The ban on electric scooters on public transport was supposed to last six months, but it will end up being nine, at least. The Metropolitan Transport Authority (ATM) has assumed that it is unfeasible to have a solution agreed upon with all the operators and administrations before August 1, which was the set deadline. Those in charge of the working group created for the occasion have asked the members of the board of directors for an extension in order to gain some time and thus ensure that the final agreement has sufficient legal and technical solidity, in addition to having the approval of the whole sector and of the new political representatives in the ATM after the change of municipal government of Barcelona and the relief in the Ministry of Territory.
The new temporary limit has been established at the end of October, when it is expected to be at the head of the street regarding the veto in force since February, with conditions still to be defined that will have to be specified in the corresponding adaptations of the regulations of the different public transport operators in Catalonia. The general lines of the solution on the table are those already published by La Vanguardia on June 7: a comeback with various restrictions, but a comeback after all.
Among the limitations that will be imposed is the obligation to fold it when accessing the interior of public transport and the prohibition of plugging in scooters to charge them on trains and buses, as well as at stations. In this way, they want to avoid overloads that can lead to a fire, such as the one that took place on a Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat (FGC) train in November and which was the trigger for the ban.
The issues that remain pending on the new regulation revolve around time and space limitations, an issue that has little to do with the safety of scooters and much to do with the debate opened by the growing number of personal mobility vehicles in carriages that are already full enough with passengers at rush hour. Those responsible for drafting the rules of the game are betting on prohibiting access during certain time slots, as is the case with bicycles in the metro at rush hour. In case of replicating the same treatment that is given to bikes, they would be prohibited from boarding the wagons on weekdays from 7 am to 9.30 am and from 5 pm to 8 pm.
In this same line, we want to delimit a specific space in the carriages for scooters, in the image and likeness of what is also there for bikes in the metro. Another issue to be resolved is the limitation of a maximum number of personal mobility vehicles per wagon.
The working group that is looking for a consensus solution is also defining differences based on the mode of transport and proposes a differentiated treatment between road and rail, since it is not the same to evacuate a commuter train than a city bus. The bus sector, with companies that mainly provide intercity services, is asking for the same treatment to be given to scooters as to bikes, in order to facilitate compliance with the regulations and understanding by users. If it ends up being like this, you would be forced to put the scooter in the hold of the bus – when there is one, on journeys outside the metropolitan area -, as is done with bicycles, so that ‘prevent the passenger from sitting with the scooter between his legs.
The measures will be reinforced by the regulations of the DGT in the matter of scooters, which prohibits the sale of non-approved vehicles from January 1, 2024, and supported technically by a technical report in which experts from different fields have participated. It will also take into account the international survey of the situation made in other cities and the contribution of Battech, the reference center in R D I specialized in batteries, which has analyzed the concentration of components and the toxicity of the smoke emitted by the components a scooter when it catches fire.
