London rental e-scooter trial

My main issue is with Privately owned scooters. While its illegal to ride these on roads, I see them at least several daily, being ridden on pavements, roads and in cycle lanes. Riders are often going over 30 miles an hour without helmets. They also ride them in the dark with no lights and high visibility clothing. There needs to be a signifiant crackdown and if they’re illegal to ride in public, there should be little market for them and therefore they should be banned from being sold full stop. It’s a serious problem in south west London - Lambeth, Wandsworth etc

I think electric scooters could be a fantastic way to get around the city quickly and safely, just like cycling is. But, car focused infrastructure makes it so dangerous as people are left with the option to ride on the road - risking their own safety, or on the pavement - risking the safety of pedestrians.

Proper, comprehensive, city-wide infrastructure is needed to enable cycling and scooting as feasible means of transport, not just reserved for those brave and experienced enough to cycle on the road. 

Digging up roads to build cycle paths which people would actually be willing to use would reduce traffic, reduce pollution and make the city quieter. In which case it would be unnecessary to hold a driver's license to ride an E scooter as no one would be riding the scooters on the road. 

It seems to me like a real opportunity to move towards a greener and safer transportation system which isn't so dependant on cars. 

I'm sure they're fun to ride but I don't see any real advantage over using a bike - I've never ridden an e-scooter because I've had no need to as a I ride a (non-e)bike to get around London, or drive when I have to go outside London. The main problem with rental scooters is that because they are only used for short periods the rider has no incentive to look after them. Then they get damaged and have to be scrapped after a relatively short life. A waste of energy and resources. That's less of an issue with privately owned devices - think of the difference between a rental car and one you own yourself. Privately owned e-scooters should be legalised, then there would be no need for rental ones. Anyway it's not as if failing to legalise them stops people using them, so surely it's better to for them to be legalised but their sale properly controlled.

I see many more folk using the rental eBikes than using eScooters.  Judging by the number of eScooters left in parking bays around Southwark, I imagine usage is relatively low.  It is interesting that the recent TfL report (June 23) on the first 18 months of the trial reports that the average utilisation of eScooters is 1.3 rides per day.  It was also reported that the equivalent to an estimated 249 tonnes of CO2 emissions had been saved.  This works out to be a saving of around 800 car miles per day which isn't going to shift the dial.  And with an average trip length of 2.5km, I suspect most eScooter activity is actually a substitute for walking anyway, and not car journeys.  The major  issues with eScooters are riding on pavements & pedestrian crossings, weaving in traffic, delinquent parking and street clutter (also a form of pollution of the environment).  A big loser in the move to so-called active travel is the pedestrian who seems to be the only one actually engaged in pukka active travel these days.  The policy of having cycle lanes on pavements is ludicrous & dangerous.   Especially when electric powered cargo bikes are thundering along them.  The active travel policy hardly takes account of older people who suffer loss of mobility, stability & agility.  They won't be be using eBikes or eScooters but they do walk and are very vulnerable to silent, rapid traffic coming from all directions.  New don't need both eBikes and eScooters so can the eScooiters.

"Rental e-scooters are the only legal way to ride an e-scooter in London."

Why?

In theory, e-scooters are a great idea. Not in reality though, unless the people using them get off the pavements, stop dumping the scooters all over the place and learn the highway code. Unfortunately the same goes for too many cyclists, particularly the people using e-bikes. I regularly have to dodge cyclists at when using a green pedestrian crossing or zebra crossing. They give all the cyclists who are doing things properly a bad name. The sad thing is I never see the police doing anything about it. If you're trying to get people out of cars you have to also make sure the alternatives are safe for everyone.

There are plenty of people commenting here who don’t like the scooters. Probably they would have objected to bikes and cars when they were first introduced. I live in north London, where the scooter hire system doesn’t reach. There are some scooters, which presumably are privately owned and therefore illegal. Being privately owned, they aren’t abandoned on the pavement. Some people ride them on the pavement (as do many bike users and drivers) and some in the carriageway. Either way they don’t cause any problems for me. They are ridden safely enough. They are quiet, efficient, and look like fun. No wonder people use them. When they do, they reduce congestion and take some pressure off public transport. 

While most will support alternative transport ideas, e-scooters are serving a few to the detriment of many.

