Pedestrians and Bikes are a poor mix.
Bikes and Cars are a poor mix.
but scooters and bikes seem to mix quite well.
Malmo, Sweden; where I live, has excellent cycling infrastructure and the scooter "problem" is really miniscule. There are still issues, people parking in stupid ways or taking scooters into pedestrian areas, but overall there are significantly more dangerous drivers who hit the accelerator as hard as they can to reach the next red-light so that they can make the most noise possible.
I have also noticed that there are a contingent of people who despise anyone having anything nice, and will throw the scooters into the canals, spray their QR codes, intentionally destroy the stands (which means they can't be parked reasonably) and, worse in my opinion, moving the scooters away from where they are safely parked and placing them across the sidewalk, which makes the previous rider look like an arse.
The scooter companies try to combat this, but their combating sometimes has the inverse affect[0]. One thing has always been true though: you have to take a photo when you park so that your parking can be validated.
[0]: https://blog.dijit.sh/enforcement-can-have-the-inverse-effec...
It could be that what can turn e-scooters from an amenity to a menace is tourism.
Malmö would hardly be on the map as an international touristic destination. This means that e-scooter users are mostly locals. Which in turns means (a) that e-scooters would typically be a complementary mean of personal mobility, (b) there will be relatively few e-scooters.
Paris OTOH, is #1 city tourist destination in the world. It also happens to have a lot of car traffic. This (a) makes moving with an e-scooter convenient, (b) makes deploying a huge number of e-scooters for-rent a very lucrative business, (c) the number of e-scooters is inflated to cater to the tourist clientele. Add to this that many tourists may be unfamiliar with Parisian traffic and norms, and you have a recipe for disaster.
Each time I stop, as a pedestrian, to wait for a traffic light to turn green, grumbling Parisians walk around me and cross the street with complete disregard for the red light. (I'm not sure I've ever even seen a Parisian pedestrian waiting for a traffic light. They might wait for traffic to clear a bit, but not until there's a green light.)
So to me, it looks like the locals have zero respect for traffic rules. Therefore I'm not surprised that new modes of transport come with a lot of problems.
Disregarding red pedestrian traffic lights is the norm in France, they are seen as indicative: green means you can pass regardless of traffic as you have absolute priority, red means you must pay attention to cars but you are still allowed to cross and the law supports that. "Jaywalking" doesn't exist in France and pedestrians can basically cross wherever and whenever they want (it's a bit more complicated than that, but not by much).
Cars do have priority when traffic lights are red for pedestrians but they would still be held responsible for any accident.
Thus, it seems to me that your impression stems from ignorance of French traffic law and norms, as the parent said. Visiting a foreign country and thinking all rules are the same as they are at home is always a recipe for disappointment.
Like, now that I live in Belgium I know that red for cars means that one or two cars will probably still go through the intersection and I shouldn't cross (as a pedestrian or a driver) without paying attention. That's not the case in France and I could think that Belgians (or at least the Flemish, don't know about the rest) "have a total disregard for traffic rules" but that's not true, it's just one difference that you have to be aware of.
The "code the la route" article R413-38 says otherwise:
Lorsque la traversée d'une chaussée est réglée par ces feux, les piétons ne doivent s'engager qu'au feu vert.
https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/codes/article_lc/LEGIARTI0000...
The law also says that pedestrians can be fined all of 4 euros for crossing at red and they have no responsibility in the case of an accident, which means in practice there are no consequences for crossing at red. As long as you check that you aren't going to be run over by a car, which people do. They cross at red if there are no cars.
I imagine they know their city quite well, and suspect many of those traffic lights hinder rather than help pedestrians. Tourists on scooters, on the other hand, don't know the city as well as them, won't know its unwritten rules, and are quite likely to mess up traffic (like you did while waiting for a light to turn green).
This is how normal people use lights in the rest of the world.
If it is green walk. If it is red - look around and if it is reasonably safe walk.
Jaywalking is not a rule or anything like it. The UK highway Code has recently been changed so that pedestrians have right od way over cars turning into a side street (although not if controlled by traffic lights)
I am Belgian. In the smaller Belgian cities that I frequent, pedestrians seem to wait for traffic lights.
Admittedly that is not the case in Brussels. Maybe it is a big city thing.
You're generalizing too much and making exact same mistake you're complaining about. Also jaywalking and going on the red light are not the same.
Here in Poland:
* you would get a ticket if police sees you crossing a pedestrian crossing on red light * you would also get one if there is pedestrian crossing near you(100m) and you don't use it while crossing * no crossing nearby ? You can pass unless it is something like a highway. You don't get priority in this case.
The problem though, if taken to extremes would be to ban any form of car-rental (tourists are unfamiliar with the streets) and bike rental for similar reasons.
I would add though, that it's possible to gate these things and the scooter companies seem willing to do it; in the US for example I couldn't use an e-scooter because the app wouldn't accept my European driving license. (and you must have a driving license to use them in California)
When the scooters first came on the scene there was a lot of gnashing of teeth, the strangest position were the vandals who would see a well parked scooter, kick it over, causing it to be across the sidewalk, and then go around complaining about the scooters being in the way. Anyway the furor has largely calmed down, who knows what exactly did it, but I suspect a large piece of it is simply people hating change and now they've come to accept it, and even use them sometimes.
