On October 25, the order from Madrid City Hall to eliminate from its streets shared electric scooters operated by three companies, companies that saw overnight how the municipality canceled a two-year public allocation of the end of the service. .
In this scenario, we interviewed Antonio Relaños, general manager for Spain and Portugal of Bird, a shared micromobility company with electric bikes and scooters present in more than 400 cities around the world, to know his opinion on what is ‘s gone and learn more about shared micromobility, scooters and rental bikes.
supercharged private scooters
Relaños warns us before starting the interview that “we must differentiate the shared scooter rental industry from those we see on the street with private users. Many of them are fake and in fact, this is one of the main reasons why the transport of electric scooters is banned on public transport.
He insists on the fact that we must differentiate between those who are deceived and the scooters made to circulate on the street, to offer an adequate service, they are very safe and they have controlled speed, in addition to many technological implementations.
OKGREEN: What is happening that at the moment it seems that rental scooters are not well regarded by city councils and are deciding to eliminate them?
Antonio Relaños: It is really in this sense that we can talk about the case of the Madrid scooters. The case of Alcalá de Henares is a purely political decision. In other words, in the case of Madrid, shared scooters had existed for six years.
They had been participating in this new competition for a year and had two years left on their contract for these active companies. It is true that there is a great negative perception of the use of public space that these scooters make.
Well, in Madrid, they used the excuse of security, although that is not true, because all the vehicles, the 6,000 scooters that were in the city of Madrid, were certified by the DGT according to the highest standards.
But it is true that as an industry we must continue to work on education and I believe that this is a political decision based on the lack of road education, the lack of movement of people on sidewalks and inadequate parking.
And in the specific case of Madrid, something else is happening. And the parking spaces available to these personal mobility vehicles are shared with motorcycles.
These vehicles, scooters, can be moved very easily. So if I am a motorcycle user and I come to a parking spot where I need or want to park my motorcycle and I can park it by moving a scooter and getting the scooter up on the sidewalk, it is strong Likely many users will end up driving the scooter to the curb.
In this way, traffic jams on sidewalks and parking problems occur, which are not so much due to the scooter user, but rather to other generalities of the city itself or to the organization of parking .
And then I can talk about the case of Alcalá de Henares and about us, as a company concerned, because we operate in the city. We had a meeting with the councilor and she told us that it was a simple political decision not to renew the permit.
This decision comes as, year after year, we have increased the number of users by more than 50% without incident. If we increase the number of users, why are we going to stop offering this sustainable mobility alternative to citizens.
Q.: It must be said that we see motorcycles on the sidewalks and nothing happens, so there may be double standards… All this shows that we are facing a complicated period for the motorcycle sector. shared micromobility, because also in Madrid there was a decision not to renew rental bikes…
A: Completely. I wouldn’t say that ultimately we are in a difficult moment for our micromobility, but rather I would say that we are in a moment of transformation rather than a crisis situation. There are many challenges in education.
This decision not to renew bicycles in the case of Madrid is political… We are present in several town halls in Spain and in more than 400 around the world.
What we’re really seeing is that bikes have always looked much better than scooters. And this is nothing other than the response to the fact that cycling on the street has been normal for years and people have become accustomed to using bicycles in a civic way. In other words, we no longer see bicycles circulating on the sidewalks, for example.
But if we see scooters circulating on the sidewalk, it is on the user side and on the infrastructure side. That is to say, with a bicycle we have become accustomed to riding in a lane where we are accompanied by cars at 30, 40 or 50 kilometers per hour and we have a maximum speed of twenty-five.
But we haven’t gotten used to a scooter using a road with cars nearby because we don’t consider ourselves safe. What is certain is that we must go hand in hand with the administrations to invest in this necessary structure so that we are truly a real alternative to someone who wants to take the car to go from point A to point B and who really manage the automobile cities.
