Adventures in mobility: scootering on a three wheeled eBike

TravelScoot at Whitireia Park

At a meeting of the Makara Peak Supporters a decade or so ago, I recall someone speaking against excessive improvement of the tracks "we'll end up making them fit for mobility scooters". It got a laugh of course - mobility scooters were the epitome of decrepitude that fit clean living mountain bikers would never descend to using. Mobility scooters are for getting from your rest home to bingo, not for adventure.

So it was with mixed feelings that I faced the fact that even my eBike was no longer a solution for my cancer related fatigue, and at times I was going to need a mobility scooter to get around. It felt a bit better to think of a mobility scooter as really just an eBike with a few more wheels: a three (or four) wheeled eBike.

Having overcome that hangup, I needed to decide what sort of scooter to get. Broadly, mobility scooters fall into three classes:

• full size scooters that weigh around 50kg, are powerful and stable, but are difficult to transport so essentially restrict you to the area around your home.
• portable or "Boot" scooters that are still heavy, but can be disassembled and carried in the boot of a car.
• light foldable scooters weighing around 15kg that can be taken on public transport including aircraft.

I'd tried a full size scooter courtesy of WCC's mobility scheme, which places full size mobility scooters at locations around Wellington, including the waterfront, the Botanic Gardens, and Zealandia. My friend Neil has been a mobility scooter user for many years, and advocates for adopting them sooner rather than later. I'd accompanied him on a few adventures on his full size scooter, but there was the disadvantage that it wasn't that easy to transport - we'd needed a trailer to get it out to the Miramar Peninsula for a run around the Great Harbour Way. But full size scooters are very stable and powerful - the Zealandia one got up a steep rutted single track to the bridge.

Neil breezes along the GHW on his full size mobility scooter

On a visit to the Mobility Centre in Epuni, I rented a Pride Go-Go boot scooter for a week. As advertised, it disassembled into five components, although the 15kg battery was heavy enough that I was banned from attempting to lift it into the back of our station wagon. I was able to explore the south coast, and the valley track through Otari Wilton's Bush. The small wheels meant that it coped with gravel paths, but only just.

Pride Go-Go boot scooter on the South Coast

My challenge for a mobility scooter is living up Durham St, which reaches 15% at its steepest. The boot scooter motor cut out half way up, coming to an embarrassing dead stop. I learned that the other meaning of "boot scooter" is that it may need to be rebooted on steep slopes. Keeping to a slow speed going up the hill seemed to keep the motor happy, avoiding the cut out.

A chance meeting at a Pilates class put us in touch with the Wellington agent for TravelScoot, a lightweight foldable mobility scooter. Weighing 15kg, it can be packed into a medium size dufflebag, and checked through as airline luggage. The battery capacity of 275Wh is within the limits for airlines. Unfolded, it can travel on Wellington's buses, trains and ferries. The dimensions of the TravelScoot are just within MetLink's limits for the bus wheelchair space. A demo and a trial convinced me that this was the answer to my fatigue related mobility problems.

TravelScoot in train mobility area

TravelScoot in bus mobility area

Of course, there are compromises. The light weight means that the TravelScoot is less stable than a full sized scooter with its low centre of gravity, and I had to learn to shift my weight to cope with camber and slopes. I suspect the TravelScoot wouldn't be a good choice for someone who couldn't walk at all, or had poor coordination. It took a week or so to master Durham St. The 200W motor is in the back left wheel, so if there isn't enough weight on the front wheel, the motor takes over the steering, veering the scooter right. The solution is to sit forward, leaning over the handlebars, bringing new meaning to the phrase "the experience had me sitting on the edge of my seat". The sharp left turn at the bottom of the street is still a challenge - occasionally I get the approach angle wrong, and find myself pirouetting around as the motor gleefully takes control.

The small wheels mean the TravelScoot doesn't like gravel - anything more than a few millimeters and the driving wheel digs itself into the path in protest. So I have to be choosy about unsealed trails, and occasionally just get off and push through a problematic section.

Using the scooter makes me realise how compromised our Wellington footpaths are. Often there isn't a kerb cutout, and I have to lift the scooter over at intersections - fortunately the 15kg weight makes this manageable. Recycling bins and improperly parked cars often block the footpath.