> who would see a well parked scooter, kick it over, causing it to be across the sidewalk, and then go around complaining about the scooters being in the way.
I wonder why cities prefer to go against the tech companies rather than the criminals vandalizing public property.
Anyways here in SF it's unlikely the DA would actually prosecute criminals.
The end result is that e-scooters are now accumulating in the water with a growing concern among researchers about what will happen once those batteries start to break down.
Similar situation happened where someone kept throwing outdoor chairs into the canal from Biraria (a restaurant located near the canal in Malmo)[0], the municipality made them pay for it and it sent them out of business (those trawlers are expensive).
Tugg, the place that leases the space now; has insurance for this.
I don't see these cases as dissimilar.
The two issues are however related. Commercial operations need to pay external costs imposed on the city from commercial activity, be that parking issues or water pollution. If companies refuse to do so it will be up to the citizen to decide if they want those costs be paid through taxes, or issue regulations that may force those companies to go out of business. Either way someone will have to pay for cleanup. Right now no one is doing that in Malmö and other Swedish cities, which is not sustainable.
This simply creates a very blurry line between spared spaces. It's not surprising that e-scooters simply ride on the sidewalk and are a hasard, when the motorcycles themselves also do.
The other problem is the streets are old and often have brick sections. ok if you're a car, annoying on a bike, almost unbearable with the small wheels of the scooters. Often they ride on the sidewalk with is a but less bumpy.
Not that I have a good solution for this, but we have some bikes by the local public transport org, and they have dedicated "parking stations" - if there were more of those (and the bikes wouldn't be more expensive than other rental bikes), or if they'd just nab a few car parking spaces for it.. then it would be nicer. Yes, it is very convenient to leave your scooter next to your door, but I don't think it would be outrageous to walk the last 200m.
I'm not sure if the ownership vs rental argument holds much water. Bicycles routinely litter the kerb (and every other surface imaginable), even though they are usually owned rather than rented. Perhaps it's because they're relatively cheap? Or maybe it's an infrastructure problem after all?
The Parisians were not asked about cars in this poll.
Parisians are less and less car owners as street parking space is being reduced and private parkings are costly.
I think that we have different standards here. Street parking for cars is the norm now, but it isn't altogether different in principle from people leaving e-scooters "in the way" on public roads and pavements either. I accept it's a bit different as others have pointed out, but given that we generally permit street parking for cars (subject to some rules), it seems reasonable that we should also permit e-scooters to be parked and it's on society to figure out what the rules for that should be.
Here they eventually forbid it altoghether and now companies have to use dedicated space, not just random patch of ground they find
> Street parking for cars is the norm now, but it isn't altogether different in principle from people leaving e-scooters "in the way" on public roads and pavements either.
The difference is that for the most cars it's someone's personal vehicle parked near where they live, while majority of the scooters are taxi-equivalent, with personal ones just being taken home.
So in first case it's public space serving public, in second it's public space serving company's margins
I don't see why this distinction matters. In both cases, it's for the direct benefit of some individual, at a direct cost to others - especially those who do not benefit from and have no interest in subsidizing that particular mode of transport. In both cases, some companies profit from that (whether it's car sales and leases or e-scooter hire fees).
I'd imagine because they are not sharing space with cars but with pedestrians and cyclists.
And this has nothing to do with entitlement, just plainly sense of danger. Those things can go at bicycle speeds with none of the breaking or manoeuvrer capability of one.
The companies operating them were also essentially loitering, putting them wherever they wanted. At least here in Poland it was finally regulated and placed some limits on them (max speed, no zooming around on pedestrian routes etc.) but I can absolutely see why pedestrians or cyclists hated them.
> I'm happy to accept the scooter menace if it means fewer cars on the road. And given how much of a nightmare traffic is in Paris, I'm surprised that Parisians don't seem to agree. But then I guess thes ones who voted against this probably feel entitled to their preferred mode of transport over all others ... ?
It would be interesting experiment to open congested routes for 2 wheel vehicles only(let's say anything between classic scooter and bicycle), but frankly all of them is a misery to drive in proper winter so I'm kinda not surprised by people staying with their cars.
At least here in Paris, it doesn't feel like scooters replace cars : the latter being mostly used to reach suburbs (and most of them actually originating from another suburb), while the former replaces long walks - at least journeys which would have been done by foot twenty years ago - or métro.
Who's "we"? I'm pretty sure this isn't universal.
The private e-scooters are not banned.
For some reason, we've come to accept the dominant position of cars and the absolute entitlement (and douchebaggery!) that comes with it. But we seem to be unwilling to accept the same from bikes or scooters.
I'm happy to accept the scooter menace if it means fewer cars on the road. And given how much of a nightmare traffic is in Paris, I'm surprised that Parisians don't seem to agree. But then I guess thes ones who voted against this probably feel entitled to their preferred mode of transport over all others ... ?