And this is only possible if we actually have good infrastructure so that people can feel safe using a scooter or a bicycle. There is a point regarding bicycles in Madrid: truly public services like Bicimad, or other services in other cities, do not control their bicycles at the geolocation level so that they cannot access a speed or control the speed depending on the area they are in. located. that in which they circulate or can be prevented from entering pedestrian zones.
So these shared micromobility systems like ours can control, at a GPS level of precision, the speeds and places a bike can’t enter.
Q: Is it a lack of road education among users or that the regulations are not very developed… and that all this creates a negative public opinion… What are we talking about?
A: We talk about the fact that a lot of this negative perception is based on specific experiences. And I’m a pedestrian and I move around the city of Madrid and we see how much bad parking or responsible driving like the ones you mention.
This is a reality and I believe what we need is proper user training. And in fact, the Madrid scooter competition was going in this direction and obviously did it very well, by offering these companies to train people in the use of these types of scooters.
This training was in person and you had to go in person to use a scooter at one of the companies’ facilities. Some of the winning companies have therefore committed to training a million people.
What would the situation be now if they had actually trained? It was a million people in three years. For example, there are 300,000 people in Madrid who use scooters. If they were trained, they would completely change these behaviors because we would see the impact of reversing into a roundabout or driving on the sidewalks.
I think we need to invest a lot in this education, not just as a skate sharing company. Every time someone downloads the app, we have a tutorial to show how to actually use it.
I insist, ultimately it is the combination of greater awareness, greater education and infrastructure improvements. It’s the same as if we say that cars are unsafe because we see rental car drivers who don’t drive properly.
We didn’t think about it because we already have the car very internalized in our lives. We must therefore continue to raise awareness and continue to educate users.
Q.: This negative feeling contrasts with the data on scooter travel users in Madrid or Alcalá because they are increasing from year to year, there is a part of the population that uses them. What will happen? Ultimately, they will have to move another way…
A: Correct. In fact, the ban on their introduction in public transport has contributed to the development of our mobility systems, because you can no longer transport your own scooter there and you have to look for an alternative.
And what we see is that year after year, the number of uses per user increases and the number of users in general increases. And this is what shows us that an alternative is necessary to reach that last mile.
I arrive at a place by public transport and from there I take a scooter or an electric bike. Demand is increasing. What do we need? Well, we definitely have the right infrastructure and are raising awareness.
I don’t think that the fact that Madrid or Alcalá de Henares say no to this type of services like scooters will encourage other cities to replicate it and remove them, because ultimately it provides a real solution to the problems that we have with traffic and pollution.
It is really necessary for thousands and thousands of city users to arrive on time to work, to return from work, to move around the city. And in reality, it’s local commuters who take vehicles off the street.
Here the main objective is to eliminate the use of private vehicles and to actually return the public space of the street to pedestrians and we have, for bicycles or for relevant purposes, the lane so that we can move freely around the city, as is the case in other cities, how can Amsterdam be?
Q: Do you think there can be a turnaround… Can municipalities and the general population be convinced that this is a viable mobility option?
A: Totally. And besides, the data proves it. It is also true that at the level of the European Union, by investing more in low-emission zones, this type of service is essential to help regulate certain areas, removing cars and placing parking spaces for scooters in appropriate locations.
But we can’t do it just as a company. Ultimately, it must be a public-private collaboration to shape and transform cities. In this sense, Zaragoza is an example of dramatic transformation in a positive sense.
This city started in recent years in 2018 with the first micromobility systems with scooters. And you see in the street that they have been educated: where they should move, they use cycle paths, they have helmets to be safer, they know where they should move, how they should turn in the street , how they should take roundabouts. And for that we need time. We give them time to develop this road education for users.
Because the regulations are developed to the extent that the vehicles are safe. The DGT has been a leader at the European level in establishing regulations and what is also needed is regulation at the city level.
That these public calls for tenders are respected, that I, as a company, invest several million euros to launch the service in a city like Madrid and that, the following year, simply because of a decision purely policy, it is decided not to continue with this service.
