Electric Scooter Ban Increased Congestion In Atlanta By 10%, Study Finds (electrek.co) 68
A study published last week in the scientific journal Nature Energy studied the effects of traffic and travel time in a city when micromobility options like electric scooters and e-bikes are banned. The results documented exactly how much traffic increased as a result of people switching back to personal cars instead of smaller, more urban-appropriate vehicles. Electrek reports: The study, titled "Impacts of micromobility on car displacement with evidence from a natural experiment and geofencing policy," was performed using data collected in Atlanta. The study was made possible due to the city's sudden ban on shared micromobility devices at night. That ban provided a unique opportunity to compare traffic levels and travel times before and after the policy change. The ban occurred on August 9, 2019, and restricted use of shared e-bikes and e-scooters in the city between the hours of 9 p.m. and 4 a.m. The study's authors used high-resolution data from June 25, 2019, to September 22, 2019, from Uber Movement to measure changes in evening travel times before and after the policy implementation. That created a window of analysis of 45 days with and without shared e-bike and e-scooter use at night.
The study found that on average, travel times for car trips in Atlanta during evening hours increased between 9.9-10.7% immediately following the ban on shared micromobility. For an average commuter in Atlanta, that translated to an extra 2-5 minutes per evening trip. The authors also concluded that the impact on commute times would likely be higher in other cities across the country. According the study, "based on the estimated US average commute time of 27.6 minutes in 2019, the results from our natural experiment imply a 17.4% increase in travel time nationally."
The study went on to consider the economic impact of that added congestion and increased travel time. [...] The economic impact on the city of Atlanta was calculated at US $4.9 million. The study estimated this impact on the national level could be in the range of US $408M to $573 million. Interestingly, the entirety of the study's data comes from before the COVID-19 pandemic, which played a major role in promoting the use of shared micromobility. A similar study performed today could find an even greater impact on congestion, travel times, and economic impact on cities.
The study found that on average, travel times for car trips in Atlanta during evening hours increased between 9.9-10.7% immediately following the ban on shared micromobility. For an average commuter in Atlanta, that translated to an extra 2-5 minutes per evening trip. The authors also concluded that the impact on commute times would likely be higher in other cities across the country. According the study, "based on the estimated US average commute time of 27.6 minutes in 2019, the results from our natural experiment imply a 17.4% increase in travel time nationally."
The study went on to consider the economic impact of that added congestion and increased travel time. [...] The economic impact on the city of Atlanta was calculated at US $4.9 million. The study estimated this impact on the national level could be in the range of US $408M to $573 million. Interestingly, the entirety of the study's data comes from before the COVID-19 pandemic, which played a major role in promoting the use of shared micromobility. A similar study performed today could find an even greater impact on congestion, travel times, and economic impact on cities.
Here's an idea (Score:4, Funny)
Continue the ban on electric scooters and e-bikes. But allow a certain percentage of cars to drive on the sidewalks. Congestion problem solved!
Re:Here's an idea (Score:5, Funny)
A certain percentage of cars already do drive on the sidewalks!
Re: (Score:1)
Re: Here's an idea (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
No, all it will do is fill up the sidewalks with cars as people switch from transit or carpooling to driving and then congestion will be worse [wired.com] than before.
It's like that cartoon: "Can't wait for the road to be widened!" "Finally!" [twitter.com]
If you want to reduce congestion, then convert one lane in each direction into a bus lane so buses don't get caught in traffic. When buses are faster than driving, people will use them [youtu.be], thereby freeing up road space [danielbowen.com], and this reduces traffic congestion [wikipedia.org].
Re: (Score:2)
Buses will never be faster than driving. There's this thing called induced demand whereby the increase in supply of bus lanes results in an increase in bus traffic*. Bus lanes do provide one benefit: By confining buses to their own lanes, they block each other instead of messing up general traffic flow.
*Ever seen an empty car driving down the road? Me neither. But buses frequently drive routes with no riders. Because of the political pressure to provide high frequency schedules so nobody has to wait long f
Re: (Score:2)
Ever seen a road that is NOT mostly empty most of the time? Me neither. The most congested roads that I know of here in the USA only move about 30-35% of their design capacity each day. So our roads have a LOT of spare capacity that isn't efficiently utilized.
