Comment by dijit | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dijit | Hacker News Reader

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> Now a last misconception is that this ban is bad because people will revert to cars. No they won't. In the first place, people riding rental e-scooters do not replace a car trip by a rental e-scooter trip

This is a hard one to qualify completely. There is a lot of statistical evidence that infers that greater usage of e-Scooters and e-Bikes decreases car traffic. That may not be the case in Paris (and I can definitely see that being true) but it does go against everything we know statistically.

There are other points though, "last mile" is a difficult problem, it's not solved with bicycles (they are too onerous to take on public transport, and they are a huge target of theft), it's not solved with rental bicycles either (they are usually very few and far between).

Last-mile is most likely solved with personal e-scooters as they are much more acceptable to take on public transport and can be taken inside so they are a lot less steal-able. The problem with this is that personal e-scooters are significantly less regulated than the "all-seeing-eye" rental ones which impose restrictions on speed (20kph in Sweden, personal vehicles can be modified to go 30kph, legal maximum is 25kph and personal e-scooters all go this speed -- with no slow zones anywhere)

That one is specifically for Paris as seen by a Parisian. I would not argue that's the case globally, and there are certainly studies showing otherwise in other contexts.

Usage of e-scooter and e-bikes decreases car traffic yes. But does banning rental e-scooter (not personal e-scooters, and not e-bikes) lead to an increase in car traffic? In Paris, I argue that no it won't, or if it does it will be negligible.

> There are other points though, "last mile" is a difficult problem

That's not true in Paris. Paris has very good public transportation. There are bus and subway stations everywhere. It's not the case outside of Paris intra-muros, but here I'm specifically talking about Paris intra-muros, because the ban only apply to that location.

> it's not solved with rental bicycles either (they are usually very few and far between).

That's not true in Paris. The city rental bicycles are omnipresent and cheap. Even though I own a good bike, I use those as well, in cases I don't want to take my own bike. And there are other rental e-bikes (by the same company that do rental e-scooters)

In general, personal e-scooters are considered fine. Their owners don't behave nearly as bad as rental e-scooters.

The speed limit, as far as I know, is the same for any e-bike/e-scooter: 25km/h. Otherwise it's in a different class (same as a moped) and is no longer allowed on bike lanes (which doesn't prevent people from doing so, but so far they are few and far between).

> There are other points though, "last mile" is a difficult problem

"Last mile" is literally solved with two legs and some shoes. A mile is walked in 15-30 minutes, and if you can scooter you can walk. The actually mobility-challenged can be provided vehicles if necessary.

I mean, it's not, because if the options are too time consuming too uncertain and/or too inconvenient people will move further away and buy a car (then expect that everywhere they go to have open roads and 12sqm of open space wherever they decide to stop).

To break down what you're suggesting, imagine 20-25 minutes walk to the train station, 10 minutes waiting for the train (you want to be early if it's an infrequent train!), 30 minutes on a train, 20-25 minutes walk on the other side.

For what looks like a quick walk and a "comfortable" 30 minute train journey you're suddenly realising that a lot of your day has gone. Somewhere in the region of 1hr20m - 1.5hrs~ has gone to your "30 minute" commute, and that's twice a day.

You could reduce both walks, and instead: bike or scooter (which are roughly three times faster on average) that journey collapses from 1h20m (in the best case) to under an hour for the worst case... (6-8.5 mins or so for each last-mile instead of 20-25)

And I mean, do this twice a day?... For a month?

That's 16 hours saved.

Last mile is not solved by ignoring it and telling people they have legs, that logic is what boomers use to tell us we're all living wrong for having a lifestyle that isn't revolving around servitude and living to work..

The problem down that argument, is if we go by time alone, the car wins almost every time (there are a few cities with certain commutes that are faster by transit, but not many, even WITH traffic jams).

not really.

theres a sweet zone.

almost no journeys inside the city of malmo are faster with a car if you include parking too, nearly all are faster with a bicycle — and its not even close most of the time

What you describe is not your typical trip inside Paris. That would better describe a suburb to Paris trip, for which 1h to 2h is indeed normal.

A typical Paris trip is 2 minutes walk to a station (at most 5 min if you are slow), then 30 to 45 minutes subway, then 2 more minutes walk to your destination. There are subway station roughly 2 minutes from anywhere in Paris, and you can go from anywhere to anywhere else in about 30 to 45 minutes. During rush hour, subways are every 2/3 minutes on most lines. The highest time you have to wait is 10 minutes during "dead" hours when going somewhere there is a fork.

It will take about the same time by bike or scooter. But if you choose to take a car? At least the same time, and it can easily be double or triple the time depending on traffic. Then you have to park, which is expensive.

Note that for suburbs to Paris trips, very few people take scooters, because then you have to carry it in the suburb train. Most people will either take a bus to the train station, or take their car and park at the train station (not drive to Paris, that would take double the time).

Now again, I'm only describing what I know about Paris and its suburbs. It's a very different situation in other places (since I'm pretty sure the scenario you're describing is one you lived)

to be perfectly fair, I haven't spent a lot of time in Paris, but I have lived in London and I feel like what I said doesnt apply so strongly to London, or at least the centre of london- it is still common to live over 10 minutes from a station in London- but commuter trains are frequent in the north.

When I have been to Paris it has been how I described, but to he fair Ubisoft studios could be located in hard to reach places for cost reasons.

When travelling to the hotel it was a 35 minute walk because google maps said it would be faster to walk, and travelling to the Eiffel tower (actually, it was to a dock near the eiffel tower but I forgot the name) it took 20 minutes to get to the metro station and 5-6 minutes to get to the dock.

So at least for trips like those its difficult to say they couldn't be served better.

It is really hard to get a "feel" for a city as a tourist, because almost by definition you're going to be in the "central/old" area or traveling to the central area from a cheap hotel on the outskirts somewhere, and those are optimized for tourist activity.

I also found walking in Rome and Paris to be as fast as transit, but I'm not going to even begin to pretend the vast majority of "average" Romans or Parisians live within the 'old city'.

It also helps that almost by definition the 'old cities' in Europe are very old and quite compact. Once you start trying to get to the "central business district" instead of the "city center" it gets more American-esque, but still doable.

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