Every school day afternoon, I see young children in school uniform riding e-scooters on the pavement and in the middle of the road. No helmets here. Many of the scooters are taken without hire as the are making the warning noise. They just ride them down hills and leave them at the bottom

Our street, which is narrow and used by many young children going to school etc is  littered with at least 1 and up to 5 abandoned e-scooters. It used to be e-bikes but that phase has passed. We have no e-scooter parking place nearby.

Overall, I agree with the vote by the citizens of Paris to ban them.

The quicker the scheme ends and scooters are removed the better.

They are illegal for a reason and it is no surprise that the people riding the scooters never take road rules or safety seriously, riding at speed on pavements or recklessly racing through traffic.

Wish those who use them would ride them safely and not on the pavements 

only used them twice - the 'restricted parking zones' are too few and far between to be practical to use the scooters for a normal journey

I think eScooters can make a significant contribution to decarbonising our city. Micro-mobility including eScooters, eBikes and London Hire Bikes has significant potential to attract a wide range of users and replace motor vehicle journeys.

In my view the following needs to happen:

Private eScooters need to be legalised and regulated, so they can be legally ridden on public roads. With enforcement for misuse e.g. excess speeds and riding on pavements. Legislation enabling modified eScooters, that can do high speeds, to be seized and scrapped.

Hire eScooter schemes need to be expanded across all inner London Boroughs.

On-road parking bays should be delineated in every road, these being available to all micro-mobility modes. Will only take a couple of car parking bays per road but would remove tendency for parking on pavements.

More people 'wheeling', and walking, means fewer people in motor vehicles and more space on public transport.

My husband has a lifelong ankle injury which makes it painful for him to walk. When we bought our house in Tottenham which is a 10 minute walk from the tube station, we bought a private scooter because we believed they would soon be authorised. It is sat in our garage waiting hopefully. Please just regulate them. He is 38 and a business owner, we are responsible professionals, and this would make a huge difference to his quality of life. 

Have less of an issue with escooters than dockless ebikes. As a parent of young children, I've lost count of the number of times I've had to walk along the road as a dockless ebike has been abandoned blocking a pavement. While I can see the value in areas Santander Cycles don't cover, at the moment the parking situation is unsustainable for pedestrians

18th July Southwark News: Police to target modified e-bike riders that speed, at 50mph down Rye Lane, proving the dangers of these machines southwarknews,co,uk

Having looked through the posts here, the overwhelming opinion is against e-scooters and e-bikes, primarily because of their selfish usage and especially against the private user ones that are illegal to run outside of private land.

The sad thing is that along with almost everything that requires police intervention, the police are nowhere to be seen. They seem to all be holed up in their police stations and don't out and about enforcing the law.

It will be interesting to see how TFL skew this survey to be positive (as they no doubt will) with such a large amount of people against them.

I find electric scooters to be very unsafe. I'm partially disabled and have big difficulties walking. I find myself being scared to walk on the pavement, as often people on scooters past me at fast speeds. I would like them to be banned from pavements, with big fines introduced to those who drive it on pavement.

Very unhappy that those are allowed to ride around London without any restrictions. I think if this scheme to continue,  they should be only allowed on roads or bicycle routes. They are fast speed vehicles capable of causing serious accidents leading to disability

The speed limit cap does not make me feel safe on the pavement. I've been hit and it stunted my walking rehabilitation.

I feel generally unsafe walking on the pavement everyday because of the e-scooters.

The e-scooters should perhaps be restricted to bicycle lanes

unfortunately it's enough to briefly search Twitter to find many photos of abandoned scooters blocking pavements, sometimes completely obstructing the way. If they have to be there (which I am not convinced), they should be managed like Santander bikes i.e. they have to be returned to a specific place otherwise the user will continue being charged/will be charged a penalty. The situation as it is cannot continue.

As a none user who’s autistic and got a lousy sense of any vehicle moving too closely to me l would appreciate greater governance over e scooters. In my area of West London we have large gyratory systems which in terms of safe use favours buses, cabs and bigger motorcycles over smaller open style vehicles. Despite the creation of  safer cycle lanes e scooter riders on these schemes ride on the pavement for most of their journeys. I get screamed at to move out of their way even when lm quite far ahead of them or lm attempting to use a pedestrian crossing and they ignore the lights in my favour, flouting any legal requirement of them to observe any sort of road etiquette. I accept many commuters use them at transport hubs to get them to their office, school or home at the end of the day. Pedestrian rights however are fast being eroded. I hope my legs last longer than these schemes. Ordinary bikes are quite fast enough.