Montreal Borough Bans E-Scooters From Parks, Trails and Sidewalks

A Montreal borough has had enough of electric scooters in its parks. Saint-Laurent has adopted a bylaw that bars e-scooters and other motorized personal mobility devices from public areas under its control, including parks, trails and sidewalks, CBC News reported on Sunday.

Councillor Vana Nazarian said the bylaw followed a series of incidents and near misses over the summer, as the devices keep growing in popularity. The borough is home to many young families and seniors, she said, and they should be able to use parks and trails without fear of a collision. She stressed the borough is not banning the devices outright. The aim is to keep fast scooters in places where people on foot are not at risk.

The local move lands on top of a provincial experiment that is still running. Quebec launched an e-scooter pilot project in 2023. It allows riders aged 14 and older on roads with speed limits under 50 km/h and on bike paths, with helmets required at all times. The province extended the pilot this summer and added rules on July 18, including a 25 km/h speed limit, with a $200 fine for going over it.

Doctors are counting the cost

The pressure for tighter rules is coming from hospital wards as much as from city halls. Deborah Friedman, the trauma director at the Montreal Children's Hospital, says e-scooter injuries at the hospital have risen sharply since the pilot began. The hospital treated 80 e-scooter related cases last year, and close to 60 percent of the children admitted with serious injuries were under the legal riding age of 14. The injuries she describes are not scrapes. They include brain injuries, facial and dental trauma, fractures and abdominal injuries.

National data points the same way. The Canadian Institute for Health Information found that e-scooter hospitalizations for children aged five to 17 rose 61 percent between 2023 and 2024. The Montreal Children's Hospital trauma centre has called for the minimum riding age to rise from 14 to 16, in line with most other Canadian provinces, and for stronger enforcement of the rules that already exist.

What happens next

Saint-Laurent's bylaw shows where this debate is heading. Rules now differ by province, by city and, in Montreal's case, by borough. A rider can be legal on a bike path and breaking a bylaw on the park trail next to it. Boroughs that feel the provincial pilot leaves children exposed are writing their own rules. Expect more of them to do so while Quebec's pilot runs, and expect the age question, 14 or 16, to sit at the centre of the argument.