Brussels & (Shared) Mobility: A complicated story.

There should be a balance between the number of shared mobility vehicles and the available dedicated parking spots for those vehicles.

The year is 2022 and if you are on Twitter, especially if you follow the (shared) mobility topics on Twitter, you most likely have seen some people complaining about electric scooters scattered around in Brussels.

At first, I didn’t really understand why  this was such a big issue in Brussels, because there are already ways available to prevent these shared mobility vehicles to be scattered around, so I did some research. When Troty, Lime & Bird launched in Brussels back in 2018, they were only available during the day. Bird (7 a.m. – 9 p.m.), Lime (7 a.m. – 10 p.m.) & Troty (8:30 a.m. – 7 p.m.) even back then these electric scooter operators were already bringing awareness to their users to respect the local rules and park responsibly.

” The companies ask their users to bring a helmet for safety, and to ride in bike lanes, not on sidewalks. They also trust the users to be responsible when parking: don’t leave the scooter lying around, because people might fall over them, and it just isn’t nice having to dodge scooters as you are walking.” (source: https://brussels-express.eu/whizzing-around-in-brussels-the-shared-e-scooter/)

So how come all these years later, there are still so many issues with wrongly parked shared ebikes and escooters in Brussels?

After doing some more research, I noticed that there just wasn’t enough dedicated shared mobility vehicles parking spots where all these shared vehicles could park their scooters and bikes without creating nuisance. However, years later, there still isn’t enough dedicated parking spots, yet the city continues to allow more and more shared scooter and shared bikes operator, while not providing dedicated parking spots.

In 2019 already the city of Brussels announced dedicated parking zones, according to this Brussels Times article: https://www.brusselstimes.com/belgium/79355/brussels-mobility-announces-drop-off-zones-for-shared-scooters-and-bikes.

“To determine the locations of the parking spaces we were inspired by an example from Bordeaux,” Camille Thiry, a spokesperson for Brussels Mobility, told Bruzz. “The proposal was presented at a meeting of the ‘shared mobility’ working group to mobility advisers and 19 aldermen of mobility. In addition, the design was approved by the four public transport companies so that, for example, SNCB can implement this design at all major train stations in the country.”

 

The drop off zones’ installation date has not yet been decided but it will be in the near future, Thiry added.

Some municipalities have already designed their own parking spaces.

“We are currently in a pilot phase,” Alexandre Pirson, the alderman for mobility in Woluwe-Saint-Pierre, told Bruzz. “We have plans to create around twenty drop-off zones, including at least twelve by the end of 2019. But if Brussels Mobility offers a design that suits us, that is certainly not a problem for us.” – https://www.brusselstimes.com/belgium/79355/brussels-mobility-announces-drop-off-zones-for-shared-scooters-and-bikes

The city of Brussels announced 20 drop-off zones in 2019, they tested those 20 drop-off zones in September 2020, however, in June 2022 they mention that “work regarding drop-off zones is still being done..” ( https://www.brusselstimes.com/244533/e-scooters-are-here-to-stay-for-better-or-worse) while in the mean time the city of Brussels keeps allowing more and more shared mobility operators to operate in the city, in 2022 there are 7 different operators  operating 18060 shared electric kick scooters, 1795 shared bikes and 205 shared motor scooters.

Let’s have a look at the evolution of the number of operating shared electric kick scooters in Brussels over time:

• In December 2018, Lime had 500 electric kick scooters in Brussels & Troty had around 60.  (https://www.brusselstimes.com/205849/scourge-of-the-streets-brussels-to-introduce-measures-to-curb-scooter-misuse)
• In July 2019 there were 5000 electric kick scooters operating in the city of Brussels (https://www.brusselstimes.com/belgium/61429/with-thousands-of-e-scooters-on-the-streets-brussels-tries-to-limit-the-chaos)
• In June 2022 there were around 18000 shared electric kick scooters in the city of Brussels. (https://www.brusselstimes.com/244533/e-scooters-are-here-to-stay-for-better-or-worse) 
• In September 2022, the city of Brussels allowed an additional shared electric scooter operator to launch in Brussels with 1500 electric scooters. (https://brusselsmorning.com/eighth-brussels-shared-scooter-provider-still-sees-room/26074/)  Now there are 8 shared electric kick scooters operators, operating in the city of Brussels with a total fleet of around 20 000 shared electric kick scooters.

