Parliament Needs To Legalise E-Scooters (And Build Cycle Highways)

Britain, as all countries are, is facing a crisis. Oil prices have shot up on the back of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Energy prices were already there after two years of uncertainty. Diesel is running low.

Despite this, riding an e-scooter on the roads or pavements is still illegal without onerous licensing and insurance. This is still the case, even though they are comparable at worst to electric-assist bicycles.The transport committee of Parliament has called for them to be allowed on roads and cycle lanes without the requirement for a license, as is the case of e-bikes.

Scooters and bicycles, both human powered and electric assisted, are an ideal form of transport for intermediate journeys, between one and five miles. Increasing uptake of e-scooters would have benefits beyond replacing short car trips however, as they would significantly extend the number of people within five to ten minutes of public transport. At walking pace, only people within four hundred metres of a railway station can get there within five minutes, depending on the street network. An e-scooter travelling five times as fast would extend this distance to two kilometres, resulting in an area twenty-five times larger being within five minutes travel. The same effect would apply to bus travel -- if people can quickly get to the main road, express buses could avoid taking circuitous routes through towns and villages to pick people up, as well as having far longer distances between stops. This would increase their efficiency and decrease their travel time, making them more attractive to commuters.

There is one trouble with riding on roads, however. Other vehicles. A small scooter or bicycle versus a large truck is not a pleasant situation to be in, and dissuades many people from using such travel options. A network of cycle superhighways, as European countries such as Denmark have constructed, would provide a safe route for bicycles, scooters, and perhaps even velomobiles, hopefully encouraging many people to switch to them for intermediate trips. A British government report gives costs of over a million pounds per kilometre for dedicated routes; however, in America the costs for a separated bikeway are significantly lower, around a quarter of this, which appears to be much more in line with costs I have seen from European projects. But even with the upper bound costs, they are far cheaper than infrastructure for cars, and well within the countries capacity (at the moment) to afford.

 The network would not need to connect every single village in the country; as most people live in towns and larger villages, the vast majority of the benefit would come from connecting local villages and towns together. We can leave the long distance paths for later. In certain suburban areas, a cycle highway could take the form of signage along safe, low speed and low traffic streets, connecting places together with a route that avoids busy main roads. This would drastically lower costs and time, allowing a rapid modal shift in many areas, which we need given the scale of the crisis and the short time we have to respond.