Session 3
Room: Melbourne
Session title: Electric Scooters Workshop
Format: Workshop/Discussion
Presenter name: Karen Roache, City of Port Phillip
Contact: karen.roache@portphillip.vic.gov.au
Note taker: Vincent Ng
Summary:
This session explored the two key questions: What will make an e-scooter trial a success and what can we learn from other shared mobility initiatives?
The first half of the station discussed what “success” looks like. Participants had a range of definitions on how they would define success of a car. The most popular response by general consensus was the need to re-claim roads from cars, and transition into more sustainable alternatives. The issue of changing perceptions and introducing a relatively new mode to the public was discussed, along with other similar implementations in the past (Uber, O-Bike, etc). The later half of the discussion examined the issues around health and safety. Are e-scooters a form of active transport? What are they replacing? 32% of the journeys are last mile car trips, but what else? Are there lessons to be learned from docking models that ensure maintenance and minimise discarded vehicles? One of the points raised was that scooter companies are incentivised to keep regular daily use of the vehicles and they already redistributing and picking them on on a daily basis. They are much easier to load and consolidate than bikes and the companies that are aligning with new regulations are also putting many more staff on the ground to service compared to Mobike's 1/2000 bikes model. Pricing models, however, are very different from bike share and are typically $4-5/ trip for last mile. At the same time there are opportunities to incentives and reward good behaviour such as station to station trips. One final takeaway is that Victoria needs a regional strategic and legislative approach though and can learn from NSW, Western Australia, and South Australia as mobility on a wider scale has more implications for jurisdiction than local council mandate.