Guide Dogs urge council to ‘act now’ and allow e-scooters to be parked on roads

The UK’s leading charity for people affected by sight loss has urged Bristol City Council to remove e-scooters from pavements.

As part of the trial of Voi hire e-scooters, the coral coloured vehicles have become a familiar site across the city, with South Glos Council recently installing several parking racks at some of the most popular pick-up and drop-off points in Filton, Bradley Stokes, Patchway and Stoke Gifford.

But Guide Dogs want Bristol City Council to go much further than this and allow the hire scooters to be parked on the road.

Guide Dogs lead regional policy & campaigns manager, Clive Wood, welcomed the suggestion made by Clifton councillor and Green Party group leader, Paula O’Rourke.

He said: “As the councillor states, e-scooters left on pavements create an unnecessary trip hazard, particularly for those with visual impairments.

“We hope that more can be done to prevent this widespread illegal use. E-scooters are almost silent, which means that people with sight loss have little or no warning that they are approaching.

“Even a near miss with an e-scooter can rob people with vision impairment of the confidence to go out independently.

“We need people to take these dangers seriously now or we risk the behaviour becoming the norm, which would have a dramatic and irreversible effect on our streets.

“We have the chance to act now and make sure that people with disabilities don’t lose out as a result.”

A newly installed Voi parking rack in Filton – photo: Daniel Durrans

Guide Dogs’ suggestions comes as Bristol mayor Marvin Rees revealed that docking stations for Voi e-scooters could be coming to Bristol.

Rees said the parking racks would help to keep the electric scooters tidy when they are not in use.

It follows news that Bristol City Council is looking to turn car parking spaces into parking zones for Voi e-scooters after numerous complaints about e-scooter clutter.

There have been several incidents of pavements being blocked by parked e-scooters, which can create dangerous obstacles for pedestrians.

Asked whether Bristol would follow the lead of South Glos at a press briefing, Rees said it would.

“They’re not docking stations for charging, but just to help make sure that when people drop their scooters off they are all tidy,” he said.

“When the teams from Voi go out and replace the batteries overnight, you can see they line them up nice and tidy.

“But sometimes the situations can end up a bit more chaotic, so certainly we’d like some… fenced-off spacing for scooters.”

There is now a limit on the number of Voi scooters that can be parked in a certain area but earlier on in the trial, scenes like this in Redland were not uncommon – photo: Tom Archer

Rees said Bristol City Council had discussed the matter with Voi already. “This shouldn’t be problematic. It’s about us then agreeing what those locations are.

“It’s probably taking a car parking space away from here and there,” he added, noting that each parking space lost would mean lost revenue for the city.

O’Rourke has previously tweeted that around a dozen sites could be used in a pilot scheme to turn car parking bays into Voi parking ‘hubs’.

A Bristol City Council spokesperson said: “We are aware that there have been problems caused by large numbers of scooters being parked on pavements and together we are continuing to explore a range of different options to help manage this issue, including using car parking spaces rather than pavements.

“The e-scooter trial in Bristol is being managed by Voi and the West of England Combined Authority (WECA) and we are continuing to work with them to address ongoing issues as well as encouraging an improvement to messaging to riders to park e-scooters responsibly.

“These discussions are continuing with a view to bringing forward proposals for review and approval.”

Main photo: Martin Booth

Read more: Rees expects e-scooters to become ‘permanent feature’ of Bristol

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