Reining-in the wild west of tearaway scooters

With the menace of unregistered e-bikes and scooters becoming ever-more apparent in our shopping district, council is taking its first steps on the issue.

Tuesday’s meeting addressed a motion by Cr Jen Cowley OAM to improve signage about their unsuitability in the CBD. It’s not much, but it’s a start! This is as statewide data reveals hospital admissions for e-mobility crashes have doubled and, in some regions, tripled over the past few years with teenagers and kids often those involved in using these modified and illegal vehicles.

However, deputy mayor Phillip Toynton, in supporting the motion, says they’re more than a menace, they’re a downright danger to citizens of the Orana region.

“It’s not the roads, it’s on the footpaths down the main drag where people are shopping,” Cr Toynton said.

“With modifications, some have the speed of a motorbike, and I’m told they’re now being used for criminals making ‘drug runs’ but, if the rider doesn’t have a helmet, the police can’t even pursue them,” he added.

He said that while they are a direct danger to so many, local police have enough on their plate now without having to go after every kid haring down the street on a modified e-vehicle.

“The only other thing to do is to lobby the police for more officers, the police are thin and overstretched at the moment and they have to prioritise cases.

“They have to ‘triage’ what they do, it it’s about someone riding an e-bike, or someone being assaulted, they’ll investigate the assault and think ‘we’ll worry about the e-bikes later,’ that’s just the reality,” Cr Toynton said.

Easily modified from instructions online, he said the vast majority of the bikes and scooters on our roads and footpaths don’t meet safety requirements.

“They’re illegal, more and more people are doing the wrong thing and they’re cheap, $700 or so, way less than the most basic dirt bike,” Cr Toynton said.

“You hear about so many incidents on social media, they’re a ‘stealth bomber ‘ in our CBD, they’ve got the power and speed of a two-stroke motorbike, with the quiet operation of a Tesla,” he concluded.

Cr Shibli Chowdhury said that he supports any efforts to curb their use in the CBD, having spoken to locals who have come off the worst after collisions with e-bikes and scooters on our footpaths.

“It’s become a big problem, because we now have a lot of e-bikes on the footpaths and the riders don’t take care for the pedestrians,” Cr Chowdhury said.

“I’ve heard of a few incidents where people have been really badly hurt and taken to hospital, a few people have reached out to me with their experiences in the main shopping area of town,” he added.

With Council recently dropping a line to the NSW Police Minister requesting the district be included in a current police drone “pilot” scheme focussing on the plague of unregistered trail bikes on our roads, Cr Richard Ivey believes that e-bikes and scooters should be included in the same initiative.

“While we have the issue with the unregistered motorbikes, the e-bikes are a bigger problem, and we should request the police include them in the trial,” Cr Ivey said.

“Every time you walk out the door in the Dubbo CBD, you almost walk into one, they need to be controlled for speed, the law is already there, it just needs to be policed,” he added.

While the resolution from Cr Cowley only relates at this stage to upgrading and renewing council signage on bike riding, it is indicative of how important the safety issue has become, Cr Mathew Dickerson said.

“This is a way of acknowledging community concern, while we have a small number of signs regarding bikes in the CBD, the aim is to increase and replace these for high-pedestrian shopping areas of Dubbo and Wellington,” Cr Dickerson said.

“It’s actually illegal to ride the e-scooters and modified e-bikes on public land at any time, but I see them every day when I’m out cycling around Tracker Riley reserve, and that’s illegal,” he said.

The former mayor had recently proposed a trial whereby they could be used in certain low-pedestrian recreational areas like the cycleway, as has been tried by other councils in NSW.

“I was very keen to get an e-scooter trail around Tracker Riley, so that these riders would have somewhere to legally use their vehicles, but with reduced speed limits of about 15km per hour,” Cr Dickerson said.

“However, I’ve seen modified e-bikes going around at 20–25km per hour easily but, in the end, why is council being burdened with this problem?” he asked.

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Liquid assets, spot-check on excessive bills

With council currently suing their smart water meter provider over alleged widespread device malfunctions, the chamber has decided to do a bit of research of their own.

Following a series of complaints from ratepayers about apparently excessively-high bills, Cr Chowdhury has called for spot audits on a handful of units that are the subject of these objections.

“My question on notice is, why do so many people say that their bills don’t seem to match their water use over, say, summer; why are there so many discrepancies?” he asked.

“We’re talking about 10 water meters where there’s been concerns with greater than 50 per cent increases in their bill from one year at the same time, with the same season next year,” Cr Dickerson added.

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Getting on the net-zero train…

Rather than futile and ultimately counterproductive opposition to renewable energy projects in the Orana REZ, council should instead be getting on-board early to optimise ratepayer return for such developments, Cr Dickerson argued in a motion to Council this week.

With regional projects ultimately approved under authority of the NSW Minister for Planning and the Independent Planning Commission, he argued that council could serve residents better by negotiating with the developers, rather than taking populist positions against them.

“We just have to acknowledge that council is not the consent authority for these developments, stop pretending we can effectively oppose them, and instead positively engage in the process to maximise benefits for the region,” Cr Dickerson said.

“The benefits are there, if we support them, we can have returns to the community for decades to come,” he concluded.