Three dead, two hospitalized, following collision in Fredericton: police
Three people have died and two have been hospitalized after a speeding car struck a tree and landed on another vehicle in Fredericton Sunday morning.
When shared e-scooter companies rolled into Canada in 2018, they hoped a few small pilots would quickly result in a country full of people zipping around on two wheels.
Since then, the companies which allow people to rent scooters through an app and park them along city streets have been banned from Montreal and Toronto and have barely made a dent in Atlantic Canada.
But recent wins in Western Canada and impending decisions in several Ontario municipalities could soon provide e-scooter companies the opportunities they need to establish themselves in the market.
"The wave is going to continue," said Jonathan Hopkins, director of strategic development and government relations in Canada for e-scooter company Lime.
"We'll see how big it is and how far it goes and how fast it spread, but there's not going to be a retrenchment against this. E-scooters are here to stay in Canada."
Lime, which currently operates in Calgary, Edmonton, Victoria and Ottawa, was among the first to attempt a shared model in 2018, where consumers locate and unlock e-scooters with an app and pick up or drop off on Canadian streets.
The San Francisco company entered the market with a pilot limited to Waterloo, Ont.'s private trails and university campuses.
Users had to be at least 18 years old with a driver's licence and were charged a $1 unlocking fee and 30 cents per minute. The pilot ended in 2019 and Lime did not seek a renewal, but Hopkins said the company wants to return whenever Waterloo allows e-scooters region-wide.
During that trial period, Lime competitors Bird, Jump, Spin and Roll were expanding in Canada and Montreal decided to give Lime and Bird a shot with a summer 2019 pilot.
A city report found e-scooters in the Montreal pilot were only parked in designated zones 20 per cent of the time and police issued 333 tickets to riders, including 324 for not wearing a helmet.
Then, there was the Lime e-scooter spotted in the Lachine Canal -- reminiscent of viral incidents in the U.S. and Asia, where scooters were lit on fire, tossed off buildings, snapped in half and even defecated on.
Montreal banned shared e-scooters in 2020, but Bird thinks the pilot would have gone differently with a greater number of parking zones in more convenient locations and a system locking e-scooters to permitted municipal infrastructure.
"There's a use case for scooters in Montreal and I'm optimistic that the shared e-scooter program will be back (but) differently constituted," said Chris Schafer, Bird Canada's vice-president of government affairs.
Hopkins agreed.
"It's definitely not a lost cause," he said. "It's only a matter of time. I think (e-scooters) will be back soon."
Raktim Mitra, an associate professor with Ryerson University's school of urban and regional planning, doesn't think Montreal's experience will keep e-scooter brands with deep pockets out of the rest of the country, but he said they have their work cut out for them.
While many debuted in the U.S. by flooding the market and then seeking municipal partners, Canada's transportation ministry has tighter controls, he said.
That means provinces have to permit e-scooter pilots and then individual municipalities must study and vote on whether to allow companies to operate there.
Provincial approval doesn't always spur municipalities to move ahead. Toronto, for example, decided in May to opt out of a provincial pilot permitting e-scooter trials because of safety concerns.
Schafer, however, still thinks there's "positive momentum," especially when people try e-scooters elsewhere.
"There's always that question of when are they coming here?" said Schafer. "I hear that in Toronto and in other cities where they may not exist yet."
But Mitra said Canada's e-scooter market is a question mark. While the devices have become more popular than bikes in some U.S. cities, Canadians may use them because they're "a cool new thing" or when they're travelling, but not adopt them regularly.
"We don't have a clear idea of what gap in the transportation landscape these e-scooters would fill," Mitra said.
Several provinces are on their way to determining that. Bird has permits in Kelowna, B.C., Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa and Windsor, Ont. and Schafer said Hamilton, Brampton and Mississauga, Ont. are considering e-scooters.
Calgary, which ran a pilot between 2019 and 2020, recently decided to let e-scooters stay and Edmonton is entering its third trial season.
B.C. said earlier this year that it will soon welcome the devices to Kelowna, Vernon, West Vancouver and North Vancouver and Ottawa will launch e-scooters this summer with Bird, Lime and Neuron Mobility.
Singapore's Neuron Mobility wasn't dissuaded by the rough ride e-scooters experienced elsewhere because chief executive Zachary Wang thinks it's common with emerging technology.
"It does take some time, some effort to try to make this new type of infrastructure be well integrated in the city," he said, after calling the Montreal ban "unfortunate."
He hopes Neuron will avoid quibbles because its e-scooters come with helmets, a button to call emergency services and topple detection capabilities that alert the company if they fall over.
Mitra will be watching how the pilot and others go, hoping they give him clues about the future.
"There's a lot of demand and I can see there's a lot of potential for it to become an important transportation option," he said.
"But at the same time, it's hard to really understand if it's here to stay or just a fad that will slowly disappear from the market in the next five to 10 years."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 21, 2021
Three people have died and two have been hospitalized after a speeding car struck a tree and landed on another vehicle in Fredericton Sunday morning.
Amid scientists' warnings that nations need to transition away from fossil fuels to limit climate change, Canadians are still lukewarm on electric vehicles, according to a study conducted by Nanos Research for CTV News.
A Montreal man is warning Tesla drivers about using the Smart Summon feature after his vehicle hit another in a parking lot.
Madonna put on a free concert on Copacabana beach Saturday night, turning Rio de Janeiro's vast stretch of sand into an enormous dance floor teeming with a multitude of her fans.
One person was killed and 23 others were injured when a bus crashed early Sunday on Interstate 95 in northern Maryland, police said.
The Maple Leafs battled back from a 3-1 series deficit against the Boston Bruins with consecutive 2-1 victories - including one that required extra time - in their first-round playoff series to push the club's Original Six rival to the limit before suffering a devastating Game 7 overtime loss.
As Canadians brace themselves for summer temperatures, forecasters say a weakening El Nino cycle doesn’t mean relief from the heat.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.
Since 1932, Montreal's Henri Henri has been filled to the brim with every possible kind of hat, from newsboy caps to feathered fedoras.
Police in Oak Bay, B.C., had to close a stretch of road Sunday to help an elephant seal named Emerson get safely back into the water.
Out of more than 9,000 entries from over 2,000 breweries in 50 countries, a handful of B.C. brews landed on the podium at the World Beer Cup this week.
Raneem, 10, lives with a neurological condition and liver disease and needs Cholbam, a medication, for a longer and healthier life.