Those are on routes without dedicated bus lanes, right?
Re: (Score:2)
So our roads have a LOT of spare capacity that isn't efficiently utilized.
If only we had socialism. And a system of travel permits which assigned everyone a specific time to use transportation resources. We could approach 100% efficiency. We'll check your social credit score and see whether you will be allowed to take a trip for your vacation. Sorry, those scenic places in the country are reserved for the dachas of the party elite.
Sounds good to me (Score:3)
An extra 2-5 of traffic to have sidewalks not littered with scooters, and being able to walk down the sidewalk without getting hit by a scooter sounds good to me.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
That depends on all sorts of things. I've seen both work. In countries like the Netherlands where cars are trained to be careful of cyclists, scooters could happily be treated as the same thing and go on roads. In other countries where cars are unskilled and/or aggressive but people aren't generally aggressive and scooter drivers behave okay, going on pavements seems to work fine. What seems to work best is lots of physically separated bike lanes together with the sidewalk but overall there's no getting awa
Re:Sounds good to me (Score:4, Interesting)
Short version: The problem is the percentage of assholes where you live.
If you're in here ranting about scooters or cars then you live in a high-asshole-density area and it includes you.
Re: (Score:2)
Short version: The problem is the percentage of assholes where you live.
If you're in here ranting about scooters or cars then you live in a high-asshole-density area and it includes you.
Takes one to know one I guess....
Re: (Score:2)
False. Everyone is an arsehole when they are inconvenienced. If you live in a city where you think someone isn't an arsehole then it's because the city is planned in a way that the person isn't inconvenienced.
Precisely no city in the world has places where people happily accept inconvenience. The GP mentioned The Netherlands. It's a wonderful country where drivers are insanely courteous to cyclists. They do after all not hold them up at all with the overwhelming majority of bike infrastructure protected, se
Re: (Score:2)
Short version: The problem is the percentage of assholes where you live.
If you're in here ranting about scooters or cars then you live in a high-asshole-density area and it includes you.
I mean...no?
I don't ride the scooters because they're way too fast for narrow-ass sidewalks and no good place to park them. As far as "high-asshole-density area", welcome to America.
Re: (Score:2)
Short version: The problem is the percentage of assholes where you live.
Sounds bad for the red states.
Re: (Score:2)
but overall there's no getting away from the fact that the attitude of car drivers is the biggest problem overall.
False. Attitudes are related to how much people piss each other off. The reasons cars in the Netherlands aren't agressive to cyclists is because largely they do not interact with each other with dedicated cycling lanes meaning that cyclists do not hold up traffic. Also many car users are cyclists too.
But that is not universal. Want to see the inner Dutch arsehole get released, go walk on a cycle path and see what these lovely friendly peaceful people think of you. I've seen people get into bar fights friend
Re: (Score:1)
Roads are for cars, sidewalks are for commies, escooters are for foreigners and have no place here.
Small electric vehicles are game changing in terms of traffic and mobility and can now be seen to have a substantial impact on traffic levels. The sane thing is to figure out where some space can be carved out of car and pedestrian spaces, segregated from both in order to support this.
But it would never happen without people pushing against legislation which didn't reconfigure a form of transport that didn't e
Re: (Score:2)
Escooters are vehicles and belong on the road, just as bicycles do.
The fact is that they create less of an impediment to traffic than a like number of cars would, regardless of how much it might infuriate you to be behind one.
Ideally, of course, they can both be relegated to a bicycle lane.
Re: (Score:3)
There are a number of towns in Europe that successfully implement a requirement to park your scooter in a painted box when in the centre of town. That solves the blocked sidewalk problem in places where it was really bad. The scooter rental companies even enforce that in their apps.
Re: (Score:2)
Better option. Remove a car lane and add a dedicated mobility lane. Everyone wins. People don't need to be stuck in cars (it's quite clear that people had a preference for scooters by this data), these mobility devices will become more pleasant to use and thus use will increase even more, and safety is improved for all users.
