After a new rash of accidents and complaints from frightened pedestrians, city officials and operators of electric scooters are finally cracking down on their use in the Norwegian capital. The new measures will slow scooters down, while users will face several new restrictions immediately.
Oslo city officials allowed the number of electric scooters in Oslo to double earlier this year, and that’s contributed to a doubling of accidents and serious injuries as well. Pedestrian complaints have also skyrocketed, especially when scooter users ride on sidewalks and frighten those walking. Now the scooter operators and city officials are responding. PHOTO: NewsinEnglish.no/Morten Møst
Operators Voi, Ryde and Bolt announced on Monday that they’re reducing their scooters’ top speed by 10 percent, from 20 kilometers per hour to 18, along with lowering their acceleration. Maximum speed will be even lower in some areas of Oslo that can be especially congested, including Stortorvet, Lille Grensen, Spikersuppa and Aker Brygge.
Users will also be instructed, before their rental period begins, not to use the scooters on sidewalks. That’s been the most serious problem with the scooters, when users have driven the silent scooters on sidewalks, often at high speeds, weaving around pedestrians and even causing serious accidents.
The conflict over scooter use on sidewalks is rooted in how Norway has long allowed bicyclists to ride on both sidewalks and streets. When el-scooters first started appearing in Oslo and other Norwegian cities several years ago, they were called elsparkesykler, all but equating them with bicycles (sykler, in Norwegian). Users have continued to ride them on sidewalks, and complaints have kept rising.
There’s still no actual law banning their use on sidewalks, but newspaper Avisa Oslo reported last week that city officials have asked the state transport ministry to come up with a measure that would forbid their use on sidewalks. Marit Vea of the Liberal Party, in charge of transport and environmental issues in Oslo, later told newspaper Aftenposten that “the most important issue is to reduce pedestrians’ feelings of being unsafe” on city sidewalks.
There’s majority support for such a prohibition but it can still take a long time to get one and then there’s the problem of enforcing it. That’s why the operators that rent out the el-scooters will now at least instruct users not to ride them on sidewalks, in the hopes that could help until a new law is in place, or until technology can render the scooters inoperable on sidewalks.
Riding scooters on sidewalks remains highly unpopular with pedestrians, but there’s still no law prohibiting it. PHOTO: NewsinEnglish.no/Nina Berglund
Conflicts between those riding scooters and those riding bicycles also often arise, with many bicyclists opposed to sharing new bicycle lanes around town with the scooters. While the Conservative Party wants to ban scooters from sidewalks everywhere within Oslo’s Ring 2, other parties disagree, also within the Conservatives-led city government.
One thing is clear: Accidents involving el-scooters have doubled so far this year, and scooter operators claim they’re keen to reduce that. Newspaper VG recently reported that more than 1,000 people were treated for injuries at Oslo’s emergency hospital between January and October, at high cost to the public health system. The increase came as city officials themselves doubled the number of el-scooters allowed in Oslo, from 8,000 to 16,000, in April, and allowed them to be operable in a much wider area of the city. Now there appear to be some regrets over the expansion, which newspaper Aftenposten branded as a “castastrophe waiting to happen,” and warned in advance.
Now, in addition to “instructing” their users not to ride on sidewalks, the scooter operators also will make it madatory for users to pass what they call “an extensive digital course” before they’re allowed to rent the scooters. During the upcoming Christmas party season, anyone renting an el-scooter after 9pm will also have to pass a sobriety test via a new app.
Users who often fail to park their rented el-scooters in a non-obstructive manner will also face fines and risk being locked out of the system. City parking officials have already been busy fining the operators when they come across scooters left in the middle of sidewalks or otherwise poorly parked. The scooter operators, who pass the fines on to the users, are prepared that they may lose as many as 4,000 customers before New Year, but now claim they feel obligated to force out reckless users.
These scooters were left parked on a bike lane last summer, between a construction site and a busy busstop on Oslo’s highly trafficked Munkedamsveien. Now users will face fines and risk being shut out of the rental system, under the stricter new rules. PHOTO: NewsinEnglish.no/Nina Berglund
Øystein Sundelin, communications chief for Voi, has been at the center of the el-scooter battle and is a former Oslo city politican himself. He told state broadcaster NRK on Monday that “there have been some clear expectations from the city that we must take our share of the responsibility to reduce and minimize accidents” involving the el-scooters (which he also calls elsparkesykler).
“I think it’s especially important to bring down the acceleration of an elsparkesuykkel from when it’s standing still to when it’s at a quite high level of speed,” Sundelin told NRK, “because that creates unpredictability for pedestrians when one of them approaches suddenly.”
Vea welcomed the new measures but stressed that they must and will be evaluated to see whether they help. She said that will happen next spring, in cooperation with Norway’s Transport Economic Insitute.
Trygg Trafikk, which promotes traffic safety, has been calling for stricter rules for the scooters. Its officials are glad the city and the operators are finally doing something to rein in reckless use, but they’re not entirely satisfied.
“We had hoped for more powerful measures,” press chief Christoffer Solstad Steen told NRK. “In order to have fewer accidents and injuries, we think they need to raise the age limits for use and to demand use of helmets.” He does think lower acceleration and lower speeds will have a positive effect.
City officials also wanted the operators to render the scooters unusable if more than one person is riding on it, and to restrict sidewalk use through technical means. Sundelin said Voi is still working at creating technology that would render the scooters unusable with tandem use and on sidewalks, “but that still lies in the future.”
NewsinEnglish.no/Nina Berglund