Auckland Council has cancelled micromobility operator Beam’s e-scooter licence, following an investigation into concerns raised around the operator’s compliance with licence conditions.
In a statement, the Council said that information provided to it has indicated that Beam has been deploying e-scooters in numbers well above the permitted limit in its licence and providing misleading data to conceal this from monitoring reports.
Council’s Manager of Licensing and Environmental Health, Mervyn Chetty, says this represents a serious breach of Beam’s licence conditions.
“Limits on e-scooter numbers are in place for the safety of other road and footpath users and to minimise nuisance in and around our city,” he said.
“It appears that Beam found a way to sidestep these requirements, which is very disappointing and has resulted in a loss of trust and confidence in the operator.
“Beam has not provided a satisfactory response to our concerns, as such we have made the decision to cancel their licence, effective immediately.”
The Council has directed that all Beam vehicles be deactivated by 11.59pm tonight, Tuesday 27 August, and all devices removed from Auckland’s streets by 5pm Friday 30 August.
Beam’s licence permits them to deploy up to 1400 e-scooters across Auckland, including 450 in both Tier 1 (CBD) and Tier 2 (inner city), and 500 in Tier 3 (suburban).
To ensure compliance with these limits, the council monitors e-scooter deployment numbers through mobility management platform Ride Report.
The Council says it was provided with evidence of anomalies between the reported and actual number of Beam e-scooters operating in Auckland and other cities across Australasia by a concerned private individual on 2 August.
It appears that data provided to Ride Report from Beam regularly showed a high number of vehicles operating in an ‘unknown’ state, which is intended to indicate connectivity loss, GPS issues, missing vehicles, or other operational variances, the Council said.
Vehicles operating in this state are not reflected in Ride Report’s real-time map and are not counted towards vehicle counts and caps. Due to the changes of the data by Beam before it was sent to Ride Report, the dashboard showed compliance with the permitted numbers.
“The evidence suggests that these anomalies were intentional, with Beam providing misleading data to Ride Report to appear compliant with cap limits,” Council said.
Council has since undertaken its own investigation including requesting further analysis by Ride Report, with resulting data received on 18 August consistent with the allegations and the council’s own findings, it said.
Ride Report’s analysis indicates that between 26 July 2023 and 15 August 2024, Beam consistently exceeded their device allowance by almost 40% of its Tier 1 and Tier 2 allocations, meaning that at its peak there were potentially as many as 530 additional vehicles at any one time showing in the ‘unknown’ state.
“We have not taken the decision to cancel Beam’s licence lightly, however, once we had reason to believe there were clear breaches of the licence conditions, we were able to quickly verify the scale and seriousness of the changes to the data,” says Mr Chetty.
Following the removal of Beam’s devices, Council says Aucklanders can expect to see an initial drop in the number of rental e-scooters available on the streets.
Council is currently exploring options to mitigate the shortfall.
With all current micromobility licences due to expire on 3 November 2024, Council says it is currently considering applications for the next round of licences which can start operating from 4 November 2024.
Council says it will now be referring this matter to the Police for further investigation.
