Due to safety concerns, officials in Melbourne, Australia, voted this week to withdraw the city from a program that provided for electric-scooter rentals in the city.

In particular, riders kept riding the scooters on sidewalks and leaving them strewn on the walkways. The scooters were introduced in February 2022 as part of an initiative from the state government of Victoria, where Melbourne is located, according to the Guardian.

“We have had two years of havoc on our [sidewalks,]” said Ben Rossiter, an executive officer with pro-walkable cities organization Victoria Walks, at a meeting of the Future Melbourne Committee Tuesday.

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The sidewalk riders and dumped scooters, Mr. Rossiter said, made the city less accessible for the elderly, families with young children and disabled people.

Lord Mayor Nicholas Reece agreed, saying that “I have run out of patience with what I’m seeing on the streets and [sidewalks] … there are literally more people disobeying the law on e-scooters than there are actually following the rules,” calling it “shameful.”

The city council voted 6-4 to ban the scooters, giving operators Lime and Neuron 30 days to comply with the order. Both companies had six months left on their contracts for a trial period in Melbourne, according to The Age newspaper.

In a video posted on X, Mr. Reece said that too many people rode without helmets, rode with multiple people on a scooter and rode on sidewalks.

The Victoria state government, however, could try to override Melbourne’s ban.

“I really hope the city of Melbourne can have a change of heart on this decision. There is a role for e-scooters in our public transport network, particularly for those last mile journeys, for getting cars off local roads,” Victoria Premier Jacinta Allan told the government-owned Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Ms. Allan told the Guardian that she hoped the matter did not come to a top-down intervention by Victoria officials to keep the scooter program going.

Both companies involved in the rental program also decried the early end of the trial period.

“We are deeply disappointed that a slim majority of City of Melbourne councilors made the unexpected decision to cancel the city’s e-scooter program without conducting any of the necessary considerations and evaluations one would expect before making such a drastic decision,” Neuron Mobility General Manager Jayden Bryant told the Herald Sun newspaper.

Lime, meanwhile, said the move was less about safety and more about politics; there are elections scheduled for the Melbourne City Council in October.

“Unfortunately, election year politics played a significant role in this sudden and unexpected pause. We do not expect this isolated decision to influence officials beyond Melbourne, as we’ve seen tremendous momentum in cities embracing shared e-scooters globally,” a Lime spokesperson told Bloomberg.