By Stephen Coulter & Krystyna Weston

The New ABC — Anything But Cars

The Polis Network is the leading network of European cities and regions working together to develop innovative technologies and policies for local transport. They have just released one of the best discussion papers regarding the macro issues for managing micro-mobility

While e-scooters are the hot topic, Polis seeks to calm government and advises them not to react with short term actions they may regret. They recognise the fundamental issue is cars and the huge amount of shared public space which has been allocated to cars and away from pedestrians, bicycles, other forms of mobility and communities.

There’s an elephant in the room. Shared e-scooters and e-bikes are being blamed and shamed as a source of hazard and inconvenience, but they’ve just laid bare a century-old problem.

People are riding e-scooters on the sidewalk because they’re afraid to ride among the cars (even in city centres and residential streets, where it shouldn’t be that way). Dockless e-scooters and bikes are left all over the sidewalks because there’s often no other place to leave them — almost all parking spaces are dedicated to cars, remember?

Even worse, this often points the traffic safety discussion dangerously away from what really matters: cars and trucks (not pedestrians, or bicycles, or e-scooters, or whatever rideable device comes next) remain the major source of risk. With or without helmets and reflective vests, shared micromobility users are vulnerable road users, and our streets — all our streets — must be safe for them.

Quote from page 12, Public Space in Macro managing Micro mobility

This is a must-read document for any city, mobility or urban planners involved in looking at how future infrastructure and regulation must provide for all modes of mobility and remove the bias most cities have towards cars.

It covers all the key micromobility issues including public space, infrastructure, safety, equity, environment impact, cooperation, fees and data. The paper does not hold back opinions but does take a non-biased approach to the discussion of the issues.

Congratulations to Karen Vancluysen and the Polis Network team on such an informed and well-written discussion paper.

It’s downloadable from Zipidi’s growing library of reports for governments on micromobility. https://www.zipidi.fun/reports. You can also subscribe and follow our blog, Zipidi Intel, https://medium.com/zipidi-intel.