Tag Archives: micro-mobility

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Is This Micro-mobility’s Moment?

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A kick scooter on a city sidewalkSince COVID-19 lockdowns started in March, micro-mobility has struggled and several big players have either exited specific markets or left the field altogether. But with more people around the world heading back to work and wary of trains and buses, micro-mobility may be enjoying a big boom–and a chance to ingrain itself into city culture.

Several cities are reporting huge increases in the number of people using shared bikes and scooters, and at least one company is rolling out a leasing model, where a user would have a specific device to use for a monthly fee rather than hitting the dock or an app to claim one every day.

Key, some experts say, is avoiding monopolies, which left several cities’ riders stranded when companies collected their vehicles and left the markets during the pandemic.

Is this micro-mobility’s big moment? Read it here.

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Micro-mobility Providers Offer Transportation to Hospital and Essential Workers

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E-scooters are being used as transportation for hospital workers and first responders.Even as micro-mobility providers struggle to operate during COVID-19 shutdowns, they’re also being offered as transportation options for health care workers and first responders trying to get to work while social distancing.

In Baltimore, Md., Lime is deploying about 50 e-scooters near several downtown hospitals and the Inner Harbor area, offering workers free 30-minute rides to get to and from work. CitiBike has given free subscriptions to essential workers in New York for the same reason, and says it will extend those as long as the pandemic persists. And in Colombia, micro-mobility startup Muvo has offered about 450 e-bikes to healthcare workers at no cost.

All this comes as micro-mobility companies eye bankruptcy, layoffs, and restructuring, pulling their fleets out of cities and hunkering down until the global pandemic’s social distancing regulations subside.  Experts say, however, that the move to offer scooters and bikes to health care workers points to a trend of usefulness for the mobility devices, and may point to a brighter future once the crisis passes, particularly as people try to get back to work while maintaining some distance from others.

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The Race to Profitability: TNCs and Micro-Mobility

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Earth day sustainabilityBy Brian Shaw, CAPP

Getting folks to reduce their driving would seem to be an ideal way to help the environment and improve a region’s traffic conditions. However, any environmental and traffic benefits depend on the mode folks switch to from driving themselves. In the case of micro-mobility and TNCs, these benefits have been a mixed bag.

In San Francisco, studies have determined that the growth in the city’s traffic (that is until the COVID-19 pandemic) is primarily a result of the use of TNCs patrolling the city before, during, and after their rides.

The various electric and/or dockless micro-mobility devices continue to clutter numerous cities’ streets and are found battered and broken. Inoperable and damaged devices are filling landfills. Plus, there have been many riders hurt and some even killed while using hourly-use electric scooters.

Neither of the big TNCs (Uber or Lyft) nor any micro-mobility services have been able to turn a profit and develop a business model that works financially. Their biggest issue is continuing to rely on human labor to provide their service. TNCs need human drivers to provide rides for their customers. Autonomous vehicles have yet to be proven viable and capable of consistently operating in complicated urban environments. Both TNCs have been artificially keeping their rates low, in fact they’re lower than what they have mostly replaced—taxi cabs. While this has help them build market share, it has been at a financial loss. TNC drivers are also increasingly wanting better wages and conditions and the right to form unions to collectively bargain their working conditions and wages. Will the TNCs survive and sustain their current business model, or are they both in a race to autonomy and profitability?

As for micro-mobility, a similar situation is also occurring. Research and development are underway to automate the process that is one of the costliest aspects of the program—the nightly collection, charging, and redistribution of the devices. Until automation occurs, how long can the micro-mobility business model survive?

I would argue TNCs and micro-mobility are only bridge technologies: a means to an end state where autonomous vehicles and automated devices will finally make TNCs and micro-mobility sustainable for the environment as well as financially viable.

Brian Shaw, CAPP, is executive director of Stanford Transportation, Stanford University. This post is part of a five-day series commemorating Earth Day 2020.

