Vienna is cracking down on scooters

The city will set up 200 designated parking spaces and it will be impossible to end your ride if you don't park in one if these

Yesterday, local authorities in Vienna announced an overhaul to e-scooter regulations in the city. According to an official statement, the Austrian capital will install 200 special parking zones for scooters, which would make it impossible to park on the sidewalk.

Additionally, authorities are looking for a public tender for four companies to implement ridesharing scooters as a service. They would have to abide by strict rules to distribute scooters throughout the city and provide more even coverage.

Certain zones of Vienna, like the inner city for example, will have a cap on the number of scooters. Officials have limited them to 500 there. This approach would be implemented throughout the urban area to increase coverage.

Parking restrictions and no-go zones

The city plans to install around 200 parking spaces for electric scooters within the year. They will be located on the road, next to WienMobil bike stations. They will have space for 8 to 10 scooters and a parking ban with a radius of 100 metres around them.

According to officials, this means that riders will be physically unable to park anywhere else if they are within 100 metres of a parking zone. If located outside of a parking zone, people will have to park in the street between cars. City Councillor Ulli Sima explained that the idea behind the measure is to free sidewalks from trip hazards for pedestrians.

Additionally, there will be red zones, where scooters cannot go at all. As opposed to slow zones, usually around pedestrian areas, where the vehicles are artificially slowed through the application, in the red zones scooters will just break and stop.

These zones will be mainly centred around hospitals, markets and other hotspots with parking violations.

The digital dashboard and scooter caps

City officials claim that there will be a cap on the number of scooters in different districts. For Vienna’s inner city, the cap will be 500, while for districts 2 through 9 and 20, the cap will be set at 1,500. For the outer districts, officials will try to break up scooter hotspots with parking areas, restricted zones and other measures.

Moreover, the city wants to create a sort-of digital dashboard to monitor scooter placement and activity. The idea here is to be able to enforce the city’s regulations and sanction violations through collaboration between private providers and the police.