John Armstrong's opinion: Silence from the Beehive astonishing over Lime Scooter's rocky start on NZ streets

March 8, 2019
AUCKLAND - OCT 15 2018: Lime electric scooters in Auckland, New Zealand. The scooters have a 48km maximum range. Users find, unlock and pay for them using an app and leave them at their destination.

Lime by name; lime by nature? That question-mark is pretty superfluous.

For those who regard the arrival in New Zealand of the California-based multinational as more akin to an invasion, Lime’s behaviour has unquestionably left a very sour taste in their mouths.

That is not solely because the pavements on the streets of the country’s major cities have effectively been hijacked by a foreign company and transformed into parking lots for thousands of that enterprise’s imported e-scooters.

It is not just because Lime is paying an absolute pittance to local authorities for licences to permit its scooters to be operated within areas covered by those councils' jurisdictions for trial periods lasting for months rather than weeks — periods long enough for Lime to build brand awareness and customer loyalty sufficient to shut the company's equally ruthless and avaricious competitors out of those markets before they have got even a look in.

Neither is it solely because the company's attitude to safety varies from lax to lackadaisical. Or manifestly did so prior to the recent software "glitch" - Lime’s preferred description of the cause of a brake-locking fault on some of the company’s e-scooters which resulted in riders being catapulted off their machines and into the Accident and Emergency Department of their local hospital.

Speaking the only kind of language which Lime seems to understand, Auckland Council and the Dunedin City Council ordered Lime off their pavements and roads.

The Auckland Council went further, warning that the temporary ban might well become permanent unless Lime lifted its game.

The self-proclaimed leader in the delivery of "micro-mobility" appears to have wised up. But for how long?

A genuine shift in Lime’s corporate mindset is simply not going to happen.

Like Uber, Airbnb and other players in New Zealand’s burgeoning App Economy, Lime’s internal culture is determined by head office back home in the United States.

The level of angst being voiced in New Zealand with respect to Lime’s corporate behaviour anyway remains low.

The debate remains fixed on the wisdom of permitting a vehicle of sorts which can reach a top speed of nearly 25km/h being allowed to dodge between pedestrians and whatever else is seeking to progress along the pavement.

That is not Lime’s problem to fix but for politicians and bureaucrats in Wellington to sort out.

There are signs, however, that there is mounting concern at the manner and speed with which Lime established its presence in New Zealand, its circumventing of central government and the lack of consultation with locals regarding its plans.

In short, Lime has done nothing that might prompt questions of legality, but an uncomfortable feeling lingers that what has happened is not right.

What is astonishing is the silence from the Beehive. It amounts to an abdication of responsibility by ministers whose portfolios focus on transport matters — namely Phil Twyford and Julie Anne Genter, whose bailiwick includes road safety.

Just how long this twosome can remain aloof is a moot point — especially in the wake of a pretty big hint dropped this week by Auckland mayoral candidate John Tamihere that he intends finding out who should bear responsibility for the deal struck between Auckland Transport and Lime which permitted the latter to flood the streets of the metropolis with its green machines.

Like Uber and Airbnb, Lime likes to play by the rules — its own rules.

Those outfits are the flag-bearers of a business model of a kind one is guaranteed can expect to see a lot more examples.

It is a model which searches for holes in the regulatory framework which sets out what is or is not acceptable in its line of business — and then tests those boundaries to their very limit.

The behaviour of these companies is such that they are in no danger of picking up awards as good corporate citizens.

They don’t give a hoot about that, their default stance is to freeload on the backs of others. They ride roughshod over long-established labour market practises. The words "trade union" are an absolute anathema.

The company not only made its presence in New Zealand a fait accompli before those in central government woke up to that truth. Lime was well down the road to market dominance.

There is not a lot that Jacinda Ardern’s administration can now do about that — unless it wants to try and outlaw that kind of business model, which isn't going to happen.

Such action would alienate consumers who don’t give a jot about what means Uber, Airbnb and Lime employ to deliver their services.

There is something that Twyford and Genter could do and should do.

The question needs to be asked as to whether it is going to require that someone first be killed in New Zealand by collision with an e-scooter or suffer irreparable brain damage to prompt the Government to make it compulsory to put on a safety helmet before jumping on an e-scooter — be it of the Lime variety or whatever.

After all, it has been a legal requirement for the past 25 years that anyone riding a bicycle on a public road must be wearing a helmet of an approved standard.

When it comes to e-scooters, however, the official line, as spouted by the Land Transport Authority, merely states that donning a helmet is "recommended".

It would take all of a couple of minutes to draft the necessary regulation under the powers contained in the Land Transport Act to bring e-scooters into line with the rule on helmets applying to conventional bicycles.

Pedants would argue that taking such a step is bound to create an anomaly elsewhere in the law. Well, so be it. Anomaly is already piled upon inconsistency in the current regulations.

There is a long list of other forms of transport which do not require the rider or driver to put on a helmet, but which are similarly capable of creating as much havoc on crowded pavements and busy streets as much as an errant e-scooter.

That list runs the gamut from conventional skateboards, motorised skateboards, segways, rider-propelled push scooters, tricycles to e-bikes, mobility scooters, foldable YikeBikes, motorised wheelchairs and even golf carts.

The rules as to which mode is allowed where are the very model of irregularity. It is a public policy disaster zone.

Officials from the various Government departments and stand-alone agencies whose purview extends from central-city sidewalks to suburban side-roads were last year instructed by their political masters to go away and sort out the shambles.

Nothing has yet emerged from that exercise — publicly at least.

Twyford has said little beyond hinting he might slash the permissible top speed of an e-scooter to as low as 10 km/h.

That would be radical. It would reduce e-scooters to little more than walking pace. It would earn the ire of scooter owners and hirers. It would see Twyford labelled a Luddite.

More importantly, imposing such a speed limit would likely have a dire impact on the Government’s public transport strategy.

People are not going to swap their cars for trains or buses if using the latter two modes of transport still leave them with a long walk to their place of employment.

E-scooters offer a quick and affordable means for commuters to get from the nearest bus-stop or train terminus to their office door.

That is very good news for the Greens in their never ending campaign to get people out of their cars and onto trains and buses.

It is also very bad news for the Greens. Lime is the manifestation of just about everything that the Greens despise.

Little wonder Genter is keeping her head down.

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