Brisbane City Council has torn up its contract with e-scooter company, Beam Mobility, alleging the company exceeded safety caps and owes $330,000 in unpaid fees.
The Council says its investigation found that Beam had systematically exceeded its scooter cap – an average of 500 “undeclared” devices a day across the city.
“We have spent the last month investigating these allegations, and have found significant breaches of the device cap by Beam – a systemic program,” said Council Transport Chair, Ryan Murphy.
Mr Murphy said the Council investigation found there were more than 220,000 occasions between July 2023 and July 2024 where Beam did not report all hireable devices.
In a statement, a Beam spokesperson said the company disagrees with the claims being made by Council, describing its findings as “highly premature”.
“We will now be reviewing our options,” the spokesperson said.
“As previously announced, Beam has appointed external advisers to manage an independent audit process, to examine the issues that have been raised regarding Beam’s fleet management system.
“Beam takes its obligations regarding fleet management seriously and is determined to work with its council partners on these issues.”
Brisbane council had recently signed a new contract with Beam, which had been due to run until 2027.
Brisbane’s cancellation follows on the heels of Auckland Council and Wellington City Council in New Zealand – which both booted Beam in the last week.
Wellington found Beam had deployed e-scooters “in numbers well above the permitted limits and provided misleading data to conceal this from monitoring reports”. Â
“On Wednesday 28 August Council received an audit report from Ride Report which confirmed that between 26 July 2023 and 21 June 2024 Beam’s e-scooter cap had been exceeded by an average daily maximum of 100 e-scooters (with the highest during this time being 185 e-scooters ), which is a breach of their licence,” said Wellington City Council’s Chief Planning Officer, Liam Hodgetts.
Mr Hodgetts said the information about the e-scooters was concerning and the City Council has taken the decision to temporarily suspend Beam’s licence to trade in public, effectively stopping Beam from operating in Wellington City until the Council’s investigation is completed and a final decision made.
Auckland Council cancelled its licence with Beam on Tuesday 27 August.
