Share electric scooter appeared scene from 5 years ago It has a promising vision of freeing people from cars and moving them to greener modes of transportation.nevertheless Billions of dollars of VC money When lots of hypethe future promised by micromobility companies has not yet fully arrived.
In cities such as Paris, Most People Haven’t Replaced Car Travel An e-scooter excursion shared in a meaningful way. The cost of riding a scooter makes it an expensive option for last-mile transit connections and fair access.and the Revealing Bards When hellbiz It shows that achieving profitability is very difficult. Moreover, in cities that have allowed e-scooter sharing companies, it is becoming increasingly difficult for scooter companies to operate sustainably.
traffic flow and carbon emissions, need an alternative to the car. Are shared e-scooters the answer, or just a crappy option? What have we gained by bringing shared micromobility to cities?
We decided to investigate two cities at the forefront of the e-scooter revolution. Los Angeles When ParisThe former has earned a reputation for being a little more freewheeling due to its laissez-faire capitalist regulatory approach that allows multiple operators to compete for rides and spaces. It has some of the toughest regulations in the game, including permits, and in fact is still considering banning shared e-scooters outright.
David Zipper, a visiting fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Taubman Center for State and Local Government, told TechCrunch: “Paris is densely populated and has a great metro system. Scooters could replace greener transportation. LA is different. doing.”
Despite their apparent hunger, two scooter operators – lift When spin – Recently pulled out of the Los Angeles area, citing lack of favorable regulation and excessive competition, making it apparently difficult to make a profit. is owned by Helbiz), and newcomer Tuk Tuk.
The fact that both cities – one sprawling, the other dense. One is poorly regulated (such as shared scooter companies) with multiple operators, the other is heavily regulated with few operators. What type of market, if any, is the right one?
Paris: Banned or Not Banned?
People walk and ride electric scooters in front of the Marechal Joffre statue in Paris on May 19, 2020. (Photo by THOMAS COEX/AFP via Getty Images)
If there’s one city where shared e-scooters could thrive, it’s Paris. This city is he one of the most densely populated cities in Europe. Most households do not own a car, and if they do, they rarely use it. And Paris is headed by Mayor Anne Hidalgo, who advocates for regenerating public spaces from roads and vehicles to become a more livable ‘city in 15 minutes’. During his tenure, Hidalgo cleared parking lots, turned streets into walkable areas, and opened new bike lanes.
Paris is still in the middle 15,000 shared electric scooters could be banned that’s why Politician of multiple parties Calling on Hidalgo not to renew Lime, Dot, and Tia’s contracts expiring in February 2023. rumor Floating on what she already has.
Paris has been a key market for the entire e-scooter industry, but the city is frustrated with the vehicles. safety accidentsome of which it was deadly.
Over the years, Paris has responded to safety concerns with increasingly stringent regulations. Following last summer, someone’s death A woman who was run over by two women riding a scooter near the Seine in Paris introduced a “slow zone” to her scooter. after one year, The whole city became a slow zoneshared e-scooters are speed limited to just over 6 mph.
Despite these strict regulations, the city is saying goodbye to shared scooters forever.
Shocked. I was appalled. Frustration. These are my feelings when I first heard the news of a possible ban. What if there is an accident? Traffic accidents happen all the time! Boohoo to complaints about sidewalk scooters! So let’s build better bike lanes!
But looking at scattered statistics about how scooters are being used in Paris, it’s possible scooters aren’t delivering the value the city needs: limiting car use.
Lime told TechCrunch that 90% of Paris’ vehicles are in daily use, with scooter trips starting every four seconds in the city. In 2021, over 1.2 million scooter his riders (85% of whom are Parisians) have made a combined 10 million rides across all three operators. Lime estimates it could replace 1.6 million car trips. did itbut did they?
One study from 2021 We found that e-scooter users in Paris are predominantly male between the ages of 18 and 29, are highly educated and often ride scooters to save travel time. Most of the passengers (72%) who took part in the survey said they had made the transition from walking or using public transport to driving. another survey of French scooter riders feel that shared scooters are ‘more likely to replace walking than other modes of transport’.
These results are not limited to Paris. Research Of our customers registered on five different shared e-scooter apps in Norway in the fall of 2021, we found that e-scooters have mostly replaced walking in all situations except night rides. If the user is male, if the e-scooter is privately owned, and to destinations poorly served by public transport, the e-scooter will replace the car with longer e-scooter trips.
What stands in the way of the ultimate goal of keeping travelers away from cars? Probably most people, at least in Paris, don’t use cars anyway because the city is walkable and public transport is sufficient. Or maybe someone who wants to become a car driver or taxi driver just needs more time to get used to the concept of riding a scooter. Or maybe scooters are just unreliable long-distance transportation.