Yeah I know though, this is America land of guns, Jesus and diesel.
coincidence (Score:1)
Re:coincidence (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
I've got a different concern: The traffic was from 9pm to 4am. How representative of traffic daytime traffic patterns is traffic at 1am? If I'm reading their somewhat vague description of what they were using for data it was 500 trips a day in a city with a population of 0.5M, so one in a thousand people, for trips taken at weird hours where you wouldn't normally find people on the road.
If this was a medical study, it'd be one of those ones that has "in mice" attached to the end of it.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
In the fourth paragraph of the article:
The study’s authors used high-resolution data from June 25, 2019, to September 22, 2019
And in the last paragraph of the article:
the entirety of the study’s data comes from before the COVID-19 pandemic
So no actually, it couldn't possibly have anything to do with the return to work. The thing that is really more intriguing though is that people were using micromobility options for distances long enough to have an impact on commute times. I would have thought
Re: (Score:2)
I live in Atlanta... (Score:2, Insightful)
The traffic is trivial between 9pm and 4am anyway...
Re: (Score:3)
The traffic is trivial between 9pm and 4am anyway...
Sounds likely. In order to make an informed comparison I'd also like to know the travel time difference between the peak of rush hour and, say, 3am.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: I live in Atlanta... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
bAN cARS!!!
Re: (Score:1)
Could the young ageist assholes kill themselves so we don't have biggots with no experience fucking things up? Auto culture made the world smaller so people could see beyond their own little world. You would have us return to days where people don't travel more than 20km and there was a different language every 100km. What the world doesn't need is enforced environazi isolation mandates. Get your momma to ride a bicycle to the next city spandex warrior. Every bicyclist hit by a car is usually their own fau
Re: (Score:2)
I am an old guy and approve of this message ^
Re: Old people in government (Score:2)
I wholeheartedly agree. Cars are so last century. I use an e-scooter to get about unless it is a long journey or bad weather, in which case I get my mom to drive me there, or I borrow my daddy's pickup.
Congestion from 9 pm to 4 am? (Score:4, Insightful)
I live in Houston, a city well-known for congestion and long commutes, a city significantly bigger than Atlanta. There is no traffic congestion from 9 pm to 4 am in Houston. Why would there be in Atlanta, and how would an e-bike ban from 9 pm to 4 am affect commute times?
And, "after 9 pm" isn't called "evening" it's "night." So how exactly would e-bike bans at night, affect travel times in the evening?
Re: (Score:2)
Just because Houston rolls up its sidewalks at 9pm doesn't mean every big city does the same.
Yeah, that. That's not how Houston does it! Well, Houston is a shithole.
Re: (Score:2)
The data is from Uber. If enough Uber food deliveries was done by scooter and then switched to cars I'd expect to see this effect.
Re: (Score:2)
My point is, *what* congestion is there to start with at that late hour? Even if there was a slight increase in trip times after the law changed, so what? Did that make a practical difference? And what about a control group? The article even mentioned the timing coinciding with the start of sports activities. Perhaps that was the real culprit.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not disagreeing with you. I don't see how there could be any "congestion". My point was that if you tracked food deliverers that rent scooters (which they do around here) that go straight to the adress and they replaced those with cars which have to look for a place to park, then you'd get data that shows more time per distance which is how they defined "congestion". I believe all your points are valid concerns.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't know about houston.
Re: (Score:2)
So you're saying that the night life is so "vibrant" that it causes literal traffic congestion at night? Wow!
Re: (Score:2)
sorry your city is so dead and boring.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not really a nightlife kind of guy, but I've been to enough downtown concerts and ball games to know that congestion from those events is highly localized and spans only a short period of time, just after the event ends. So basically, I don't believe you.
For those who do like the night life and other entertainment options, Houston has plenty going for it. Its theater district is second only to Broadway in terms of theater seats. It has numerous pro sports franchises and multiple downtown universities. H
Re: (Score:2)
So basically, I don't believe you.
