They are also struggling with this in Nuremberg. Especially in the mornings on the weekends, they stand and lie around again: electric scooters that revelers have fallen into the next hedge after the ride or left in the middle of house entrances. But that should soon be over in Nuremberg at best. The town hall wants to designate 290 collective parking spaces for the scooters, prohibit parking in some places in the city center and limit their number. So park more neatly, park less wildly. Because: “E-scooters have not improved mobility, but impede and endanger millions of people,” complains Roland Stimpel from the pedestrian lobby Fuss eV. “They are driven illegally on sidewalks and parked recklessly.”
Enemy image of e-scooters? Not only in Middle Franconia have they now declared war on scooters, more precisely: the parking chaos that can be observed again and again. For several years, models from various providers have been circling through Bavaria’s cities as a private supplement to local public transport – and blocking where they were not parked properly, including people with prams, walkers and wheelchairs. Some therefore see the companions whirring along on their own as a practical alternative. The others see them as a nuisance that needs to be regulated more.
The latter can certainly be called a challenge, also in Nuremberg. The scooters from five rental companies are out and about here; greatly simplified, the scooters are booked via app and can be parked anywhere at the destination after the journey. Many providers ask that the vehicles be parked out of consideration for the neighborhood, but this may not always work in practice. According to the traffic planning office, companies in Nuremberg will therefore need a special use permit in the future. For example, they must undertake to remove illegally parked vehicles within six hours. They also have to pay fees and thus finance the collective parking spaces.
This is already being done in a similar way in some cities, such as Munich, which has also designated parking spaces. Aschaffenburg, on the other hand, decided against the commercial rental of e-scooters in 2022. The Bavarian Association of Cities also points out that there is no uniform handling of the vehicles. Places with narrow streets and historic old towns need different regulations than other municipalities, says spokesman Achim Sing. Problems with e-scooters are of course also known to the municipal umbrella organization – also because they are repeatedly sunk in lakes and rivers, for example. “Vandalism” is what Sing calls it. The Bavarian Association of Cities therefore advocates exclusion zones on rivers and lakes. The colleagues from the German Association of Cities also see the federal and state governments as having a duty to create a legally secure framework for special use permits. The road traffic regulations and the regulation for small electric vehicles would also have to be adapted.
The city of Augsburg obviously does not want to wait for that. According to her own statements, she is working on a concept similar to that of Nuremberg. In 2019, the e-scooters arrived in the Swabian metropolis, and since then, numerous citizens have been complaining about vehicles parked wildly. There are now agreements with the operators that scooters may not be parked in the city center. Users cannot log off in these areas with the app and then have to look for another parking space in the Augsburg city area. Stricter requirements are currently also being discussed in Regensburg. E-scooters have also long been part of the cityscape there; According to media reports, two other providers are now planning to enter the market. The city council faction of the bridge has therefore already called for fixed parking locations for the scooters to be identified.
Providers are increasingly targeting small municipalities
These can become a stumbling block, especially for people with disabilities, criticize associations for the blind and visually impaired. The Bavarian police, in turn, registered a sharp increase in e-scooter accidents last year; their number was a good 2000 by the end of October. In the same period last year, 762 had been listed. The nationwide statistics also recently showed an increase in accidents among scooters. The casualties had therefore often drunk alcohol and were wrong on the streets and sidewalks. In some places, drivers therefore have to pass an alcohol reaction test from late in the evening before they can rent an e-scooter – and after the ride they have to take a photo to prove that they parked the scooter properly. In addition, the providers have created a central contact point for complaints.
Should stricter regulations, such as those in Nuremberg, prevail across the board, this could make the fierce competition in the industry even tougher. Several companies are often active in a city without the market growing to the same extent – which is why not all of them can keep up in the struggle for customers in the long run. Nevertheless, the companies are still trying to expand, not only in Regensburg. After the conurbations, smaller towns and communities seem to be increasingly coming into focus: E-scooters will soon be driving in the Swabian town of Friedberg – and they are already on the road in the Würmtal valley around Krailling (Starnberg district).