Paris votes to ban rental e-scooters • Hacker News Board

Re: Paris votes to ban rental e-scooters

#261

Post by DoingIsLearning » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 8:21 AM UTC

pif wrote: post #241

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…

> If a city were to dedicate a single car lane sized lane for “micromobility” Most cities do not have a car lane sized lane to spare.

If you look at many historic city centres in the Netherlands the solution is to changeover a fraction of those narrow streets into single way streets + cycle path. There is now enough evidence that more lanes does not improve traffic it is just met with more cars to match the increased capacity.

Re: Paris votes to ban rental e-scooters

#262

Post by 444Duarte » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 8:22 AM UTC

capableweb wrote: post #249

HPsquared wrote: post #245

It's a shame they are being banned in many places, because they are such a great idea. It's the equivalent to a taxi, but a small fraction of the price. It's such a great utility to be able to pick one up and go directly to your destination. All the advantages of having a bike, but without most of the downsides. People just needed to be somewhat polite and disciplined - too many ride fast on sidewalks, leave them in…

What exactly are the downsides of owning a bike that you don't have owning a e-scooter?

Space if you live in a very small apartment and don't have a garage. Also probably easier to take with you on public transports.

Re: Paris votes to ban rental e-scooters

#263

Post by bjackman » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 8:22 AM UTC

franky47 wrote: post #185

One major annoyance with these e-scooters is their "take it from anywhere, leave it anywhere" rental model. Sure, it's practical for the user, but it litters the pavement for everyone else with scooters badly parked, sometimes even lying on their side on the floor, requiring teams of maintenance people to patrol the streets (with petrol trucks) and set them back up in an orderly fashion and grouped at strategic locat…

My market-supremacist response: I wish that instead of banning them they just fixed the negative externalities: a system where anyone can report a poorly parked scooter to the city govt and the owner of the scooter receives a significant fine.

That way the market will soon be forced to find a solution to parking enforcement, or stop renting out scooters. In the former case we keep the benefits of scooters. In the latter case, we learn that they aren't actually economically viable

(Admittedly the focus in Paris seems to be more on bad driving than bad parking, which seems even easier to fix: just reduce the max speed and/or tie usage to a driver's license...)

Re: Paris votes to ban rental e-scooters

#264

Post by maest » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 8:23 AM UTC

capableweb wrote: post #249

HPsquared wrote: post #245

It's a shame they are being banned in many places, because they are such a great idea. It's the equivalent to a taxi, but a small fraction of the price. It's such a great utility to be able to pick one up and go directly to your destination. All the advantages of having a bike, but without most of the downsides. People just needed to be somewhat polite and disciplined - too many ride fast on sidewalks, leave them in…

What exactly are the downsides of owning a bike that you don't have owning a e-scooter?

The vote concerns rentable scooters, not private ones.

Re: Paris votes to ban rental e-scooters

#265

Post by goodcanadian » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 8:23 AM UTC

flak48 wrote: post #9

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

In the context of UK law, e-scooters are motorised vehicles which make them illegal to use on the sidewalk. However, they don't come close to meeting the legal requirements for use on the road (no turn signals, for example) making it illegal to use there. Personal e-scooters aren't technically banned (they are available to buy), but there is no where on public property where you can legally ride them (not that it stops people). Therefore, the only way an e-scooter can be used legally is if a special provision has been made for a trial with rental scooters in select locations (Oxford being the one that I am familiar with).

Re: Paris votes to ban rental e-scooters

#266

Post by martin_a » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 8:23 AM UTC

HPsquared wrote: post #245

It's a shame they are being banned in many places, because they are such a great idea. It's the equivalent to a taxi, but a small fraction of the price. It's such a great utility to be able to pick one up and go directly to your destination. All the advantages of having a bike, but without most of the downsides. People just needed to be somewhat polite and disciplined - too many ride fast on sidewalks, leave them in…

> because they are such a great idea

I'd prefer a tight mesh of public transport with a flatrate ticket system over any fancy mobility startup at any time.

Re: Paris votes to ban rental e-scooters

#267

Post by pengaru » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 8:24 AM UTC

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:…

> 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.

I had a similar experience but on Velib bicycles around a decade ago... It seems strange to ban scooters when Velib was such a popular success AFAICT.

Re: Paris votes to ban rental e-scooters

#268

Post by FeistySkink » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 8:24 AM UTC

schnitzelstoat wrote: post #251

FeistySkink wrote: post #3

I hope this becomes EU-wide. Every season it seems like there's a new generation that discovers and abuses them to no end, endangering everybody around.

Nah, I live in Barcelona where it's very hot and humid and there are a lot of hills. This makes bikes not really usable in much of the city due to the hills and the alternatives to e-scooters are petrol scooters or motorbikes which cause much more noise and pollution.

Just in case, I was talking about shared scooters and not personal ones.

Re: Paris votes to ban rental e-scooters

#269

Post by HPsquared » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 8:25 AM UTC

publicmenace wrote: post #26

pcthrowaway wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think cars are a lot worse, if we just took those off the street there's be no problem with people scooting on the streets

So that's a whole other debate (and I disagree), but even if you're right, getting rid of cars would be a gradual, multi-decade project. It's just not possible to get around modern American cities without cars. You can't just abandon the city. These cities represent trillions of dollars of investment. Otoh, you could ban e-scooters tomorrow and after dramatically improving various urban areas, the biggest effect woul…

Trouble is, the e-scooters are a pretty good replacement for private cars. Allowing them would facilitate a reduction in cars.

Re: Paris votes to ban rental e-scooters

#270

Post by rob74 » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 8:25 AM UTC

SCUSKU wrote: post #240

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.

YMMV - here in Munich I have experience with both e-scooters and the "leading" bicycle-sharing solution (MVG Rad). E-scooters are about 2x more expensive, but also considerably more reliable. With the bicycles I regularly have to call the support hotline because the bike won't unlock or the return doesn't work correctly, also on many bikes the gear-shift is partly broken, the saddle is adjusted wrong (not the height, which you can adjust yourself, but the angle, which can make longer rides very uncomfortable) etc. Some of these can be fixed with better maintenance or better design of the bikes, but others are due to scooters being technically simpler and easier to use (they already have a big battery that has to be charged anyway, so not unlocking because of low battery is less likely, plus they are regularly picked up, charged/serviced and then put back, which is much harder with a full-blown bicycle, they don't need a gear shift or a saddle etc.).