An electric kick scooter being used in the Sixth Avenue bike lane in downtown Kamloops. (Photo via Victor Kaisar)

Kamloops City Council will be asked to allow the city to join a provincial electric kick scooter pilot project before the end of the year.

Climate and Sustainability Manager Glen Cheetham says city staff are going through the results of a technical review that was completed over the past several months and coming up with recommendations that they think will work for the community.

He told the Livability and Sustainability Select Committee that those results will go before council, where politicians could approve the city’s participation in the pilot.

“The first phase is just to participate in the program and make sure the bylaws and everything are aligned with the modified Motor Vehicle Act that permits these to be used,” Cheetham said. “Which would basically mean that any of those devices that are currently being used in our community would be lawful and not breaching our current bylaws.”

“It also sets the stage for pursuing an agreement with a shared service provider like Bird or Lime or those other companies that you see in other communities.”

Cheetham told the committee that while there will be some challenges, he felt there is a tremendous opportunity for Kamloops to join the provincial pilot, which is expected to wrap up in April 2028.

“Every community that has launched them to date has had some challenges, but fortunately and particularly with our partnership with Interior Health Authority, who has a tremendous amount of data from the City of Kelowna’s experience, there is a lot of insight that we’re going to be able to apply to our journey towards this,” Cheetham said.

“What we’ve learned from our research to date is that other communities have learned to do things like adjust availability during say the later evening in the downtown core around the bar district. I know Kelowna had some issues with that and they would ways to mitigate that.”

Cheetham also said if the City signs an agreement with a shared e-scooter provider, it will have a lot of say into how that service looks like in Kamloops.

“One of the greatest benefits of that program is the provider working with the local government can really establish a lot of parameters through geo-fencing,” Cheetham said. “So basically, these are GPS enabled devices, so if we decided we only want to see these being used in a specific area, they can be geo-fenced.”

“Likewise, if you want to throttle them back and make them go slower in certain parts, that can be done.”

Cheetham communities can join the pilot – which began in 13 B.C. communities – at any point, as the province looks to see how e-scooters can be safely integrated with other modes of transportation that already exist.

While he says there has already been some interest from Tourism Kamloops and the local business community to bring in a shared service provider, its not clear when the matter will be brought before City Council for a decision.

“My role is a facilitator,” he said. “Our Climate and Sustainability team is working with transportation, external relations and others, and we’re just really facilitating this process.

“But from an emissions and Active Transportation prospect, and the ability to move people to shift to other modes of transportation, yes, I think there are tremendous opportunities for that. But at the same time I think its really important that we, with sober perspective, really look at the issues that are surrounding this.”

Councillor Nancy Bepple, who chairs the Livability and Sustainability Select Committee, said that e-scooters are already in Kamloops, and “having a thought on how it will go will be important.”

“We have the benefit of four years of Penticton, Kelowna, and Vernon having done this, so hopefully we can do a better job if we do go forward,” Bepple said.