Auckland Council announced yesterday it would impose a 15kmh speed limit in parts of the city as part of its second e-scooter trial, which runs until the end of October.
Busy parts of the city would be ''geo-fenced'', using GPS technology to automatically slow a scooter when it was in one of the designated areas.
DCC community services general manager Simon Pickford said yesterday Dunedin could follow suit.
The council was meeting representatives from Lime - the only company operating e-scooters in Dunedin so far - each week to discuss safety initiatives.
Those talks ''definitely'' included setting lower speed limits for parts of Dunedin, as well as designating busy parts of the city as complete no-go zones for e-scooters, he said.
''We're working with them on a package of stuff - a variety of safety initiatives.''
Councillors had voted in March to give council greater control over the scooters by reviewing its mobile trading and temporary stall bylaw to include bike or scooter ride-share companies.
Changes would allow the council to require companies such as Lime, which now has 700 scooters in Dunedin, to obtain a licence and pay a fee to operate in the city.
An urgent report on what other options were available to the council to control the use of e-scooters was also being prepared.
Mr Pickford said that safety report was now expected to be presented to councillors on May 28.
Asked if a 15kmh speed limit was likely, Mr Pickford said it was, and that ''seems to be a kind of acceptable limit'' for highly pedestrianised areas.
He said Auckland was ''leading the way'' because it already had a bylaw in place and could issue licenses to operators, giving it a ''stick to hold over those operators'' to ensure compliance.
''That's a significant amount of clout over the operators that we don't have, so we have to work alongside the operators and encourage them to do the right thing.
''They're very good at taking feedback around things that are working well and not so well for Dunedin,'' Mr Pickford said
The number of complaints against e-scooter riders had also dropped off ''to more or less zero'' after an initial spike, which showed people were ''starting to self-regulate''.
Related Stories
Comments
"The number of complaints against e-scooter riders had also dropped off ''to more or less zero'' after an initial spike, which showed people were ''starting to self-regulate''
So all the angst etc from the hand wringers came to nought.
Angst is not from hand wringers but from walkers who were and still are affected. It also does not show that people are starting to self regulate. More likely they are expensive and not so trendy now.
The DCC made it plain that they were not the organisation to field complaints against e-scooters but the Police and Lime were. I have no way of contacting Lime and contacting the police seems inappropriate. I suggest that that is the reason for the reduction in complaints.