this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2023
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We should disincentivize antisocial behavior rather than ban specific technologies. If rental e-scooters left in the middle of the sidewalk are a problem, require rental companies to provide parking where the e-scooter must be docked at the end of the journey, for example.
As long as e-scooters are primarily replacing car trips, they are a net benefit to society. Let's iron out the wrinkles instead of an outright ban.
E-scooters didn't usually replace car trips in Paris, but instead walking and public transport trips.
If that's the case, and I don't have statistics one way or another, then we must ask ourselves why people dislike walking and taking transit in Paris and do something about it, rather than banning alternatives.
Laziness ? Ease of bypassing rules ? (slight /s)
Honestly, between the very extensive metro system that pretty much goes everywhere in Paris, complementary bus lines and docked (e-)bikes that are pretty much everywhere in the city, Paris has a very good offer for mobility. Sure, things can always be improved, but on that aspect, I don't think we can really blame the city.
I mean for walking, that seems straightforward. A scooter is slower and you're exposed to the elements. A scooter is more of a drop-in replacement for walking than riding in a car.
I can tell you how these are used in Prague because I've almost been hit by them multiple times while attempting to walk on the sidewalk.
They are used by tourists that don't put in the minimal effort to understand the extensive and very effective tram and metro system. They are usually ridden on sidewalks which is against the law. They are ridden without helmets which has caused a huge uptick in hospital visits.
Basically we are all subsidizing the treatment of injuries caused by these fucking rental companies which provide no net benefit and defund our excellent public transportation. Meanwhile we have to play frogger every time we get on the sidewalk because tourists are riding these things illegally all over the place.
I support bans on dockless scooter rentals, but allow dock based systems
But a big appeal of it is, that you can drop it off anywhere. If you can only unlock and lock them a specific stations, you might as well make a bus/tram/metro line.
...which is fine. We can't encourage antisocial behavior, and leaving private stuff for free in the middle of the street is antisocial behavior. Free on-street parking for cars is just as bad for everyone, but people have grown accustomed to it and get bothered by e-scooters even though they take a small fraction of the space of a parked car.
i fully agree with the parking of cars issue. But for that at least exist systems to reprimand people parking outside of the alloted spots and many cities have parking spots only designated for people actually living there.
For scooters we would need a default fine, of say 20โฌ per scooter that is not in the correct spot or is parked in a way to hinder other people. The fee would need to be deducted directly from the company, irrespectuve of whether they pass it on.
But that kinda brings us to the point that the whole business model is bullshit, as it can only be profitable with internalizing public goods and externalizing the costs of manageing the dipshits that are misusing them, endangering the safety of other people.
Paris is slowly but surely greatly limiting cars in every way possible in the city, even motorbikes now have to pay to park in the streets.
It's just that users of shared e-scooters were not being respectful. We don't see any problems with shared docked bikes and other types of personal bikes/e-scooters, which are all still allowed.
How do these things even work without being docked? When do they recharge?
By exploiting people with miserable working conditions that collect all e-scooters and recharge them for the main company.
Where I live, people in rental trucks go around at night gathering low battery scooters and unloading fully charged ones. Apparently you can make good money doing that work and recharging them.
It's hard to really think of a use case for scooters that isn't already fulfilled by e-bikes, and there's already good biking infrastructure throughout the city that's rapidly developing, including storage and parking. I can understand an argument that a new transit mode that would require a lot of infrastructure isn't worth it.
Some people clearly prefer e-scooters over bicycles, otherwise they would not have been successful so far.
Parking for e-scooters isn't "a lot of infrastructure" when in the space of just one car you can park, say, 8 e-scooters? If we are going to be so particular about the downsides of e-scooters then we also need to take a hard look at the immense externalities of cars, from on-street parking to street noise and road maintenance costs.
How much of that preference is expressly because they don't need to be parked, which residents are increasingly finding intolerable?
Remove that, and I don't really see the benefit over just investing more money in expanding bikes. By all means, absolutely do take more space from cars though. They're a blight.
You could try to mandate parking them is designated zones that are currently used for automobile parking, though I do wonder how effective enforcement would really be.
Mandated parking zones are very effective because you can't really end the trip if you're not on a parking zone, meaning that you keep getting charged until you park it in a parking zone.
Here you could leave the scooters anywhere for about a year, and it was nice because I could take one right to my doorstep - but my neighbours took them inside their house, and there were scooters everywhere taking up sidewalks. Around a year ago, it changed and now there are predefined parking spaces, around 50m or 100m from each other. I haven't seen "abandoned" scooters outside of parking spaces for a few months now, and a lot of people still use then anyway.
Escooters are really, really lot more convenient than ebikes on very short distances and if you need to carry the scooter/bike with you in further public transport or take it inside to workplace
Scooters are much cheaper than e-bikes. You can probably get two e-scooters for the price of an e-bike. They are probably closer to regular bikes in price. But regular rental bikes are less attractive to people with low fitness levels. Especially when they have airless tires.
Do e-bikes not have the same problems as e-scooters? If no, why not?
A huge reason why the companies behind the scooters have been able to fund it is because they haven't had to build any real support infrastructure since they can just take advantage of public sidewalk space. e-bikes have had to deploy actual infrastructure with parking and docks.
If we were coming from point zero, I wouldn't see a huge reason for one or the other, but at this point, infrastructure already exists for bikes, so why spend more time and use more limited street and parking space and money for another mode of transit that doesn't really solve any new problems?
It is not the scooter company who decides/limit where scooters need to be parked, it's the city.