Active Mobility vs. Electric Micromobility

Shared micromobilty trips are growing at an exponential rate in the United States. Last year NACTO (2018) reported 84 million trips on shared micromobility across the US. Nevertheless, at this point one question is important to answer: Is shared micromobility reducing the use of cars or it is reducing active mobility trips? 

While active mobility has a lot of health and environmental benefits, shared micromobility does not seem to promote walking or cycling. First, electric micromobility is growing at a faster pace than active micromobility. Nowadays, more than half of the trips by shared micromobility are made with electric devices, especially e-scooters. Second, shared e-scooter trips are substituting trips by foot and by bicycle. According to a study in the City of Portland (PBOT, 2018), 37% of e-scooter users would have made the trip walking if the e-scooter had not been available. In the same sense, 5% would have made the trip with a personal bike and 4% would have used the bike-share system. These are no good news for the active mobility community.

NACTO (2018) also reports that “dockless pedal (non-electric) bikes, which quickly proliferated across the U.S. in 2017, have largely disappeared from North American cities, with just 3 million trips in a handful of cities in 2018.” At the same time, cities around the world are implementing e-bikes in their bike share system. Those are the cases of Metro in Los Angeles, Ecobici in Mexico City, BiciMAD in Madrid and many more. At least, all those e-bicycles systems mentioned are pedal-assisted and not fully electric, which means that the rider will do some exercise.

In the bright side, electric shared micromobility is also reducing trips by car. In that same study in Portland (PBOT, 2018), from all the trips by e-scooters, 34% would have been by car. This is great news for the active mobility community. 

All in all, electric shared micromobilty is substituting active mobility trips and trips by car. Which is the dominant effect? Is it better for cities to have fewer cars at the expense of less walking and biking trips?  Only further studies will answer these questions. Until then, cities have to be very careful with regulations.

Finally, after all this critical analysis of shared micromobility, I would like to close with some optimism. I firmly believe that shared micromobility is more an ally than an enemy to active mobility advocates. The exposure and success of these devices in American cities will speed up the change from car-oriented streets to multimodal and shared streets. Now there are more allies and more lobby power to convince local governments and neighbors that another city is possible. Once the war on cars is over, then we can smooth things between e-micromobility and active mobility.