AODA Alliance
ACCESSIBILITY FOR ONTARIANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT ALLIANCE
NEWS RELEASE – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
After An Outpouring from People with Disabilities, Toronto City Council Again Overwhelmingly Votes to Leave in Place the Ban on Electric Scooters
May 23, 2024 Toronto: As another major victory for people with disabilities, Toronto’s City Council today overwhelmingly voted once again not to allow e-scooters in public. Terrified of the danger to them that e-scooters pose, people with disabilities have been working hard to oppose the efforts of well-financed e-scooter corporate lobbyists.
Toronto City Staff has twice recommended against allowing e-scooters, in 2021 and 2024. Toronto’s Accessibility Advisory Committee has three times made strong recommendations to City Council against allowing e-scooters, in 2020, 2021 and 2024. City Council’s Infrastructure and Environment Committee twice decided against allowing e-scooters, in 2021 and again in 2024. Disability advocates told the Infrastructure and Environment Committee on May 2, 2024 that Toronto City Council must not unleash dangerous electric scooters. Three years ago, on May 5, 2021, Toronto City Council voted unanimously to say no to e-scooters.
The Latest City Staff Report recommended that Toronto say yes to micromobility, but no to e-scooters. The report amply shows e-scooters endanger public safety in places allowing them. Riders and innocent pedestrians get seriously injured or killed.
E-scooters especially endanger seniors and people with disabilities. Blind people can’t tell when silent e-scooters rocket at them at over 20 KPH, driven by unlicensed, untrained, uninsured, unhelmetted fun-seeking joy-riders. Left strewn on sidewalks, e-scooters are tripping hazards for blind people and accessibility barriers for wheelchair users.
The Infrastructure Committee was told that Toronto has been getting less accessible to people with disabilities. Allowing e-scooters would make that worse.
It accomplishes nothing to just ban e-scooters from sidewalks. The new City Staff Report documents the silent menace of e-scooters continue to be ridden on sidewalks in cities that just ban them from sidewalks. We’d need cops on every block.
E-scooters would impose significant costs on taxpayers for new law enforcement, OHIP for treating those injured by e-scooters, lawsuits by the injured, etc. Toronto has more pressing budget priorities.
In 2020, the AODA Alliance first exposed the stunning well-funded behind-the-scenes feeding frenzy of back-room pressure that corporate lobbyists for e-scooter rental companies have inundated City Hall with for months.
“We applaud the Toronto City Council for its overwhelming vote and we congratulate all the disability organizations and individual disability advocates who devoted their volunteer efforts to help protect our safety and accessibility,” said AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky. “Those Ontario cities that started an e-scooter pilot project should now suspend those pilot projects, and learn from the wise Toronto decision, in order to protect their vulnerable seniors, people with disabilities, and others that e-scooters endanger. We need Ontario cities to become more accessible to people with disabilities and to stop allowing any new disability barriers to be created.”
“We know that a growing number of people are illegally riding e-scooters in public in Toronto, and we need Toronto law enforcement to step up to the plate and do its job,” said Lepofsky. “Let’s expand other micromobility options, like Toronto City Staff recommended, while protecting vulnerable people with disabilities and seniors from the proven dangers that e-scooters cause. And after City Council has twice said no to e-scooters, it’s time for our politicians to permanently leave this e-scooters issue behindt and get on to more pressing issues.”
Contact: AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky, aodafeedback@gmail.com
Twitter: @aodaalliance
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.