How Montreal is preparing for the 'scooter-pocalypse'!

Montrealers are particularly good at hating every mode of transportation other than the one they're using at the time. The addition of e-scooters to the transportation mix, as early as this Saturday, will be an interesting test.

Will the city embrace e-scooters — shared, battery-powered, app-activated vehicles that have no need for docking stations? Will they despise them? Ignore them? Or will the vehicles disrupt the tense but stable romance currently enjoyed by pedestrians, cyclists and motorists in some other way?

The sudden appearance of e-scooters in a city is a phenomenon McGill University geography Prof. Grant McKenzie half-jokingly refers to as the "scooter-pocalypse." McKenzie says Montrealers tend to like new technology and green policies, but he suspects the early days of the e-scooter era won't be easy.

"Montreal still hasn't sorted out the — I don't know what the right term is — negativity? Or the sort of combativeness between drivers and cyclists," McKenzie said. "Introducing a new service like scooter-share just causes a bit more problems in the mix."

The city and the province have been preparing for the introduction of electric scooters for some time. Montreal introduced bylaws earlier this year with very specific rules for e-scooter users and operators, and the province recently made some interim changes to road rules that permit a pilot phase for scooters on the streets.

There's a chance e-scooters could appear on downtown streets this Saturday, but both the city and officials at an e-scooter operator were noncommittal about a start date.