Alpharetta’s elected officials are looking to become the latest city in metro Atlanta to ban electronic scooters.
The Alpharetta City Council voted Monday night to move forward with the city creating a ban on the scooters, said city spokesman James Drinkard.
Marietta outright banned the devices in February.
A Roswell committee, which has previously looked at regulation, at its April meeting asked city staff to monitor the number of scooters in the city but said an ordinance was not currently needed. Midtown sidewalks flooded with scooters forced Atlanta politicians to create new regulations,
BACKGROUND | North Fulton prepares for e-scooters, but do they need to?
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The city staff's report said the rollout model for some companies "is to simply place a large volume of them in a community without notice, betting that riders will encourage elected officials to change city infrastructure and enact regulations to ensure the devices become an essential part of transportation."
Not all companies adhere to that model.
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Staff also mentioned that Georgia's largest hospital, Grady Memorial, estimates it receives 80 to 100 scooter-related injuries a month that range from head injuries to broken limbs. People are getting hurt across the country; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is studying scooter injuries in Austin, Texas.
Staff said they were committed to improving mobility but that it had to be safe. And scooters don’t appear to be safe enough, according to the report.
Drinkard said the City Council asked that small changes be made, which will be heard and voted upon at the Council’s meeting on May 28.
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