Getting the full potential of Micromobility: escaping a “catch 22” situation

#micromobility                #sustainable_mobility

Strong private appeal, possible public benefits

Micromobilty has grown spectacularly in many cities of the world, especially since the options of shared bikes and e-scooters have been added to the traditional options of walking or using your own bike. E-scooters have attracted a large number of new users, even in cities where their price is well above that of the shared bikes, suggesting that they are favoured by different segments of society.

The introduction of e-bikes in some shared bike systems has proved to be very popular and could be decisive for its use, especially when larger distances and or slopes are involved. With e-scooters physical effort is not an issue.

Modal choices always reflect multiple factors. Considering short urban trips (of say, between 1 and 4 kms or up to 1 hour walking time, which in many cities represent at least 40% of car trips), micromobility solutions will be cheaper and more convenient than a taxi, ride-hailing, or driving and parking your own car (except if you have free parking at destination), more convenient and faster than public transport and much faster than walking. But still quite more expensive for regular use than public transport, unless a price packaging solution (monthly pass or similar) is available also for the micromobility option.

And, while micromobility can easily replace a significant part of public transport trips, it can also be decisive for its adoption in many other trips, as it provides the necessary first/last mile connection between stations and the real origins and destinations of those trips.

At the same time, there can be very significant benefits for society from adoption of these new mobility options to the extent they replace car trips, because of their very positive impact on pollution, congestion and emissions, and even public health. And they can also provide a general improvement of access, particularly in areas not so well served by public transport.

Adequate public space allocation essential for safety

To safely drive the vehicles in any of these modes a minimum of movement coordination skills is needed, but that is no problem for a large part of the population. The real safety issues are in the joint use of street space with pedestrians and or with road vehicles. This is the main reason why some countries have been (or still are) reluctant to allow their operation in public space.

But experience from many cities is very clear: when a good, segregated bicycle lane is available, people on bikes and e-scooters will happily use them. But when that lane does not exist or is not perceived as safe, two things happen: the number of riders is much lower (by abdication of those who don’t want to ride alongside cars) and some riders will use the sidewalk (for fear of sharing the road space with cars).

 Even if they recognize the benefits, authorities face the problem of finding the public space needed to provide micromobility users with safe operating conditions. Adequate space is required not only for their displacement but also for their parking.

While it is obvious that for docked systems that space is provided by or agreed with the municipality, a similar degree of oversight by the municipality should be exercised for the designation of the legally permitted places of parking in the case of dockless systems: public urban space is scarce and it must be clear for all which sets of users are allowed to use each part of it. Cars are also dockless systems and we all accept than on street parking is only possible in some places (even if many).

Meanwhile, most operators are apparently not making an operational profit, but this does not seem to worry investors, who continue to throw money into these companies, possibly in the hope (for each of them) of forcing competitors out and then being able to charge higher prices.

Getting the public space needed for wider adoption is a catch-22

But the real challenge for operators and public authorities is how to scale-up adoption of these shared modes, making them a regular component of daily mobility for many citizens, instead of what they mostly are today: a nice-to-have option for an occasional trip. For each current user, this would mean going from 4 or 5 trips a month to 40 or 50, while many more users could be attracted.

This would be a dramatic change for the revenue profile per vehicle (many of those urban trips of less than 4 km are made off-peak). For public authorities this would mean a radical change of modal split of urban trips, with vast, immediate impact on pollution, carbon emissions and congestion. And for those citizens that choose these modes, more efficient mobility.

The barrier to such scale-up seems to be a combination of price, safe operating space and availability, in different combinations in different cities. Overcoming it requires coordinated action from authorities and operator(s).

In many cities there are quite affordable monthly and yearly subscriptions for shared bikes, making them a viable option for daily use, if there is enough supply in terms of number, geographical coverage, and traction (e-bikes having such an advantage in terms of comfortable use) alongside safe operational conditions. Most of these schemes are led by public authorities and significantly subsidized.

Nonsubsidized private operators (of shared bikes and e-scooters) have a different value and pricing proposition, placing their offer mostly as a “feel-good” option for non-daily use. A much stronger market share could be achieved by introducing package deals both for more intensive use of these vehicles and or for integrated use with public transport. Some initial, careful initiatives are visible in these directions. To be effective, this requires a significant investment on additional fleet (and on its repositioning processes).

Whether operations at this larger scale could be profitable or not is not clear, but it seems worthwhile exploring how they could be. Given the largely unregulated nature of this market, multiple business model options are possible.

From the public authority’s point of view this scaling-up implies providing a network of segregated, well-designed two-wheel (2W) lanes and proper conditions at intersections, ensuring citizens that they will enjoy a safe ride from beginning to end of their trip. This is where the problem lies: public space at street level is fully committed, which means that allocating some of it to this use implies taking it away from another use.

The most obvious target for that operation is the space used for kerb parking. In political terms, it is important to distinguish between kerb parking used by residents – especially those who do not have a private parking place – and that used by people travelling to the area, either for work (longer stays) or for other activities (shorter stays).

The part used for residents is the most difficult one to deal with. Significant parts of our cities have apartment buildings without garages, and in many of those areas public transport service is not at a level that makes it easy to live without a car. Many cases of resistance of residents to loss of a few parking spaces are well known.

This political difficulty makes serious development of a network of safe 2W lanes a “catch 22” case: you only get political ammunition to justify a wide, safe network of 2W lanes when there is a high number of micromobility users, but there will only be a high number of micromobility users once this network is available.

Coordinated action is the key!

A way out of this problem could be found through coordinated action by multiple parties: The municipality could start by installing a high-quality standard 2W network in parts of the city where public space for that is more easily available (wider avenues, larger share of dwellings with their own parking). To have a meaningful scale, this should already allow trips of at least 2 km (half-an-hour walking) and include access to one or two mass transit stations.

Micromobility operators would – in parallel – introduce attractive packaging price offers and increase their supply in the area and especially in the immediate vicinity of mass-transit stations serving it. As all these vehicles are georeferenced, special promotional prices in designated areas are quite easily to implement for these services.

This exercise should be monitored with careful, reliable data collection allowing a before and after comparisons. This would allow some design improvements in the same area and especially provide lessons for the next areas of implementation.

And, if adoption rates are good and largely based on transfers from car trips, this could be serving as a demonstration that the statement “build it, and they will come” also applies for micromobility, thus  creating a basis of political legitimacy for a bolder program of building that wide, safe 2W network and promoting use of micromobility as an essential instrument of a clean, efficient and fair urban mobility. Carefully designed subsidization schemes could be justifiable.

Both for municipalities and micromobility operators this means coming out of their comfort zone, but it certainly seems that it’s worth a try!