Exploring best practice for municipal e-scooter policy in the United States

Abstract

The transportation and mobility landscape has changed at exponential rates in recent years. This is particularly evident in the spread and use of micromobility, primarily via e-scooters, in the United States. It is widely agreed that municipalities need to regulate the deployment of this new form of mobility to capture some of the benefits that these devices provide but also mitigate the impact and risks associated with their use. This paper evaluates commercial scooter deployment within municipalities in the United States, and seeks to identify policy trends for regulating e-scooters. As many communities do not have policies in place, the study seeks to benchmark and develop a policy dialogue addressing e-scooter use and deployment. The study focuses on three specific policy strategies cities are implementing: the use of pilot programs; vendor limits or caps; and the inclusion of equity policy. The study finds that tension between these policies has the potential to constrain or accelerate the market adoption of scooters and that very few communities are designing and adopting environment strategies to regulate scooter use. These policy dialogues are worth exploration as cities accelerate trends toward micromobility.

Introduction

In 2017, electric scooters (e-scooters) began appearing in cities around the United States. Companies rushed to enter the market and get their vehicles on the streets, even though there were no regulations or permit requirements in place. While these platforms (which are sometimes referred to as micromobility) were viewed favorably by many as a new means of transportation, others soon viewed them as a nuisance with reports that scooters were blocking sidewalks, getting thrown in trash cans, and causing injuries (Levin, 2018). The private e-scooter companies such as Bird, Lime, Skip and Scoot all operated with similar business models (Clewlow, 2018). Specifically, each company sought to distribute their fleets across a city (with or without city authorization) and encouraged individuals use smartphone applications to gain access and use their scooters. Riders were then charged a fee to ride – typically, a $1.00 flat rate plus $0.15 per minute.

By summer 2018, many cities started investigating ways of regulating e-scooters. Cities began implementing a variety of regulatory measures: establishing permit requirements for operators to deploy their vehicles; issuing Request for Proposals (RFPs) for companies to operate vehicles under temporary pilot programs to study the use of scooters; and in some cases, issuing moratoriums or outright bans on the deployment and use of scooters.

Since this trend is quite recent, literature and review of the benefits and impacts of e-scooters has been limited. Moreover, many cities were caught off guard by the rapid deployment of e-scooters in 2018 without any policy in place dictating how scooters could be deployed similar to the way many cities were blindsided by ridesharing services and the transition to using digital technology for urban planning and transportation services (Aarian, 2018, Levin, 2018, Riggs, 2018, Riggs, 2016, Riggs and Gordon, 2015). In response, some cities chose to place outright bans on the rollout of e-scooter services (Fang & Agrawal, 2018). Scooters, however, offer a variety of benefits to users and to cities by giving access to travelers making short or last mile trips. For instance they (along with other forms of micromobility like docked and dockless bicycles) are believed to be a potential solution to addressing “the first and last mile issue” (Clewlow, 2018, Fang and Agrawal, 2018, McKenzie, 2019).

This concept connotes that scooters can help individuals connect readily with other transportation options. For instance, scooters can be used to replace a short vehicle trip from a prospective rider’s home to their local transit station. Similarly, instead of taking Uber or Lyft ride from the station to the workplace, an individual can use a scooter instead. These potential scenarios are supported by data that suggests that the majority of trips made via automobile in the US are short – in fact, 45% of trips in the US are under 3 miles in length, with the majority of those taken by single individuals (Clewlow and Mishra, 2017, Zarif and Kelman, 2019). Research shows that micromobility services can help address this issue and expand transportation options for people and that these services have had efficacy even during the 2020–2021 pandemic (Clewlow, 2018, Riggs and Appleyard, 2020, Riggs and Shukla, 2020).

Another potential benefit of scooters is their small physical footprint; especially compared to cars they require very little space for storage and parking; although there has been some debate over the how (particularly dockless) microbiology services can be parked in a manner safe to other roadway or sidewalk users (Brown et al., 2020). This could potentially free up some valuable real estate space for cities, which could then be used for other purposes. Other less-known and less-certain benefits include reductions in single occupancy vehicle (SOV) trips and a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs); however, there is debate about this due to the fact that scooters need to be charged and redistributed. Often times, this is performed by someone moving the scooters around in a car or truck, therefore negating the total climate benefits of scooter trips (Riggs, 2019).

In this context, it is important for cities to develop policy to mitigate and prevent negative impacts associated with scooters such as blocking access on sidewalks while at the same time also capturing some of the benefits that scooters provide. Based on the limited body of research and understanding on this subject, this study seeks to provide a baseline understanding of how cities are addressing this issue from a policy perspective. While other work has attempted to benchmark this policy (Anderson-Hall et al., 2019) this work seeks to look at best practice. We identify 183 cities with some type of scooter, e-scooter or micromobility policy and classify data for sample of 61 of these cities to look for commonalities and best practice. The authors do a deep dive into equity questions, attempting to address whether mobility providers adhere to these policies, whether they achieve their goals, and propose additional policies that might enhance equity. We do find commonalities around the implementation of pilot programs, including policies on vendor limits or caps and discussions of equity. We also provide a deeper dive on equity programs and how they achieve goals and can be better connected to multimodal planners for all travelers. Ultimately, this may help cities develop more effective policy.