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New York Legalizes E-bikes, Scooters, in Response to COVID-19

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Black e-bike with orange wheel rimsNew York City, long a holdout against e-bikes and e-scooters, this week legalized the mobility devices in response to the COVID-19 crisis. Delivery workers using the motorized devices have, until now, faced fines and having their rides confiscated, but lawmakers said e-bikes and scooters will help those people keep working at a time when they’re needed.

Helmets are required for e-scooter riders and anyone using a class-3 e-bike, which can go up to 25 miles per hour. New York Police will no longer enforce any rules prohibiting the vehicles, and local jurisdictions were given leeway to craft their own supplemental policies about their use. Read the whole story here.

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No Scooting in Skirts? Why Women Aren’t Embracing Micro-mobility.

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Parking & Mobility Magazine March IssueWe see shared e-bikes and scooters all over downtowns and campuses, but researchers noticed something recently: They are overwhelmingly occupied by men. Women haven’t embraced micro-mobility modes as much as men have. So the researchers got together with 40 female mobility professionals to find out why.

Some of what they learned:

  • The last mile of a trip is the most challenging for women at night. They don’t feel safe walking or using scooters or bikes on poorly lit or unpopulated streets.
  • Many women, particularly mothers, trip-chain, stopping at several destinations during most outings. A trip to work involves a stop at daycare or school, and the trip at home includes that stop again plus one at the store, extracurricular activity for the children, or other destination. They’re often holding little hands and carrying things besides a briefcase. Doing that on a bike or scooter is challenging, if not impossible.
  • Working women experience tension “between status and impact.” Their professional appearance (clothing, shoes, hair, makeup, etc.) is important and can be destroyed on a bike or scooter.
  • Women are time-crunched. They often multi-task, combining a subway ride with paperwork or a ride-share with phone calls. Neither is possible on micro-mobility.

There are more reasons, and the experts behind the study share them along with their story and why it’s all important, in the March issue of Parking & Mobility magazine. Read it here and let us know on Forum—what do you think?

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Micro-mobility, Parking, Data, and Your Operation: Looking Ahead

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A scooter parked on a sidewalk in a cityBy Nathan Donnell, CAPP

The micro-mobility movement has exploded around the globe in the last three to five years. Government agencies woke up to find e-scooters and bikes dropped onto sidewalks for the general public to use. For the most part, the public has embraced this new form of transportation. However, agencies have been challenged to find the balance between safety, sustainability, street clutter, and revenue generation.

If your agency is weighing different micro-mobility options, which one or ones do you choose? Have you figured out how many units to allow per vendor? Who’s responsible when the units are left in prohibited areas? How do you access the data from each vendor? Is the data valuable for your operations? What do you do with the data when you get your hands on it?

Various studies claim more than 60 percent of 0- to 5-mile trips are taken via micro-mobility options. This mode of transportation adds to the options from which the public can choose. It can even bridge gaps in areas where traditional transport modes may be lacking, such as government-run bus routes.

IPMI’s Technology Committee has scheduled a webinar that will discuss benefits, challenges, and questions to ask when agencies are approached by vendors. Mark March 18 on your calendar and click here to register.

Nathan Donnell, CAPP, is director, western U.S. and Canada sales, curbside management solutions, with Conduent, and a member of IPMI’s Technology Commmittee.

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My E-scooter Rental Experiment

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By Scott C. Bauman, CAPP

Last fall, I took my family into Denver for a special excursion–to rent electric scooters for the very first time and explore our vibrant downtown. The experience was quite informative. We rode all around the central business district, stopped for some famous local ice cream, spent time watching kayakers, and experienced the shared-mobility e-scooter craze to its fullest.

This wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment family adventure. It was a strategic, work-related field trip to gather facts. I intended to road-test and witness firsthand the various interactions, challenges, and benefits of shared mobility e-scooters. With the word “mobility” in my work title, I needed to experience this emerging mode personally.

We deliberately rode on different roadways: sidewalks, exposed bike lanes, protected bike lanes, trails, open streets, shared sharrow streets, and a pedestrian-only mall that prohibits e-scooters (to see what would happen; nothing happened). I wanted to witness and feel for myself how they operated, how the smartphone app interacted with users, and of course, my direct interactions with motor vehicles, parked vehicles, pedestrians, sidewalk obstacles, and other modes of transportation.

