Words by Iqbal Ahmed, Senior Policy Manager at Dott

Electric scooters are currently being trialled by DfT in cities across England, including London, Liverpool and with combined authorities, including Bristol, in the west of England. 

Dott has just completed the first phase of the London trial, which had incredibly strong safety outcomes across operators. Around 10 boroughs are participating, helping to understand if and how scooters could be introduced into London in a safe and sustainable way. 

Now we're starting phase two, which is going to further investigate safety, see whether we’re driving modal shift for the sustainability benefits and look at some of the underlying economic numbers. We've proven that we can grow ridership and do it safely: now it's about trying to drive mass adoption. 

Is legislation forthcoming?

These trials are meant to be feeding into future parliamentary legislation to legalise private and shared scooters. However, that legislation, the Future Transport bill, has been delayed numerous times and it's debatable if the bill will be passed in this Parliament. Meanwhile, it's hard for us to invest in our services and workforce if we're not sure if we'll be here after the trial. 

The recent vote in Paris to ban scooters is unfortunate, but it’s an outlier: other major cities, including London, are extending the contracts they have. 

The feedback from customers has been very positive. Dockless shared mobility – when done responsibly, alongside a good parking network and with strong safety standards – can drive a lot of benefits. In London you can see that bikes and scooters are very popular, so if you give people the option, they will want to use them. 

Parking for e-scooters

In London, the scooter trial is fully bay-based, so every trip needs to start and end in a parking bay. If it doesn't, the user receives a fine, a warning, or possibly a ban, but we are quite strict about the mandatory parking around scooters in London. Across the trial, there's been a compliance of 95-98% of all trips ending responsibly in a bay. 

What we also find is that means a scooter's usability is tied to the amount of available parking: you need dense parking to make the service useful. We want to provide a useful and safe service, but it's about parking density and that’s one thing we need to push in the next phase. There's a strong correlation between ridership and responsible parking, and parking density. The last thing you want is someone to get on a vehicle, ride to where they want to go and find there's no parking around. It's incumbent on operators, participating boroughs and TfL to work together and build that network: if we do, it's also a way to drive modal shift.

Scooters are just filling another niche in the network, between car clubs, bike sharing and the Tube. It’s about taking the private car and trying to break it into constituent parts, trying to offer as many form factors as you can. 

Scooters are not a silver bullet, but they are an important tool for cities to leverage in a future mobility landscape.

Iqbal Ahmed was in conversation with Craig Thomas