ACT e-scooters register 2.7 million trips, 5.3 million kilometres since introduction

The highest number of e-scooter trips logged in one day was an astonishing 10,200 on Saturday, January 7 this year, when Summernats was in full swing in Canberra and some scooters were creatively repurposed to generate black burnout marks around the Braddon "rainbow roundabout".

The lowest usage was back in September 2021, at the height of the COVID pandemic, with just 200 trips logged in one day, hundreds of the devices sitting idle and unwanted as the city went into lockdown.

The most recent ride report data, compiled and reported online, has revealed how sustained the appeal of the rental e-scooters has been since their introduction to the ACT in late 2020, when the number of daily journeys jumped from 800 to more than 9000 in just two months.

The daily average number of trips over the 30 months since introduction has been 3300, at an average 9.6km/h.

The scooters are capped at a speed limit of 15km/h on footpaths and can go up to 25km/h on roads. They will automatically slow down in designated high-traffic zones around Braddon and Civic.

Two companies, Neuron and Beam, are the approved micro-mobility e-scooter rental providers for the ACT.

The novelty value of the devices - which charge a $1 unlock fee and 45 cents per minute - delivered a usage boom for both companies for the first six months, but this plummeted when the pandemic hit.

After the September 2021 rock bottom, daily usage slowly crept upwards again, peaking at 8600 on January 8 last year.

While the past 12 months have not recaptured that initial rush of enthusiasm for e-scooter rental, the 14-day rolling average of journeys has never fallen below 2000.

The most condensed scooter usage, as expected, has been in and around the city, with Bunda and Alinga Streets, as well as parts of London Circuit and Braddon, the most popular scooting areas.

The data revealed how the tiny scooters also have travelled far and wide across the ACT, from as far north as Horse Park Drive in Gungahlin to Drakeford Drive and Isabella Plains in the south. The machines are all equipped with tracking devices and are recovered in the oddest places, including Canberra's lakes and drains.

Geofencing prevents them travelling outside the ACT. The geofencing technology used by Beam and Neuron limits where the scooters can be left and users are incentivised to park them in the right spot so they aren't charged more.

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Canberra has recorded one road fatality of an e-scooter rider back in September last year, when a 19-year-old woman was killed when hit by a car in Kambah.

While Canberra has embraced rental e-scooters, elsewhere in the world they are facing a backlash, with Paris turning against the machines.

In a referendum held on the weekend, 90 per cent of Parisians voted to ban the battery-powered devices, claiming they were causing more harm than good by weaving through traffic, cluttering pavements and parks, and injuring riders and pedestrians.

New laws were introduced in 2019 which required riders to wear high-vis and not ride against the traffic flow but these were largely ignored by users.

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