Green Party councillor for Dublin’s north inner city Janet Horner has said that Dublin has a lot of lessons to learn from other cities about shared e-scooter schemes.
Speaking on RTÉ radio’s Today with Claire Byrne show about the decision of the city of Paris to ban shared scooter schemes, councillor Horner said that public concerns cannot be resolved by not having a shared scheme.
The regulation of conditions of e-scooters to ensure they meet safety standards, was an option, she said. “You can regulate the speed, for example.”
“One of the advantages that Dublin has at this point is that we have a lot of opportunity to learn from other cities like Paris. There's a lot of other cities across Europe which are on the ground floor where E-scooters are coming on the scene, they brought them in and regulated them within the cities. We haven't done that. We've never had a shared scheme up to this point. So we have a lot of lessons we can learn from other cities.
“Anybody who has spent time in Paris, Brussels particularly comes up constantly as an example, will tell you about how frustrating it is to be stepping over scooters constantly on the footpaths. So if we were to do this in Dublin, which is still a conversation, the decision that we have to make.
“I think we would universally agree that they would not be allowed to be part of footpaths and penalties would have to be quite high.”
Cllr Horner said she was keen for Dublin to look at the alternatives to getting people out of cars, “to reduce their emissions, to reduce our congestion so the city can move in a way that it just isn't at the moment.
“I think the stronger evidence is there for obviously increasing public transport, and then e-bikes I think can be a massive game changer because they really help people with mobility issues in a way that e-scooters don't always, so they can hit a demographic of older people and very another demographic the scooters are just not going to be attractive to.
"However, while I'm not a die hard scooter advocate, but I do think when you have people who are doing shift work, doing unsociable hours, who the bus service just isn't servicing, is it useful to have a scooting option for them there? I think there can be. There is an argument made that the scooters will still have some function to play, but I don't think they will be the strongest card in our deck when we are looking at reducing emissions.”
