About the electric scooter pilot program The Ontario electric scooter pilot program allows municipalities to choose where and how electric scooters can be used. As a reminder, electric scooters are currently banned in the city of Toronto. So keep that in mind if you decide to go for a walk and always make sure you apply the best practices (which are detailed in the last section below). In Canada, electric scooters are not legal on public roads.
However, it is legal to use them on private properties and sidewalks. The Ontario government has launched a pilot project for electric scooters, but it is quite restrictive in terms of scooter capacity. In addition to the restrictions, the municipality itself must draft regulations that allow the pilot to actively participate in that area. The best thing to do is to Google the restrictions of provincial law (maximum speed, maximum weight, maximum tire size, maximum power) and check with your municipality if you have gone ahead with regulations.
I don't know what Pickering's status is, but Toronto has decided not to go ahead. With a 134% increase in private sales and hundreds of new people around the world becoming users of electric scooters every day, it's crystal clear that the electric scooter revolution is here to stay. Nowadays, many people are looking for different ways to reduce their daily commute to work or school, making electric scooters much preferable for Canadians. This initiative came to light during the height of the pandemic, hospitals were overflowing with patients with Covid-19 and the city's medical system was under so much pressure that the city council considered it unwise to introduce electric scooters due to the stigma of related injuries.
This pilot program established strict guidelines for the use of electric scooters in the city on highways and public properties. Therefore, it's safe to assume that most of the problem is due to the rental of scooters and the lack of safety infrastructure around them, rather than to privately owned scooters (whose owners often follow all the rules of the road and drive responsibly). Staff in the City of Toronto have identified several times that they do not have the resources available to enforce the ban on electric scooters, so as long as traffic regulations are respected, there are NO legal impediments to the use of electric scooters. However, some people choose to ignore these rules and use devices unsafely, leading to a sharp increase in injuries related to electric scooters.
Electric scooters are successfully used all over the world. In Canada, cities such as Brampton, Vancouver and Ottawa have approved the same or similar pilot program with great success. Unfortunately, when something as fun as electric scooters are presented to the world, there is always a group of people who come to ruin things for everyone else.
