Western Daily Press (Saturday)
The driving force of e-scooters: has urban travelling changed forever?
Tristan Cork discusses how the phenomenon of e-scooters has the potential to change the West’s cities and whether an ongoing trial has reached the point where the genie is well and truly out of the bottle
THEY appeared in small numbers at first, in a wet autumn and winter and during an increasingly strict coronavirus lockdown.
But now, the sun is shining, lockdown easing and people are getting back out there. And there is one big difference between now and last summer. Some of our towns and cities have changed – they’re full of electric scooters.
And not just the illegal ones that were causing a bit of bother before the pandemic and in last summer’s lockdown lull.
It’s pretty hard to go out for a walk, cycle or drive in Bristol, Bath and parts of South Gloucestershire now without seeing at least one, but more probably ten, of the coral pink Voi technology e-scooters.
They’ll be ridden on the road in front of you. They’ll be parked up on the pavement. If you’re unlucky, they’ll be buzzing along the pavement behind you. They seem to be everywhere, and they are rapidly changing Bristol, the city and the way we move around.
Some people absolutely love them. The area that you can ride them has expanded hugely since they were first introduced in a tight little circle around the city centre back in the late autumn.
And where there were dozens, now there are hundreds ready to go each morning, dotted around the city. Voi have brought more and more into the city as lockdown has eased and Bristolians in their thousands are signing up to ride them – at the latest count, 61,000 people have done so.
Since the start of the trial last autumn, more than 415,000 rides have been taken, with the vast majority in the past month or so, as the lighter days, better weather and lockdown easing has come in.
Just this week, Voi registered that its scooters had passed the milestone of travelling one million kilometres on Bristol’s streets. For the people for whom Voi scooters have become part of their everyday lives, like taking a bus, ordering a pizza or going to work, it’s hard to imagine Bristol without them now.
THEY SURELY CAN’T TAKE THEM AWAY AGAIN, CAN THEY?
The Voi e-scooter trial is just that – a trial. And there are issues that need to be ironed out, problems to be overcome. But they are changing Bristol and it’s hard to imagine going back to a city that doesn’t have them.
But what do people think of them? What are they like to ride? What are the problems that need sorting out if they are to be made permanent.
Parking has been one of the biggest issues. The scooter scheme works by people downloading an app, finding the nearest scooter, unlocking it and riding it away.
The scooters are free-standing, and Voi’s app has designated special parking zones. Riders finishing their ride can only lock the scooter up again, and therefore stop paying for it at a rate of 12p a minute, if they are leaving it nicely and safely in one of these ‘Parking Zones’ shown on the app.
The problem comes because very often, the ‘Parking Zone’ is just a wider bit of pavement, or a street corner, or the edge of a park. And when it’s an area that lots of people have as a destination – like near a park at the start of a warm, sunny evening, for example – the result can be startling.
Last weekend, for instance, as many as 100 scooters were left on the corner of Elm Lane, just off Whiteladies Road, and about the nearest and most convenient spot for anyone parking up to wander onto the Downs for a sunny weekend picnic.
So, for most people who are not Voi scooter converts, their experience of the distinctive, heavy pink things is of them being in the way, of tripping over them on the pavement, of having to weave around them with a buggy, or step into the road to avoid them.
If the scheme is to become permanent then a solution has to be found so that there are more parking areas that have a maximum capacity and drop off the app if they are full.
But more importantly, unless they are clearly marked and physically created on pedestrian areas, like bike racks, they should be on the road.
You could easily fit 20 scooters in the space normally taken up by one on-street car parking space.
If every other street had that that would end the issue of people wanting to walk along the pavement and finding it blocked by the machines.
It would make for an interesting debate, wouldn’t it? There are many people in Bristol who have already made that seismic shift in their own state of mind to see the car as an absurd societal luxury – imagine having the conceit to go out into the world and take up a large space of a road, or car park or street outside your house, just for one or two people?
Compare that to an e-scooter – it’s many times smaller than a person, whereas a car is many times bigger. Cars are so very practical, but in an unarguably selfish way.
