Segways have lots of advantages: they’re environmentally friendly, silent and sort of fun ... maybe. What’s more, despite being a common joke in film and TV shows, they have found a solid economic niche: city tours. But they can also be tremendously annoying for pedestrians.
Barcelona, for now at least, has had enough. After summer upon summer of what the mayor’s office calls “complaints and problems” from residents of Ciutat Vella – the central neighbourhood and the one most affected by mass tourism – the city council has provisionally banned Segways from the waterfront for the summer months.
The proliferation of personal mobility vehicles in recent years has caught Barcelona, and other cities around the world, off guard. “These include tricycles, electric scooters, flying wheels … Anything you could imagine,” says Mercedes Vidal, mobility councillor for Barcelona. “Technology has progressed much more quickly than any possible regulations cities could introduce.”
Indeed, with bikes, Segways, tricycle taxis, vendors, bathers, wanderers, walking tours, scooters and actual citizens who are trying to get from A to B coexisting in a stretch of pavement five metres wide – and with searing temperatures thrown into the mix – it’s easy to imagine how clashes could happen. While apparently there’s only been one accident and complaints at the inconvenience of sharing the street, with seven separate companies offering tours along the beach operating a total of 136 Segways, it could have just been a matter of time.
The council is now working on city-wide regulations, but the urgent need to decongest the area during the summer to “avoid an excessive pressure on neighbours” has prompted it to introduce a temporary ban of Segways between the W Hotel and the Olympic Port, through to 1 October. All unregulated vehicles (those that don’t require permits, unlike Segways) have been banned as well. Riders in the no-go area will face a €90 fine, and up to €1,125 for riding “in a dangerous or inconsiderate fashion”, such as breaking the 10km/h speed limit.
“We turned to other European cities like Paris, Amsterdam and London for guidance, but these vehicles have never been regulated in a thorough way,” said Vidal. She notes that most other cities “don’t have the pressure Barcelona has on its public spaces. As always, we’re dealing with the fact that it’s an incredibly dense city, with an added high touristic pressure.”
In London, Hong Kong and New York City, the solution has been to ban Segways outright. Prague recently joined that club, fearing a serious accident could be imminent. This all resurfaced, with no little confusion, when hoverboards made a comeback (from fiction) last year.
In other cities, however, Segways have taken over: an online directory lists 622 guided tours in 56 countries and 427 cities, with the US at the top with 324 tours, followed by Spain with 44. Their coexistence with pedestrians remains problematic, as does deciding whether they belong in car, pedestrian or cycle lanes.
Barcelona has a population density that is high enough by itself (15,685 people per sq km, compared to London’s 5,491 or Copenhagen’s 1,850) without taking into account the 27 million tourists who visit every year. The Segway issue is, says Vidal, “only the tip of the iceberg”.
The Ada Colau-led council has been grappling with the effects of mass tourism, one of the city’s economic engines but also a threat to the very quality of life that makes it so attractive. Among the efforts to clamp down on its negative effects are a moratorium on new hotel beds (recently extended to a second year), crackdowns on Airbnb and similar tourist apartments, restrictions on bar crawls and measures to reduce street noise.
Last summer, Segway companies joined forces with electric bikes and bike taxis to form the Association for Sustainable Mobility and Tourism. “All of a sudden they all felt like criminals,” says the group’s secretary, Santi Torrent. He thinks Segways have been tackled because they are very visible. “You have these people on these kind of pulpits, smiling, and here we are getting disastrous salaries. Segways are an easy target.”
Torrent admits, however, that “we can’t talk about a common space, a citizen space, when this space is completely over-saturated. Especially in a city where car density is through the roof, any solution to make Barcelona breathe is welcome.”
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