KUCHING: Just days after the Beam e-scooters hit the streets of Kuching, early this month, local councils declared the operation of the e-scooters as illegal, over safety fears.
A RM300 compound penalty would be imposed against those who failed to comply with the rules which would be enforced by the police and the Road Transport Department.
“You can’t bring something like that to an area like this and think people aren’t going to be on the sidewalks,” one passerby told New Sarawak Tribune.
“They’re not safe enough to be on the roads,” added another, who opted for the city’s hire motorbikes instead. “I feel like the council changed direction quickly. They (Beam) should not be around,”
In other cities our laws and regulations currently make their use illegal anyway – an example of cutting-edge technology butting heads with outdated regulations – but almost two years since the first appearance of e-scooters, hundreds of cities around the world are still grappling with the same issue as Kuching.
The early “arrive first, ask later” tactics of the Beam e- scooter had perhaps riled local councils, and they wanted to show they were in charge.
Speaking to New Sarawak Tribune yesterday, the Kuching South City Council (MBKS) mayor Datuk Wee Hong Seng who described Beam Mobility’s move as cheeky, said “We saw the scooters everywhere and we said, ‘There is a problem, it operates in a way that spoils the image of the city,”
“To operate these e-scooters, you need to have a permit. And before you get our consent, do not do it.
“It would be very nice if the tech bros could come in and ask collaboratively for permission rather than after-the-fact forgiveness,” said Wee.
On the bright side, local council officials were learning the trade quickly.
Last week, Beam Mobility was instructed by the Kuching City North Commission (DBKU) and the Kuching South City Council (MBKS), to remove its e-scooters immediately.
This decision suggested that Wee was far from convinced with a lack of safety measures and legal reasons at the forefront.
“The risks, not just for riders but for pedestrians, especially people with disabilities and the elderly, are obvious. For us, safety is our top priority,”
He also revealed that Saradise and Icom Square management had made it clear that no e-scooters would be allowed to operate in their areas.
Beam Mobility, nevertheless, seemed unwilling to go quietly. An online ‘petition’ was launched on January 7, seeking support from the public to allow the use of e- scooters in the city. It has since gained good traction on social media.
However, according to them, this was not a petition of any kind. It was merely a platform for its supporters to make their voices heard to the DBKU and MBKS via emails.
The petition reads, “Our team has put in a lot of hard work to bring these e-scooters to you and we were thrilled to see them being used.
“Unfortunately, the councils have been a little concerned about the usage of our e-scooters in the city and were instructed to remove our fleet,”
No available records of how many emails were sent out because the operator did not collect any responses nor was able to track any data relating to it.
The mayor confirmed that the council had glanced through a few emails from the public and business owners about the e-scooters.
“Commenters said that e-scooters are a good form of exercise, and a way of getting less mobile people out and about, and some showed incidents of riders going where they shouldn’t, often with speed which was filmed by a passerby at night,”
But riding a privately owned e-scooter on private land was not targeted in this discussion. They were “not a problem”, he noted.
In an email reply to New Sarawak Tribune on January 9, Beam Mobility said it would strive to have comprehensive discussions with local authorities to ensure that both its micro-mobility solutions and the market’s environment were safe and suitable for deployment.
“While Beam is confident in the high technology built into its e-scooters that maximises safety potential, we are also excited to continue discussions with the local authorities with the focus of bringing a service that is beneficial to individuals, businesses, and government stakeholders,” the email added.
According to Wee, during the council meeting which was attended by Beam Mobility representatives on January 10, the MBKS had recommended the operator introduce a charter of good practice and clarified usage rules after safety issues and a lack of appropriate legal infrastructure was raised.
“In the meeting, it was found that their operational requirements could not be met by our public space. When ridden, they emerged as sidewalk bullies — fast enough to unsettle pedestrians and create safety issues,” he stressed.
A successful e-scooter operation is not a prerequisite. He wanted Beam Mobility to search for private land and designated areas which are particularly suited to e-scooters, for the time being, while reiterating they “weren’t going anywhere before these all settled”. He considered this a fair decision.
“In the modern world, there is a place for everything but let’s make it right. With this in motion, the council will go some way to set a legal and regulatory framework that means they can be safely and lawfully used when the operator has found the place,” he said.
That could be about changing regulations, but there was no guarantee.
Wee said Beam Mobility was playing a long game in Sarawak and perhaps the operator had learned its lesson.
“As a responsible council, we strongly advise you to follow the law when you want to bring whatever latest technology to Sarawak,” he said, “and the technology is very attractive, but you’re not going to succeed unless you work in partnership and that’s fundamental to the sustainability of the service. If you can make it here you can make it anywhere, because the standards are so high,”
“It’s a learning experience,” said Dr Carmelo Ferlito, CEO of the centre for market education. “We don’t have a lot of good data. So much is anecdotal, that’s the biggest issue,”
“I think when you’re innovating and disrupting, for better or worse, there’s going to be that clash between the way things happened in the past and the way they will happen in the future.
“There’s going to be that evolutionary phase where we’re like, ‘OK, this is how we used to do things for the last 100 years, this is how cars have become the centre of our world, and this is why we need to move on,” said Ferlito, who is also an economic historian.
He also added that “the emergence of e-scooters demonstrates the possibility for bottom-up solutions to environmental issues which would greatly help with reducing carbon emissions as well.
“According to MDPI, a platform for scholarly publishing, the average fossil fuelled car emits 269 grams of carbon dioxide (CO2) for every kilometre travelled in Malaysia. Giving an emission-free option for people to move about is motivated by our commitment to being kinder to our one planet,”
Earlier, Beam Mobility claimed every 10 km Beam ride saves 2.65 kg of CO2 emissions instead to a car.
