Community
31 October, 2023
Cairns hostile to e-scooters
QUEENSLAND’S motoring body is calling on Cairns Regional Council to show more support for e-scooters to expand the environmentally-friendly transport system across the city.
The council does not back e-scooters and Beam is the only operator in the city which works with private providers to provide parking bays and charging systems.
The RACQ says this is in contrast to Townsville.
The RACQ’s second annual Public Transport Survey found 17.5 per cent of public transport users in Townsville had jumped on an e-scooter in the past 12 months, compared with 5.2 per cent in Cairns, 11.2 per cent in Brisbane and 6.3 per cent on the Gold Coast.
Club transport planning and infrastructure advisor Tim Mitchell said it showed residents had well and truly embraced e-mobility.
“While e-scooters are growing in popularity right across the state, our survey found some clear differences when it comes to why they’re using them for transport,” he said. “For example, in Brisbane almost a quarter (23.5 per cent) of all e-scooter riders used them as a way to commute to work, whereas in Townsville 100 per cent of rides were taken purely for recreation,” he said.
“This shows e-scooters have become a great drawcard, not only for tourists in North Queensland, but also locals looking for fun ways to explore their own city.
“Townsville is a great example of a regional city embracing modern forms of mobility and benefiting from it.”
Mr Mitchell said there were reservations and little public support in Cairns.
The report also found in Cairns, two-in-three bus users travelled on public transport less than once per month and less than half of shared car users shared cars on a monthly basis.
It found the preference to drive was the most common and the top main reason for Cairns residents to not use public transport (PT), noting the unavailability of PT and physical safety were ranked higher as ‘main reasons’ for non-usage.
Mr Mitchell said users were concerned about how long the bus journey took and the infrequency and the RACQ believed an on-demand service using smaller buses would work well in Cairns.
Mr Mitchell said it was like ordering an Uber or a ride share on specific routes where the service could also pick up other passengers on the way to the destination, offering flexibility, more frequency and shorter journeys.
He said it was being trialled on the Gold Coast, was used on Sydney’s northern rivers, Moree in regional NSW and parts of Adelaide.
