The local government in Berlin is urgently searching for a remedy to the city’s epidemic of abandoned e-scooters and bikes, and, for now, allowing them to use car parking spots is the answer they’ve got.
In response to the nationwide frustration with abandoned and incorrectly parked e-scooters, the Berlin Senate Department of Environment and Mobility has announced that rented scooters, e-bikes and personally owned bikes will soon be able to use parking spots normally reserved for cars, for free. These types of vehicles will not be subject to parking fines and the new rule will come in from January 1, 2023.
For now, the misplaced scooters will be tolerated. But once additional BVG Jelbi stations, which are managed by the transport association, are introduced across Berlin, it will no longer be allowed to park scooters on pavements. It will of course still be possible to park your bike on the pavement.
In the German city, incorrectly parked e-scooters take up particularly large real estate in the already frustrated minds of commuting Berliners. A recent survey even found that in some of the city's districts, locals stumble upon an incorrectly parked or abandoned e-scooter or bike every 77 metres.
This can be dangerous for many groups of people: for cyclists, when scooters are dumped on the cycle path, and for blind and partially sighted people, who are at a higher risk of tripping over the abandoned scooters.
Speaking to rbb, Minister for Environment and Mobility Bettina Jarasch said, “It is the case that bikes, but also electric scooters and other small vehicles are actually vehicles and as such, they are permitted to be parked in parking spaces.”
Jarasch also said that her party’s policy for the scooters was part of a bigger plan to revolutionise the way that public space is used in Berlin. “The goal of our mobility turnaround is that public space would be organised differently, with more space for transport that is environmentally friendly and less space allotted for cars. Parked cars simply require too much space in such a tightly-packed city.”
“The goal is clear, I want to make sure that bikes, scooters and other small vehicles disappear from the pavement, where they have been legally tolerated until now,” Jarasch added. CDU politician Kai Wegner called Jarasch’s plan the “incorrect path” to a solution, and one that would only burden car drivers in the capital.