Paris Becomes the First European Capital to Ban Rented Electric Scooters
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Scooter left on the sidewalk? Charge the operating company with a ticket. So they will charge their customer.
Scooter driving in an illegal manner? Charge the driver and the company.
This way, scooters would be operated in a manner that is good for everybody. They are a very effecive way to get around in a city. Are used much more than personally owned cars and bikes, so less parking time / occupied space. They take up way less space while driving and parking. Make no noise. And emmit no air pollution.
It is similar to banning light bulbs vs introducing a carbon tax. Concrete laws like banning things are more popular. But taxing the problems they create is more effective.
Unfortunately, those areas are so small that you can be stuck with a scooter that is impossible to return, because the GPS tracker doesn’t update fast or precise enough.
And unfortunately, people still dump them on the side of the road if either they go out of their allowed area, or run out of juice.
Considering you can rent a car at a lower rate per minute with less fuss, I think these scooter companies just have a hard time accepting sunk cost.
There is a YouTuber who collects and dumps them in piles, and it seems like the scooter companies have sufficient anti-theft measures in place to justify that the risk of theft is low.
I agree, it seems like such a trivial solution to implement that I am baffled that no western city has done it. Laws against blocking pedestrian spaces surely exist already so they only need to be enforced. If car rental companies can designate parking spaces for their cars, surely scooters can too.
As someone who frequently has to dart myself and my puppy out of the way of these jerks—almost always on a narrow sidewalk beside a busy arterial—this kind of sounds nice. But I can’t imagine how it would work. Even if I could scramble fast enough to snap a picture while keeping pup safe, would it be actionable?
As it is, on the rare occasion it’s just me out walking I’m content to play chicken with them and try to hold my ground. But I don’t take those chances with pup, and trying to get evidence (however useful) would involve the same risk.
dart myself and my puppy out of the way of these jerks
Look at all the infrastructure, rules, regulations and surveillance we maintain to make the use of these large, heavy, loud, air polluting vehicles possible.
Why not put some effort into making the use of small, lightweight, silent, clean vehicles possible?
snap a picture while keeping pup safe, would it be actionable?
What for? So that they can extract more money and let the rest of us deal with the externalities?
This is the people telling those companies that they create too much hassle for what they contribute. People are still welcome to have their own lightweight, silent, clean vehicles. The various start-ups who came here were just too much of a pain for everyone.
It’s already possible. The effort you seem to be requesting is the effort I already described as dangerous to me and my pup. If I’m understanding correctly: that’s why. Because it’s dangerous to me and my pup.
If I’m not understanding correctly, please feel free to clarify what effort you think I should be making to better accommodate these vehicles by which I wish not to be hit.
Mixing operation of motorized vehicles in the same space with vulnerable humans and their pets is the real problem. Operating them on the sidewalk is an instance of and amplification of the same problem.
I’m wildly sympathetic to the anti-car position, but I’m not at all sympathetic to excusing motor scooters on sidewalks in the interest of advancing that position.
Can’t say the same about other US cities.
There are so many logistical barriers to creating systems for accountability with rental scooters. First of all, remember that crime (and law enforcement) is an economy, and the fines have to be large and frequent enough to result in positive cashflow into the city. Otherwise, there is no incentive to enforce the rules. Now consider what a city would have to do to enforce the rules you suggested. The city will either need to
1) force the e-scooter companies to provide their data to law enforcement,
2) require the e-scooter companies to self-report misbehavior and pay the corresponding fines,
3) rely on citizens to report misbehavior.
Among the litany of reasons why (3) doesn't work is because it relies almost entirely on circumstantial evidence. (2) is laughable because the scooter companies have no incentive to self-report, and an audit would be hideously expensive for the city government. (1) doesn't work under US law because the police would need a warrant, or a legal hellstorm would ensue.
Bicycles also make no noise and emit no air pollution. They can also be electrically-powered, they are safer for the rider, and are limited by the laws of physics to safer, less erratic driving. They're faster and harder to steal. They're categorically better than e-scooters in every way except size, and as I said, even their size can be considered a strength.
Rental e-scooters were a fun experiment, and I will definitely tell my kids all kinds of stories about the stupid things I saw people do with them. If my city bans them, I will be pleased.
The city also made quite a few changes in the last few years, sometimes giving whole car lanes to bikes, and all that for a monthly 3 euros or so price. I would much prefer a centralized solution like this over the ad hoc, leave everywhere scooter one. Bikes can also be misused, but have a better, existing culture/understanding, and are much more safer for the drivers (scooters have very low central mass and a small hole can cause really bad accidents).
Rental scooters, on the other hand, are basically drunken-tourist-wagens, usually ridden without safety equipment, any semblance of skill or care, on sidewalks and often by two people (which is IMO absolutely fucking insane).
There is nothing inherently more dangerous about rental e-scooters than about rental bikes, other than that rental bikes are much less used by tourists, and much more used for commuting by the locals. The idea behind this and other bans is that people were tired of the tourist shit, and the rental companies literally didn’t care at all. A helmet mandate would be easy to implement. Overweight protection (two people) would be easy to implement. Reducing the speed in the city center or during the rush hour or detecting all kinds of dangerous states (driving at full speed on cobblestone) would be easy to implement, but the rental companies didn’t care at all and now they’re getting kicked out. Good riddance I say.
The swerves look scary because the wheels can move a LOT laterally before the rider starts to feel unbalanced and has to take corrective action (an actual turn). It’s an optical illusion.
Yes, the wheels on some scooters are quite small and ride poorly over potholes. That’s a real issue that the rider needs to account for.