Fluctuo, an aggregator of shared mobility data, found that the average scooter distance traveled in Paris was 2.67 km in July and 2.53 km in November 2022. It’s a long journey that you don’t want to walk, but it’s too short to drive places like Paris.
Whether scooters get people out of their cars or not, they’re certainly popular in Paris. A September Ipsos poll (thus interpreted as a grain of salt) commissioned by Lime, Dott and Tier found that most Parisians believe that e-scooters are part of the city’s daily It turns out that they agree that they are in line with the city hall’s broader transportation policy. Most of the respondents (68%) said they were satisfied with the number of self-service his scooters on the streets of Paris, but a quarter actually wished for more I answered.
And a recent petition launched by Paris residents in response to a potential ban has amassed even more 19,000 signatures Conversely.
Hannah Landau, communications manager for France and Southern Europe at Lime, told TechCrunch that the ban would make Paris a global anomaly.
“The major cities in the world that have introduced shared e-scooter services have not banned them permanently,” she said. Or to expand the program with more vehicles and a wider service area (New York, Chicago, Washington DC, Rome, Madrid, Lyon).”
Lime, Dot and Tia have proposed a range of measures to Paris City Hall, which they say will address safety concerns and ensure the renewal of scooter licenses next year. Among the proposals is a joint campaign to raise awareness about traffic laws. A great system for using the camera on public roads.Expanded use of Scooter ADAS Prevent walking on sidewalks. Equip the scooter with a license plate.
Among major cities, Paris may be unique in considering a blanket ban, while other regions have recently shown willingness to limit scooters. Stockholm, Tenerife, Spain, boston college When Fordham University.
– Rebecca Bellan
Los Angeles: Auto City
A shared scooter parked on a sidewalk in Koreatown in central Los Angeles on Dec. 29, 2022.
Let’s add a few more wheels to this discussion. Yes, I’m trying to talk about cars personally. Fasten your seat belt!
car manufacturer rewired american city over the last centuryand if you ask me, we all suffer from it – especially Angelenos. clog arteries in LAthey pollute the air,driving climate change When health problems similar. plus, once an SUV driver hit me as I stood on the sidewalk innocently searching for a nearby ramen shop. See, you said it was personal!
I mean, as an occasional driver and a resentful pedestrian (the type who yells “I’m walking here!” in a vague New York accent), it’s heartening to watch micromobility operators save the city. It means it hurts. , like Spin, Bolt and Lyft do in his LA.
This isn’t because I ride my scooter regularly, nor because there’s a shortage of scooters (one block from my apartment in the heart of LA, a few limes and Link on sidewalks and curb turns). I simply want to curb the cars and rebalance the city around public transport, walking, biking and even scooting. But what kind of future does scooters and the like have here, given their recent withdrawals? Byrd’s financial troubles to start?
It depends who you ask. At least one of her operators — Lime — says things have never been better in Tinseltown. A spokesperson recently said Los Angeles is the largest American market for limes today.
A spokesperson likened 2022 to a “moment of surprise” that would mark “micromobility taking hold,” while acknowledging the shortcomings of LA’s scooters, including its vast geography. Lime admits it’s had a decidedly strong year for local staff, working with city officials, and investing in hardware, but when TechCrunch asked if its LA business is currently profitable, the company didn’t respond. Lime is a privately held company, so you won’t get as much insight as Lyft or Bird.
The Lime experience in LA may be an anomaly. Both Spin and Lyft told TechCrunch they would have to sign new long-term contracts with local governments to get back here. “In a nutshell, the challenge in LA is that it is an open vendor market with no cap on the number of vehicles,” Spin CEO Philip Reinckens said in an email to TechCrunch. I’m here. “This has led to an imbalance in vehicle supply to rider demand as operators oversaturate the market.”
“Long-term arrangements for limited operators will be a prerequisite for considering re-entry,” Reinckens added.
Santa Monica, a coastal city in LA County, seems to have already embarked on this approach. Next year, Santa Monica says it plans to limit the number of permitted scooter operators from four to four. just one to two.
Zoom out: Greater LA area has mixed reputation Among cyclists, however, authorities have recently shown some willingness to embrace more than cars. There are some interesting public initiatives underway, including the recently announced efforts to promote cycling. South LA, North Hollywood and San PedroThis isn’t a revolution, but it could make cities a little safer for all light transportation, including e-scooters.
Taken together, LA’s free-for-all scooters appear destined for consolidation, leaving a handful of operators overall. a lot of ground to coverBut shared electric scooters are a lot different from Paris, and all in all, they don’t seem to be at risk of getting a boot.
– Harry Weber
