Paris says au revoir to rental e-scooters | Hacker News Reader

Paris says au revoir to rental e-scooters

bbc.com

32 pointsvinni227 comments

The article shows a graphic showing 3 scooter related deaths in 2022. They state that 15000 scooters have been removed from the streets of Paris (presumably rentals since private is not banned) but fail to state the total number of scooters. Other useful bits of information omitted are were:

Were those deaths pedestrians or riders? (Given that the complaints were about sidewalk riding) How many bicycles are in use in Paris and what is the death ratio there? Are bicycle accidents less severe than scooter accidents?

I imagine that I’d rather be hit by a scooter than speared by a bicycle but maybe scooter riders are just more out of control. There is so much detail that could be covered in these sorts of articles but they always seem to disappoint.

The only interesting insight made was that the decision was most likely skewed by older voters who don’t ride.

It's worth noting that the eScooters are one of the most efficient (and thus greenest) form of transportation around. The mass overhead is very low, especially compared to other devices like cars, mopeds and even bikes.

This is definitely a short-sighted move by the city.

Escooter are far less green than walking, regular bikes or existing public transport.

The rental ones requires plenty of vehicles to be recharged as well, which makes those technically running partially on fossil fuel.

And it's a fairly big annoyance for pedestrian most of all (i guess that's why parisian voted against those escooter rental companies).

Are you so sure? How much CO2 does a human put out to walk a mile?

As it is, I only compared them to other vehicles. It's not really fair to compare them to walking which is much slower and often impossible for the less than fit.

Are you saying that seriously?

Yes. Seriously. How many extra carbs do you burn to walk a mile? Those end up in the atmosphere as CO2. There's no free lunch, so to speak.

Given that animals aren't super efficient already, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that something like a moped puts less CO2 in the air to move a sedentary human compared to a human that's huffing and puffing CO2.

Using a scooter requires you to be more fit than walking. You need better strength, balance and reaction time. Scooters are essentially limited to the young

As someone who routinely dodges scooter drivers speeding recklessly down sidewalks and bike paths, it doesn't feel short-sighted. I wish my city would ban them.

Rental scooters is an e-waste disaster

I don't think they are nearly as bad as cars from a waste perspective, even if they are short lived, it takes quite a few of them to make one car worth of (e)trash.

If they weren't allowed on sidewalks and parked in (repurposed) car spaces I'd be fine with them.

Cars don't get thrown in rivers do often.

They've been pulling at least one a month out of my local river for the past 8 years or so.

Good riddance. The scooters were a nuisance in the way that even the bike shares are not.

I'm not sure what it is about the form factor, but the scooters were significantly more likely to have been parked laying down in the middle of the sidewalk, preventing anyone with mobility issues to squeeze through or not be able to move through.

And they were much more commonly ridden on the sidewalk. Being motorized, they were often getting up to speeds equivalent of bicycles and they were quite heavy as well.

I know a lot has been made about the turnout, but the vote was advertised very heavily. I couldn't go anywhere for a few weeks without seeing posters for it. Maybe those in favor didn't vote, but they had the chance and the heads up. (It's also possible that it was heavily tourists using them, but I can't be too upset about residents deciding what they want for their city.)

Anecdotal, but one source of scooters laying down is scooter protestors themselves, exacerbating the situation.

And if it is the users, this is more of a societal problem, in a collectivist society, like Japan, a user would be ashamed of parking in a way that might block others.

Pretty sure the French are saying "adieu" (goodbye) and not "au revoir" (goodbye until I see you again).

The author disagrees (and used “au revoir” accordingly):

> Free-floating e-scooters have been around all of five years. Nothing has replaced them. Unlike the horses, I can't help feeling that at some point they'll be back.

Private e-scooters are still allowed. I'm glad to hear that, as I believe that people who owns scooters will generally be well-behaved. They will be more skilled riders. They will not abandon their scooters in inconvenient places. I am curious if the rental company is can sell their scooters to private owners. Perhaps it would require a software update.

I read in another article [0] that they will be shipping the scooters to other cities after doing repairs.

0. https://www.thelocal.fr/20230901/rented-electric-scooters-va...

Thanks. I read that and learned that only "floating" scooters are banned. You can still do weekly or monthly rentals. So it's not just private scooters that are allowed.

"Older people - who vote regularly and hate e-scooters - turned out in force. Many younger people, who actually use the things. are more likely to have stayed at home."

This might be an excellent lesson in citizen's duties in a democracy, for young people, actually : a vote they skipped has a direct and visible impact on their life.

It's a lesson in demographics. You can vote all you want, not a chance against boomers.

I‘m not a fan of the government running businesses but in the case of rental eScooters:

Why not let public transit have the single license to operate a rental eScooter service or at least assign that single license to one private operator (as a public private partnership)?

On the one hand the e-scooter network could (should) have a way larger service area, could be more tightly, better integrated into public infrastructure and get utilized by a way larger customer base.

On the other hand it could alleviate some deadlocked budget discussions about public transport (eg. more bicycle garages vs. a new subway line) by providing an alternative.

PS: And then rinse and repeat for bike- and carsharing.

To bicker,

Many cities spent millions of dollars on the city sponsored bikes from a period from 2005-2015... and 2015 was the first time ebikes + scooters became convenient and abundant enough to establish a volume of users.

One could conclude that the cities provided a very costly startup beta, that the for profit entities were actually able to adopt. From $100s dollars per user activation to $1.

Abandoning e-scooters but keeping the Vespas and Lambrettas (operated by Citiscoot and Cooltra) doesn't make any sense.

The Vespas and Lambrettas are way bigger and create higher disruption of foot traffic on sidewalks.

With e-scooters gone people will jump on those even more often and consequently leave them on sidewalks even more often.

Users of Vespas and Lambrettas are largely not a nuisance: they don't ride on sidewalks, utterly disrespect traffic rules while endangering themselves and others, and are generally properly parked (at least well enough to not be a noticeable nuisance).

There is probably a link with them being more expensive, requiring a licence, being registered and the fact that they are not perceived as a nuisance.

I really doubt e-scooters users are going to jump on those in numbers large enough to make a difference.

It takes 24h at most to register on the "Vespa" sharing service with a driving license.

And yes once you have a "small" 2 wheel vehicle people are gonna ride them on sidewalks and park them on sidewalks.

For all practical purpose the width bubble is the same around the e-scooter and a Vespa, unless you want to be borderline suicidal with the e-scooter.

The only thing that's different is the required athleticism to mount and dismount as well as parking the "Vespa" on the stand.

I reckon maybe they solved the problem of people riding the e-scooter in the opposite sense on the road and the problem of people lifting the e- scooter to transport the e-scooter to areas which are completely closed to vehicles and then riding it there

This sounds like an enforcement problem.

How much do cities spend on police cars for traffic flow, moving, and even parking violations; but not have similar ratios to enforce more efficient space/energy and safer transportation methods?

In the US, part of our infrastructure underspend is going from full time janitor at a park to a weekly visit by a contractor.

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