My field experience yielded a wealth of valuable information–so much so that I can say without hesitation that I strongly recommend every parking, mobility, and transportation professional considering these types of shared operations should do exactly what I did and gather the field facts firsthand. Relying solely on news articles and press reports does not give you the comprehensive picture needed to make informed decisions. The hands-on information gathered allowed me to intelligently update my city’s shared mobility policies with factual experience. It also allowed me to educate and articulate my experiences to executive staff and council members. That insight was priceless!

If you are considering shared e-scooter operations and have not already rented a scooter for yourself, I encourage and challenge you to do a similar field experiment. The real-world experiences and takeaways (positive and negative) will absolutely shape and broaden your knowledge, and you’ll probably have a bit of fun getting them.

Scott C. Bauman, CAPP, is manager of parking and mobility services for the City of Aurora, Colo.

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Data-based Storytelling

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Data-based storytellingBy L. Dennis Burns, CAPP

According to the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO), shared micro-mobility devices like bikes and scooters provided more than 84 million trips across the U.S. in 2018. While these numbers are impressive and contribute to reductions in urban area congestion and greenhouse gas emissions, I have been worried that the e-scooter industry in particular may be facing an uncertain future as it struggles with escalating accident rates and negative headlines.

I recently read an article entitled: “Micro-Mobility Contest Wants to Spark Data-Based Storytelling.” In this article, e-scooter operator Spin is leading a project in partnership with data firms StreetLight Data and Populus to make troves of micro-mobility data available to nonprofits advocating for safer streets.

According to the article, “Advocates working for improved bike, pedestrian, or other micro-mobility projects in cities across the U.S. could soon have access to new datasets, as they make their case to officials. Spin, an operator of e-scooters, is leading a pilot known as the Mobility Data for Safer Streets (MDSS) which asks nonprofits and other micro-mobility advocacy groups to apply for one of up to five slots to participate in the program. The five winning organizations will have access to a year’s worth of mobility data collected by StreetLight Data and Populus, two leading data collection and analysis firms often used by cities, transportation agencies, and others looking to use traffic and other data to shape transportation policy.”

I am encouraged by this move to better use available data in advocacy for safer streets as cities and states work to shape the public policy to both regulate the devices and reshape the public streetscape to accommodate them. It will be interesting to see what comes from this initiative.

L. Dennis Burns, CAPP, is regional vice president, senior practice builder, with Kimley-Horn.

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European Scooter Startup Gets Huge Investment

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Tier, a scooter-share startup with a presence in 40 cities in 12 countries, received a $60 million (U.S.) infusion it will use to further expand across Europe. With 10 million rides in less than a year, Tier claims to be the fastest growing micro-mobility startup to date.

In an interview, Tier CEO Lawrence Leuschner said the company is “not far away” from launching a new kind of micro-mobility vehicle–one that will be “good in rainy seasons.”

Read the whole story here.

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Bringing E-scooters Into Your Operation: Do You Need Insurance?

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e-scooter accident insurance liability micro-mobilityIn cities and on campuses around the world, e-scooters seemed to have revolutionized short-distance personal transportation. Some days, it feels like they’re everywhere. And headlines trumpet the potential dangers for riders, pedestrians, and drivers as the micro-mobility vehicles grow in popularity. It all brings up an interesting question: If someone rents an e-scooter and has an accident, who’s liable? And do you need insurance for e-scooters if your operation offers them?

As with many things, it’s not a simple question. Part of it boils down to the regulations in each state, and part of it depends on who owns the scooter, who’s using the scooter, and whose fault an accident is. Insurance Business America takes a look at the liability of e-scooters and what users, owners, and contracted organizations need to know about insurance when the two-wheelers hit the streets.

“There’s still a lot of confusion around which insurance policies will pick up an E-scooter liability claim. If a rider has personal /private health insurance, they will likely get some coverage in the case of an accident. But if an E-scooter rider causes an injury to a pedestrian, damages a person’s property, or causes a road accident, coverage is much less clear–and often non-existent,” the article explains. Read the rest of it here.