Also these scooters are a serious public nuisance where I live. I cant skateboard, ride a bike, or rollerblade on the sidewalks downtown because of pedestrian traffic. it's literally against the law.
yet these scooters are zipping past/through people and sometimes hitting them, and are littered all over the streets and sidewalks, how is that ok?
We have a metro, that would allow you to cross the capital from west to east in 40 minutes. A network of overused suburban trains that electric scooters can't and won't try to fix.
It's just a fad. An opportunity that was made available when the city council decided to switch the public bike provider. It required to change all existing bike stations, and severely crippled the existing service. So, they tried to seize that opportunity. First, free floating bikes [0], and now electric scooters. The overall disrespect for non-users is so present that it will make worse any problem they're trying to fix.
[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-paris-bicycles/bik...
Maybe I wasn't clear enough, but I feel complaining about scooters taking up space on pavements is a distraction from solving the ACTUAL problems.
Even if you don't take into account the gigantic safety hazard that these vehicles represent, this is absolutely insane. Sidewalks are small. In this situation, each scooter that you can take off the street is a step in the right direction for the public interest.