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Last summer 2021 – which feels like a long time ago – we talked a lot about how the escooters are going to be the transport of the future and how many cities around the world are opening up pilot programs to test how do escooters and especially shared escooter programs going to affect their cities. Now in Spring 2022, the first results are starting to pour in, let’s take a look at one of the first ones.
In an article by Govtech we are presented with results on how people used the scooters and what issues they had, mainly from health concerns.
Unsurprisingly people took the escooters to heart and over 1.4 million rides were taken in Seattle by 260,000 riders. They also mixed up the test by having 4 different ridesharing companies taking part in the pilot.
Usage cases were pretty clear too, almost half of the trips were said to be taken for visiting friends and parks – in other words, leisure trips. As we at Langfeite have always seen escooters are especially great for getting around in a city in a fun and leisurely way as you can actually enjoy the actual trip. It’s just pure fun to ride a good scooter.
22% of people used the scooters for commuting and for some reason as in its own category 15% of people used the scooter to go to restaurants. Basically, the above three categories already cover 80% of the usage cases. The cases weren’t combined but if they were we’d say that many of the same people used the scooters for multiple uses – as to say that for many participants scooters were able to cover all their work commuting and free time uses.
Just about 11% of their respondents had gotten some kind of injury when riding the scooters, due to bad weather or accidents. At the same time, 70% said they never used a helmet when riding the scooters.
Other issues with rules were about riding the scooters on the sidewalk which isn’t allowed in Seattle and parking.
All in all Seattle’s city council is going to gather some more data about the test and safety but it looks like the scooter program is here to stay. From the results, it’s also pretty clear to see it is going through the same steps as bikes did as we predicted. Some parking issues and public helmet awareness campaigns might be needed to educate the people. Even the shared scooters are pretty fast at their usual 15mph speed and helmets are always recommended for riders if accidents happen.
In the future we expect many cities to come to the same conclusion: Electric scooters are widely favored by the citizens and as they are new people will just need some set rules and regulations to make them an enjoyable experience for everyone.