Updated 6.25pm

The planned ban on rental electric kick scooters from March will go ahead as planned, Transport Minister Chris Bonett told Parliament on Wednesday.

His statement came just two days after saying he was willing to meet the operators and “take it from there.”

E-scooter companies Bolt and Bird had appealed for Bonett to scrap the ban, having complained that the minister's predecessor, Aaron Farrugia, was ignoring their requests to meet.

Farrugia had announced the decision to ban rental e-scooters last October.

At the time, the Transport Ministry said the rental vehicles would be banned as of March 1. The ban now appears to have been postponed by a few weeks, with Bonett saying in a written reply to a parliamentary question by PN MP Albert Buttigieg that rental e-scooters will be illegal "as of the end of March".

But the minister made it clear that it would be going ahead. 

“We observed a lack of respect, excessive speeding, scooters on pavements and haphazard parking. They were not only causing an inconvenience but also endangering people’s lives," the minister said.  

When the ban was first announced, Bonett's predecessor as minister, Aaron Farrugia, had said the vehicles were causing “disturbances” and rental drivers were committing a high number of illegalities.

Farrugia later said Bolt and Bird were appealing every single contravention issued to their users, instead of introducing systems to incentivise drivers to obey the rules.  

Pedestrians and residents, especially in areas like Sliema and St Julian's, had long complained about how e-scooters are parked, blocking pavements, pathways, and garage access.

However, critics said the decision to ban them showed a lack of political vision and an unwillingness to provide better infrastructure and regulate shared micro-mobility.  

Scooters 'replaced walking'

When asked about the issue in parliament on Wednesday, Bonett confirmed that the ban will proceed as planned.

He explained that the goal was originally to provide the nation with an alternative mode of transport, but instead of replacing cars, the scooters ended up replacing walking.

Moreover, there were several reported incidents where people were injured by scooters while the scooters were being left haphazardly.

"I can assure you that being hit by a scooter is no walk in the park,” Bonett said.

Those concerns did not apply to privately owned e-scooter riders, the minister said, who took better care of their vehicles and drove them carefully. 

He confirmed plans to unveil new incentives to promote the purchase of e-scooters as an alternative means of transport.

Meanwhile, replying to another question on the latest decision to make ferry crossings between Cottonera and Sliema and Valletta free, Bonett said that more than one million people used the two ferry crossings last year – 750,000 used the one from Sliema and 500,000 used the one from Cottonera.

He said that making it free was not enough and that the service had to remain good and attractive for people to use as an alternative means of getting to Valletta.

An average person who used the service regularly would save some €780 a year with this initiative, he said.