cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/16133154
Link to original Tweet: https://x.com/DavidZipper/status/1795048724021862898
I skimmed the picture first, and thought you were talking about escooters which are terrible, ebikes are great though.
escooters which are terrible
That’s a bit of a stretch. They aren’t great, but they’re still better than a car, and a lot of the disadvantage is because of poor infrastructure and lack of courtesy by a lot of e-scooter riders. One of those is easier to fix than the other.
E-bikes are way better than e-scooters, though, and I’d say e-bikes are more versatile.
There are two kinds of escooters, the rentable, and personal.
The rentable escooter are absolute shit, they are scattered over cities, making is difficult for disabled people to get by, they promote use without helmets which increase severity and frequency of accidents, they also are driven recklessly.
The personal escooters are mostly fine, people drive them less recklessly, often wear helmets and in general take better care of them.
Both types are bad in that they move people away from existing public transport lowering demand meaning that public transport gets less money which lowers the quallity and again moves people away from public transport.
Ebikes doesn’t have that direct cause and affect as they mostly replace cars, ebikes also tend to have less severe accidents as the result of the combination of larger wheels with better banace, a better riding possition with a lower center of gravity again improving balance
There’s a lack of infrastructure to accommodate rental scooters which cause the problems you mentioned. Having safe places to ride (i.e bike lanes) and designated places to park them would solve these issues. I could also argue that cars do all the same things.
Reducing demand for public transport is a good thing in a developed city. You want there to be more space for people that aren’t going to choose micromobility, which is much cheaper for a city to provide more capacity for.
I’d be interested to see some research into your theory of ebikes replacing more car journeys and escooters replacing more public transport journeys.
I agree with your points on why ebikes are safer, but scooters are also more compact and therefore easier to transport and store when not riding, and the safety issue is really solved by having safe places to ride. Having the choice available is important because different people have different priorities and preferences.