The nuisance of shared electric scooter seems obvious, over the years the city of Brussels allowed more and more operators to operate their scooters in the city, while not simultaneously providing these electric shared scooter operators with sufficient enough of dedicated parking spots, yet demanding them to use dedicated parking spots…

The question is then, why allowing more and more scooters to operate, while not increasing the available dedicated parking spots & improving the infrastructure? This is a problem that was already known in 2018, and other cities such as Oslo and Stockholm had similar issues, yet they were able to learn from the shared electric scooter pilots and they adapted and improved their regulation, policies and limited the number of operating shared electric scooters. (https://www.brusselstimes.com/244533/e-scooters-are-here-to-stay-for-better-or-worse)

“In Scandinavian cities such as Stockholm, Oslo and Copenhagen, they have already taken measures against the nuisance. The Swedish capital halved the number of partial scooters from 23,000 to 12,000. In the Norwegian capital, the number of scooters was reduced from 20,000 to 8,000 and people are not allowed to use them between 11 pm and 5 am. And in the Danish capital, the scooters were even completely banned at the end of 2020, but were allowed to make a comeback a year later under very strict conditions.” – https://www.brusselstimes.com/244533/e-scooters-are-here-to-stay-for-better-or-worse

When I launched in Kortrijk with SMOVE.CITY, initially, when someone entered used our ebikes, they would enter their end destination and we would provide a route to that destination, however, to prevent our ebikes from being wrongly parked, we made a small change, instead of providing a route to the end destination, now we would provide a route to the closest dedicated bike parking spot and from there we would show the walking route, usually a few meters, to their end destination. In Kortrijk there are 482 dedicated bike parking spots.

That, together with more awareness inside the app, worked for us to prevent wrongly parked ebikes. To be able to do this, you of course need to have the infrastructure and enough dedicated bike parking.

when we launched, it took us less than two weeks to implement a solution for Bancontact payment & for making sure users would only park at dedicated bike parking spots. Other operators had been operating for over a year, yet they hadn’t come up with a solution.. https://t.co/ER9acEHora pic.twitter.com/B7EQczPUb3

— Constantin🚲🚲 (@ConstantinVer) October 21, 2022

I strongly believe that if the city of Brussels would limit the number of operating shared scooters and increase the available dedicated parking spots enough for the amount of shared scooters they allow to operate, then that would already improve the current nuisance in the city.

I believe that a strong collaboration and communication between the operators, the city and inhabitants is essential and will only be beneficial for all parties involved.

I also am strongly in favor of all operators coming together and agreeing on certain specific standards, such as for example having enough dedicated parking spots and infrastructure, and providing these standards to cities, such that a certain standard can be achieved in every operating city. This would benefit the operators as well as the inhabitants.

This was my personal opinion on the past and current issues related to shared vehicles nuisance in the city of Brussels.

Some articles on this subject:

• https://www.brusselstimes.com/belgium/244533/e-scooters-are-here-to-stay-for-better-or-worse
• https://www.politico.eu/article/brussels-uccle-ban-e-scooter/
• https://www.brusselstimes.com/brussels-2/273073/hazard-or-helpful-why-brussels-e-scooter-plan-will-take-time-to-deliver
• https://www.brusselstimes.com/brussels-2/283528/some-e-scooters-can-no-longer-be-parked-everywhere
• https://www.eltis.org/in-brief/news/stricter-rules-e-scooters-new-law-brussels-goes-further-belgian-one
• https://leva-eu.com/new-brussels-specific-e-scooter-rules-add-stricter-measures-than-those-governing-the-country-as-a-whole/
• https://www.brusselstimes.com/brussels-2/286060/uccle-wants-to-ban-shared-e-scooters
• https://www.brusselstimes.com/belgium/60387/mobility-company-wind-to-launch-500-e-scooters-in-brussels-in-coming-days
• https://www.brusselstimes.com/brussels-2/59032/800-new-electric-scooters-brought-to-brussels-lime-dott-troty-tier-hive-flash
• https://www.brusselstimes.com/belgium/60918/thousands-of-e-scooters-take-brussels-by-storm-more-expected-by-2020
• https://www.brusselstimes.com/belgium/61429/with-thousands-of-e-scooters-on-the-streets-brussels-tries-to-limit-the-chaos
• https://www.brusselstimes.com/brussels/66451/e-scooter-no-parking-brussels-streets-parks-train-stations-gare-midi-centrale-nord-municipalities-saint-gilles-saint-josse-woluwe
• https://www.brusselstimes.com/brussels/70928/brussels-municipality-to-create-designated-parking-spaces-for-e-scooters-dockless-bikes
• https://www.brusselstimes.com/brussels/174209/another-e-scooter-rental-service-enters-the-brussels-market-bolt-green-recycle
• https://www.brusselstimes.com/brussels-2/224049/brussels-pedestrian-zone-overrun-with-bikes-and-e-scooters
• https://www.brusselstimes.com/mobility/234765/e-scooters-make-brussels-residents-feel-unsafe-on-the-street
• https://www.brusselstimes.com/brussels/247954/stricter-rules-new-e-scooter-law-in-brussels-goes-further-than-belgian-one
• https://brussels-express.eu/whizzing-around-in-brussels-the-shared-e-scooter/
• https://brusselsmorning.com/eighth-brussels-shared-scooter-provider-still-sees-room/26074/
• http://reinventingthewheel.eu/2020/01/13/tips-for-dealing-with-scooter-sharing/