Takeaways from Paris and LA • TechCrunch

Shared electric scooters emerged five years ago with a promising vision of shifting people from cars to green transportation. But despite billions of dollars in VC funding and a lot of hype, the future promised by micromobility companies has yet to fully arrive.

In a city like Paris, few people replace car travel with shared electric scooter excursions in a meaningful way. The cost of riding a scooter makes it an expensive option for last-mile transit connections and fair access. Also, the disclosures of Bird and Helbiz have shown profitability to be very difficult to achieve. Moreover, in cities that have allowed e-scooter sharing companies, it is becoming increasingly difficult for scooter companies to operate sustainably.

We need an alternative to cars for traffic flow and carbon emissions. Are shared e-scooters the answer, or just a crappy option? What have we gained by bringing shared micromobility to cities?

We decided to focus on two cities at the forefront of the e-scooter revolution: Los Angeles and Paris. The former has earned a reputation for being a bit freewheeling due to its laissez-faire capitalist regulatory approach that allows multiple operators to compete for rides and spaces. It has some of the toughest regulations in the game, including, and in fact is still considering banning shared e-scooters outright.

David Zipper, a visiting fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Taubman Center for State and Local Government, told TechCrunch: “Paris is densely populated and has a great metro system. Scooters could replace greener transportation. LA is different. doing.”

Despite that apparent hunger, two scooter operators, Lyft and Spin, recently pulled out of the Los Angeles area, citing a lack of favorable regulation and excessive competition. In total, LA still has six operators: Bird, Lime, Veo, Superpedestrian, Wheels (now owned by Helbiz), and newcomer Tuk Tuk.

The fact that both cities – one sprawling, the other dense. One is poorly regulated (such as shared scooter companies) with multiple operators, the other is heavily regulated with few operators. What type of market, if any, is the right one?

Paris: Banned or Not Banned?

If there’s one city where shared e-scooters could thrive, it’s Paris. This city is he one of the most densely populated cities in Europe. Most households do not own a car, and if they do, they rarely use it. And Paris is headed by Mayor Anne Hidalgo, who advocates for regenerating public spaces from roads and vehicles to become a more livable ‘city in 15 minutes’. During his tenure, Hidalgo cleared parking lots, turned streets into walkable areas, and opened new bike lanes.

Still, Paris is in the midst of a possible ban on 15,000 shared electric scooters, with politicians from multiple parties urging Lime, Dott and Tier not to renew contracts that expire in February 2023. Because you’re asking Hidalgo. She will make a decision.There are always and indeed some rumor Floating on what she already has.

Paris is an important market for the e-scooter industry as a whole, but the city is unhappy with the vehicles, citing safety issues, some of which are fatal.

Over the years, Paris has responded to safety concerns with increasingly stringent regulations. Following the deaths of two women riding a scooter near the Seine last summer, Paris introduced a “slow zone” for scooters. A year later, the entire city became a slow zone, limiting the speed of shared electric scooters to just over 6 mph.

Despite these strict regulations, the city is saying goodbye to shared scooters forever.

Shocked. I was appalled. Frustration. These are my feelings when I first heard the news of a possible ban. What if there is an accident? Traffic accidents happen all the time! Boohoo to complaints about sidewalk scooters! So let’s build better bike lanes!

But looking at scattered statistics about how scooters are being used in Paris, it’s possible scooters aren’t delivering the value the city needs: limiting car use.

Lime told TechCrunch that 90% of Paris’ vehicles are in daily use, with scooter trips starting every four seconds in the city. In 2021, over 1.2 million scooter his riders (85% of whom are Parisians) have made a combined 10 million rides across all three operators. Lime estimates it could replace 1.6 million car trips. did itbut did they?

A 2021 study found that e-scooter users in Paris are predominantly male between the ages of 18 and 29, are highly educated and typically hop on their scooters to save travel time. Most of the passengers (72%) who took part in the survey said they had made the transition from walking or using public transport to driving. Another study of French scooter riders found that shared scooters were “more likely to replace walking than other modes of transportation.”

These results are not limited to Paris. A survey of customers registered on five different shared e-scooter apps in Norway in autumn 2021 found that e-scooters will most often replace walking in all situations except night rides. rice field. If the user is male, if the e-scooter is privately owned, and to destinations poorly served by public transport, the e-scooter will replace the car with longer e-scooter trips.

What stands in the way of the ultimate goal of keeping travelers away from cars? Probably most people, at least in Paris, don’t use cars anyway because the city is walkable and public transport is sufficient. Or maybe someone who wants to become a car driver or taxi driver just needs more time to get used to the concept of riding a scooter. Or maybe scooters are just unreliable long-distance transportation.