I like the fact you need a driving licence to use one. I like the lights. Most people using them are safe road users. I dislike the illegal black e-scooters, with no lights – very dangerous CATRIONA COOK
Now transpose that school of thought onto parking the e-scooters. All of the problems and complaints about parked up Voi scooters come because they are parked on the pavement, where people who take up no more space than their own belts allow, find their narrow pavements filled with the things.
If each street sacrificed one onstreet car parking space, who would complain?
HOW MUCH DO THEY COST?
Take-up of the Voi e-scooters has been ‘unprecedented’ in hilly Bristol and Bath, and in the wider West of England area, which includes the bits of Bristol in South Gloucestershire.
And that might partly be due to just how cheap they are.
They cost 12p a minute to ride, which sounds a lot, but that’s generally cheaper than a taxi, which is the only other transport option where you pay by the time or distance travelled.
Anyone thinking of hiring them for more than a few short hops is beginning to learn it’s cheaper to buy a 24-hour pass for a fiver. That’s about the same as a day rider on the buses.
As an alternative to the car for a trip into town to go shopping or go out for a meal, you’d struggle to carry much shopping unless you take a backpack with you.
Another question many ask about the Voi scooters is about the environmental benefits of them. Yes, Voi have counted that people have travelled a million kilometres on them, but how many of those kilometres would have been driven in a car?
Aren’t they just being used by lazy people who don’t want to walk a long way?
They are perhaps most popular among Bristol’s student population – always early adopters of anything involving an app.
Voi is researching this, and riders of Voi scooters across the country are currently being asked to fill in a survey for both Voi and the Government, when they get off the scooters.
It revealed that more than a fifth of people said the trip they just did would have been in a car, before the option of taking an e-scooter was available.
“This means that Voi scooters are allowing people to replace short car journeys,” a Voi spokesperson said.
“With air pollution being the biggest threat to health in the UK, as more people replace short car journeys with e-scooters, this green mode of transport offers a massive opportunity to improve air quality and reduce congestion,” she added.
The vast majority though, more than three-quarters, would have been people walking or taking the bus?
But the trial wasn’t just about working out if they’d be popular, or what kind of journeys they would replace. It was primarily a pilot scheme to see if they were safe.
Electric scooters have been a technology for years, and until Voi’s hire scheme began, every single journey in public in Bristol on a privately owned e-scooter was illegal.
They are treated under the law as a motor vehicle, in the same way as a moped or a car is. So they need insurance, but insurance companies won’t insure them as they are not a recognised vehicle without an MoT.
The biggest issue for the Government, the police, the West of England Combined Authority metro mayor Tim Bowles, who launched the scheme last autumn and for Voi, was not how popular they would be or whether people would use them instead of driving, it was whether people would be knocked off them by car drivers, or would run over pedestrians with them.
The police are playing an active part in the pilot scheme and are monitoring statistics on crashes.
It has to be said that the two most frequent kind of negative comment on social media about the Voi scooters illustrate their new place in the pecking order of city travel in Bristol.
Many a car driver complains about the e-scooter riders. Car drivers now have an extra thing to look out for on the roads of the city, as well as other cars, motorbikes, cyclists and pedestrians. From behind the wheel of a car, on an average road in the city, Voi scooters and their riders seem unpredictable, challenging, vulnerable.
The scooters are slow enough to want to overtake, but are fast enough for that overtaking manoeuvre to not be quick, simple and easy.
With the sight of someone standing on a narrow metal board, wobbling down the road at 15mph in front of your front bumper, it’s no wonder motorists aren’t keen.
And then many pedestrians aren’t fans either. Anyone riding a Voi e-scooter has to agree to abide by the rules, and one of those main ones is not to ride them on the pavement. But people do.
It appears though, that Bristol is muddling through this. There have been – touch wood – no major or serious incidents involving e-scooters yet, which is remarkable if you stop and think about it for long enough.
