Bloomberg: Electric Scooter Sharing is Revolutionizing the Landscape of Urban Mobility
Photo by Christina Spinnen on Unsplash
BLOOMBERG TECHNOLOGY
By Emily Chang
Last month, Populus released its study on Micro-Mobility, the 2018 Populus Report. This report, authored by the firm’s CEO and co-founder Regina Clewlow, Ph.D., offered new data and insights for smart cities on the mobility front, with particular in-depth analysis on shared electric scooters and their impact on urban mobility.
Dr. Clewlow joined Skip CEO and co-founder, Sanjay Dastoor, in an interview to discuss the scooter-sharing revolution with Bloomberg’s Emily Change on “Bloomberg Technology.” In the discussion, she cites research conclusions that major urban areas are adopting electrical scooters as a transportation alternative significantly faster than they had car-sharing. In the last 12 months, 3% of the population in major urban areas has adopted electric scooters. This same milestone took 12 years to reach by car-sharing services like Uber and Lyft.
She adds that, in addition to the rapid adoption of the micro-mobility service option, cities will likely put in more regulations than they had previously for car-sharing services due to the lightweight and easily confiscated nature of the electric scooter.
In this interview, two cities were contrasted: Santa Monica and San Francisco. Santa Monica awarded electric scooter permits to Uber, Lyft, Bird, and Lyme for a total of 2,000 scooters. By contrast, San Francisco awarded Skip and Scoot permits totaling 1,250 scooters for 6-months, which can double after 6-months. Dr. Clewlow noted that sentiment in San Francisco was less receptive than typical cities, likely due to a combination of factors: past battles between city transportation planners with car-sharing operators and the city’s residents have adopted an anti-technology sentiment, due to the fatigue of the San Francisco being a frequent test hub for some many of these innovations.