The Micro-Mobility Debacle.
To the delight of some, and the displeasure of others, micro-mobility solutions have taken up residence on sidewalks in cities around the globe. They’ve proven to be a major point of contention for municipalities like Seattle, leading our moderator Devin Liddell to ask, “Are scooters the heroes, or are they villains?”
Hopkins chimes in to debunk some false assumptions.
“So the myth is, it's just rich hipsters in Brooklyn that are riding scooters. However, our data shows that in Portland, 15% of our ridership makes less than $25k a year per household. Yes, there are stereotypical riders. But there are also people who have two jobs and four kids that frequently ride as well.
“Others demographics, such as people of color, are overrepresented amongst our ridership. Women ride scooters more than they ride bikes, percentage-wise. And 20% of our riders say their last trip was connected to public transit. It’s quite diverse.”
Kelly Rula makes a case for sharing this data in order to properly prepare and inform both governments, their cities, and consumers for new incoming mobility solutions.
"In the past, we retroactively responded to this new tech. This time we want to step back and say, ‘Hey everybody, we want to hear from you before we show you something that's already been rolled out.’"
“I think we're doing some really interesting things in the micro-mobility space and in the new mobility services space in terms of cities; for example public/private partnerships around data. Everyone uses this example, but it's a great one, the ridesharing example: They came into the market, cities weren't ready, municipalities weren’t ready, and they didn't get ahead of the data sharing, or what that should look like in order to really understand, and therefore build, good policy and regulate these new services.
“That's what we're doing with the scooter pilot; we're kicking off a big public engagement process, taking it slow, and really trying to take everything to heart. Unfortunately, we didn’t do that with our bike-sharing pilot. We got it out really fast.”
Rula continues on to shares the approach taken by the Seattle Department of Transportation to correct some of the chaos brought about by the introduction of bikes by deploying scooters in Seattle with careful consideration of their impact on urban riders,
“In the past, we retroactively responded to this new tech. This time we want to step back and say, ‘Hey everybody, we want to hear from you before we show you something that's already been rolled out.’"