For a brief few months this spring, the streets of San Francisco were riddled with electric scooters. Riding a wave of venture capital, scooter-sharing companies descended upon the city en masse and the sight of startup employees gliding past gridlocked traffic on tiny scooters became commonplace, as did complaints about abandoned scooters clogging up pavements.
Early this June the city struck back, kicking out some of the scooter companies and putting in place a permit system to limit the number of scooters in the city to 1,250. But this hasn’t deterred the firms involved from scooting ahead and bringing tiny, two-wheeled transport to cities across the globe. On June 21, Lime – a scooter-sharing firm worth a reported $2 billion (£1.5 bn) – launched its service in Paris. It also operates in Berlin, Bremen, Frankfurt and Zurich.
“Scooters have been a hit with consumers,” says Euwyn Poon, co-founder of Spin, a scooter-sharing company that operates in 18 US cities and has a fleet of 30,000 vehicles. After starting as a bike-sharing company, Poon pivoted to scooters in March last year. “They’re a bit more nimble and take up less space on the street,” he says, and cities are starting to catch on to the idea that they could be a cleaner, more convenient alternative to driving or taking public transport.
This is not the case in London, where electric scooters are outlawed on roads and pavements. That’s because the Department for Transport (DfT) defines electric scooters as “powered transporters”, a type of vehicle that can only legally be used on private property. Segways, hoverboards, u-wheels and powered unicycles all fall into the same category and, like electric scooters, aren’t allowed in public spaces.
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That hasn’t stopped scooter companies petitioning Transport for London (TfL) to change the law and accept scooters on the capital’s streets. According to a TfL spokesperson, multiple companies have asked about bringing scooter-sharing scheme to London. Each time, TfL has given them the same answer, saying that it’s up to the DfT to decide which vehicles are road legal and which aren’t. And the DfT is unequivocal in its stance: electric scooters aren’t legal on the streets, and it has no plans to change that law.
But for some Londoners, this legal status is a mere technicality. Every day, Liam Lawless, director of sales at scooter retailer Inokim UK, scoots six miles through central London on his way to his office. He’s sent letters to the DfT asking them to consider changing the law, but hasn’t made much progress. “It’s kind of falling on deaf ears,” he says. “They want people not to drive their cars in the city, they want people to get around the city in other ways but there isn’t a solution for someone who is unwilling to get on a bicycle or isn’t able to.”
Lawless says he’s never been stopped by the police in seven months of scooting, and thinks that they’re turning a blind eye to scooters as long as riders are safe and respectful. And it looks like this argument is winning over his customers. Two weeks ago he took a delivery of 40 new scooters costing between £520 and £1,800. Now he only has six left in stock.
“The majority of people buying them are getting them for commuting,” says Lawless. People like the convenience of something that they can fold up and take on the train, and ride without ending up drenched in sweat or looking dishevelled before a big meeting. But to really understand the appeal of scooters, you have to try one. “Put an adult on a scooter who’s never stepped on one in their live and they’ll be able to get on and scoot without falling or hurting themselves,” he says. “They’ll just get it.”
Like Lawless, Poon thinks that now the scooter genie is out of the bottle, there’s no way back. He has plans to one day bring Spin to London, but knows that getting there will involve working with the city from the very beginning. “As scooter culture grows we will have to work with cities to build dedicated scooter lanes,” he says. Cities, just like their residents, will eventually be won over by scooter appeal. “It looks stylish, it has this skateboard-style design,” he says. “It’s just a skateboard with a little handle.”
Updated 03.07.2018: This article has been updated to correct a reference to Inokim UK's scooter prices
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
