2 Montreal City Councillors Want To Bring Back Self-Service Electric Scooters
They're calling for a 2023 kickoff. 🛴
Someone stands on a Lime e-scooter in a bike lane. Right: Two Montreal city councillors pose with an electric scooter in front of a BIXI stand.
Two Montreal city councillors are calling on BIXI to bring self-service electric scooters back to the city by 2023. Alba Stella Zúñiga Ramos of Mercier–Hochelaga-Maisonneuve and Stéphanie Valenzuela of Côte-Des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce made a joint statement outside of City Hall on Tuesday saying the popularity of e-scooters has gone up and more than half of Montrealers want to see a return of the motorized mode of transportation.
It has been just under three years since a failed 2019 pilot project saw rentable scooters booted from the city. Within weeks of the scooters being introduced en masse by the two companies, Bird and Lime, many were destroyed and dumped around town. One was even launched into the Lachine Canal.
"The only way to meet demand without reliving a fiasco is to hand over the mandate to BIXI, which has proven its ability to manage a self-service transport system," said Ramos, the the Official Opposition spokesperson at City Hall for active transportation and BIXI.
Ramos said it's in residents' interest to fund BIXI with an additional $46 million over a decade instead of bringing in another company to manage a new scooter rental project.
"It is an alternative that can reach many people who would like to give up their car, but who are less inclined to cycle, or who are looking for an offer to cross the last kilometre between the metro and the house or the workplace," she wrote in a social media post.
"It's an alternative that can reach many people who would like to give up their car but who are less inclined to cycle,” agreed Stéphanie Valenzuela, Official Opposition spokesperson for the environment.
Ensemble Montreal plans to table a motion to bring back scooters at the next city council meeting on June 13.