Hire scooters withdraw from City of Yarra, Melbourne

ABC NEWS (Australia)

The future of e-scooters in Melbourne has been thrown into doubt after two major operators announced plans to withdraw from an inner-city council area. The Yarra City Council voted to impose a 400% fee hike on operators. Lime and Neuron have responded by pulling their scooters off the streets.

Transcript

00:00Since they were introduced to the streets three years ago, e-scooters in the city of

00:07Yarra have been a hit and a miss, and soon they'll be gone.

00:20E-scooter operators Lime and Neuron today announced their withdrawal from the city of

00:25after the council voted last week to increase operator fees by 400% from $1 to $5 per e-scooter

00:33per day. A spokesperson for Neuron saying the fee hike was unsustainable.

00:38This was kind of done without any consultation to the operators on the feasibility and it's

00:42making it the highest fee in the world. The numbers just don't stack up.

00:46Oh mate, give me the smallest violin string in Australia.

00:49Yarra Council says the increase is unavoidable because it's staring down a $570,000 shortfall

00:55from the trial.

00:56It's a Pandora's box. If we start subsidising private companies, big private companies,

01:01every private company in Yarra is going to be knocking on our door saying we're going

01:03to have to sack people.

01:05But a permanent contract for e-scooters in the city of Yarra is still set to go to tender

01:09in September.

01:10I would predict that Lime and Neuron would also come back with a towel between their

01:13legs and try and get this contract back up and running again.

01:17Now that Lime and Neuron are pulling out of Yarra City Council, the only remaining

01:21council in Melbourne running an e-scooter trial is Port Phillip. Melbourne City Council

01:26banned shared e-scooters from its streets last year.

01:29I don't jump on a bandwagon that's looking at what's happening and says oh this is the

01:34death of e-scootering. I don't think that's going to happen. I think it will just take

01:37different forms.

01:39Darabin, Marybeck and Moonee Valley councils have proposed starting their own trials.

01:44But those wheels are not yet in motion.

01:47For more information visit www.fema.gov

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