The City of Nelson may soon consider joining B.C.’s electric scooter pilot program after a resident asked council to explore the idea.
Councillor Leslie Payne raised the topic at Tuesday’s council meeting after reviewing a letter from a resident requesting that the city join the e-kick scooter pilot program.
Payne said the resident also questioned why they had been told they needed a licence to operate an e-scooter.
“It didn’t make sense to me that a safety officer told him that he needed a license for his e-scooter because those things are driving all over the place,” said Payne.
Corporate services director Sarah Winton said that because Nelson is not a pilot community, privately owned electric kick scooters cannot legally be operated on public roads or in other public areas where they are permitted under B.C.’s pilot program
“You have to be approved as a pilot community to legally have scooters in your town, and we are not,” said Winton.
Winton confirmed there have been tickets issued in the city for illegal e-scooter use.
Payne asked whether the city should consider becoming a pilot community, noting e-scooters could provide another transportation option for residents travelling across the relatively flat parts of the city.
“It’d be interesting to get the opinion of development services as far as active transportation, if that’s anything that has been considered in the past,” said Payne.
But Councillor Keith Page urged caution, saying he would like to see more emphasis on education and safety.
“I really want to see us manifest well, good training, good compliance around safety,” he said.
“I am very concerned about the number of severe injuries that we’re seeing in other communities and I don’t want to necessarily embrace another product out here.”
Council voted to pull the resident’s letter from its correspondence package so it can return as a regular agenda item at its Aug. 18 meeting, where councillors can decide whether to direct staff to pursue an application to join the program.
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