E-scooters are terrible! E-scooters are wonderful!
Both are true, depending on who you are and the context.
A fix is needed. Having just written a long blog on this that disappeared (does that ever burn!), thanks to a crashing page, I’ll save you the justification, stats and arguments and just get to it.
Here’s how to fix e-scooters in Edmonton in 2020.
The problem: This sidewalk is rendered impassable for people like my mom, who uses a walker. Unacceptable but fixable with actual effort.
1) Dedicated parking areas on streets, havens on sidewalks — and financial incentives
Take parking dedicated to private vehicles on city streets and create stalls set aside for share vehicles such as e-scooters and carshare. Do this on every single block. In areas where more spots are needed or stalls are difficult to come by, create havens on sidewalks that are out of the right-of-way. Financially incentivize using these areas by making it far cheaper to park in them than elsewhere.
2) Build more separated and safe lanes
Edmonton recently set out, slowly, to build proper bike lanes. While it has done this the world has changed. Anyone who uses the small grid of lanes has seen they aren’t just used by cyclists. Instead, they’re used by all sorts of people on all sorts of mobility devices, many of them electrified. This is only going to accelerate, and at a dizzying pace, in the future. Indeed, if you think e-scoots came out of nowhere, get used to the feeling. Cities that work to allow the shift will win in so many ways — on climate change, on congestion, on vibrancy. So build more lanes now, build them using adaptable and affordable measures (buffered lanes) and get to work. People using e-scoots, e-skateboards, e-mopeds, e-bicycles and e-younameits are the more affordable future.
The solution: Dedicated parking on the street. It’s already happening in isolated areas on the ground in Edmonton, like at this bike corral in Strathcona.
3) Stop setting ourselves up to fail
Anyone, and I literally mean any person, who uses a bicycle or walks in Edmonton could have told rule-makers that forcing people onto streets and keeping them off sidewalks was a nice, idealistic rule that was going to fail from the moment it went into force. I’m a vehicular cyclist and have been for more than 25 years. I still am forced onto sidewalks in Edmonton, one of the most speed crazed cities (thanks to road design — looking at you slip lanes and inner-city freeways) in North America. Our e-scooter rules need to reflect reality. People will use sidewalks. So teach them how, create campaigns to suggest good behaviour and stop the denialism. Lecturing people on following rules is a good way to say, “Our rules don’t actually make any sense in reality.”
4) Adopt ideas like the #YEGCoreZone
One great way to get people off sidewalks and onto streets when they’re on bicycles, e-scooters or other devices is to make those streets safe. That means lower vehicle speeds for everyone. It means streets for people. The #YEGCoreZone idea to reduce neighbourhood speed limits within the inner core of Edmonton to 30km/h is vital for all of the future ways we will move around and the future density we will absorb to be happy and healthy.