The European Cities That Love E-Scooters — And Those That Don’t

The shared e-scooter industry is booming in Europe, reports David Zipper for Bloomberg CityLab. “The tiny devices have found a niche, particularly in places where many trips are short, tourists are abundant, and car use is cumbersome and expensive.” Scooters, particularly rentals users don’t have to park or store themselves, offer a convenient, efficient way to travel across urban neighborhoods.

But not all cities are equally enthused: Paris, Madrid, and Malta have banned shared e-scooters, while many Europeans perceive them as useful only to tourists. In the Netherlands, scooters are banned “because it’s hard to see the upside. Dutch cities already have so many cyclists, and if people riding bikes shifted to e-scooters they would lose the health benefits of biking,” said Karen Vancluysen, the secretary general of POLIS, a network of European city transportation officials that has monitored and researched micromobility deployments across the continent.

According to Vancluysen, “The most common sentiment was, ‘they’re cluttering urban space.’ But that wasn’t really fair, because people didn’t realize that the biggest polluter of public space isn’t a tiny scooter, but a car.” Meanwhile, some officials have suggested charging e-scooter companies for parking areas — though no one has made a similar suggestion for carmakers.

Vancluysen points out that because many European cities already have high rates of walking and cycling, e-scooters have a greater potential to benefit U.S. cities, where most trips are still made by car.