CELPIP Reading Part 4 Practice Test: Shared E-Scooters On City Streets

Two summers after Riverton invited private companies to rent electric scooters by the minute, council must choose between making the program permanent and letting the permits lapse. Supporters cite impressive numbers: riders took roughly 310,000 trips between May and October, and in an operator survey, about one user in four claimed their latest ride had replaced a car or taxi. Yet the scooters have also become a lightning rod for complaints, from abandoned machines to injured riders.

“Clutter is a management problem, not grounds for discarding a popular, low-emission option,” says Councillor Margaret Oyelaran, the pilot’s champion. She proposes painted parking corrals on every downtown block and a $50 penalty, charged to the operator, for each scooter left outside one, while conceding that the companies were sluggish with complaints in the first season.

Emergency physician Pieter Vandermeer reports that his department treated over 200 scooter-related injuries last season, one in three of them to the head. A ban, however, is not what he seeks. “Cyclists get hurt too, and nobody proposes outlawing bicycles,” says Vandermeer. “What troubles me is that this pilot’s being evaluated almost entirely by ridership.” He would cap speeds at 15 km/h, down from 24, and disable the scooters after midnight, when a disproportionate share of serious crashes occur.

Rosalind Achebe, the blind chair of the city’s accessibility committee, regards a scooter sprawled across the sidewalk as a hazard, not an inconvenience. “Without enforcement, corrals won’t accomplish much, and operators will simply absorb the penalties as a routine business expense,” she suspects. She would prefer that the permits expire, though she recognizes that some committee members depend on scooters for distances they cannot walk.

Kenji Morikawa, an urban planning instructor, considers raw ridership a poor yardstick. “That survey was commissioned by the operators and counted only volunteers,” he points out. His own analysis of trip data suggests most rides covered under two kilometres and replaced walking or a bus journey. Trips to or from a transit station, by contrast, genuinely keep people out of cars, so he recommends a smaller fleet clustered near rapid bus stops.

Council votes on November 18. Two councillors have declared they will oppose renewal without Vandermeer’s speed limits.

I ride a scooter from the Elm Street rapid bus stop to my office most mornings, so I am hardly hostile to them. Still, it unsettles me that so much of this debate rests on figures supplied by 6. Choose…an independent researchera party with a stakea hospital with an axe to grindthe city’s own transit planners. If Mr. Morikawa is right, the scooters mostly 7. Choose…replace already green tripstake cars off the roadcarry riders to transit stationscause crashes after midnight, which scarcely helps the climate. Ms. Achebe also has a point: the $50 penalty, in her reading, is 8. Choose…a step too fara fair price for cluttera burden on the wrong shouldersa drop in the bucket. Why not bill the careless rider instead? Even the pilot’s greatest champion admits that the companies 9. Choose…cooked their own numbersdeserve a lasting licencewere sluggish at firstneglect those who ride. Personally, I would accept 15 km/h without complaint; judging by the final paragraph, it may well be the price of 10. Choose…fewer scooters on the roadrenewing the programMs. Achebe’s supportparking corrals downtown.