Key point here is that all new forms of urban mobility – the services and the increasinly shared urban infrastructure need to be managed on an integrated holistic basis.
Electric Scooters — Mobility Revolution or Illusion?
by Dan Kosky – 31st JUly 2019
Electric scooters are taking cities by storm. No longer such a novelty, they are fast becoming part of the everyday transit landscape. The numbers don’t lie — In the United States, 38.5 million rides were taken on shared electric scooters in 2018, making them more popular than shared, docked bicycles. Electric scooters are available in at least 100 US cities. Meanwhile in Europe, where cities like Paris were among the first to be flooded with e-scooters, electric scooter operator Bird is preparing to launch in at least 50 more cities during the coming months. So successful is the e-scooter conquest of our streets, that Bird and its main rival Lime, are both valued in the billions of dollars.
On the face of it, this is incontrovertible good news for anyone concerned about creating greener cities. Electric scooters are well, electric. Therefore, their carbon footprint is negligible. One calculation has estimated that the adoption of e-scooters in 500 cities, each with a population of more than one million people, would in terms of emissions be the equivalent of removing 105,000 cars from the road every day! There is also the potential reduction in noise pollution to take into account. Electric scooters are practically silent. At a glance, electric scooters seem to be a no-brainer. They are fast, convenient and environmentally friendly.
The Down Side…
Yet, there are detractors. There are non-believers in the small-wheel revolution taking place in front of our eyes. Some are fed up with the dockless scooters strewn across pavements. So much so, that vigilantes in Los Angeles have made a point of vandalizing them. Understandably, others are more concerned that electric scooters are simply unsafe. They have good reason to be concerned. There have been a reported five e-scooter related deaths in the US during the past year, compared to just four linked to bike sharing schemes in the US since 2007. The issue recently came to prominence in the UK, after YouTube personality Emily Hartridge died when her electric scooter collided with a truck.
Such tragedies are one reason why municipalities have yet to figure out if and how to regulate electric scooters. Should they be treated like road vehicles? Should they be welcomed or banished from pavements? And what kind of permit is required in order to use and operate them? The answers vary, often wildly. New York State has banned them from the streets entirely, placing them in the same category as golf carts. In Mississippi they are treated as regular bikes. Meanwhile in Colorado e-scooters are restricted to pavements. Quite the opposite in Germany, where e-scooters are only allowed on the road. And in the UK, they are only legally permitted on private land, treated as little more than a toy.
What Environmental Impact?
However, regulatory and legislative dilemmas are just one part of the puzzle which municipalities need to figure out. One way or another, electric scooters are here to stay, at least for the immediate future. It is not only the obvious safety concerns which need to be addressed. The actual environmental impact of electric scooters should also be closely examined. While use of shared docked bikes peaks during rush hours, use of shared docked e-scooters does not. This indicates that electric scooters are used primarily for recreation, rather than a serious transport alternative. Meanwhile, research by the American Community Survey suggests that around three quarters of all commuters in the United States still drive solo to work, a similar figure to 2010. In other words, electric scooters have not yet shifted the urban transit needle at all.
A Question of Integration
The truth is, that if e-scooters are to have anything beyond an aesthetic impact on city streets, they will have to be part of a wider city plan. They must not be seen as a cheap, quick fix in the quest to build greener, more mobile cities. It is all too easy to choose the new, shiny, hi-tech wizardry, at the expense of making the difficult, long-term and expensive infrastructural changes which many cities must make in order to ease congestion and improve air quality. In other words, e-scooters must never be a substitute for new roads, improved trains and buses or other transit essentials.
E-scooters can of course, be an important part of the solution. But they must be integrated into a wider city vision, in partnership with local transit authorities and other stakeholders. Such integration is no easy task. There are technologies which can ease the process, including city-wide digital currencies, which can nudge residents towards using different forms of transport. Either way, e-scooters are not a stand-alone solution for greener city mobility. But they can become a valuable component of a coherent city strategy. Only then will the current anarchy of the e-scooter revolution become a truly impactful mobility evolution.
View original article at medium.com
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