E-scooters have hit the road in Brampton as pilot project launches

A fleet of new electric vehicles has hit the road in Brampton, making it the first city in the GTA with an e-scooter program.

Hundreds of electric kick-style scooters are now available in Brampton under the City’s e-scooter pilot project which launched on Monday (April 3) to give residents more mobility options while cutting down on traffic and vehicle emissions.

The e-scooters are available from three different companies – Neuron Mobility, Bird Canada, and Scooty Mobility. Each provider has been approved to operate a fleet of 250 to 500 e-scooters, and Each company has its own area of the city to cover and uses a smartphone app which can be used to reserve and rent scooters.

The rentals have an activation fee and users are charged by the minute with the three providers using similar rates for rides – Scooty charges $1.15 to unlock a scooter and 0.40 cents per minute; Neuron charges $1.15 to unlock the scooters and another 0.35 cents per minute; while Bird charges around $1.35 to activate and 0.20 cents per minute.

Neuron and Bird currently have day-use packages available for riders who know they’ll be making multiple trips, and Scooty says it will be rolling out similar packages soon.

The new e-scooters are only allowed on roads and banned from sidewalks and are limited to a maximum speed of 20 km/h. The scooters have also been “geo-fenced” to reduce speeds to 15 km/h when operating in parks, high-pedestrian areas, and paths.

With so many first-time rides in Brampton, Neuron has launched its ScootSafe Academy program for riders to learn about the dos and don’ts of scooter safety while earning credits for future rides. The website covers how to get riding, where to park, and videos to help ensure Bramptonians use e-scooters safely.

The City made changes to the bylaws to allow for the tiny electric vehicles to be used on Brampton streets, and the City says scooters are being treated similarly to bicycles “in that they will be permitted to operate within the road right-of-way as a vehicle and not be permitted to operate on sidewalks.”

Bird Canada says that kick-style scooters could cut down on the number of car trips across the city and give residents more transportation options.

The company says data from similar programs in other cities have shown that every 2.5 scooter trips replace one car trip, like in Ottawa, 4 to 6 per cent of residents reported using vehicles less in favour of e-scooters. In Calgary, there have been over two million e-scooter trips with over 200,00 unique users.