The Star: March 07, 2019

6 Thursday March 7 2019
Latest Christchurch news at www.star.kiwi
The Star
News
Policy to address the way we wheel
FUTURE-TECH: The influx
and popularity of Lime
scooters has seen the city
council begin work on a
policy for all micro-mobility
vehicles.
• By Julia Evans
LIME SCOOTERS have taken
the city by storm.
But they could soon be a thing
of the past, making way for new
modes like hoverboards, Ogos (a
hands-free wheelchair), Segways,
e-unicycles, velomobiles (a
combination of a bike and a car)
and two-seater pod cars.
With the huge popularity of
Lime, the city council is looking
at being prepared for all future
forms of transport by developing
a policy for micro-mobility
vehicles.
The policy would cover any
current and future form of
low-powered devices from
e-bikes, e-recumbents and
e-scooters to everything in
between.
ViaStrada senior traffic
engineer Glen Koorey said
transport technology is moving
so quickly that the city council
and central Government needs to
prepare.
“With rules and regulation,
you have to try not to be too
prescriptive because it won’t
be long before something new
comes along,” he said.
Dr Koorey said policy should
be based around “performance
measures” such as size, speed,
POWERED UP: Left to right – Hoverboards, Ogos and
e-unicycles will be catered for in a city council policy for
micro-mobility vehicles.
protection, so it did not rule any
future technology out.
“Then you can try and
future-proof regulation. The
legislation for e-scooters has been
around since 2004, but we never
anticipated their uptake now in
it.”
Any future transport modes
would have to co-exist with cars,
pedestrians and bicycles, he said.
“There’s a concept for a
mid-size vehicle lane that
would include cycles, scooters,
skateboards and other lowpowered
devices. I do see merit in
that,” Dr Koorey said.
“First we need to make
it easier for any of these
devices to use cycle lanes,
then we’ve got to build
them.”
Last week Lime was
granted a one year permit
with an $86.25 fee per
scooter by the city council.
Since they were
launched in October, more than
100,000 people rode the scooters
and a survey found 95 per cent of
users wanted them to stay.
They were briefly removed
from Auckland and Dunedin
Glen Koorey
streets after safety concerns over
a software glitch which caused
the wheels to randomly
lock up and riders to be
thrown over the handle
bars.
But Lime also has plans
to launch pod-like twoseater
cars for rideshare in
New Zealand.
City council head of
planning and strategic
transport David Griffiths said it
would take 12 months to develop
the policy, which would give
guidance on a range of issues
arising with the popularity of
new kinds of transport.
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