AODA Alliance
ACCESSIBILITY FOR ONTARIANS WITH DISABILITIES ACT ALLIANCE
NEWS RELEASE – FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Disability Advocates to Present Wednesday at Virtual Meeting of Mississauga City Council’s General Committee to Oppose Allowing a Shared Electric Scooters Program
June 14, 2022, Toronto: On Wednesday, June 15, 2022, starting some time after 9:30 AM, the AODA Alliance will make a deputation to Mississauga City Council’s General Committee, urging the city not to authorize a shared electric scooter pilot project. The Committee meeting will be live-streamed at https://www.mississauga.ca/council/council-activities/council-and-
Disability advocates will tell the Committee that Mayor Crombie and City Council must not unleash a shared program of dangerous electric scooters in Mississauga. (See AODA Alliance’s June 13, 2022 letter to City Council members, Below.) Experience in city after city shows that e-scooters, a silent menace, endanger public safety in places allowing them. Riders and innocent pedestrians get seriously injured or killed. They especially endanger vulnerable seniors and people with disabilities. Blind people can’t know silent e-scooters rocket at them at over 20 KPH, driven by unlicensed, untrained, uninsured, unhelmetted, fun-seeking joyriders.
Often left strewn on sidewalks, e-scooters are tripping hazards for blind people and accessibility nightmares for wheelchair users.
Mississauga has been getting less accessible to people with disabilities. A program of shared e-scooters would make that even worse. City Council has a legal duty not to create new disability barriers.
It accomplishes nothing to just ban e-scooters from sidewalks. The silent menace of e-scooters continues as they are ridden on sidewalks in cities that only ban them from sidewalks. We would need cops on every block.
E-scooters would cost taxpayers substantially, such as for new law enforcement, OHIP for treating those injured by e-scooters, and law suits by the injured. A city staff report, proposing a shared e-scooter program, makes the utterly false claim that there are no financial implications for Mississauga if it adopts a shared e-scooter program. Mississauga has more pressing budget priorities.
City Council should not conduct an e-scooter pilot. A pilot to study what? How many innocent people will be injured? We already know they will from cities that allow them. Mississauga residents and visitors should not be forced to serve as guinea pigs in such a human experiment, especially without the consent of those at risk of being injured.
The AODA Alliance exposed the stunning well-funded, behind-the-scenes feeding frenzy of back-room pressure that corporate lobbyists for e-scooter rental companies inundated Toronto City Hall with for months. They do this in city after city.
“The corporate lobbyists want to make money on e-scooter rentals, laughing all the way to the bank as injured pedestrians sob all the way to hospital,” said AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky. “We call on Mayor Crombie and City Council to stand up for people with disabilities and to stand up to the e-scooter corporate lobbyists.”
The AODA Alliance’s brief, filed with Mississauga City Council, shows that the Mississauga staff report that pushes for an e-scooter share program is riddled with problems. It gives mere token lip service to serious disability concerns. Incoherently, it does not support a sensible bike-share program but instead supports the more dangerous option of e-scooters. Traditional bicycles are healthier for riders, safer for pedestrians, and able to fulfil the goals of a new Mississauga micromobility strategy.
Contact: AODA Alliance Chair David Lepofsky, aodafeedback@gmail.com
Twitter: @aodaalliance
For more background, check out:
The AODA Alliance’s June 13, 2022 brief to Mississauga City Council.
The June 9, 2022 Mississauga staff report addressing e-scooters.
The appendix to the June 13, 2022 Mississauga staff report.
The text of the presentation that Mississauga city staff are to make to City Council on June 15, 2022, and
The AODA Alliance website’s e-scooter page.
Text of the AODA Alliance’s June 13, 2022 Letter to Mississauga 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/
June 13, 2022
Via email
To: Mayor: Bonnie Crombie
@BonnieCrombie
Councillor: Stephen Dasko
Councillor: Pat Mullin
Councillor: Chris Fonseca
Councillor: John Kovac
Councillor: Carolyn Parrish
carolyn.parrish@mississauga.ca
Councillor: Ron Starr
Councillor: Dipika Damerla
Councillor: Matt Mahoney
Councillor: Pat Saito
Councillor: Sue McFadden
Councillor: George Carlson
Dear Mayor and Members of City Council
Re: Protecting Mississauga from Proliferating the Dangers of Electric Scooters
We seek your leadership to protect all people in Mississauga, especially people with disabilities and seniors, whose safety is endangered if Mississauga adopts a city staff proposal on June 15, 2022 to hold an e-scooter pilot project. With this letter, we are forwarding to you a detailed brief that we have sent to Mississauga City Council’s General Committee. We have booked a slot to make a deputation to the General Committee when this agenda item comes up on June 15, 2022.
