Santa Cruz de Tenerife, a scooter cemetery

The public roads, gardens and suburban lots have become unforeseen deposits in Santa Cruz of Tenerife for the scooters that have operated in the city as an alternative to the private vehicle. When users no longer need to use the VMP (personal mobility vehicles) they deposit them at a delivery point that the company, in this case Link, once made available, but it is the public operators who have had to take charge of the transfer of these vehicles to the warehouses until they considered that the situation was unsustainable. There is a municipal ordinance from 2008 that authorizes the Local Police, upon payment of certain municipal fees, to remove bicycles, motorcycles or trucks from public roads with a crane, but it does not include scooters. At first, the company was charged the deposit withdrawal fee as if they were bicycles, “but Link appealed with the current ordinance in hand and started not paying anything,” Jesús Illada, delegate of the CSIF (Central Independent Trade Union and Officials) in the City Council of Santa Cruz de Tenerife. Illada assures that this expense has been assumed by the citizens and the city’s security forces have had to take charge of the management. “When we have to remove a scooter, it requires a tow truck and a crane driver, and we have three or four drivers in the city, and if we need them to remove scooters we no longer have them for other emergencies,” he says.

The rental scooter company Link had been operating in Santa Cruz de Tenerife for two years until it declared bankruptcy and announced a worldwide cessation of activity. From the opposition and through his but his ‘children’ decided to stay on the sidewalks of Bravo Murillo and surrounding areas. “Who needs parks when you can have a scooter safari around the city,” he said ironically through the social network.

On January 2, 2021, the Royal Decree that establishes the regulations for Personal Mobility Vehicles came into force, among which are electric scooters (for rental and personal use), although each municipality has its own ordinances that users must achieve. For example, the town councils of Benidorm, Palencia, Pozuelo de Alarcón (Madrid), Córdoba or Mahón (Menorca), have required that users have civil liability insurance, something that is not required in the rest of Spain.

For Illada, who differentiates between the behavior of the owner of a scooter or the user who rents it for a few hours, the measure of betting on what was “supposed” to restrict the use of the vehicle is not being effective either from an environmental point of view. particular and that it was going to be less polluting. “The scooters are used by young people who do not yet have a driving license or their own vehicle, tourists who do not have their own car on the islands either, so that, finally, what is achieved is that the density of cars is the same and “scooters become a danger to the road safety of pedestrians and drivers in the city, ultimately creating a problem that no one knows how to tackle.”

Remember, renting a vehicle, traveling on roads and, therefore, paying for a ride in the corresponding municipality is not the same as operating an economic activity on public land, as is the case of scooter companies that “ They need a tender.” “Recently the City Council announced the public domain contract tender project by a VMP rental company, but it was forgotten.”

According to the union delegate, the municipal police service was “ceasing its own functions” to collect abandoned scooters and take them to the warehouse doing a service for a private company, “until we said: this is it. “We are no longer picking up the scooters with the crane.”

This newspaper has contacted the communication office of the Santa Cruz City Council, which states that since the company announced the bankruptcy and the cessation of activity at a global level, it also announced that it would proceed to withdraw the scooters, “which which is being done gradually,” they say. Likewise, they point out that, currently, “there is no contract with any company” and point out that Link, “like any other vehicle rental company, only has to announce that it is beginning to operate in the city.” They have also announced that this Wednesday “a note will be sent updating the situation of scooters in the municipality.”