Municipalities have until the end of the week to make an expression of interest to the province for pilot projects that would allow people to operate things like e-scooters.

The Parliamentary Secretary for Technology Rick Glumac says it is looking to explore new ways for people to get around communities.

“Since we’ve announced the pilot project we’ve had a steady stream of phone calls and emails and interest in this. But, even before this, we had municipalities like Kelowna that had already been looking at allowing e-scooters on their waterfront.”

Glumac says this is a Ministry of Transportation initiative and it will look to individual municipalities to take the lead in figuring out how these types of vehicles would be policed.

“Every municipality will have their own set of regulations and the application that is made is quite thorough. It asks a lot of questions around safety and how safety can be addressed. Data sharing and a whole bunch of other things.”

Glumac says companies need to know that it is up to the each community to take the lead. “It’s through the municipality. So if there are companies that are interested in working on a pilot it would be working with a municipality on this. It’s like Kelowna, it has been working with private partners.”

Glumac says the formal application is due March 6th, but the deadline to express interest is the end of this month.