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Paris votes to ban rental e-scooters

france24.com

251–260 of 571 posts

Re: Paris votes to ban rental e-scooters

#251

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.

Re: Paris votes to ban rental e-scooters

#253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like the parent comment is talking about expanding & improving bike lanes, rather than forcing electric scooters into car lanes (where they are at risk), undersized bike lanes (where they endanger bicyclists), or banning them outright (where you’re now stuck with more demand for car traffic).

Yes, but the comment you are responding too notes, that city streets are not stretchable, so you cannot add full-sized lanes for everyone's new toy.

There's an answer to this, an answer which I see implemented in some places: cutting into the car lanes. Because you don't have to drive through the historical center.

Re: Paris votes to ban rental e-scooters

#254
post #53
post #33

Cities must upgrade as well in order for this to work out. Must be a transition period but without public measures to implement the urban mobility this won’t work.

Why would you if bicycles exist?

Try using a bike on a steep hill, or in a hot summer.

Not everyone has showers at work.

Re: Paris votes to ban rental e-scooters

#255

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…

I agree. It's just e-scooter companies trying to externalize the cost of parking. Tragedy of the commons and all that...

Re: Paris votes to ban rental e-scooters

#256
post #125
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?

You don't ticket the tourists directly, you ticket the scooter company. You can be sure that the scooter company will either get their money from the riders, or will develop really quick some methods to make it impossible to leave them in undesignated areas.

Re: Paris votes to ban rental e-scooters

#257

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…

They have such great utility value that I think they're worth keeping, but should be regulated more. Things like parking should be controlled, and a crackdown on misuse of the scooters. But they can be incredibly handy.

Re: Paris votes to ban rental e-scooters

#258
post #65

Instead of banning cars, they banned rental e-scooters...

Yes, I get sad when I read most comments here. The way people have been indoctrinated with car-culture is just astounding. E scooters are like a drop in the ocean compared to the damage caused by cars: the space they occupy, the pollution they cause (mostly noise pollution). Cars have killed city-life and people are blind to it.

The difference is e scooters kill the pavement, the last refuge for people who aren't driving. Even if it's illegal to ride there, people do because they don't feel safe riding a slow e scooter on the road.

Re: Paris votes to ban rental e-scooters

#259
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…

> but between an aggressive ticketing campaign 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.

As it's already being said, you don't ticket the individual riders. You ticket the company and let them deal with recouping the losses or creating ways of making the scooters less of an annoyance.
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