City of Ballarat one of four selected for e-scooter trial program

Ballarat, along with the City of Melbourne, City of Yarra and City of Port Phillip will take part in the state government trial for 12 months.

Under the trial, people will be able to hire electric scooters and ride them in bicycle lanes and paths, shared paths and roads with a speed limit less than 50km/h. Helmets must be worn and the scooters cannot be ridden on normal footpaths.

City of Ballarat Mayor Daniel Moloney said council was keen to position Ballarat as a trial location for transport providers.

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"I think we've got a fairly compact CBD and a strong, growing population as well," he said.

"Whether it be e-scooters or autonomous vehicles in the future and a whole range of different ways of travelling, I think it'd be great for Ballarat to be one of those cities that isn't afraid to try something a bit different.

"It's easy to say I'll never use a scooter or I'll never use an autonomous car, but these are transport modes of the future that will continue to evolve and for Ballarat to be one of those pioneer cities, I think, is pretty cool."

Cr Moloney said the scooters could be placed around some of the city's busiest activity zones such as shopping centres, schools and universities, hospitals and train stations, but would likely see the most use in the CBD.

"We'll be working on the finalisation of some of the locations in the coming months, but I'm hoping that they will be well taken up in the CBD area," he said.

"We can see being particularly popular amongst students when we get out of the COVID period and we have Melbourne students returning who typically catch a train, get off at central station and go through to the TAFE and university precincts in the centre of Ballarat."

However, Cr Moloney said council needed to be cautious that the scooters did not suffer the same fate as some of the state's other shared vehicles, such as Melbourne's blue bicycles that occasionally turned up in trees or at the bottom of the Yarra River.

"We don't go into it blind, we know that there's been history in other locations, but we've also seen that with the trials in other locations, many of the bugs have been ironed out through better tracking of the scooters and by working with stakeholders to make sure we've found the appropriate drop-off locations as well," he said.

Public Transport Users Association Ballarat branch convenor Ben Lever said the e-scooters had the potential to transform part of Ballarat's transport ecosystem and could help link new developments that do not currently have a bus service.

"I think we need to be really clear that it's probably not going to be a silver bullet that's going to solve all our problems, we still have an urgent need to fix our bus network and do other things like that, but it does help to provide some last mile solutions in combination with other transport modes."

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