Do the Costs of E-Scooters Outweigh Their Benefits?

In the last several years, micro-mobility options have become a hot new trend in US cities and across the globe. According to a 2018 study by the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO), Americans took roughly 84 million trips using shared micro-mobility options – more than double the number of trips taken in 2017. Virtually all the growth came from electric scooters (e-scooters). Micro-mobility ride-share programs offer a sustainable solution to last-mile transportation problems found in many major cities – the subway might get you close to your destination, but the last few blocks are still too far to walk. Often, however, the rapid growth of these programs occurs without any collaboration from local governments. Without proper time and planning, this new method of transit leaves municipalities responding to unforeseen complications. 

The e-scooter industry has ballooned in a very short period of time, mostly due to the emergence of companies like Bird and Lime investing in several major cities across the US. San Diego, Austin, Washington DC, and St. Louis are just some of the cities where you can find scooters on the sidewalk. Proponents of e-scooters argue that their presence in a city has multiple direct and indirect benefits. 

First, the obvious argument for e-scooters is the reduction of emissions. Over a third of car trips in the US are under two miles. According to the EPA, taking cars off the roads for short trips like this could result in a reduction of well over 2 million metric tons of CO₂ emissions per year – that would be like taking 400,000 cars off the road. Fewer emissions can improve a city’s air quality, which is an increasingly pressing public health concern. US drivers would be spending less money on gas too, saving nearly $600 million in fuel costs – more if you include car maintenance, new tires, and road repair.

Removing cars from city streets has other, indirect benefits. Fewer cars on the street means less traffic and congestion. Other means of public transport, like city buses, will become more efficient as they have less competition for the road. By competing directly for passengers, people will be less likely to use ride-share programs like Uber and Lyft. All of this points in the same direction: the more private cars on the street actually decreases the mobility of all forms of transport. Safety is another important concern – 6,000 pedestrians were killed by cars in 2018. Removing cars from the road curbs the risk posed to pedestrians. 

Unlike most bike share programs, e-scooters aren’t don’t have centralized docks stationed throughout a city – users are able to leave their e-scooter on the sidewalk when they’ve completed their trip. Louis Pappas, the senior manager of Transportation and Mobility Policy at Bird, sees this as an advantage. He says by eliminating dock-stations, e-scooters are removing barriers to transportation often faced by underserved communities. In an interview with Metro Magazine, Pappas said “Dockless mobility options like Bird are used by a more diverse population than docked bike-share before them, bringing new communities and new parts of cities into active transportation.” 

Among city governments and sidewalk users, however, opinions are mixed. After thousands of e-scooters appeared on the streets of San Francisco in March of 2019, the city bristled at the problems they created. Because the e-scooters were dockless and the city infrastructure had no established parking, users left them lying scattered on the sidewalk, blocking bike racks and entrances to building, and posing a particular threat to the elderly and disabled. When in use, the e-scooters – which can go as fast as 25 miles-per-hour – became a hazard on overcrowded streets. Pedestrians reported being “afraid to go for a walk.” E-scooters aren’t merely a nuisance, but actually pose a legitimate threat to public health. After their debut, patients started flooding into the emergency room, where doctors were shocked by the severity of some of their injuries, many caused by falling or cashing into things without wearing a helmet. Others were the product of the e-scooter’s battery catching fire or the baseboard splitting in half while in use. 

San Francisco issued a temporary ban on e-scooters after a few months in order to get a grip on the newfound transit problems they caused. They’re coming back to the city this October, after the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) established new regulations and collaborated with private companies to ensure a smooth rollout. Jump, Lime, Scoot, and Spin will all be allowed to rent 1,000 e-scooters each – a number which could increase if the companies comply with regulations. The companies are experimenting with new solutions to address the problems. Geo-fencing, technology which would prevent e-scooters from working outside a designated area, could keep them off the sidewalks. Companies may now charge users until the e-scooter is properly parked in designated areas established by the city. 

Like San Francisco, other cities face similar problems and are struggling with the proper response. We’ll be able to see if San Francisco’s reforms are successful at curbing the negative effects of e-scooters in a few months, and it could be a model for how to safely integrate this new form of travel into a city’s transit program. The root problem, however, remains. As e-scooter companies aggressively spread throughout the US, our cities are put in a reactionary position. Going forward, e-scooter companies and city governments need to preemptively collaborate to ensure a smooth rollout. If this can be done, e-scooters have the potential to revolutionize the way we travel inside cities.