Fluctuo, an aggregator of shared mobility data, found that the average scooter distance traveled in Paris was 2.67 km in July and 2.53 km in November 2022. It’s a long journey that you don’t want to walk, but it’s too short to drive places like Paris.

Whether scooters get people out of their cars or not, they’re certainly popular in Paris. A September Ipsos poll (thus interpreted as a grain of salt) commissioned by Lime, Dott and Tier found that most Parisians believe that e-scooters are part of the city’s daily It turns out that they agree that they are in line with the city hall’s broader transportation policy. Most of the respondents (68%) said they were satisfied with the number of self-service his scooters on the streets of Paris, but a quarter actually wished for more I answered.

And in response to a potential ban, a recent petition launched by Paris residents gathered more than 19,000 signatures in opposition.

Hannah Landau, communications manager for France and Southern Europe at Lime, told TechCrunch that the ban would make Paris a global anomaly.

“The major cities in the world that have introduced shared e-scooter services have not banned them permanently,” she said. “In fact, the major global trend today is for cities such as London to either update their programs or expand their programs with more vehicles and wider service areas (New York, Chicago, Washington DC, Rome, Madrid, Lyon). is to do.”

Lime, Dot and Tia have proposed a range of measures to Paris City Hall, which they say will address safety concerns and ensure the renewal of scooter licenses next year. Among the proposals is a joint campaign to raise awareness about traffic laws. A great system for using the camera on public roads. Expand the use of scooter ADAS to prevent sidewalk driving. Equip the scooter with a license plate.

Among major cities, Paris may be unique in considering blanket bans, but others, including Stockholm, Tenerife, Spain, Boston University and Fordham University, have recently become more willing to limit scooters. is showing.

– Rebecca Bellan

Los Angeles: Auto City

Let’s add a few more wheels to this discussion. Yes, I’m trying to talk about cars personally. Fasten your seat belt!

Automakers have rewired American cities over the last century. If you ask me, we all suffer because of it. Gasolines, SUVs and trucks notoriously clog LA’s arteries. They pollute the air and cause climate change and health problems alike. plus, once an SUV driver hit me as I stood on the sidewalk innocently searching for a nearby ramen shop. See, you said it was personal!

I mean, as an occasional driver and a resentful pedestrian (the type who yells “I’m walking here!” in a vague New York accent), it’s heartening to watch micromobility operators save the city. It means it hurts. , like Spin, Bolt and Lyft do in his LA.

This is not because I ride a scooter regularly, nor because there is currently a shortage of scooters (one block away from my apartment in downtown LA, on the sidewalks and curb turns). You can find some Limes and Links). I simply want to keep cars in check and rebalance the city around public transport, walking, biking and even scooting. But given recent exits and Bird’s financial woes, what kind of future does scooters and the like have here?

It depends who you ask. At least one of his operators, Lime, says things have never been better in Tinseltown. A spokesperson recently said Los Angeles is the largest American market for limes today.

A spokesperson likened 2022 to a “moment of surprise” that would mark “micromobility taking hold,” while acknowledging LA’s scooter shortcomings, including its vast geography. Lime admits he’s had a decidedly strong year for his local staff, working with city officials, and investing in hardware, but when TechCrunch asked if his LA business is currently profitable. , the company did not respond. Because Lime is a privately held company, it doesn’t offer as much insight as Lyft or Bird.

The Lime experience in LA may be an anomaly. Both Spin and Lyft told TechCrunch they would have to sign new long-term contracts with local governments to get back here. “In a nutshell, the challenge in LA is that it is an open vendor market with no cap on the number of vehicles,” Spin CEO Philip Reinckens said in an email to TechCrunch. I’m here. “This has led to an imbalance in vehicle supply to rider demand as operators oversaturate the market.”

“Long-term arrangements for limited operators will be a prerequisite for considering re-entry,” Reinckens added.

Santa Monica, a coastal city in LA County, seems to have already embarked on this approach. Next year, Santa Monica says it plans to limit the number of permitted scooter operators from four to one or two.

Zoom out: Despite a mixed reputation among cyclists in the LA area, officials have recently shown a willingness to accommodate more than cars. There are several interesting public initiatives underway, including recently announced efforts to promote cycling in South LA, North Hollywood and San Pedro. It’s not a revolution, but it could make cities a little safer for all light transportation, including e-scooters.

Taken together, LA’s free-for-all scooters seem destined for consolidation, allowing them to cover good range with fewer operators. But shared electric scooters are a lot different from Paris, and overall, they don’t seem to be at risk of getting boots.

– Harry Weber