Will Lime scooters go or stay on Auckland streets? Decision due this afternoon

Auckland Council bosses are due to make a decision this afternoon on whether Lime scooters will be taken off city streets or be allowed to stay.

Senior representatives from the San Francisco-based company met with council officers this morning, who gave them until midday to provide information on safety issues following a spate of incidents in which scooters' front wheels locked.

A council spokesman said officers are now deliberating and are due to make an announcement this afternoon.

One man suffered a broken jaw, and others were also injured when the front wheel of the Lime e-scooter they were riding locked.

Auckland Council and Auckland Transport yesterday imposed a deadline on Lime, after attempting to seek assurances from the company about the safety of its scooters.

"Auckland Council has formally written to Lime twice this week to request urgent updates, for us to be able to decide on any next steps from a licensing perspective," council chief operating officer Dean Kimpton said in the joint statement yesterday.

"We have also asked Lime to provide information on the number of scooters affected, the technical issue leading to failure, its proposed solution including how it will manage pulling affected scooters off the streets, and assurance there will be no further malfunctions."

The two bodies gave Lime until noon today to respond to their concerns, with AT chairman Lester Levy saying, if it failed to meet the deadline, management would take appropriate action.

"If this was an aircraft with a problem it would be grounded," Levy said.

High expectations had been set for scooter safety for Lime's customers and other road users as part of Lime's licence extension, Kimpton said.

In a letter to Lime on Wednesday, Kimpton said while Lime believed the issue has been caused by a software glitch and rolled out an update across all Lime scooters in New Zealand and requested 48 hours to monitor the update, "should the fix not work more locking issues appear likely to occur and may result in injury".

"Given the significance of this issue, and that it has occurred elsewhere - not just New Zealand - 48 hours is the maximum time that Auckland Council and Auckland Transport are prepared to wait for confirmation that the issue is resolved," he said in the letter to Lime's director of government affairs Mitchell Price.