Electric scooters: this might be the ultimate solution to the parking problem

Have you watched South Park’s episode in which Mr. Mackey tries to get rid of scooters for being all over the place and they just start to appear more and more? Whether you use scooters or don’t, at this point we’re all a bit tired of them being laid around blocking facilities and pedestrian paths. This is not what they’re here for and the problem requests immediate action.

Last week Copenhagen banned electric scooters from being parked on the streets of a considerable part of the city center. You can still scoot around the city, but parking is forbidden, hence you can’t find any available vehicles to unlock. The city that has one of the highest cycling modal share in Europe is still a bit reluctant to embrace the new micromobility trend.

On the other hand, Porto, the second largest city in Portugal has come up with a clever idea to solve the e-scooter parking problem. What traditionally was assigned as parking space for cars, has now become pontos de partilha — shared mobility zones. These points concentrate a mix of shared vehicles (e.g. scooters and mopeds) from different operators in specific zones assigned exclusively for that. And there are 215 of them around the city!

Yes, Porto has narrow sidewalks and it would help a lot to do something about it to promote active ways of mobility. One of these initiatives is to create “Pontos de Partilha” to keep scooters away.

The parking policy is super effective in many ways. By removing hampering vehicles it allows free-flow of cars, bikes and pedestrians simultaneously. The city looks much tidier and people are able to get in and out of shops and houses. But most importantly, it takes up available car parking space.

Cars take up valuable space in the city and it was about time for them to give off some space to other forms of mobility.

By reducing parking supply, cars are strongly discouraged to enter the city center because they have nowhere to park. Instead, the city is assigning that public space to new forms of mobility such as shared e-scooters. This public space tactic has been seen before with parklets, which are being especially successful during the pandemic.

Why does that space have to be for cars in the first place? Cities are for people (and scooters), not for cars.

The city of Porto is complementing this policy with a well-thought licencing scheme which limits the number of operators and vehicles availble. This gives a stable market context and balances operator’s supply with the city’s demand, preventing operators of withdrawing due to fierce competition.

The following step will be to enforce users and operators to use the designated parking areas compulsory. This can be done through technology such as geofencing which can allow scooters to be locked/unlocked exclusively in these areas.

The shared parking areas have been working for over 3 months and results so far have been good: people scoot around when needed and leave the vehicles in the designated areas. How long will it take until other cities implement Porto’s pontos de partilha?