It doesn't take much of a kerb to stop the TravelScoot's small wheels

So what sort of adventures can you do on a mobility scooter? One early trip was Hawkins hill. We parked by the windmill (the TravelScoot just needs the handlebar lowered to fit in the back of the Corolla station wagon) and followed the road up. On the steep section there were frequent stops - to collect pine cones for the BBQ, not for electromechanical reasons. The TravelScoot has a neat canvas luggage tray for carrying in-trip acquisitions.

On summit of Hawkins Hill

An advantage of the TravelScoot (and the Gold Card - thanks Winston) is being able to use different public transport modes. One day I scooted down to Queens Wharf on the waterfront, and got the East by West ferry to Days Bay. At Queens Wharf the scooter needed to be loaded by a ramp onto the top deck - the staff helped me negotiate the lip up onto the ramp. At low tide it isn't possible to use the ramp, but I'd checked the tide tables in advance.

TravelScoot joins the top deck crowd on the East by West Ferry

At Days Bay I scooted around to Eastbourne for coffee with my friend Neil. I could have got the ferry back, but the clement weather tempted me to follow the Great Harbour Way around the shore. There is a narrow shared path demarcated by safe hit posts, though I had to pay attention to avoid scootering onto the rocks below, and there was a background soundtrack of crunching mussel shells that had been dropped by seagulls onto the roadway. I crossed the Hutt River bridge, navigating around fisher folk trawling the outgoing tide, and along the Petone foreshore.

Selfie with East Coast Bays beach architecture

[eVehicle Digression. Lime eScooters are neatly lined up on footpaths around Hutt city. On a wide section of the esplanade, I was thinking of moving right, towards the road crossing, when a woman on a Lime scooter shot past on my right hand side at about 20km/hr, less than a metre from me. Despite this Christine Fletcher moment, when I came to cross the roadway I reflected that I had to be wary of cars running the red light in the same way I had to be wary of poorly operated scooters on the footpath. The technology isn't the problem, it's getting people to use it appropriately]

At Petone station I caught the train into Wellington - the guard offered to drop the ramp onto the platform, but it's easy to lift the TravelScoot across the gap, and put it into the wheelchair area, where its handy parking brake stops it from heading down the aisle and creating mayhem. The battery charge was getting low, so from the station I caught a bus to Aro Street. The advertised range of the TravelScoot is 19km, so it wasn't a surprise when half way up Durham St, at 20km of travel, the motor cut out. A combination of pushing, and reviving the battery for short spurts, saw me home.

When Wellington's usual breeze reaches strengths that less hardy cities might call "gale", the sheltered Korokoro stream trail is a natural choice for an adventure. Would the TravelScoot be up to it? We parked at the end of Cornish St, lifted the scooter up and down the steps on the footbridge, and set off. Fortunately the gravel is generally well packed and I'd learned to track the left wheel through the part of the path that offered the best grip. Some narrow sections, and occasional steep camber, threatened to tip me into the blackberry bushes lining the creek, but Marg followed behind ready to intervene if the inside wheel looked to be lifting off (this prevented a repeat of one of our son Martin's early mountain biking experiences, when he made an involuntary detour into the creek here. Which might be why he decided to follow less risky pursuits such as off-piste snowboarding). We made it around the bend with rockfall notices suggesting we didn't tarry, but halted when, about 1.5km in, the track takes a steep climb over a bluff. It was a good trip even though the outer wheel was occasionally delicately balanced on the edge of the trail.

TravelScoot on Korokoro stream, just past the rockfall area

When the new Wainuiomata hill shared path opened, I took the train to Woburn and tried the shared path on the scooter. When path is complete to Wainuiomata, there'll be a good train/bus/scooter adventure here.

TravelScoot at top of Wainuiomata shared path

So what's the verdict on mobility scooters? It's certainly been the answer for my cancer related fatigue, although this has now improved to the point where on my weekly drug cycle I get a couple of days of eBiking, a day of watching Netflix, and a few days of scootering. Around town it's nice always having a seat, and being able to scoot around stores if it's not too crowded. A bell is essential to alert slower moving pedestrians, but people are tolerant of mobility scooters in a way that perhaps they aren't of bikes, skateboards or kick scooters. I find that the gentle 6km/hr gives me time to look around me that I don't have on a bike. So if age and decrepitude is putting you off the single track trails of your yoof, consider the mobility scooter solution sooner rather than later.