Further German public transport operators ban scooters

After Rheinbahn (Düsseldorf) and DVG (Duisburg) announced a few days ago that they would be banning the use of electric scooters on buses and trains, other transport companies are now following suit, including the KVB (Cologne), SWB (Bonn), VRS (Cologne/Bonn region), DSW21 (Dortmund) and Ruhrbahn (Essen). Bogestra intends to follow suit somewhat later, on April 1, in Bochum, Gelsenkirchen, Herne and Witten.

It is striking that the previous bans have all come from North Rhine-Westphalia. The transport companies are thus following a recommendation by the Association of German Transport Companies (VDV), which has now published more detailed information on this. It warns of the risk of fire and explosion posed by electric pedal scooter batteries. The starting point for the VDV committee to take a close look at the issue were fires and explosions in public transport vehicles in London, Barcelona and Madrid, among other places.

All of the public transport operators mentioned above emphasize that pedelecs, electric wheelchairs and four-wheeled electric vehicles for people with reduced mobility are not affected by the ban, as their batteries meet higher safety requirements.

The decision was not an easy one for the bus and train operators. DSW21 operations manager Ralf Habbes emphasizes, “We know, of course, that some passengers take the e-scooters with them in our vehicles to cover the rest of their journey. This is basically a sensible combination of climate-friendly modes of transport in terms of the transport transition. However, when it comes to blatant safety risks, which are uniformly assessed by all experts, we must make consistent regulations in the interests of passengers.”

kvb.koeln, swb-busundbahn.de, lifepr.de (VRS), bus-und-bahn.de (DSW21), ruhrbahn.de (Ruhrbahn), waz.de (Bogestra), vdv.de (all in German)