St. Albertans will be able to ride e-scooters in the city every summer, after council voted to make the scooter program permanent.
The local city council has been eyeing a permanent program for shareable electric scooters after companies like Bird Canada and Lime were operating in the city as part of a two year pilot program.
During the March 21 council meeting, the motion to make the program permanent, although with a few tweaks, passed with Coun. Shelley Biermanski opposed. Coun. Sheena Hughes was not in attendance to vote.
The main changes to the program include the removal of a cap to the number of companies allowed to apply for business licenses and operate in St. Albert, whereas under the pilot program a maximum of five companies were allowed to operate, although only three did, according to the city's data.
Likewise, companies operating in St. Albert this summer will also no longer have to restrict their fleet sizes to 60 e-scooters.
When the program was discussed at the committee stage on March 14, multiple councillors expressed their intention to bring forward some other minor changes, such as eliminating the helmet requirement to ride the e-scooters, and possibly increasing the programmed speed-limit of 15 km/h to 20 km/h, although neither of these changes have been approved or discussed by council yet.
In 2022, according to data collected by the city, St. Albertans took nearly 20,000 individual e-scooter trips and travelled just over 50,000 kilometres.
It's estimated that e-scooters will be available for the 2023 season starting in May.
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