[Pictures, courtesy of Davina Ware]
E-bikes and scooters - on and off the streets of Bath – are a popular topic of conversation – both here and on other social media.
Davina Ware has copied me on on an email she sent to the appropriate department within B&NES:
“Once again the e-bikes are becoming an obstruction – as expected. This happened with the last e-bike provider VOI.
If the bikes are placed here overnight, for people to pick up and use, they are returned in the same place in a disorderly fashion that obstructs the pavement for everyone.
My husband has Parkinson’s and uses a mobility aid. If these are strewn all around he can’t get to the dropped pavement or get by.
PLEASE do something about it as it’s unsafe and an eyesore.
Some legislation or some penalties need to be enforced because it’s not acceptable the way things are.”
AND she has let me see the reply she received from B&NES:
“Apologies for the delayed response, we are very aware of the issue of poorly parked e-scooters and bikes within Bath and are working closely with TIER to find a solution.
Currently, we are developing a parking bay system that will allow us to better delineate were the scooters should be parked and, in turn, will allow TIER to scrutinise more easily those who are leaving bikes and scooters strewn across the pavement.
We are planning for these parking bays to be implemented in the coming months to deal with this issue.”
Having read the above, bathnewseum.com follower Paul Harris sent me a picture and the following message:
“Re your e-Bike post today: please see pic attached.
This seems to be a tidier solution (bikes pictured in Plymouth city centre). They’re also in use at around 20 other locations in England.
All journeys must start and finish at a docking station, with fines for hirers if they leave bikes out of the stand or outside the designated zone.
Not too keen on the extra street furniture, but at least people with sight or mobility difficulties will know where the obstructions are.
Perhaps B&NES should give Beryl a call …?”
Yes – we’re near neighbours and we complained some weeks ago and got the same bland reply. Apparently this is an approved drop off site; no-one asked if that was OK and we’re stuck with them. They constantly fall over and blow over and they’re very heavy to move.
The e-scooter debate is now at an end.
Hm, their solution is ‘Parking Bays’. Where? There is already a dearth of parking bays for cars, people’s preferred mode of transport in this city.
Here’s another solution – end the ‘trial’ (ha! We all know it’s not a trial), and kick them out of Bath.
In the main, their young users don’t give two hoots where they leave them, and B&NES, the Police and Tier don’t give two hoots about monitoring their misuse.
The notion of waiting for months for some solution to this ongoing problem (made worse by the addition of the heavy bikes to the earlier scooters) is offensive to the residents. Tier should be made to pay for the quick construction of special bays. They are profiting from the current arrangement. If they don’t want to, their stuff should be kicked off the streets. Their users are mainly young people who use them for joy-riding. Bike lanes encourage bike riding. These objects don’t.
Seems a perfectly reasonable reply from B&NES. And, overlooking the national cycle route leading to the river path, I see all types and ages of users riding escooters and ebikes. (Is joy-riding on a rented bike an offence, anyway?) No doubt there will be teething problems but on balance I think they’re a benefit to the city.
The negative posters are not users, just haters, it is possible to solve this problem but being rude about the riders is not one of the solutions. Creating loads of new physical street furniture is not the way. It would be possible to paint-on parking bays. The new provider Tier is not as good as Voi, speaking from a great deal of experience the new Tier app regularly has issues and prevents the vehicles from being parked, it’s a chronic issue which leads to the riders giving up and plunking it wherever. In my case, and my colleagues, we take it to a known parking spot and have to abandon it there, when we are trying to make a connection such as a bus, train etc, what else is there to do if the app fails to let you park and cease the ride, you have to leave it and move on. Parking on the pavement as pictured is not ok and is punishable through the app BUT are we trying to encourage new modes of transport or just be NIMBYs? For us these have been a revolution and we already own an e-car, and the scooters certainly save us from even using that for some journeys. You could all complain about the traffic again and various other things or worse you could just write to the council in your spare time, full of blame without acceptance that current attitudes to change are part of the problem. Being rude about young people relegates the complaints to the NIMBY pile of retirees who also probably own a gas guzzler and have a parking spot nearby and have a great deal of time to find negatives. Not nice when someone else holds up the mirror is it? The council does have a role to play, in forcing improvements to bus and train services and avoid the simple temptation to use everything as a revenue generation exercise.
Mr SmileMore forgets that Bath city is, for its Residents, indeed their back yard. So for them NIMBY, is merely a statement of fact, and not the slur he intended it to be.
The AIMs of eScooter introduction into our back yard was to cut congestion, reduce air pollution and increase ‘active travel’. Not one of those 3 aims has been met, or arguably to have been improved by eScootering.
As for riders, there are considerate and inconsiderate ones as with users of any public facility. But ….. why give the inconsiderate ones yet another opportunity to degrade everyday life for the majority, a majority who don’t use the facility. The downsides of this new ‘exciting'(?) facility far outweigh the upsides for the majority of us, and it’s the majority the Council must serve – just for once, eh?