I'd really love a mechanics engineer view on this because having a center of gravity up high seems similar to the unsprung mass problem.
It can be stabler for a little bit but become unmanageable. And somehow I wouldn't want to drive nearby "optical illusion". Above 20mph things need to be dead simple, not maybes.
There are probably many more markers than these companies originally considered where scooter ownership works better than others, and it’s going to end up killing their foothold in the cities they operate in. I suspect as electric assisted bicycles become even cheaper and lighter, we will see the exact same trend.
Might be the average user, but I also see more asocial comportements on E-scooter despite them being less prevalent than bikes everywhere I go.
Still disagree with how it was decided though.
It was through a referendum, with something like 90% votes in favour of banning them:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-65154854
Surely it wasn't a popular referendum as only 8% or so actually voted.
Is this the thing you disagree with?
If you look at the demographics for people using electric scooters, it contains a lot of: minors, people from the suburbs, train commuters, tourists. None of these were eligible to vote.
On the other hand, people annoyed by the scooters are more likely to be older locals, eligible and motivated to vote.
I think that's fair, because hey, locals should get to choose what happens in their city. But Paris is such an interconnected city that I understand it leaves a bad taste in the mouth of some.
- Students (middle grade to college): half of those can't legally vote, and the other half wasn't eligible to vote.
- service workers/vendors: most of Paris is too expensive for them, so like 95% wasn't eligible to vote (not counting visa workers not immigrants, else it would be 99%).
- tourists (or 90% remote workers like me) : none are eligible. I think that part is okay actually, even if we bring money to the city, we aren't essential to the city (unlike the first two groups).
The referendum was mostly peddled by mail (physical mail) which target especially older people.
Like I said, I think the ban might not be a bad thing overall, but this was a travesty. I would rather have hidalgo ban the e-scooters without consultation.
In Florence (Italy) the mayor attempted in 2021 to make the helmet mandatory for e-scooters (besides geofencing and limiting them in some zones to 6 km/h), but it was deemed like an excess of power by the relevant court.
But, starting probably end of 2023, the helmet will be mandatory in all Italy for both private and shared e-scooters (besides other new rules for parking, a license plate, insurance, lights, turn indicators, use of high visibility vest at night).
The renting companies won't have any trouble (besides the costs) to modify the scooters to comply but very likely the need for the helmet will make the whole thing fade away (IMHO).
AFAIK the renting companies (some of which already introduced helmets, on a voluntary basis) have a lot of troubles with stolen or damaged ones.
Besides, I don't think many people will happily put on their heads helmets used by someone else (without proper cleaning/sanitizing) and/or at the first few (not so improbable) cases of lice or similar there will be some new (sanitary) rules implemented, making sanitizing between rents mandatory.
And - even for the private ones - the need for the helmet, registering to get a license plate, adding the lights, etc. and the need for insurance will likely cut down the usage.
Btw, in Dutch 'scooter' is more like a sturdy motorized bike, a 'moped' maybe, in some languages? Those electric rental scooters can be rented in Amsterdam but are much more expensive. I assume Paris also continues to allow those.
Same in French, “scooters” are more like Vespa scooters than what English speaking people would call scooters.
> I assume Paris also continues to allow those.
AFAIK, the ban concerns only push scooters, so those should be fine. But I am not aware of any company renting them.
Paris is nice to cycle, cars can't typically go fast enough to be too much of a hinderance, better for bikes will be good tho, the bike lanes need some work
Surely the issue is the scooter on the pavement, not the fact that scooters are allowed.
If you read my comment, you will notice I didn't say anything about this.
Source on page 79 - https://www.onisr.securite-routiere.gouv.fr/sites/default/fi...
(Meanwhile, 190 pedestrians were killed in just my state of Illinois in 2022)
The issue is one of appropriate spaces, if we actually had decent cycle lanes then I don't think we'd see this issue.
https://slate.com/business/2023/03/paris-car-ban-bikes-cycli...
> It’s part of a larger movement—spanning a half-century, two decades, or the mayoral tenure of the Socialist Anne Hidalgo, depending on whom you ask—to expel cars from the heart of the largest metropolitan area in the European Union. Car trips within Paris declined by almost 60 percent between 2001 and 2018, according to research from Atelier Parisien d’Urbanisme, the city’s planning arm; between the city and its suburbs, they have fallen by 35 percent. Car crashes have fallen by 30 percent; pollution has fallen too.
Don’t worry. They are on their way to do just that, as well.
> If I had my way, they would never have been invented, and today the population would be biking around the streets of Paris like it was Amsterdam in the '70s
1970s Amsterdam was the low-point in biking in that city. "The share of trips made by bicycle in Amsterdam plunged from 80% to 20% between the 1950s and 70s" https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/may/05/amsterdam-bic...
1970s is when the "Stop de Kindermoord" protest movement started in the Netherlands, because drivers were killing too many children.
Personally, I really enjoy them in Europe. I was walking about 12-15 km a day in most cities a day and there were some areas I wanted to revisit later during my trip, these scooters really made it convenient when I didn't want to walk for an hour or two to get back to a certain location.
Tourists on Lime scooters riding on sidewalks are a daily (hourly) sight in the center (I go there quite often), especially in the evening. Maybe I’m more sensitive than you, as I said, I’m an escooter rider myself and I care about “our” public image.
I am not entirely sure why that is, but I think it's a combination of the smaller frame and the ease of hopping onto them by simply stepping up that makes them feel more like "enhanced walking" (with an illusion of control) than an actual vehicle.