With my unfortunate timing in Seville, I told myself I had to go to the Malaga warehouse. And I’m glad I did: My 4hr roundtrip trek to Malaga for a day-trip was unforgettable, and not because of the beaches.
SCOOTERS, MAYBE
I immediately spotted a Dott scooter outside of the train station, hidden amongst the competitors. It was an older Dott scooter, but I rode it perfectly all 20 minutes right to the warehouse. I was also surprised that I was able to: the warehouse wasn’t too far from the city centre, and there were no invisible zones to stop me like what happened in Seville.
In parallel, my friend didn’t have as much luck with their Bolt scooter. Like an expert rider, they had preplanned parking and scooted to their destination. Only then did they realize the closest scooter parking… was back where they started. They didn’t notice the parking icons were for bikes only.
In Malaga’s defence, this exclusionary practice is not uncommon in other cities, as we saw in Seville, and will see in Paris later in this article. Still, let’s be real: for a rider, does differentiating parking for a bike versus a scooter make sense? Some food for thought.
My friend went back the way he came, and ended up in a loud Starbucks gleaming in sweat, even with a planned a 10 minute buffer before their next meeting. After that traumatizing trip, they were significantly more averse to taking scooters. I couldn’t blame them; we’ve punished even a proactive user for nothing.
Despite this, I would still take the haphazardness of Malaga over the confusion of Sevilla. Bike paths — although frustratingly windy — had good coverage. If it wasn’t a bike path, there was usually ample signage reassuring you and the car-drivers that yes, your fleshy body and your dinky scooter capped at 20km/h are indeed supposed to be on the same road. In busier parts of the city they kept bike paths closer to pedestrian walkways which made me feel safer too. Overall, much better than the guessing game in Sevilla.
THE MAN, THE MYTH, THE LEGEND
I flew on my dinosaur Dott into the outskirts of Malaga, watching beaches turn into residences turn into industrial garages, to meet the man in charge of our operations: Jose.
The warehouse felt like a real garage. It wasn’t large, but Jose walked me through every crook and cranny, showed me every wire and frame. We got deliciously technical on the vehicle hardware issues, where he showed me all the different ways he has gotten clever about repairs. I learned about how the Malaga sun bullies the vehicles: from cracked and yellowed battery indicator screens, to ruptured pleather bike seats. Each of the failures had its own little backstory of understanding what caused the damage. For Jose, the vehicles lying on the surgery table didn’t seem to be the bane of his existence — but rather the signature red Dott handlebars smeared black, waiting to be cleaned.
Jose didn’t just know the vehicles: he also knew the locale. He told me about how Malaga is highly touristy, how the population triples in peak times. How all those people are on scooters — rather than bikes. Somehow, I understood; I also chose a scooter over a bike.
He told me how in the morning, people bring all the vehicles from the suburbs to the start of the pier, and in the afternoon they take them from the lighthouse at the end of the pier to go back home. How folks choose scooters over waiting 10 minutes for the next bus to come. How, at his previous micromobility stint, he traded cigarettes for scooters on pick-up runs in rougher neighbourhoods. What a legend!
THE ATTITUDE
Given my limited time in Malaga, I can’t make confident observations on what their cultural attitude and behaviour towards shared micromobility. But based on the few trips I made that day, I never felt threatened by motorists, and pedestrians were rather understanding of my presence.
Despite my friend’s traumatic experience, we did take a scooter again when we were a touch tight on time and 90% sure that we could park on the other end. Also mostly because the busses weren’t much of a better bet, as Jose had warned us.
Still, we caught our train with no minute to lose.
Part 1: Intro & Seville
📍 Part 2: Malaga
🛴 Part 3: Madrid
Part 4: Paris
Part 5: Not the End
Tour de Dott Takeaways
