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Australia: Melbourne Officials Vote to Ban Rental E-scooters

Hire e-scooters are lined up in Melbourne's central business district (CBD) on August 13, 2024. (Photo by William WEST / AFP)
Hire e-scooters are lined up in Melbourne's central business district (CBD) on August 13, 2024. (Photo by William WEST / AFP)
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Australia: Melbourne Officials Vote to Ban Rental E-scooters

Hire e-scooters are lined up in Melbourne's central business district (CBD) on August 13, 2024. (Photo by William WEST / AFP)
Hire e-scooters are lined up in Melbourne's central business district (CBD) on August 13, 2024. (Photo by William WEST / AFP)

Melbourne has become the latest city to ban rental e-scooters, abruptly moving to end a trial contract with two firms after a community revolt.

After a six-to-four council vote late Tuesday, city authorities said they would give operators Lime and Neuron 30 days to rid the city center of the two-wheeled contraptions.

Mayor Nicholas Reece -- a former executive at the men's health charity Movember -- backed the move and said it had popular support.

He alleged scooters had been scattered around the city "like confetti", posing a risk to the community.

For fans, e-scooters are a transport revolution -- allowing commuters to zip around crowded cities with ease and at minimal cost.

For detractors, they are injury-inducing street litter and a hipsters' plague on peaceful pedestrians.

In just two decades, e-scooters have grown into a worldwide market worth tens of billions of dollars a year.

But Melbourne follows cities from Barcelona to Montreal in banning or limiting where e-scooters can go.

Researchers at the University of New South Wales report the growth of e-scooters has brought a rise in related injuries and hospital admissions, mostly from men aged in their late 20s to early 30s.

The Royal Melbourne Hospital recorded 256 e-scooter-related injuries in 2022.

Rental company Neuron Mobility said Melbourne's "drastic" decision was made without "proper discussion".

"We still believe that Melbourne is an excellent city for e-scooters," Neuron's local general manager Jayden Bryant told AFP.

"If given the opportunity, we could quickly implement a variety of measures to address many, if not all, of the councilors’ concerns."

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Varieties

Australia Weighs Tactics to Thin Crocodile Numbers

A crocodile moves from the riverbank into the waters of the Adelaide River in Wak Wak, Northern Territory, Australia, July 19, 2024, in this screengrab obtained from a Reuters video. REUTERS/Stefica Nicol Bikes
A crocodile moves from the riverbank into the waters of the Adelaide River in Wak Wak, Northern Territory, Australia, July 19, 2024, in this screengrab obtained from a Reuters video. REUTERS/Stefica Nicol Bikes
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Australia Weighs Tactics to Thin Crocodile Numbers

A crocodile moves from the riverbank into the waters of the Adelaide River in Wak Wak, Northern Territory, Australia, July 19, 2024, in this screengrab obtained from a Reuters video. REUTERS/Stefica Nicol Bikes
A crocodile moves from the riverbank into the waters of the Adelaide River in Wak Wak, Northern Territory, Australia, July 19, 2024, in this screengrab obtained from a Reuters video. REUTERS/Stefica Nicol Bikes

A mottled yellow-green and brown saltwater crocodile lies mostly submerged in the muddy waters of an Australian river, only its ochre eyes visible above a triangular snout as it scans for prey.
When just such a reptile killed Charlene O'Sullivan's daughter 15 years ago, her first thought was that every one of the predators should be killed or caught around her home city of Darwin, to spare others from similar heartbreak.
Now she prefers a less drastic safety measure: education.
"I initially probably supported removing every crocodile," said O'Sullivan, whose daughter Briony was 11 when she was taken while swimming with friends at a waterhole in 2009.
"But you remove one crocodile from a creek or a waterway, another one's just going to move in," Reuters quoted the former real estate agent as saying.
"We need to respect the environment we're in, know they are there, and think smart about what sort of situation you put yourself in."
O'Sullivan's change of heart is emblematic of a growing debate in Australia's tropical north, where unrestricted hunting nearly eradicated "salties" by about 1970, only to have strict conservation rules drive up their numbers ever since.
Now authorities are making tentative efforts - from more proactive messaging to physical removal of animals - to reduce the frequency of attacks, after 18 nationwide since the start of 2023, five of them fatal, database CrocAttack shows.
But they need to do that without threatening the survival of a species enmeshed with the economy and identity of the Top End, becoming a key part of the Northern Territory's A$1.5-billion ($980-million) tourism industry.
In the past two months, crocodiles have killed an Aboriginal girl in the Northern Territory and a doctor in the neighboring state of Queensland.
But even a modest culling quota, unveiled in April, has rattled conservationists, Aboriginal elders and owners of tourism businesses.
The government wants to rid the territory of 1,200 reptiles each year from an estimated population of 100,000, to keep numbers where they were before a free-for-all by hunters drove them below 3,000 in the period from World War Two to the 1970s.
Queensland, estimated to be home to 30,000, raised the stakes this year by saying it would try to keep the animals away by shooting them with non-fatal rubber bullets.
It demurred from a recommendation by its chief scientist three years earlier to consider catching or killing larger animals.
Allowing crocodiles free rein would lead to deaths, said Hugh Possingham, the former Queensland chief scientist, whose 2021 study targeted animals longer than 2.4 m (8 ft).
"Wiping all the crocodiles out is ridiculous as well," he added. "You're between a rock and a hard place."
Conservation authorities in Western Australia, home to several thousand saltwater crocodiles, ruled out culling, said a spokesperson, adding there was no scientific evidence that it reduced the risk of attacks.
BITING BACK
But for the Northern Territory, the setting of Australia's top-grossing movie, "Crocodile Dundee", and with the world's highest ratio of saltwater crocodiles to people, awareness campaigns alone no longer suffice, the government says.
The 250,000 people who live there could soon be outnumbered by the animals, whose numbers have exploded by 3,000% in 50 years, it says.
That rankles those who work and live near crocodiles.
"The new Northern Territory plan is entirely unnecessary, wasteful and potentially dangerous," said Brandon Sideleau of Charles Darwin University, who started the CrocAttack database.
It could even bring increased attacks, if it led the public to believe that areas previously off-limits were safe, he added.
"If it hasn't got tiles on the bottom of it, don't swim in it," is the advice Tony Blums, owner of the Original Adelaide River Jumping Crocodile Cruises, gives to visitors, adding that better public education would save more lives than culls.
Tibby Quall, an Aboriginal elder of the Dungalaba, or saltwater crocodile, clan, also opposed culling.
"It's something you live with, something that's cemented to your culture, who you are and what you are," he said.
O'Sullivan, who with her partner now runs a crocodile farm that breeds thousands of the animals for meat and skins, says the venture has helped her to better understand and respect the predator that took her daughter's life.
"I don't for a moment blame the animal for what happened," she said. "It's an animal, Briony was in the waterway, the animal did what the animal does."