1 Week Left to Tell Toronto City Council to Say No to E-Scooters

Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance Update

United for a Barrier-Free Ontario for All People with Disabilities

Twitter: @aodaalliance

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/aodaalliance

1 Week Left to Tell Toronto City Council to Say No to E-Scooters

May 13, 2024

At its next meeting starting May 22, 2024, Toronto City Council will decide whether to lift the ban on electric scooters. On May 13, 2024, the AODA Alliance wrote Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow and all members of Toronto City Council, urging them to say a loud and clear no to e-scooters. We set that letter out below.

We invite and encourage everyone to email Toronto City Council to support our letter. Below you will find the email addresses you need. You have one week left to make your voice heard.

Learn more about the AODA Alliance efforts to protect vulnerable people with disabilities, seniors and others from e-scooters. Watch the captioned video of AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky’s 3-minute presentation at the May 2, 2024 Toronto Infrastructure and Environment Committee meeting. Check out the AODA Alliance website’s e-scooters page.

MORE DETAILS

May 13, 2024 Letter from the AODA Alliance to Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow and Members of Toronto City Council

Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance

United for a Barrier-Free Society for All People with Disabilities

Web: www.aodaalliance.org Email: aodafeedback@gmail.com Twitter: @aodaalliance Facebook: www.facebook.com/aodaalliance/

May 13, 2024

To: Mayor Olivia Chow mayor_chow@toronto.ca

Councillor Vincent Crisanti Councillor_Crisanti@toronto.ca

Councillor Stephen Holyday councillor_holyday@toronto.ca

Councillor Amber Morley Councillor_Morley@toronto.ca

Councillor Gord Perks councillor_perks@toronto.ca

Councillor Frances Nunziata councillor_nunziata@toronto.ca

Councillor James Pasternak councillor_pasternak@toronto.ca

Councillor Anthony Perruzza councillor_perruzza@toronto.ca

Councillor Mike Colle councillor_colle8@toronto.ca

Councillor Alejandra Bravo Councillor_Bravo@toronto.ca

Councillor Ausma Malik Councillor_Malik@toronto.ca

Councillor Dianne Saxe Councillor_Saxe@toronto.ca

Ward 12 Councillor Josh Matlow councillor_matlow@toronto.ca

Councillor Chris Moise Councillor_Moise@toronto.ca

Councillor Paula Fletcher councillor_fletcher@toronto.ca

Councillor Jaye Robinson councillor_robinson@toronto.ca

Councillor Jon Burnside Councillor_Burnside@toronto.ca

Councillor Shelley Carroll councillor_carroll@toronto.ca

Councillor Lily Cheng Councillor_Cheng@toronto.ca

Councillor Brad Bradford councillor_bradford@toronto.ca

Councillor Parthi Kandavel Councillor_Kandavel@toronto.ca

Councillor Michael Thompson councillor_thompson@toronto.ca

Councillor Nick Mantas Councillor_Mantas@toronto.ca

Councillor Jamaal Myers Councillor_Myers@toronto.ca

Councillor Paul Ainslie councillor_ainslie@toronto.ca

Councillor Jennifer McKelvie councillor_mckelvie@toronto.ca

Dear Mayor Chow and Members of Toronto City Council,

Re: Please Approve Toronto City Staff’s Proposed Micromobility Strategy

At the upcoming May 22, 2024 meeting of Toronto City Council, your agenda will include a recent City Staff Report on micromobility. That report proposes a comprehensive strategy on micromobility to help Torontonians get around, reduce car traffic and help battle the danger of climate change.

We endorse the City Staff Report and urge City Council to quickly and categorically approve it and the refinements that the Infrastructure and Environment Committee added to it at its May 2, 2024 meeting. Please approve this package “as is” without any further additions or changes.

We support the options for micromobility that the City Staff Report recommends. We especially support the clear City Staff recommendation that Toronto not lift the current ban on electric scooters (e-scooters).

E-scooters are a silent menace, endangering public safety in places that allow them. Riders and innocent pedestrians get seriously injured or killed. They especially endanger vulnerable seniors and people with disabilities.

Blind people don’t know when silent e-scooters rocket at them at over 20 KPH, driven by unlicensed, untrained, uninsured, unhelmeted, fun-seeking joyriders. Left strewn on sidewalks, e-scooters are tripping hazards for blind people and accessibility nightmares for wheelchair users.

The case against allowing e-scooters in Toronto is overwhelming. It includes:

City Staff twice conducted exhaustive studies on e-scooters, at the direction of City Council. As a result, City Staff Reports in 2021 and again in 2024 found that e-scooters do not provide the alleged benefits asserted by e-scooter corporate lobbyists. They found that e-scooters create a serious danger to vulnerable people with disabilities, seniors and others. They concluded that no city that allowed e-scooters have found an effective, enforceable way to regulate them. They recommend that Toronto say no to e-scooters.
On May 5, 2021, Toronto City Council voted unanimously to ban e-scooters.
At its May 2, 2024 meeting, the Infrastructure and Environment Committee voted to approve the City Staff Report on micromobility, including its recommendation against allowing e-scooters. There were no dissenting votes.
The City of Toronto has been advised not to allow e-scooters by three strong recommendations of Toronto’s official Accessibility Advisory Committee passed in 2020, 2021 and 2024.
Last year, a compelling open letter to Toronto City Council signed by at least 21 community organizations urged Toronto City Council not to legalize riding e-scooters in public in Toronto.
At every meeting of any committee of Toronto City Council addressing this issue and at which delegations were permitted, diverse voices from the disability community were unanimous in calling for e-scooters to remain banned. For example, at its May 2, 2024 meeting Disability advocates from the AODA Alliance, the CNIB, the Alliance for Equality of Blind Canadians, and the Canadian Council of the Blind all told the Infrastructure and Environment Committee not to permit e-scooters. People with disabilities told the Infrastructure and Environment Committee that spiffy new technology that e-scooter corporate lobbyists promote has not prevented the serious dangers that e-scooters create.

It is not good enough to simply ban e-scooters from sidewalks. Several cities have tried this. It doesn’t work. People regularly continue to ride them on sidewalks.

It is not good enough to just try to regulate e-scooters. To legalize them and try to regulate them will just lead to more e-scooters and more danger.

We know that some people are now riding e-scooters in Toronto, even though it is illegal. That is because there has been no effective law enforcement, nor any serious effort to alert the public that riding e-scooters in public is illegal. The new City Staff Report calls for new action to address this. We would be happy to assist in those efforts.

If you are at all uncertain about supporting the City Staff Report on micromobility, please take the time to watch the AODA Alliance’s three-minute deputation to the Infrastructure and Environment Committee on May 2, 2024. It is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDHVJ7whWA8

It is time to put this issue to rest and for City Council to deal with more pressing issues.

Sincerely,

David Lepofsky CM, O. Ont

Chair Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance

Twitter: @davidlepofsky