Another inner city, Perth Council is looking to remove highest scooters from their streets. Joining me now is Allison Zamon, the mayor of the City of Vincent. Could they Allison?
Good to talk to you, hy Simon good to talk to you too.
Well, when did you make the decision on what are you going to do?
Okay? So, look, the first thing I want to say, because I really do need to say this, I just want to express it like I'm sure you do and your listeners, just how sorry we are for the family who have lost their father, their husband, son, because I think that's the thing that is really weighing very heavily on everyone at the moment, I think. But also I want to acknowledge out that the family of the woman who's alleged to have run into him what they must
be going through as well. So I do want to say that because I don't want to lose sight of the fact that this is happening in the face of
a tragedy. So we a city of Vincent has had an a scooter trial for coming up to two years now that we're put in place just before I became mayor of the City of Vincent, and it has really been operating in conjunction with the City of Perth because we're obviously adjoining councils and people are using the Beam and the Neuron scooters to go between Vincent and the
City per quite a lot. So I've been in regular conversations with the acting lagmir Bruce Reynolds around following the tragedy and we've been talking about what needs to happen. And as a result of that, the City of Vincent is now moving to also suspend the trials as well. With both companies, we're just we're hoping we'll be able to get the final decision out today. The only thing we're waiting on, which is waiting on a last last
little piece of legal advice. And the reason for that is because obviously I don't want to be exposing our City of Vincent rate payers to any penalties for breach of contract or anything like that, so that's a concern. But otherwise we'll be seeking to effectively follow the lead of the City of Perth because they've had more time to be able to get the advice and everything to pull this together. So we're looking at doing the same thing all right.
City Vincent famous for being a pedestrian friendly place in the entertainment commercial precincts Oxford Car, Vincent Street or William Yeah, yeah, and even off the side streets around around the big oval over there. So is it because you have pedestrian congestion versus higher scooters potentially.
Well, I think I think it's as important that we talk about the higher scooters and the way that they get used. Look, I'm pretty very clear with everyone. I'm an EAT scooter writer. I was an earlier adoptor. I have. I played a scooter for four and a half years and I ride it around Vincent all the time and
it's really good. But I suppose the thing about me as an E scooter rider is that because it's my scooter, I'm obviously taking particular care of it, because it's my asset, and I'm wearing a helmet because a quiet brown injury doesn't appeal, and also and you know, I'm obviously using
it in a particular way. I think the concern that's emerging is really how higher scooters are potentially used differently as opposed to people that I'm in their own scooters and ride them, ride them potentially in a different way, and will be more experienced as well in terms of
riding around. So well, I really really want to make that distinction because what I am very concerned about is making sure that we don't have a knee jerk reaction which just banns an entire mode of transport because a particular availability of this mode of transport is potentially able to be misused in a way that people who own their own scooters aren't necessarily going to do. But we need, we need to make sure that lads are enforced, we
need to make sure that people respect it. And I also put that out to the drivers as well, because I've never had a tumble, I've never been in an accident, but I can tell you there's been two times I've almost been cleaned up by inattentive car drivers and when I had the right of way and when I was driving,
when I was riding responsibly. So in the same way that people need to look out for bikes, they also do need to look out for e scooters and conversely, people who were using that mode of transport have a responsibility to use it appropriately.
So yeah, so if you get the final legal tick off, Allison Neuron and being could be getting out of the trucks today.
Yes, well, so the way it works is that people would be aware, I've seen it already in the city of Perth. What they made the decision they're able to be turned off remotely, and then well, look, it's actually in Beams and Neuron's interest to gather up their assets as soon as possible. They don't want to leave them lying around on the streets. And you see that people are already starting to pick them up, so we would expect that they'd all be gone within a forty eight
hour period. What we're going to do is we are then commissioning We're going to commission investigations into the safety to sort of look at are there ways to make it safer? Are there restrictions that we need to look at imposing additionally, so for example, it can only be used in daylight hours, or it could only be used around the river or something like that. I don't know.
I don't want to pre emp that, but or maybe the decision will be made that it's really just the future of Higher East scooters is really doesn't have a place. That might be what we do, but I don't want to preempt that. But what I do know is that right now we are working with the City of Perth following the lead, and we're working towards doing the same thing perfectively. And the Council will talk about this more fulsomely at our public Ordinary Council meeting in a couple of weeks.
All right, Alison, thank you very much for talking to our listeners. Appreciate it.
Thank you, no worries, thank you