Pilot ending: Calgarians’ input wanted to help inform the future of shared e-Scooters

The two-year shared e-Scooter pilot is set to end in late October, 2020. Currently, The City of Calgary is looking for feedback on the pilot to help inform the future of shared e-Scooters in Calgary. Areas of focus for the online survey include opinions on fleet size, where to ride, user behaviour, shared e-Scooter operators and reasons for using or not using a shared e-Scooter to travel.

“We have made a number of changes to the pilot in response to citizen feedback on last year’s survey. With the shared e-Scooter pilot ending soon, we need Calgarians' feedback to help inform decisions about the future of e-Scooters in Calgary,” says Andrew Sedor, Transportation Planning Strategist with The City of Calgary.

“Survey feedback will be one of the important data sets analyzed alongside e-scooter GPS data, a medical study done in collaboration with the University of Calgary Cumming School of Medicine, information from other jurisdictions, and other citizen feedback like 311s,” says Sedor.

The data and survey feedback provided by Calgarians will be summarized into a What We Heard report that will be posted online in late 2020. The report will be submitted as part of a presentation to the Standing Policy Committee on Transportation & Transit on Dec. 16, 2020 to help inform what the future will look like for shared e-Scooters in Calgary.

The online survey, which targets both those who have and have not used the shared e-Scooters, is now live and Calgarians can participate until Oct. 7, 2020.

More than 1.7 million rides on shared e-Scooters and e-Bikes were taken since the pilot started in October of 2018. There are currently three private sector e-Scooter operators in Calgary – Lime, Bird Canada and Roll, and approximately 2,500 shared e-Scooters.

“We are analyzing the GPS data on shared e-Scooters, but that data can only tell us where and how often people are riding. The survey helps inform us on why people are making those trips, and what users and non-users have experienced throughout the pilot” says Sedor.

Calgarians can access the survey by navigating to engage.calgary.ca/scootershare.

Background 

In July, 2019, The City of Calgary launched the shared e-Scooter pilot to last until October, 2020. For the pilot, The City allowed third-party operators with a set number of shared e-Scooters, to access city sidewalks, exclusive bicycle lanes and parks and pathways through a permit to operate within Calgary. The City provides the framework, but the pilot is fully funded and operated by private sector companies.

The City conducted the first public survey in September, 2019 and used the feedback to make changes to help address issues in 2020, such as low speed zones, share and go parking zones, and new fines.

Calgary’s shared e-Scooter and e-Bike pilot by numbers:

Number of permitted operators: 3 (Bird Canada, Lime and Roll)

Number of e-scooters in Calgary now: 2,500

Number of trips recorded since start of the pilot in October 2018 –e-Bike (168,000) and e-Scooter (1,532,000): Total 1,700,000 rides

Number of kilometres travelled: 2,263,481 km

Amount of time spent on e-Scooters and e-Bikes: 22 million minutes (that’s 42 years of riding)

Average trip length: 1.6 km

Median trip duration: 14 minutes

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