How Big Was 2019’s Scooter Boom, and What’s Next?

Photographer: Sarah Silbiger/Bloomberg

Final yr, when the Nationwide Affiliation of Metropolis Transportation Officers (NACTO) launched its annual report on shared micromobility services, the message was clear: The dorky-looking electrical scooters that had appeared on the streets of American cities over the course 2018 had been greater than glorified youngsters’s toys. The battery-boosted rentable autos had been a severe city transportation know-how that racked up greater than 38 million journeys — a wholesome chunk of the 84 million whole journeys that conventional docked bikeshare packages and less-traditional dockless companies tallied.

Now NACTO is releasing its 2019 Shared Micromobility Report, which reveals scooter ridership persevering with its development trajectory, and huge bikeshare methods increasing utilization at a wholesome clip. American cities performed host to 136 million shared micromobility trips in 2019, together with station-based bikeshare, dockless bikeshare and shared e-scooters. To place these numbers in perspective: Two thirds of all shared micromobility journeys since 2010 have been made within the final two years. 2019’s shared micromobility ridership alone can be the equal of the fifth-busiest subway or mild rail system within the nation. 

“What we’re seeing is there’s great demand to make brief journeys straightforward, which is what micromobility does,” mentioned Alex Engel, this system supervisor for communications at NACTO. “We see that with the explosive ridership development and the sturdiness of ridership in lots of, many locations.” 

In fact, these findings include an enormous, virus-shaped asterisk. Micromobility ridership, like all types of transportation, took a significant hit in 2020 when the pandemic-related stay-at-home orders introduced America’s cities to a digital standstill. And the enduring influence of Covid-19 is continuous to depress ridership, as college students, vacationers and workplace employees — all e-scooter energy customers — have but to renew their pre-pandemic patterns. However there are indicators that this business continues to be coming into its personal, consuming up a rising share of the U.S. transportation pie and taking part in an important position in preserving cities transferring throughout the coronavirus disaster. 

Many of the micromobility development has come from e-scooters. Scooter ridership elevated from 38.5 million in 2018 to 88.5 million in 2019, a development fee of greater than 100%, whereas station-based bikeshare ridership elevated 10%, from 36.5 million to 40 million.

The 2019 scooter explosion got here because the business expanded its geographic footprint significantly to 109 cities, up 45% from 2018. The six largest scooter markets, Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Diego and Washington, D.C., accounted for a bit greater than a 3rd of all scooter ridership. (The report doesn’t present city- or company-specific numbers as a part of its data-sharing agreements with micromobility suppliers. NACTO cross-checks knowledge from the suppliers with metropolis governments to make sure accuracy.)

Docked bikeshare, alternatively, noticed just about all of its development and 87% of whole ridership in its six largest markets: New York Metropolis, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Boston, Honolulu and the Bay Space. The remainder of the nation’s adoption has lagged: Three-quarters of all docked bikeshare methods recorded ridership decreases in 2019.

The poor efficiency of smaller-market bikeshare methods factors to a different one of many report’s findings: Scooters get the best utilization (journeys per automobile per day) in fleets with fewer whole scooters, whereas docked bikeshare bikes get the best utilization within the largest methods. “Dynamic” caps that improve as utilization grows are serving to cities establish the correct measurement of their scooter fleets, Engel says. “There’s a trade-off right here. You need your system to be utilized, however you additionally need it to be accessible.”

This trade-off already prompted one thing of a micromobility reckoning on the finish of 2019, as Lime and Lyft (which additionally owns a lot of the nation’s largest bikeshare methods) pulled their scooters out of a number of cities with a purpose to deal with their hottest markets. Across the similar time, Uber handed off its JUMP enterprise, purveyors of standard dockless electrical bikes, to Lime.

The NACTO report sheds extra mild on how completely different varieties of websites favor numerous types of shared micromobility. 

Scooters tends to thrive in sprawling, warm-weather cities, whereas docked bikeshare does greatest in additional dense, older cities. (The candy spot for each: Washington, D.C.) The regulatory atmosphere performs a job, too. Strict geo-fences and automobile caps on scooters in cities like Chicago and San Francisco, and outright bans in New York, Boston, Seattle and Philadelphia, have hampered their development there. A few of these laws, together with New York’s ban, are starting to loosen.

Shared bikes and scooters additionally are usually used for various journey varieties. Scooter rides in 2019 averaged just one mile, had been usually concentrated in leisure districts, and tended to be extra frequent within the afternoons, evenings and weekends. Station-based bikeshare members’ journeys averaged 1.5 miles and had been extremely concentrated throughout commuting hours. As Washington, D.C., demonstrates, these two modes can fortunately coexist.  

In fact, these figures are only a snapshot of the Earlier than Occasions: Patterns of labor and leisure have since been upended by the pandemic, and 2020 is shaping as much as provide a really completely different image. Based on the report’s transient hypothesis about this yr, journey size and kind are a number of the largest modifications shared micromobility has seen for the reason that coronavirus arrived.

Whereas scooters hogged the micromobility highlight over the previous couple of years, it’s docked bikeshare that’s been the workhorse of the Covid-19 restoration. Even within the depths of the pandemic in April and Could, bikeshare ridership within the six main markets decreased a median of 44%, decrease than plunges in driving and transit utilization. Since then, ridership has bounced again to shut to regular, as extra folks hop on bikes for neighborhood errands, train, or to keep away from public transit. 

Citi Bike’s 2.1 million rides in July 2020 had been only a shade off July 2019’s ridership of two.2 million. New York Metropolis subway ridership, in the meantime, remains at about 20% of regular. Different bikeshare comebacks haven’t been fairly as dramatic as Citi Bike’s, “however we’re seeing actually robust ridership in just about all the main established methods,” Engel mentioned. Scooter use is progressively recovering, too.