Hannah McCutcheon
April 2020
A fleet of electric scooters blocking the sidewalk in Paris. [Photo: Paul Gueu / Shutterstock]
Electric scooters have become widely popular in cities across the US and Europe, but are often met with harsh criticism by city inhabitants. The City of Toronto, Canada’s largest urban centre, is currently in negotiations with electric scooter companies. Toronto has the opportunity to develop its policies based on the experience of hundreds of other cities that have already introduced electric scooters.
Safety Concerns
Safety is a major concern surrounding the rollout of e-scooters in Toronto. If not properly parked, they block the narrow sidewalks, interfering with pedestrian traffic and accessibility. Toronto’s streets are small, with limited space for bike lanes, pedestrian walkways, accessibility for disabled people, and vehicle parking. All of these pre-existing issues make Toronto’s streetscape less than ideal for electric scooters.
Paris, which is similar in population to Toronto, has had municipal contracts with electric scooter companies since late 2018. When the approximate 20,000 e-scooters were released into Parisian streets, there were very few regulations in place. Since then several fines have been put into place to reduce reckless driving, speeding, and riding outside bike lanes. There is a 135 euro fine for riding them on the sidewalk, and a 35 euro fine for improper parking. Safety concerns extend beyond just the scooter riders, as seen in Paris, pedestrians regularly get injured as well, including Paris Opera pianist Isabelle van Brabant. She spoke out about the dangers of e-scooters to other users of public spaces, saying “The number of people injured by scooters is increasing exponentially. Soon it will exceed the number of people injured on bikes! According to emergency doctors at Cochin hospital I spoke to, there are approximately 200 a day in the Paris region.”
Restrictions in Denver currently allow scooters to operate in bike lanes, and on streets with speed limits under 30 miles per hours, on roads with higher speed limits, riders can use the sidewalk at a speed of 6 miles per hours. Toronto has proposed that electric scooter riders must use bicycle lanes where they exist and where there are none, to ride on the shoulder or right side of the roadway. Riders are permitted to use sidewalks in tunnels or underpasses, unless prohibited by bylaws in that area. So far, no fines have been proposed to ensure these regulations will be followed.
Maybe because regulations upon electric scooters can only do so much. A study by 6t-bureau found that a third of electric scooters users in France are foreign tourists. Toronto sees 27.5 million visitors annually, these tourists have limited knowledge of the rules of the road and are therefore more likely to use the scooters improperly. How will Toronto guide tourists to safe practices when operating these motorized scooters?
Environmental Concerns
Bird, an industry-leading electric scooter sharing company, prides itself on environmentally friendly practices. The company boasts its new scooter line has a 14,000 mile (approx. 22,000 km) lifespan, and the ability to withstand 60,000 curb impacts. While these numbers seem incredibly high, each scooter will be used a lot more than once per day, by multiple users, plus they are often vandalized and improperly parked, all of this dramatically decreases their lifespan. According to Boston Consulting, these scooters are in fact estimated to last just three months. Electric scooters don’t create carbon emissions, which makes them more environmentally friendly than personal vehicles. However, the materials used to make them and manufacturing processes make up half of each scooter’s global warming impact. Recharging them makes up the other half: researchers Joseph Hollingsworth, Brenna Copeland and Jeremiah Johnson found that the daily process to pick up, charge then redistribute the scooters (by competing individual contractors) makes up about 48% of each scooter’s global warming impact.
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