For every pedestrian who has had to dodge a speeding electronic scooter on the footpath in Singapore, there was someone waiting at home hoping their food delivery would hurry up and arrive. Or so it seemed in mid-2019.
But it all changed in November 2019, when the Singapore government abruptly banned scooters from footpaths, restricting them to the city's cycling paths and park connector networks.
Delivery riders who depended on e-scooters for their livelihood voiced strong objections to the prohibitions. But even before the ban, the authorities would catch around 370 offenders a month for errant cycling. And there were a number of fatal accidents.
Did it have to be this way? Could there have been a way for pedestrians and e-scooters to coexist? Could they make a safe return? And if so, is that desirable anyway?
A popular urban mobility solution
When he announced the e-scooter ban in parliament, Senior Minister of State for Transport Lam Pin Min acknowledged their considerable appeal. They don't pollute (although charging them causes emissions from a power plant). They're cheap. And they're convenient.
Another great advantage of using e-scooters in a tropical city was that users did not have to arrive at their destinations dripping in sweat. A number of scooter share businesses considered this a key selling point for their service.
Personal mobility devices (PMDs) like e-scooters had been seen as a way of meeting Singapore’s goal of transitioning to a car-lite future. The scooters could serve as the link between public transport and the first and last mile of journeys.
And e-scooters proved very popular, especially amongst young adults and the middle aged. The Minister put the number of e-scooters in Singapore at around 100,000. The Land Transport Authority's (LTA) figures show the great majority of owners are between the age of 21 and 50.
But they've perhaps been most noticeable among Singapore's 7,000 delivery riders. Just under a third of them used scooters to deliver food. After the ban, the government, along with major food delivery companies like GrabFood, Deliveroo and Foodpanda, enacted a $7m grant scheme to help riders switch to electric bicycles or regular bicycles.
Inconsiderate and irresponsible riders
The problem, according to the government, was that there were simply too many irresponsible riders.
"We expected the co-sharing of footpaths to be challenging but were hopeful that with public education, PMD users would be gracious and responsible. Unfortunately, this was not to be," Mr Lam told parliament.
There were 228 reported accidents involving e-scooters on public paths in 2018 and 2019, with 196 resulting in injuries.
There were also a number of deaths, and e-scooter riders themselves were usually the victims. But the incident that perhaps most galvanised opinion against e-scooters was the death of a 65 year-old cyclist, who was fatally injured in a collision with an e-scooter in Bedok.
The sudden rise of the e-scooter
Any new transport option presents complex policy and infrastructure problems. Cars required sealed roads, which were in short supply when the first Model-T rolled off the assembly line. Electric cars, too, will create dilemmas, as business and governments everywhere grapple with how to charge them.
Although PMDs have existed for some time, e-scooter ownership has surged dramatically in Singapore over recent years. The Segway debuted in 2002. But it never took off, because it was cumbersome and expensive. Scooters, by comparison, were cheap and convenient. And within the space of a few years, 100,000 have appeared on Singapore's streets. Policymaking can be tricky even when there's a much longer lead time.
A number of other policy proposals have been made. The government could have pursued, for example, a licensing system, import restrictions or small-scale trials in selected towns. But their popularity and their usefulness perhaps made the government search for solutions that weren't too draconian.
Prior to the ban the government had enacted a series of measures aimed at a more cooperative approach. These included a lower speed limit of 10km/h on footpaths, mandatory registration, a rule requiring helmets for riders if they're on the road and a requirement for riders to "stop and look out for oncoming traffic" at road crossings.
Singapore isn't the only country to grapple with the e-scooter dilemma. France, Germany and the UK have all recently introduced varying levels of restrictions or bans.
Streets, Roads, Jalans, Lorongs
Others wonder if there's a different way to approach the issue.
"I do see bicycles, e-bikes and some kinds of PMDs as a big opportunity that could play a really large role in urban transport, if only we can get serious enough about creating a safe network of facilities and secure parking for them," says Associate Professor Paul Barter, transport policy researcher and adjunct Associate Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.
Singapore is rapidly expanding its network of bike paths, where it is still legal to ride e-scooters. It will expand from its current 440km to 750km by 2025. By 2030, the government aims for all Housing and Development Board (HDB) towns to have cycling path networks.
Prof Barter says it's a welcome push, but there's another under-explored component to the issue: the difference between a road and a street. The former facilitates the movement of traffic from one point to another. The latter has many more uses. It's a place for shops and pedestrians and transport links. The speed limits are low, but it can accommodate many modes of transportation.
"Singapore could also accelerate the rollout of a network of safe routes for bicycles, e-bikes and PMDs. Streets can be included in the network if they can be made safe for these 10-25 km/h small vehicles if we can design them for traffic speeds that are low enough," he says.
This approach has been implemented successfully in the Netherlands (which is also well known for its dedicated bicycle lanes) and also in the London borough of Waltham Forest.
Issues remain
It's unlikely that the issue of e-scooters will vanish from the radar any time soon. Enforcement of the ban will likely make headlines for the foreseeable future. After it went into effect, the authorities caught 6,000 riders flouting it in the space of two months.
And even if the government were to take a different approach, many of the proposed solutions would take years to effect.
Photo credit: Christian Bueltemann