Even if their popularity continues to grow, e-scooters still have a rather negative image. Electric scooters are particularly controversial as a sharing service. For some, this new form of mobility is an important contribution to the mobility transition, for others it is a nuisance in public spaces, especially on pavements. They would prefer to ban the scooters standing around altogether.
Some cities, including Paris, Barcelona and Montreal, have already taken this step and banned rental scooters from their streets. Others have adapted or tightened their rules. But are e-scooters really as bad as their reputation or is it rather due to the prevailing car-centred perception and division of road space? After all, cars take up a much larger share and block it for other road users.
Paris
Before the French capital declared war on SUVs, Parisians had already decided to ban e-scooters from the streets. The French capital was the first city in Europe to allow rental scooters and, with this decision, is one of the first to ban them again: From 1 September 2023, there will be no more rental e-scooters in Paris. In a binding survey of residents, 90 per cent voted against the extension of contracts with several e-scooter providers. However, participation in the vote was very low at 7.4 per cent.
Brussels
In 2022, Brussels decided to drastically reduce the number of rental e-scooters from over 20,000 to 8,000. Instead of the previous nine providers, only two, Bolt and Dott, will be allowed to operate an e-scooter hire system for an initial period of three years. The parking of e-scooters is limited to 1,500 so-called "drop zones" in order to avoid conflicts with pedestrians. In addition to the decision to limit the number of rental e-scooters to 8,000, the Belgian capital has also decided to authorise only 7,500 bicycles, 300 cargo bikes and 600 scooters for sharing.
Barcelona
In Barcelona, there are no e-scooters in the free-floating sharing model in the first place. Spontaneously renting an e-scooter using an app and QR code is not possible in the Catalan metropolis. Nevertheless, e-scooters are still present in the cityscape and on the streets: many residents use private scooters to get to work or take their children to nursery. If you want to hire an e-scooter, you have to rent it for at least a whole day from selected providers or specialist shops and return it there.
Berlin
Many German cities are also adapting or tightening the rules for e-scooters. This is also a consequence of the fact that the regulations have not been able to keep pace with the development of micromobility and sharing services in the past. For example, Berlin wants to reduce the number of free-floating rental scooters permitted within the S-Bahn ring from 25,000 to 19,000 and is also obliging the four providers active in the capital - Bolt, Lime, Voi and Tier - to share their usage data on a platform. The providers are also required to remove dangerously parked e-scooters and monitor the situation.
As with bicycles, the parking of rental scooters is currently still permitted everywhere in Berlin as long as no one is obstructed. Nevertheless, the responsible senate administration has designated no-parking zones.
Whether (incorrectly) parked e-scooters are really a major problem in dense city centres is questionable. In Berlin alone, around 54,000 shared small electric vehicles, i.e. e-scooters, hire bikes or e-mopeds, can be borrowed and parked in public spaces. However, there are also 1.24 million cars registered in the capital and the space required by parked cars can be considered a much bigger problem than the space blocked by e-scooters. This is because 20 rental scooters can fit in a car park where one car is parked. In addition, cars are allowed to be parked almost anywhere and this is tolerated as "normal". The price of a car park in German cities is still far too low compared to other European cities and in view of the costs that local authorities have to maintain a car park.
When it comes to the sustainability and carbon footprint of scooters, however, the studies are inconclusive. Two new studies refute the myth that micromobility neither reduces car traffic nor cuts emissions more than the means of transport it is supposed to replace. For example, researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute found that e-scooters significantly reduce CO2 emissions from urban transport systems in all the cities analysed, including Paris. However, there are also studies that tend to come to the opposite conclusion. For example, a study by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich found that journeys with shared e-scooters often do not replace car journeys, but rather journeys on foot, by bike or public transport, which means that shared e-scooters would ultimately be more harmful to the climate.
One thing is clear: e-scooters are only environmentally friendly if they replace car or motorbike journeys and no additional journeys are made with fuel-powered vehicles. If footpaths or journeys by bike are replaced by e-scooters, this is bad for the environment, climate and health.
