The presence of e-bikes popularizes biking infrastructure in cities.
Cycling infra suffers from a catch 22: if there isn't any, people won't purchase bikes and thus won't bike. If people don't bike, cycling infrastructure isn't in demand.
Shared e-bikes lower the barrier of entry to cycling and thus people push their cities to invest in cycling infrastructure. Which increases cycling as a whole.
E-scooters are horrible but i suspect they have a similar positive effect long term.
Course correction on decades of car dependency may require over-correction in certain cities. E-scooters are likely that.
Here in Brussels, the sudden popularity of e-scooters caused a few e-bike startups to appear and get funding. The e-scooter boom faded but e-bikes gained as a result, and demand for cycling infrastructure is way up. Now the city is seriously pedestrianizing everything, which would not have happened had there not been these low barrier of entry alternatives (public transportation is very mediocre).
I mean that's nice and all but when I'm going anywhere in San Francisco it's walk if it's close enough, too far then scoot/lyft bikes, rain/massive hills then Uber. A personally owned one just isn't an option for the vast majority of my travel since I can't safely lock it indoors at most of my destination. It wouldn't last a month with me locking it outside.
Shared e-bikes and e-scooters are some of the most environmentally friendly transportation options in existence; they cause something like orders of magnitude lower emissions than personal automobiles. Framing them as "worse for the environment" by using a dubious baseline, really isn't productive
The nice thing about shared ebikes is that they don't get stolen.
The not so nice thing is that they're unreliable. I can't plan to meet someone at 4:30 pm and plan using a shared ebike to get there. The bike is likely going to be unavailable and I would be late.
To sum up: shared e-bikes had higher rates of replacing walking and public transport than personal e-bikes which had higher rate of replacing cars
> Substitution patterns reveal that ... shared e-scooters and e-bikes emit more CO2 than the transport modes they replace.
What? "Shared e-bike" for me typically replaces "car"
It's early days. This study is a snapshot that doesn't take into account the impact of expanded infrastructure for e-bikes and e-scooters. It will take time to assess of the aggregate impact of more mobility options and adoption of personal vehicles resulting from exposure to shared vehicles.
For example, one element that's sorely lacking for personal ebikes is widespread security. As things stand now, parking them anywhere in public regularly is a nonstarter due to high value and ease of theft. When a critical mass of personal ebikes makes secured parking services viable, then we have a positive feedback loop that encourages more people to use them.
Agree that e-bikes probably are better than no e-bikes because most people won't actually buy their own e-bike anyways.
Another piece not really discussed: shared e-bikes are a gateway drug for buying your own e-bike. You discover the freedom to move about a city without showing up sweaty and it's wonderful. Additionally, more people on 2-wheels / scooters = more support for cycling infrastructure = more cycling!
This type of research is great, but man the headlines suck and are clickbait-y.
> Substitution patterns reveal that personal e-scooters and e-bikes emit less CO2 than the transport modes they replace, while shared e-scooters and e-bikes emit more CO2 than the transport modes they replace
This doesn't say what the title says. Surely this basically lies in what they've determined to be the transport modes being replaced rather than the bikes or scooters themselves.
Makes sense. You could own an ebike or scooter for years, but the shared ones have a much shorter lifespan, sometimes as little as a few days or a week. Vandals, people riding 2 to a scooter, etc.
Off-topic and rant-y:
I hate these goddamn scooters. I swear at peak hour in the city center where I am, where there are heaps of people walking down the street, these stupid goddamn fucking scooters are parked one after the other making the footpath at least 40% smaller. It's so infuriating having to walk around these goddamn things, avoid fucking tripping over them because they're so badly placed.
I just want to get from point A to my bus stop. Is that too much to ask?
Sure, but how much better are they for the environment than owned cars? Shared buses?
I'm not particularly convinced by the figure in 5.2. While the personal automobile costs may be accurate per average mile, it's not clear to me if it is accurate per short-trip mile.
The paper assigns 0 to walking…I’m sure that if you account CO2 emissions for raising cows, e-bikes are more CO2 efficient than walking.
I DO NOT miss that silly orange ride share bike. The singular benefit of COVID was getting rid of JUMP bikes. No more of those garbage bikes in the river or abandoned in the bike path, halfway disassembled JUMPs sitting around. Terrible idea.
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