Two companies which provide e-scooters for rental are contesting more than €200,000 in fines issued over the past five months and are planning to challenge the “defective laws” in court.

The fines are for obstruction and non-observance of traffic regulations, including illegal parking, but the companies insist that the law is incorrectly treating electric scooters as motor vehicles.

They believe that a growing problem of scooters being abandoned on pavements could be easily resolved if Transport Malta and local councils sat with them to provide docking stations at regular intervals. 

The demand for the clean mode of transport is growing exponentially, they said, with scooters being used for short distances by a growing number of unique users on a daily basis.

Roberto Pestana, a director of Seven Group Malta Limited, operators of Bird scooters, said his company provides scooters in 300 cities across Europe but was only facing fines in Malta.

Since they began operating here in May, Local Enforcement System Agency (LESA) officers have been issuing fines over obstruction, dangerous or illegal parking.

The fine for obstruction stands at €104.65 while all other offences carry a €23.25 fine.

“In just five months, we’ve racked up close to €100,000 in fines which we are contesting individually because our scooters can never be treated as cars,” he told Times of Malta. 

Similarly, Bolt chief executive Klas Johansson said his company is also busy contesting over €100,000 in fines issued by LESA officers over the past few months.

“We are attending tribunal sittings on a weekly basis. Some cases are thrown out because the judges recognise that the law is not clear but we intend appealing the rest in court,” he said.

LESA CEO Svetlick Flores said wardens were simply enforcing the rules governing the use of e-scooters through subsidiary legislation for low-powered vehicles and pedal cycles and micromobility regulations.

He said these regulations are specific for these modes of transport, which are treated differently from motor vehicles, governed by the Motor Vehicle Regulations.

According to the rules, electric kick scooters may be parked on pavements and promenades or on footpaths and in pedestrian zones as long as they do not obstruct the free flow of pedestrian traffic or restrict or hinder their use by people with mobility impairment or impede access to such pavements, promenades or footpaths.

“LESA enforces on various offences regulated by same subsidiary legislation, which includes, besides others, illegal parking (obstructing) and non-observance of traffic regulations,” Flores said.

On parking, the law says that e-scooters were to be parked in specifically designated parking spaces, such as racks.

However, the law makes a proviso: “wherever available”.

“The law is defective. Scooters are not motor vehicles and cannot be considered as such.

“An electric scooter is a stand-up device that has a handlebar, a deck and small hard wheels powered by an electric motor which also allows for human propulsion and this does not make this device a motor vehicle as defined in the law,” Bird’s lawyer, Adrian Sciberras, argued.

He added that, contrary to motor vehicles, they can be used by people under 18.

Aside from the legal arguments, the directors of both companies insist they want a solution to the issue because they could help the island reduce its carbon emissions.

“Bird was originally planning to introduce many more scooters than the fleet we have at the moment but with these fines it does not make sense to have more,” Pestana said.

“Once we settle the issue and have proper parking spots, then we’ll get more and we will also invest in solar-powered charging stations so that we can be entirely green. We feel that parking spots will benefit everyone.”

Johansson added: “I think not everyone is realising the benefit of these scooters that get hundreds of cars off the streets. It’s a way of decreasing carbon emissions and switching to green modes of transport.

“There are also other issues which we need to address through education, including people not using them properly and drivers not following traffic regulations.”

Asked about safety concerns, Johansson said that he understood and appreciated such concerns but insisted that “car and e-scooters can co-exist if we really want carbon emissions to drop”.

E-scooters currently have a maximum speed limit of 20 kilometres per hour.

One of Pestana’s company proposals was designating certain areas, such as a promenade or places with an increased number of pedestrians, where the speed automatically drops to 10 kilometres per hour.