Many mobility experts, city planners and councillors believe that e-scooters and similar vehicles will play a big role in how we get around in the future, but the path to getting there remains rather bumpy.

Riding privately owned e-scooters in public remains illegal across NSW and the Northern Territory, with South Australia due to legalise them early next year. And though many city centres have embraced rental scooter schemes, they’ve been marred by illegal riding activity, accidents and haphazardly parked vehicles. In Melbourne’s CBD, rental scooters were banned earlier this month and will soon be gone.

Scooters can get you to most places around the city and suburbs, regardless of bus routes or your personal level of fitness, making many car trips unnecessary.

Some opponents (and politicians) only seem to experience e-scooters as annoyances, eyesores and tools for dangerous misbehaviour, which is, I’m sure, how some people felt about the first cars, too. But they can also be fun, clean and useful. As for safety, they could be just as safe as any other mode of transport given some time and reasonable adjustments made to accommodate them.

When Victoria legalised private scooters a year or so ago I borrowed one to test out, and I enjoyed it so much that I recently bought one of the same model. I don’t drive, and I like the idea of a vehicle that greatly broadens the area I can freely travel on foot, but that won’t exhaust me like a bike.

A trip to the market or library takes half the time on the scooter compared to walking, and parks that I would never normally visit because they were an hour’s walk or a 40-minute bus trip away now take me 15 minutes to reach.

Riding to work, which I’ve been doing around twice a week, takes almost the same amount of time as commuting on the tram. And while I miss having dedicated time to........

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