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Paris votes to ban rental e-scooters

france24.com

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Re: Paris votes to ban rental e-scooters

#231

Post by Symbiote »

johannes1234321 wrote: post #221
anhner wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lmao this guy thinks scooters only ride on bike lanes

Where there is proper infrastructure this works relatively okay. Where there is no infrastructure scooters take the pedastrian way as roads are dangerous.

Copenhagen banned rental scooters from the city centre.

For some reason, people were finishing their ride and leaving the scooter in the bike lane, across the sidewalk, across a pedestrian crossing etc.

The rental companies were intentionally blocking the sidewalk in the city centre, arranging the scooters in neat lines overnight. Presumably for visibility/advertising.

All this happens to a much lesser extent with the SV-style ebike rental companies, though it's still not unusual to see those parked badly.

It happens rarely with the manual bike rental company. I think they make you photograph the parked bike when you finish, so they are almost always in a bike rack.

Re: Paris votes to ban rental e-scooters

#232

Post by ehnto »

twelve40 wrote: post #16

> She said on Sunday that their business model was "very expensive -- five euros for 10 minutes -- it's not very sustainable, and above all, it's the cause of a lot of accidents." It must be great to have a wise mayor in the government who calls out "expensive business models". > currently be hired by children as young as 12 When I went there, I read the Lime, Dott, etc rules and they all said 16, some 18+. Where did…

The internet companies and apps do exactly nothing to prevent kids using them.

It's a tough problem, because the alternative is requiring ID validation for every online service you use, which is the wrong path too.

Re: Paris votes to ban rental e-scooters

#233

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

HWR_14 wrote: post #125
arijun wrote: post #47

I would like to provide a contrasting viewpoint. I can’t speak to the situation in Paris, but in the city I live in, scooters are amazing. They reduce car usage which is better for both pedestrians and car users. They turn a 45 minute walk/30 minute bus ride/20 minute cab into a 10-15 minute trip, which opens up much more of the city (the city I live in was not built for the number of cars it has in it so getting any…

No one is contending that using scooters is bad for the user. They are saying a bunch of drunk users are using them recklessly for non-users and are getting in people's way by parking them all over the sidewalks and streets. 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?

> No one is contending that using scooters is bad for the user.

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).

Re: Paris votes to ban rental e-scooters

#234

Post by rimliu »

FeistySkink wrote: post #39
hackerlight wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars are far more dangerous, no?

Cars have a dedicated space. Most cities don't have a dedicated bicycle infrastructure, or at least not enough and not well connected, so scooters are forced to share pedestrian paths. And, again, people treat them like somebody-else's property and misbehave, for which there are no consequences.

Also in Europe most countries require you to attend some driving school, pass a test that's not a joke and abide to the traffic regulations.

Neither of this applies to the scooter riders and it shows.

Re: Paris votes to ban rental e-scooters

#235

Post by lozenge »

ouid wrote: post #114
rhaway84773 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real problem with scooters is cuties unwilling to provide them with proper infrastructure. Bike lanes in most cities (out of the better European cycling cities), tend to be narrow and about 1/4 - 1/3 the size of a car lane. 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 pr…

You can't add a lane for every "new" mode of transportation...

Car lanes are the least efficient use of road space in terms of number of passengers carried, but a lot of the wider roads in Paris only contain car lanes.

Re: Paris votes to ban rental e-scooters

#236

Post by seu »

extr wrote: post #194

I visited Paris last year and had a very cute midnight scooter ride with my girlfriend down the Seine. It was like out of a movie. But the ride costed like $17 each, it would have been cheaper to just get an Uber directly back to our hotel. And I no doubt caused some french drivers/pedestrians some grief because I had no idea where I was going most of the time. So frankly I get it. But this makes me ask the question:…

In Berlin, it's mostly youth having fun, tourists being touristy, or people with enough money that they could either rent a bicycle or purchase one, but find it cool, don't want to sweat, or share public transport with others.

Re: Paris votes to ban rental e-scooters

#237

Post by ehnto »

gorgoiler wrote: post #174
shtopointo wrote: post #2

Excellent vote from the people of Paris! It's too easy to take these things on the sidewalk, go 20mph and disregard the people around you. Those things also weight quite a bit, so getting hit with that may be life altering.

I don’t agree with it, but I understand why people ride these on the sidewalk rather than the roads. A pothole under a 700c road bike wheel will be a jarring annoyance. A pothole under a scooter wheel will knock you off into the path of an oncoming cement truck. The weight of the devices seems immaterial when the human riding it is 50kg to 100kg. You’re getting tackled by at least 50% of a linebacker but with 0% of t…

I think it wouldn't matter what surface the road was though, people don't ride the scooters on the road because cars are scary and a scooter feels like Pedestrian+, very exposed. Same feeling cyclists eventually overcome to ride on roads.

Re: Paris votes to ban rental e-scooters

#238

Post by Symbiote »

qball wrote: post #112
flak48 wrote: post #9

London meanwhile, continues to ban personally owned e-scooters - allowing only rental e-scooters!

Seems like a very British solution to me (being a nation that cares little for liberty); if the police have had enough being constantly called to deal with another 10 being stolen today I'm not surprised they'd only permit company vehicles. After all, there's no economic value to be gained in stealing them and the insurance premiums for destruction (including simply throwing them into the Thames) is distributed acros…

That they have always been banned is an accident of the way a very old law on vehicles was written.

Making an exception to that law for rentals in limited areas was seen as more controlled than allowing everything, although looking at other cities allowing only non-rental usage first might be more sensible.

Re: Paris votes to ban rental e-scooters

#239

Post by TheLoafOfBread »

wtcactus wrote: post #196

Three main reason e-scooters and even bicycles take to the sidewalks, is that they are totally unsafe sharing the road with the cars, and that there's a lack of bicycle lanes. Once again, the absolute worst offender when it comes to safety inside towns - the car - gets spared from any responsibilities.

Oh poor users of e-scooters and bicycles, they feel so threatened by cars, but have no problem to mown people on sidewalk.

Re: Paris votes to ban rental e-scooters

#240

Post by SCUSKU »

extr wrote: post #194

I visited Paris last year and had a very cute midnight scooter ride with my girlfriend down the Seine. It was like out of a movie. But the ride costed like $17 each, it would have been cheaper to just get an Uber directly back to our hotel. And I no doubt caused some french drivers/pedestrians some grief because I had no idea where I was going most of the time. So frankly I get it. But this makes me ask the question:…

Same here in San Francisco, I took a Lime scooter to go home about 2 miles and the ride cost me $16, whereas the Lyft bike I took to go out cost me a flat $3.50. Not to mention the scooter ride was terribly bumpy and much slower than the bike.
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