学进去

Back in Brisbane, Australia, for the Christmas break, I found myself in a public transport dead zone. Bikeless, 7 kilometers from where I was meeting friends and unwilling to get a taxi, I decided to borrow an electric scooter. The trip took far longer than it would have by bike, mainly because of a major spill halfway there. A rock, hit at speed, is a terrible thing: weeks later, I still had the red knees of a primary schooler.

In the UK, they are legal (合法的) only on private land, but the Department for Transport is discussing how to control them on public roads and pathways, with the possibility for legalization later this year. Other cities that have e-scooter rental programs have had problems in the early period. In Paris, Mayor Anne Hidalgo described the situation last year as messy. She has announced that the city is reducing its number of e-scooters to 15,000 and plans to create laws forbidding them from pavements (人行道). France has put into force laws limiting e-scooter speeds to 25 kilometres per hour.

Similar to dockless (无桩的) hire bicycles, e-scooters are parked on pavements and people leave them up trees or throw them into rivers. Wild treatment shortens their lifetime, which is bad for both profitability (盈利) and the environment. Analysis suggests that the average e-scooter’s lifetime is just three months.

I think e-scooters are an basic part of the effort to make city transport greener. They are seen as a key to the “last mile” problem—a potential way to reduce transport jam by rapidly getting someone to their final goal. Cars can take up 28 times the space of a person riding a bicycle. As far as the environmental effect goes, recent research suggests that e-scooters are not as green as walking or cycling, but they are still better than cars. And though there are still many reports of serious accidents, scooting is about as safe as cycling. Stephen Gossling at Lund University in Sweden has suggested we build car-free “micromobility” streets, where cyclists, pedestrians (行人) and e-scooters could share the road. He thinks this will reduce accident risks and invite more vulnerable (易受伤害的) traffic participants, such as children, to become active transport users. If more e-scooters mean fewer cars on roads, an improvement in local air quality is also a likely result. When 20 kilometers of roads in central London closed for World Car-Free Day last September, the air quality was greatly improved according to the report.