E-bike and E-scooter - ongoing issues and discussion (merged posts)

[whole diary]

[Bmblbzzz]

I saw two people using them today. I think they'd just activated the app and unlocked them.

Yeah, 20p a minute does seem a lot compared to ?1 an hour for the Yo bikes (which of course aren't electric) or even to a bus fare.

[grahame]

Yeah, 20p a minute does seem a lot ...

Provocative comparison:
Taxi 133p / km = 213p / mile plus overhead
e-Scooter 80p / mile at top speed 15 m.p.h;  average half that = 160p / mile plus overhead
Electric bike - 2000p for 3.5 hours; say 15 miles = 133p / mile includes overhead
Shank's pony - stop for coffee at 250p every 2 hours at 3.5 m.p.h = 37p / mile

Bus Melksham to Trowbridge, 6 miles - 450p = 70p / mile
Train Melksham to Trowbridge, 6 miles - 420p = 75p / mile
Train RETURN  / Melksham to Trowbridge (41p or 38p off peak return)

At 20p / minute (12 pounds per hour) I suspect that speed of docking / undocking and how fast you can travel will be significant and could encourage speed over safety?

[Bmblbzzz]

I would expect to travel far more than 15 miles in 3.5 hours on an electric bike, or even a non-electric one.

[grahame]

I would expect to travel far more than 15 miles in 3.5 hours on an electric bike, or even a non-electric one.

Indeed, but with the same hire and return point in the city of Bristol, would you want to be cycling all the time?  The blurb suggests enough battery for 50 miles ...

[TonyK]

Provocative comparison:
Taxi 133p / km = 213p / mile plus overhead
e-Scooter 80p / mile at top speed 15 m.p.h;  average half that = 160p / mile plus overhead
Electric bike - 2000p for 3.5 hours; say 15 miles = 133p / mile includes overhead
Shank's pony - stop for coffee at 250p every 2 hours at 3.5 m.p.h = 37p / mile

Bus Melksham to Trowbridge, 6 miles - 450p = 70p / mile
Train Melksham to Trowbridge, 6 miles - 420p = 75p / mile
Train RETURN  / Melksham to Trowbridge (41p or 38p off peak return)

At 20p / minute (12 pounds per hour) I suspect that speed of docking / undocking and how fast you can travel will be significant and could encourage speed over safety?

We could label these different items, a bit like Trip Advisor and others do, to show relative costs in a simple, easy to understand, pictorial way:
Train             ?
Bus              ??
E-bike         
E-scooter     ?

(I never knew that 3 ?'s make a !)

[grahame]

We could label these different items, a bit like Trip Advisor and others do, to show relative costs in a simple, easy to understand, pictorial way:
Train             ?
Bus              ??
E-bike         
E-scooter     ?

(I never knew that 3 ?'s make a !)

Technical note - the additional "Don't use smileys" option on posts allows you to switch this behaviour off for the whole of your post.     Do want just a few cases where ??? actually appears?  If so, you can insert an empty extra tag pair such as start and end italics between the characters which normally make a smiley.

  for 8) is the one I most commonly run across ...

[TonyK]

Technical note - the additional "Don't use smileys" option on posts allows you to switch this behaviour off for the whole of your post.     Do want just a few cases where ??? actually appears?  If so, you can insert an empty extra tag pair such as start and end italics between the characters which normally make a smiley.

  for 8) is the one I most commonly run across ...

They were meant to be ? signs - a bit like $ or ? but more British, but somehow come out all wrong. I'm no expert with computers.

[Red Squirrel]

Plans for extending the e-scooter scheme in Bristol were outlined at a meeting I attended (on Zoom) this morning. These are tentative at the moment, but include expanding the zones to the north (including the north fringe), west and south and increasing the number of scooters from 100 to 750 and ultimately 2000.

Future plans include an option to take out a personal lease on a scooter, which would allow you to take it home.

There is an aspiration to locate scooters at railway stations, but they will have to be parked on council-owned land pending negotiations with NR^» (Network Rail - home page)/GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway). At Redland and Montpelier stations there is council-owned land close by, so these sites might present an early opportunity.

The scooters are initially limited to '10 mph' while people get used to them; this reduces to '5 mph' in shared use areas. Some places such as parks and shopping centres, and the zone limits, are geo-fenced. This is achieved by setting the speed limit to zero. Notably this doesn't stop people from pushing the scooter.

[Bmblbzzz]

Interesting news there, thanks, RS. Point by point:

At present the zone seems to be quite limited in the northward direction; ends at the Arches, from what I've seen. Was this just due to lack of scooters or something else?

Lease would presumably be priced at a huge discount to the current ?12 an hour... Who would be responsible for maintenance? How would the driving licence requirement be enforced if you can, in effect, lend it to other household members?

Why are they limited to 10mph rather than the 15mph that applies to e-bikes and is what I've heard in Birmingham (friend hired one there for an experiment)? Or has the speed been reduced nationally?

I'm not necessarily expecting you to have all or even any of the answers...

[Red Squirrel]

I'll do my best...

I think BCC^» (Bristol City Council - about) were very concerned to phase this, so as to avoid hundreds of scooters getting dumped on the streets. It is all very controlled. And BCC's keen, I think, to get the community engagement right on this.

There are some 'interesting' controls: if you pick one up in the late evening, you may have to do a little quiz to check you are sober, for example, and you may receive a national ban if you break the usage rules. I imagine that might apply if you sublet a leased one, though that's just conjecture on my part. 

Every night the scooters will be 'rebalanced': moved to where they'll be needed the next day. So there'll be vans going round doing that, and presumably swapping batteries and so on.

The initial low speed limit is just part of the cautious approach; they'll be slow for a month while people get used to them and then the 25km/h limit will kick in.

[broadgage]

Hopefully an electric van will be used to transport the scooters rather than petrol or diesel fueled.

[TonyK]

It sounds a more measured approach than the "big bang" method tried in some other places. As you say, getting the non-scooting public onside is key. The yellow hire pushbikes were becoming a nuisance in some parts - clearly something not wanted for scooters.

I must have a play when I next visit Bristol.

[CyclingSid]

Useful modification?
https://inews.co.uk/news/technology/e-scooters-alerts-noise-sensors-warn-pedestrians-safety-746228
if it happens

[TonyK]

Useful modification?
https://inews.co.uk/news/technology/e-scooters-alerts-noise-sensors-warn-pedestrians-safety-746228
if it happens

Someone will complain that this will make no difference to the majority of younger people, immersed as they are in phones and music, but merely add an irritating beep-beep noise to the sound of screams, scooters doing a Colston into the docks, drums from today's demonstration, and the Mayoral telecast from Kuala Lumpur. I won't.

[CyclingSid]

The distance between a person?s home and their nearest mass transport hub is often around five miles in rural areas.

There must be some bright ideas from those of us who don't live in large urban areas!

https://www.bikebiz.com/government-seeks-views-on-boosting-rural-transport-connectivity-with-e-bikes-and-digital-mapping/