They will happen though, and then it will be a question of whether or not the e-scooter was to blame – would it be enough to stop the trial? What will have to happen for the Government to say ‘actually, no, e-scooters are not a good idea, and should continue to be banned’?
WHAT DO PEOPLE THINK OF THEM?
A random question thrown out onto Bristol Twitter reveals a range of opinions. The Voi e-scooters are not quite into Marmite territory yet, but there’s certainly a divide between people who love them and people who hate them. But most people in between can see the value in them but want the trial tweaked to iron out those issues.
“I’d second more parking locations and better infrastructure,” said Sasa Plains.
“On the road they feel dangerous both on a scooter and as a car driver. I also hate them inside parks,” she added.
Catriona Cook made the important distinction between the (legal) Voi e-scooters and the (still illegal) privately owned scooters.
“I don’t use them, but I think they are great,” she said.
“I like the fact you need a driving licence to use one. I like the lights. Most people using them are safe road users. I dislike the illegal black e-scooters, with no lights – very dangerous.”
Dr Shawn Sobers, from the University of the West of England, raised the issue echoed by many, of the problems of where the Voi e-scooters go when they are not being ridden.
“I don’t like how people leave them on angles across pavements, blocking wheelchairs and pushchairs,” he said.
Jen Randall pointed to an issue raised by charities, support groups and advocates for the blind and partially-sighted, that the scooters are another rather hefty trip hazard.
“I’m in the minority here, but I hate them – zipping around all over the road and pavement and left around on pavements as a hazard to partially-sighted people to trip over and others to manoeuvre around,” she said.
“They are a nuisance as far as I’m concerned.”
Twitter user Lily raised a flipside to that point – that they could be good for public safety, giving women an option to get home at night.
And Karin Smyth MP is a fan. “I love them,” she said. “I might never walk up a Bristol hill again.”
WHAT ARE THEY LIKE TO RIDE?
They are fast, convenient and fun. Riding them on the road is not as scary as it sounds or perhaps looks, but just as cycling on busy, car-filled streets can be daunting, they are not for the very faint-hearted.
It’s a fairly similar experience to cycling, in terms of the logistics and mild terror of putting yourself into the traffic without that metal cage of a car surrounding you – just a lot less sweaty.
The ideal place to ride them is also the ideal place to ride a bike – on a designated cycle path, lane or cycle road.
They are just as quick as a bike, and as previous experiments have shown, that means they are in many cases, the quickest and most convenient way to get around the city.
Assuming that most of the 60,000plus people who’ve signed up to use e-scooters aren’t already cyclists, that’s tens of thousands of people who used to drive, walk or take the bus, now experiencing the city’s roads as a cyclist has done.
So could the e-scooter be the cyclists’ strategic friend – providing added impetus to the long-running campaigns to create proper, Dutchstyle segregation, allowing cyclists and e-scooters to share space away from the hierarchical dangers of lorries, buses and vans on the one hand, and absent-minded pedestrians on the other?
LONG TERM
The pilot scheme is running in cities across the country and with longer summer days ahead, the scooters are about to get even more popular.
It’ll be this summer too, that the Department of Transport, police and local councils sit down to think about the future.
And they have questions to answer, that will be questions all of us should think about too. Firstly, are they safe? Has putting a new form of potentially even more vulnerable road user onto the road increased the dangers?
If that’s a ‘no’, and e-scooters can be officially legalised, should it only be hire schemes like Voi’s? Or should the e-scooters people are still buying in shops in their droves, even though they can’t ride them anywhere much – should they be made legal too?
And if so, how? Should they be a kind of 50cc moped with a number plate, lights, indicators, crash helmets, MoT, insurance and driving licence?
If privately owned ones are legalised, will that put such a dent into the demand that creates Voi’s business plan, that hire schemes end up not viable?
The pressure from e-scooter manufacturers and shops to legalise them all will be immense. They are already pointing out the inherent unfairness of the legality of hire schemes against the still illegal status of the same vehicle, just because an individual owns it, not a company.
The Government have some tough decisions, but can they put the genie back in the bottle now?