Friday Reads – 27 April 2018

1. Interesting to see a confirmed date for Amsterdam’s North South line. I have followed their Flickr account and some of the stations are incredible bits of architecture due to the difficult ground conditions. They also vastly smarter than the pretty dire architecture of the original Metro line although that was built in a very different era.

   Also there will be substantive adjustments to the transport network – trams, local buses and regional buses to feed into the Metro line and to reflect changed travel patterns. Quite a lot of frequency reductions on some bus and tram corridors too. Locals have been submitting comments on the changes – as you might expect some are not very happy. Sound familiar??

2. Um
   Electric scooters exist here too.
   Can someone please clarify their legal postion?
   I’ve seen them on both “the road” & “The pavement”.

3. While you provide an entirely suitable name for keeping tabs on urbanism in Vancouver, the blog happens to be called ‘Price Tags’.

   [Touché. Corrigé, merci. LBM]

4. @GT – It seems, if powered in any way while having no pedals to qualify as a bicycle, such scooters are illegal to use on any UK public road, pavement or cycle track. There is a European initiative however to harmonise rules for vehicles of this type throughout the EU. I guess if we miss out on implementation of that there won’t be much incentive for UK to spend any valuable Government time on such trivialities while there’s so much other Brexit business to deal with.
   https://www.techadvisor.co.uk/buying-advice/gadget/is-it-legal-ride-electric-scooter-in-uk-3668712/

5. @Mark Townend

   As I understand it, the law treats pedal cycles, motor-assisted or otherwise, in a different way from vehicles propelled by pedestrians (i.e with the feet pushing on the ground – such as handcarts, perambulators, skateboards, scooters etc) The latter are allowed on footways, the former are not. But power-assisted pedestrian controlled are different. There is provision for power-assisted handcarts, lawnmowers etc, but they are quite strict. http://www.stilltimecollection.co.uk/gallery/Trucks/Misc%205133.jpg
   In particular they are not permitted to carry people, and you need a category K driving licence, although I don’t know if they still need to be registered with DVLA as the milk float in the link was. Apparently Segways, electric scooters etc are not “street-legal” – In particular, they would need to be taxed (albeit presumably zero-rated VED) registered and insured like any other motor vehicle, but they don’t satisfy the regulations regarding pedestrian-controlled vehicles or the exemptions for power-assisted pedal cycles and for mobility scooters.

   Presumably an electric version of the classic Vespa would be legal though, if it had standard brakes, lights etc

6. It is not unusual for the law to take a while to catch up with technology. The law prohibiting cycling (or driving) on the pavement is Section 72 of the Highways Act of 1835, (originally intended to curb the excesses of drivers of horse drawn vehicles) which was enacted during the reign of William IV, long before pedal cycles were invented (some time in the 1860s). However, it was not until 1888 that bicycles were classified as “carriages” within the meaning of this Act. (The law was a bit quicker to add motor cars, to its scope – that came in 1903, the same year registration numbers were introduced)

   Incidentally, self-driving vehicles are nothing new – in the days of horse drawn vehicles a milkman could do his rounds without jumping on board every time he needed the cart to move to the next house, then go to the pub and get roaring drunk and sleep it off in the cart on the way home. Have cars yet developed as much intelligence as a carthorse?

7. Timbeau: Given the recent example of someone ‘driving’ a car along the M1 whilst sitting in the passenger seat* I’d suggest that some *drivers* haven’t “yet developed as much intelligence as a carthorse”, let alone their cars.

   * https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/tesla-driver-moves-sit-passenger-12443643

8. What has really damaged segways, electric bikes, etc is the requirements for registration, insurance, driving licenses and crash helmets which stem from them being considered as motor vehicles. Pedal cycles which are battery assisted (as opposed to battery driven) still count as pedal cycles and not motor vehicles.

9. Basically, these things are motor vehicles. There are certain exemptions, quite tightly drawn, for some motorised vehicles to be exempted from some of the rules. But each new invention has to be specifically exempted, and parliament is quite careful to define them rather precisely.

   Segways are not only not exempted from the motor vehicle rules, they are not even allowed to be used at all on public land.

   These exemptions do vary from country to country – segways are quite freely permitted in many countries, but not the UK.

10. I was in LA last week, and noticed loads of these scooter things around the more “hipster” areas such as Venice Beach. Anything that reduces the insufferable dominance of the car in LA is a great idea, but the ‘wild west/no regulation’ method of introduction means that users tend to be thoughtlessly abandon them rather than park them carefully. Middle of the pavement, right across the crossing point at an intersection – etc etc. Thus blocking pavements, and ironically making things more difficult for those trying to get around without the car.

11. People park cars just as carelessly except in areas where there is a combination of tradition, provision and enforcement. (And even then some people park inconsiderately.)

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