2023-12-13 00:09:44
Three people with electric scooters showed up this Tuesday at the entrance to the Méndez Álvaro train station in Madrid after 6:00 a.m. to go to work. They passed the turnstile, but did not protest when the security guard told them that with the machine they could not get on the car. The information sign on the door was clearly visible: “From today it is prohibited to introduce these vehicles on the Cercanías network.” “They turned around without incident,” explains a couple of hours later the security guard, who is having a peaceful morning: the passengers comply without question and the injured groups have already resigned. “Everything falls to us,” laments an affected food delivery man.
The situation is normal throughout the morning in the main stations of the country during the first day in which scooters are prohibited on all Renfe and Ouigo trains, Cercanías trains but also Medium Distance, Long Distance and High speed.
In the aforementioned Madrid station one could perhaps expect some gesture of reluctance, since it is an intermodal station that gives access to the transport network to a significant population pocket in the south of Madrid with no nearby alternatives. But residents are under notice since the Community of Madrid prohibited access to the metro network starting November 4, and the City Council did the same with urban buses.
“I entered at 7:00 a.m. and since then, zero,” says another security guard at the Sol station, which this week recovered a certain normality in traffic after the crowds on the bridge. On Tuesday, tourists can walk around with some ease. “People were already aware. I have stopped two,” corroborates another security worker at the city’s largest station, Atocha. In Nuevos Ministerios, another of the busiest, they did not appear absent-minded either. “As Renfe is warning and the media…”, they reasoned here. The same in Chamartín, where the detours caused by the remodeling works confuse non-regular travelers. “So far nothing,” certifies another worker.
Luis Carlos Rivas is 35 years old and delivers food on a scooter. For a month now, his expenses have increased by 150 euros per month. He lived in Alcorcón and paid 300 euros for a room. Every day, he took the Cercanías train to go to work in Madrid, but given the prohibition he decided to move inside the M-30. He now shares a studio with a partner for whom he pays 450 euros in the Cuatro Caminos neighborhood. In the homonymous roundabout it is common to see delivery drivers waiting for orders, and this afternoon there were several who exchanged impressions and anecdotes about the prohibition. Rivas, originally from Colombia, is one of the most stoic. “Everything falls on us. The bad weather, the people’s complaints. But this is the life of migrants, here we have come to fight.”
In the square they talk about Mohamed, a boy from Parla who came daily with his scooter to Nuevos Ministerios and now has gotten his motorcycle license. Or from another colleague, who has found a place in a garage on Ponzano Street for 30 euros and can leave the vehicle there. A bicoca, nowadays. Others, like Gustavo Escalona, 23, say that the ban is too generic. He believes that if some scooters have exploded it is because they have extra batteries installed, and that there are safe generic models that would not need to be vetoed. But the collective’s ability to exert pressure, no matter how much the law now forces companies to enter into labor contracts, is diffuse.
Anyone like Rivas who decides to move will not be able to use the time they spent traveling to work, because the sector operates through peaks of activity that coincide with lunch hours, not with office hours. “Now it would be a period of high demand, but you see me, here talking to you,” he explains. Although there are also those who were sweating so much that they had already ruled out getting on the train, like Miller Angulo, 28. “I don’t remember the last time.” It weighs a lot, really. If I run out of battery I prefer to drag it.”
From the beginning, scooters have also (almost) disappeared from the usual image of a suburban station such as Virgen del Rocío or Santa Justa in Seville.
Those who frequent this service usually see users riding their electric scooters because they help them save time on their daily trips. However, both the station’s security personnel and regular travelers like Débora have noticed the absence of these vehicles since the morning: “I haven’t seen any,” she says surprised while waiting for the arrival of the commuter train heading to the Palacio de Congresos. Although she does not consider herself affected because she does not use this type of electric transportation, she empathizes with those “people who use it daily because it is more bearable for them to go to work” and who, she adds, “are usually respectful.”
Among them is Marcia, who makes two or three suburban trips every day between Guadajoz, her town, and the capital, where she works. Unaware of the new regulations, Marcia is one of the few people who enters the station with her electric scooter – “my feet and my hands” – and she sits down to wait for the train. When he tells her the news, she exclaims, “Oh, don’t tell me that.” And she asks herself: “Now what do I do?” She declares herself “very annoyed” because thanks to this vehicle she saves “a lot of time” between going to work and coming home.
One of the Renfe drivers in the city of Seville claims to be aware that numerous incidents have occurred due to the batteries of this type of electric vehicles that “heat up very quickly.”
Beyond the risk of fire posed by scooters, this train driver celebrates that his access to trains has been regulated because, as he states before getting on the convoy, “chaos is created during rush hour” when he occupies the space designated for people with mobility. reduce or hinder the passage of travelers. This is the reason why Santiago is in favor of banning scooters on trains: “I think it’s good because there are people who have no conscience and they make passage difficult and take up a lot of space,” says this young man who defends that “the “Trains are for passengers.” On his side, his friend Rafa thinks at the doors of the Santa Justa station that “in the middle distance they don’t bother as much because they leave them next to the bathrooms,” although Santiago maintains that “on the Cercanías they are a problem”.
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