Organisation: Department for Transport
Date of Publication: December 2022
Uploaded to Knowledge Centre: 11 January 2023
The DfT’s evaluation into the ongoing trials of rental e-scooters has concluded that they could provide a real alternative to other modes of transport, including cars.
Rental e-scooter trials were launched in July 2020 in 32 areas across England. It is estimated that by December 2021, 14.5 million trips had been made by users.
The evaluation, carried out by Arup, NatCen and Valtech, examined how and why rental e-scooters are used, and by whom, as well as safety, mode shift, environmental and wider social impacts.
The evaluation finds evidence to suggest that as the trials have become more mature, users are seeing e-scooters less as a novelty and more as a convenient mode of transport that they could use to get to specific destinations.
This is reflected by the fact that the proportion of users shifting from private motor vehicles to e-scooters has been increasing over time, while mode shift from active modes has been decreasing.
Therefore, the report concludes that rental e-scooters ‘can serve as a valuable mode of transport’, which has been welcomed by the DfT.
The evaluation also brings into focus the safety record of rental e-scooters.
Data highlighted in the report indicates that the frequency of rental e-scooter collisions was higher during 2021 than for pedal cycles (including bicycles and e-bikes), though this was ‘likely to be driven in part by the novel nature of the mode’.
It is also noted that findings show collisions were more likely to occur among less experienced users, ‘making it difficult to make like-for-like comparisons with more established modes’.
While the frequency of rental e-scooter collisions was higher than for pedal cycles, the types of injuries reported by rental e-scooter users appeared broadly similar to the types of injuries reported by cyclists.
Elsewhere in the report, e-scooter and other road users raised concerns around technical elements of the e-scooter design such as e-scooter audibility, visibility and acceleration.
Some members of the public also had issues surrounding the behaviour displayed by riders, with pavement riding causing particular concern among pedestrians with mobility issues and blind or partially sighted individuals.
The DfT has pledged to incorporate the conclusions from the evaluation into future policy development.
Click here to read the full report: