City of Rockingham trials 50 seated e-scooters in new branch of Beam offering

Rockingham is among the first areas in the State to welcome seated e-scooters in a bid to improve accessibility and mobility for all riders. The City of Rockingham partnered with micro-mobility company Beam in March last year to bring 200 e-scooters to the area. Fifty seated e-scooters can now be found along the foreshore and in surrounding Beam locations after they were rolled out last week. The new “L-shaped” e-scooters include triple brakes, phone holders, Bluetooth helmet locks, and dual front suspension. It offers an alternative for people who find standing e-scooters and pedal-assist e-bikes challenging, or for people who are travelling longer distances. Geraldton became the first place in WA to trial the seated e-scooters just a fortnight ago, adding to its already 300-strong purple fleet. A total of 150 seated e-scooters will be deployed in Rockingham, Geraldton and Esperance for the trial. Rockingham riders have quickly taken up the e-scooter trend since it was introduced last year, with users racking up more than 225,000km in the first year alone — about the same distance as 15 laps around Australia. In May, councillors voted to hike the cost of Beam’s trader’s annual permit fee to $5000 based on the level of work undertaken by City officers to maintain the scooters during the trial period. The previous permit fee was charged annually at $1216. Beam WA operations manager Stuart O’Callaghan said the company had so far recorded more than 1.7 million kilometres on e-scooters across WA, in a “great success with shared micro-mobility”. “However, they (e-scooters) have not been accessible to all members of the local community, which is a gap we are looking to address with the launch of seated e-scooters across Western Australia,” Mr O’Callaghan said. “Our goal is to bring safe, sustainable and equitable transportation to as many residents as possible, and we look forward to seeing the local communities embrace this new mode of transportation.”