I see them in Cambridge where Harvard students own them and zip across the river to the athletic center.
The can go quite fast and as a biker then can be annoying when the try to go past you at 20 mph, but honestly in the bike lane is probably the best place for them
If a city were to dedicate a single car lane sized lane for “micromobility” and responded quickly to damage to this lane (which wouldn’t be as frequent for the obvious reason that damage is proportional to weight, and scooters and bikes are way lighter than cars), scooters would not be a problem at all.
A city may decide it doesn’t want dockless scooters, but even that problem could be resolved by replacing 1 car parking spot on every street into a scooter/bike dock.
In the cities, where real people live there, it is not. Every part of the city needs servicing, including center. Your plumber won't lug his tools on a scooter; your furniture won't teleport itself into your house either. Every now and then, the residents themselves need to bring in or out their heavier or larger crap, so issuing permits to entry to well-connected companies is not a solution.
Yes, I do live in city center; and yes, we also have people who know nothing about living there, but they go to pub there every Saturday night, so they have strong ideas how it should be. It is not limiting them, after all.
Edit: just for clarity: this model is already working (plumbers, movers and locals included).
In a given area (say a full city block, including all roads and alleys within and bordering that block), you might want...
- Pedestrian lane
- Bike+scooter lane (any transport that's ~20mph and <500lbs loaded). That may or may not include gas scooters (50cc Vespa type).
- Auto lane
- parking lane (could be a mix of bike/car parking)
- possibly a transit lane (bus, light rail, etc)
And you don't need every one of these on every block/street - you can alternate. Or use one-way auto lanes on alternating streets to make room for the other modes of transport.
Most cities do not have a car lane sized lane to spare.
If you want to live downtown and own a car, you can rent a parking space in a garage.
Cars are an incredibly inefficient way of transportation. You can easily fit 10x as many bikes in the same space as a car lane. By building a viable biking / scooter infrastructure you reduce the amount of cars on the road, which more than makes up for the space required by this infrastructure.
Besides, car-heavy tend to be designed quite badly. Planners have a tendency to design for the worst-case scenario, so you end up with communities which legally require a 40-foot wide street in a quiet residential area. You simply don't need that much space!
An aggressive ticketing campaign isn't very helpful in a city with a lot of tourists, because they'll just go home without having paid the ticket. Is Interpol going to seek out 30 euros?
I have proposed this before in my city, ticket the e-scoter company for improper parking not the users.
Most of these business have gps trackers on them they will quickly find a way yo enforce proper parking onto users.
We need to stop externalize problems away from companies.
BINGO!
Haven't parked your scooter in the designated area? -10 Euros fee on your credit card.
Driving recklessly on the scooter? -30 Euros fee.
You'd think common sense would dictate not across sidewalks, but humans prove time and again that common sense isn't very common.
Border control does not (currently) detect fines and prevent people from leaving to non-EU locations.
I'll definitely contend they're bad for the user. Now, to your point about being drunk, it could be due to the facet that in my city they seem to be primarily used for bar hopping, but my partner works in a hospital and has seen too many horrific injuries (and deaths) of scooter riders - like way more than bicyclists or even motorcycles (which he refers to as donor-cycles).
In Tel Aviv, all rental scooters come with helmets, and wearing a helmet is actually enforced by the police. Also they are banned from riding on sidewalks. So it seems to be just a regulation/enforcement problem, not intrinsical to scooters themselves or being rental or private.
But it is less costly for the cities to remove the problem (ban e-scooter) that to hire people to chase bad e-scooter behavior. Especially if many users of those e-scooter are tourists who will bring back home a bad souvenir of their trip if they get fined.
It does not remove the problem but would simply transfer it elsewhere. In result, either people become significantly less mobile, or they get more used to cars, creating huge traffic jams and polluting cities with noise and fumes.
With scooter, one can get to any point of the city in 15 minutes max and basically for free compared to taxi. It has a huge value for the city economy, and worth the regulators' time.
> tourists who will bring back home a bad souvenir of their trip if they get fined
If you are caught for the first time, you'll just get a warning. So not an issue for a tourist.
Also, e-scooters are banned from riding on sidewalks just about everywhere. That doesn't necessarily mean the rule is enforced or that collisions with pedestrians don't happen. I've almost been hit while riding a bike by an e-scooter operated by an underage child (in violation of the terms of service) that darted from an alley without right of way.
But I generally agree that it's a regulation issue and outright banning rental scooters is rather extreme. Paris did it with public consultation, so the city coulcil has their backs covered.
That’s how you solved it. Paris is entirely unable to perform such a campaign, because it would “target minorities unfairly” as they say, and Paris is at something like 10x fewer policemen per population compared to the average of US cities, which puts Paris in the category of “self-managed” much more than other cities of the same size.
because it would “target minorities unfairly” as they say
And, it is interesting that you chose to compare Paris with a very large population, to an "the average of US cities". Would it be more reasonable to compare to the megas in the US, like NYC, Chicago, Los Angeles? Better, it would be more reasonable to compare to large European cities: Berlin, Frankfurt am Maim, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Milan, Madrid, etc.?
[1]: https://southseattleemerald.com/2023/03/01/opinion-seattles-...
Most stats show that they don't reduce car usage, the people using them aren't people that give up cars, but people that give up on walking or taking public transport.
https://www.sciencealert.com/the-city-of-atlanta-banned-e-sc...
When they first came there were a bunch of scooter on pedestrian collisions, but between an aggressive ticketing campaign, adding bike lanes, and adding slow zones, these numbers have gone way down.
(I rarely use them as I tend to cycle everywhere, I’m just glad my city has them)