SINGAPORE: She has ridden her electric scooter to and from work since 2009, and hardly takes the bus or train.
When Singapore banned such motorised personal mobility device (PMDs) from footpaths at the end of 2019, Sarah (not her real name) did not despair.
She simply continued with her preferred mode of transport – be it legally on cycling paths and park connectors; or illegally over pedestrian walkways and short stretches of roads.
According to the 50-year-old, it’s impossible to be fully law-abiding during her 20-minute work commute, as the cycling paths are not seamless and often interrupted by pavements.
“They say that with a PMD, we have to ride on paths with the red-coloured dotted line (indicating a shared path), but near my house, there aren’t any. So what can I do?”
Sarah was even caught last year by enforcement officers, who confiscated her PMD worth S$1,500 (US$1,110) and fined her S$500.
She promptly bought another and resumed riding. “The officers can stop me … but I’m going to buy some more. I won’t stop.”
And in the face of such brazen acts of defiance, it is pedestrians who suffer, said those living in active mobility hotspots as identified by authorities.
“The pavement has been robbed away from us,” said a Toa Payoh resident who only wanted to be known as Mark.
The 62-year-old, who works in logistics, said that in the five years since the ban, he hasn’t sensed any improvement in his safety while walking around his estate.
Auxiliary police officers have been deployed to deal with errant riders “but it only works when they are there”, said Mark.
He recounted an incident about two years ago when a young boy illegally riding a PMD was “going super fast” and nearly hit him and his wife as they were taking a walk.
Amid continued palpable tension between active mobility users and pedestrians, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) told CNA the number of accidents involving PMDs fell significantly in the years since the ban.
There were 144 accidents involving motorised PMDs on footpaths in 2019; 30 in 2020; and six in the first half of 2024.
