Slow your roll: City of Calgary will lower e-scooter speeds in 2020

Calgary is anxiously awaiting the spring return of Lime and Bird e-scooters, but their reintroduction will come at the price of a few kilometres per hour. The popular means of transportation is expected back March 16th, 2020 but will hit the sidewalks with a reduced maximum speed. Sorry, adrenaline-junkies.

Calgary e-scooters will now only operate at a speed of 15 km/h in high-traffic areas, as opposed to the 20 km/h they were tearing up the streets at before. Sure, 5 km/h might not seem like a huge decrease, but that’s 25% of your total speed completely erased.

The decision follows the results of a public survey done in September this year, where 9,000 Calgarians provided feedback on the controversial vehicle alternative.

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Surprisingly, over 30 serious two-wheel accidents occurred in 2019. The city hopes that reducing the speed on e-scooters will prevent these accidents from happening come the new year, but only time will tell.

The city will also create designated e-scooter parking spots, which is great news for the people who hate tripping over scooters in front of their apartment buildings. Another safety hazard quick-fix!

It will be interesting to see if this actually changes anything. We’ll keep an eye on this one for you guys! Until then, if you would like to learn more about the pilot program, you can take a look at the City of Calgary website here.