City council members aren’t sure Columbus is quite ready to welcome motorized commercial scooters to its streets and sidewalks.
The council voted unanimously Tuesday on an ordinance that prohibits the use of motorized commercial scooters until the city has created its own rules and regulations.
The move is a proactive step toward preventing a rental company such as Bird or Lime from dropping off hundreds of scooters on city streets as they have in other Indiana cities including Bloomington, Indianapolis and West Lafayette over the last year.
“I’ve received a lot of positive response from folks in my district in regard to the proactive nature we’ve taken with scooters,” Councilman David Bush said.
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The 15-miles-per-hour vehicles have caused controversy in cities across the nation after injuries have been reported and cities have been left to clean abandoned scooters out of rivers and waterways. Nashville, Tennessee, reported its first scooter-related death last month.
The Indianapolis City-County Council adopted a proposal Monday that makes it illegal to ride an electric scooter on the sidewalk.
A new state law took effect July 1, calling the scooters “electric foot scooters,” not motorized vehicles, allowing scooter rides to use them on sidewalks again after Indianapolis banned the use of what they referred to as a “motorized vehicle” on sidewalks last year.
Indianapolis had to pass a new ordinance in order to update the language. Now, violators can receive a $20 ticket for using a scooter on an Indianapolis sidewalk.
Councilman Frank Miller said the city ordinance review committee will begin identifying rules and regulations that could be put in place to get the process rolling, but he said there is no rush to get it done.
At a July 2 council meeting, Miller said the committee and a subcommittee forum made up of downtown merchants and the Columbus Visitors Center aren’t against scooters, but said they’re not fond of how e-scooters are currently being used in other cities.
“What we want to avoid is a company without any regulation could come here overnight and dump thousands in a large city because there’s no regulations,” Miller said on July 2. “Without a regulation, that doesn’t mean they can’t come. We can always revisit the ordinance.”