We ask you to please stand up to e-scooter corporate lobbyists. Stand up for the many people who don’t want to be injured by e-scooters. We ask that City Council do the following at your June 15, 2022 meeting:
- Please stop the City’s consideration of a shared e-scooter pilot before it goes any further. If you want to proceed with some new micromobility initiative, establish a far safer bike share program. It is frankly bizarre that Mississauga city staff categorically reject a bike share program, which would be far better for public health and which does not produce more land fill in the form of discarded e-scooters and their limited-life batteries.
- If not, then at the very least, send this issue back to city staff, to properly and thoroughly study the dangers that e-scooters create for vulnerable people with disabilities, seniors, children and others. That is what the City of Toronto wisely did. It led Toronto City Council to ultimately, and wisely, say a unanimous no to the e-scooter corporate lobbyists.
- If not, then our brief lists a series of specific mandatory conditions that City Council should impose on any further steps towards the city staff’s proposal regarding e-scooters.
The Issue
An e-scooter is a silent motor vehicle. If allowed, a joy-rider with no license or training could rocket around on an e-scooter at 20 kph or faster. E-scooter riders and innocent pedestrians would get seriously injured or killed. See a CBC report on e-scooter injuries suffered in Calgary. See also a disturbing collection of 25 news reports on e-scooter injuries in communities that allow them.
The silent menace of e-scooters especially endangers seniors and people with disabilities, such as people who are blind or who have low vision or balance issues, or whose disability makes them slower to scramble out of the way. A blind pedestrian can’t know when a silent e-scooter races toward them at over 20 kph, driven by a fun-seeking unlicensed, untrained, uninsured, unhelmetted joy-rider.
In cities where e-scooters are allowed, rental e-scooters, left strewn around public places, create serious new mobility barriers to accessibility for people using a wheelchair, walker, or other mobility device. For people who are blind, deafblind or have low vision, this is a serious unexpected tripping hazard.
Over the past two years, Toronto City staff commendably produced two detailed reports on e-scooters, one in June 2020 and one in April 2021. Taken together, they showed that to allow e-scooters in Toronto will endanger public safety, send e-scooter riders and innocent pedestrians to hospital emergency rooms, require significant new law enforcement efforts, and impose new financial burdens on the taxpayer to cover added costs that e-scooters trigger. Those Toronto City staff reports also showed that e-scooters do not bring the great benefits for reduced car traffic and pollution that corporate lobbyists for e-scooter rental companies claim. We are aware of no City staff report in any other Ontario municipality, including the Mississauga staff report, now placed before your City Council for consideration, that has replicated or improved upon the research on this issue conducted by Toronto City staff.
E-scooters would especially endanger public safety and accessibility for people with disabilities and others on sidewalks. The two Toronto City staff reports, referred to above, show that in cities where e-scooters are allowed but banned on sidewalks, they are nevertheless ridden on sidewalks. The experience in Ottawa amply supports this concern.
Last year, Toronto City Council commendably voted unanimously not to allow e-scooters. It did so after it directed City staff to study the impact of e-scooters on people with disabilities. The Accessibility Advisory Committees of Toronto, Hamilton, London, and Ottawa have all advised their respective city councils against allowing e-scooters.
On January 22, 2020, over two years ago, an open letter to the Ontario Government and all municipalities from eleven major disability organizations called for e-scooters not to be allowed.
Feeding Frenzy at Toronto City Hall by E-scooter Rental Companies’ Corporate Lobbyists
It is evident that the well-funded e-scooter corporate lobbyists have been trying to get the ear of the City of Mississauga. We have elsewhere seen those corporate lobbyists in action. A 2020 AODA Alliance report on e-scooter corporate lobbyists provides insight. It documented through a public lobbyists’ registry that Toronto City Hall was inundated by a well-funded feeding frenzy by corporate lobbyists for the e-scooter rental companies.
Those corporate lobbyists want to make money on e-scooter rentals, laughing all the way to the bank as seriously injured pedestrians sob all the way to hospital emergency rooms. They have falsely claimed that the City can approve e-scooters at no cost to the City or the public.
Mississauga should not run a shared e-scooter pilot project. To run the pilot that your city staff are proposing would expose people in Mississauga to serious injuries if not deaths, just to see if e-scooters are a good idea. Experimenting on the public, when the risks are so serious, is demonstrably immoral. The corporate lobbyists seek a “pilot” as an obvious pretext to establish a market for their product, and to get a foot in the door.
Please make Mississauga safer and more accessible for people with disabilities. Do not leave a legacy of a Mississauga where it becomes harder and more dangerous for us to get around. Mississauga already has too many disability barriers. Do not create new ones by creating a shared e-scooter pilot project in Mississauga.
Sincerely,
David Lepofsky CM, O. Ont
Chair Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act Alliance