So basically, I believe you.... are an asshole
you are pontificating about a scene you aren't a part of, in a city you don't live near
Feel free to drive around midtown atlanta or buckhead on a night where this is a big event, as the bars, start to close, and tell me how wrong I am
houston has plenty going for it
maybe it does, you can love your dead downtown all you want. The issue is you are making proclamations about things you've never experienced, in a town you don't live in, and calling the folks who have experienced them, and the
useless study, needs update (Score:3)
It's important to know, to have facts to guide planners and citizens.
Google has some relevant data from their traffic analysis. Ebike/scooter renting companies have their stats. Traffic cams have useful data. Some cities have relevant, current, daytime stats that can immediately inform us all about the value and adoption of micromobility devices. Why is this ancient, useless study still festering?
A cost/benefit study of these devices should be easy to produce. I'll add that many cities are redesigning infrastructure to make such modes of transportation safe and practical. This is controversial because it usually inconveniences auto drivers and sometimes roadside businesses. In my city, many deaths have occurred due to inattentive auto drivers and users of scooters/ebikes/bikes. Safety has to be part of the equation.
I'll go out on a limb and predict that every major city will eventually outlaw/restrict private vehicles downtown. There will be a place to park your 2 ton vehicle and rent a smaller device or a rideshare to go into the city.
Re: useless study, needs update (Score:4, Interesting)
Data from before change? (Score:3)
Presumably the downside of small personal mobility devices is safety so a comparison of accident rates to see if that is a valid concern would be interesting
Re: (Score:2)
Dedicated bike lanes (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
I suspect you're about to be deluged by naysayers who will cite examples from there cities where a couple of streets have been modified like this and the cycling lane remains unused.
One important thing to remember above all is that cycling lanes need first and foremost *to get you where you want to go*. Upgrading a few streets here and there doesn't make cycling to work safer if you have an incredibly risky trip to get to that bike lane, and an incredibly risky trip afterwards.
This may come as a shock to so
Re: (Score:2)
...cities where a couple of streets have been modified like this and the cycling lane remains unused.
That may have been the case 20 years ago. City planners have since learnt their lessons & the networks are continuous, comprehensive, well protected from cars, & heavily used now. Also, mopeds (Vespa, Lambretta, etc.) are losing their popularity because you have to park them in the street & there are well-organised criminal gangs that steal them. eScooters, on the other hand, that you can easily take to the relative security of indoors, have now become the individual transit of choice.
Re: (Score:2)
City planners have since learnt their lessons & the networks are continuous, comprehensive, well protected from cars, & heavily used now.
Precisely *which* city planners and *which* networks are you talking about. I can show you the full range between Copenhagen and cities that ask "WTF is a bicycle and why should it get a lane".
"City planners" are not a homogenous group. Some are good at what they do, others not. Some are good but are overruled by mayors who have conservative voters. The vast majority of the cities in the world do *NOT* have continuous or comprehensive cycling infrastructure. Much less protected from cars. Tearing up a car l
The problem with scooters... (Score:2)
But really scooters are just a shitty solution to an endemic problem in US cities - sprawl, lack of amenities, lack of public transport, lack of pedestrian / cycle paths and lack of focal points (offices, bars, restaurants, supermarkets) to point th
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
More than a few people can't ride to anywhere without a place to lock up bikes in the USA, because they will be stolen immediately. People are stealing even shitty bikes, I certainly can't take my good one anywhere. I have a shitty bike just for this reason (and so I don't have to take off my dirt tires) but that still sucks. And I've got to take my pump and my little toolkit with me when I go inside if they don't have lockers, or I have to pay to use a locker.
How about instead, we get decent public transpo
Last Mile Problem (Score:2)
Here lots of people are getting ebikes. People in more congested areas use more rental scooters. The problem is: California doesn't care if you you get hit by a car. Every day, there are lots of people who are killed by motorists: pedestrians, cyclists, sco
Right (Score:2)
Buses Not Scooters (Score:2)
Adding a reliable mass transit system composed of trams, trains, subways, and buses with wait times in the five to ten minute range is a vastly superior system. Those e-scooters are relatively expensive to use, ironically carbon intense, and require workers to go around redistributing the abandoned scooters to keep the whole system from breaking down. What's more, none of those systems are actually economically viable. They're all supported by massive infusions of investor capital. None of them actually tur
Forget the roads and hit the water :) (Score:1)