Get ready for the tiny transport revolution

2 August, 2022  By: Ruth Callaghan

However you measure it, our love affair with the car comes at a cost.

Fuel prices have been at record highs, and so has the price of new and second-hand cars. Registration costs have nearly doubled in a decade, and as congestion grows, drivers are spending longer sitting idle in traffic.

And while the pandemic briefly gave Perth road-users a reprieve from gridlock, roads are now back to being choked at peak hour.  

Add in declining public transport use, and it’s no wonder an RAC member survey in late 2021 revealed 75 per cent of Perth residents say congestion is worse in the past 12 months.

But there is a glimmer of hope — and it comes on two wheels (or even one).

Sales of traditional bicycles, electric bikes and e-scooters have all seen significant and sustained rises as people see the benefits of avoiding traffic jams, saving money and often time, lowering their carbon footprint, and still keeping a distance from other commuters.

Known as micromobility, and covering a range of lightweight one-person transport options, it is a trend some urban planners believe could help reshape the way cities operate.

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Tiny transport takes over

The term micromobility is still relatively new — it was coined in 2017 — but its potential has caught on around the world.

Paris is betting on shared bikes and e-scooters to achieve its ambition of becoming a 15-minute city, where everything you need – like shops, cafes, restaurants, your child’s school, your gym – can be accessed within a quarter of an hour by public transport, foot or two wheels from where you live.

New York has seen bike trips jump 50 per cent in the past year, while California is now subsidising the purchase of e-bikes to help people join the craze.

In Australia, where a lot of trips are shorter than 5km, there are also calls for governments to get behind the trend.

RAC acting general manager Social Impact, Sarah Macaulay, says that with good weather and relatively flat terrain, Perth has the right conditions for micromobility to take off — but there’s more that needs to be done to enable it to become mainstream, as a safe, convenient, and affordable alternative for many trips.

“People often only make a step change in their travel behaviour when external conditions encourage it, and the pandemic did that,” she says.

“We saw more people out riding and walking, which was positive. But we also saw many regular public transport users becoming regular drivers, and if these habits are locked in, then bouncing back to or exceeding pre-COVID public transport demand will be even more difficult.

“We need to look at how we can support increased public transport patronage when it’s safe to do so, and enable more walking, cycling and micromobility more broadly to complement and support greater public transport use moving forward.

“These modes should be an integral part of the transport mix, enabling enhanced travel choices and replacing unnecessary car trips.”

Public transport struggles with health concerns

Public transport is designed to move huge amounts of people efficiently and can be the heartbeat of a thriving city, but the past two years have seen sobering results.

Despite steady population growth, bus trips peaked in Perth in 2014-15 and train trips two years before that. Since then, it’s been stagnating and even showing a steady decline.

Pandemic health concerns changed our travel behaviour — first limiting movement, then dissuading some from sharing their journeys with others, and creating opportunities to work more often from home — and bus and train trips are still about a quarter lower than before.

At the same time, the number of people turning to bikes, e-bikes and eRideable devices such as electric scooters, has soared.

Maurice Berger is a business development manager at MetroCount, a WA business that measures traffic, bike and pedestrian movements across the globe.

In many locations that MetroCount monitors, there’s been a clear increase in people riding, walking, scooting and cycling since the pandemic began.

“During lockdowns, people weren't going to their workplaces so were getting out for recreational cycling or walking,” he says.

“Since then, there are people who have a few days a week working from home, so our commuting and our patterns of movement have changed.

“Personally, instead of travelling through the city to get to get to my workplace, I'm either at home, or I'm using two modes of transport, one a bicycle and the other the train.”

In Sydney and Melbourne, the pandemic saw some road lanes given over to riders rather than cars, increasing safer route options for cyclists and riders.

In Perth, that wasn’t the case, but commuter hotspots such as the South Perth foreshore saw a 40 per cent jump above average cycling numbers before the pandemic, and a 70 per cent jump in the number of e-scooters on the path.

Maurice Berger believes numbers could continue to climb, but as a cyclist he feels changes that make it easier for people to get on their bikes or scooters are required.

“We have a well-developed shared path network in Perth. The river forms part of that backbone, the rail lines form another part, and the freeways do as well,” he says.

“What we haven't really created yet is the connection between all of those links and the idea that we can travel on roads safely.”

Cities hope to harness the new micromobility movement

Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Munich are often cited as stand-out examples of micromobility in action, with between a third and half of all trips undertaken by bike, but other parts of the world are also rapidly turning to micromobility to combat congestion.

Change is particularly appealing in places like South America, where drivers in cities like Bogota and Rio de Janeiro lose nearly 200 hours a year to congestion.

Larger cities also record high levels of air pollution and often have limited public transport options. For poorer communities, paying for a car, parking, and road costs can also be prohibitive.

It’s not just the total rise in riders that indicates a micromobility-friendly city, however.

A wider demographic of people cycling, particularly for commuting purposes, is often viewed as an indicator of cities where cycling is safer and there is less interaction between bikes and cars.

In European cities like Amsterdam women ride as frequently as men, while in the US and UK, male riders outnumber females two to one.

In Australia, the 2021 National Walking and Cycling Participation Survey found about 46 per cent of males surveyed report having ridden in the past year, compared to just 34 per cent of females, and 30 to 39-year-olds cycle at twice the rates of over-50s.

RAC’s Sarah Macaulay says designing infrastructure and our streets to enhance the safety of all road users, especially the most vulnerable such as cyclists and pedestrians, should help narrow the gap.

“With an electric boost, people can comfortably travel further than by walking and cycling a regular bike, which makes micromobility a more attractive option for a wider demographic of people,” she says.

“We need to consider the full range of potential users and make sure we're catering for their needs, as well as ensuring the safety of other vulnerable road users interacting with them.”

“Sadly, as personal use of e-scooters in WA has grown, we have been seeing a few collisions causing death and injury, Macaulay says.

“It is so important that we take care of ourselves and one another out there – whether we are using a road, footpath or shared path.

“An expanded network of off-road paths and on-road protected lanes, as well as the creation of slower speed streets, will be important in supporting micromobility.”

“We also need to see more education on how to use eRideable devices such as e-scooters safely and legally, and a greater level of enforcement.”

Making micromobility work in conjunction with public transport is also important. The rules for transporting eRideables and bicycles around Perth tend to limit travel to off-peak times.

E-scooters and bikes can only be taken on buses if folded and in a fit-for-purpose carry bag or unfolded on off-peak trains.

“eRideables can be a great way to travel between your home and the train station for instance,” she says.

“But it will be important to enable riders to securely park and ride at stations to complete these journeys.”

Trials explore short-term hire services

One driver for the widespread adoption of micromobility devices is the rise of share schemes, with e-scooter hire outpacing shared bikes or e-bike schemes across the US and Europe.

Germany, for example, is thought to have about 120,000 shared e-scooters, about a third of all the scooters in Europe, while 110 US cities now have shared e-scooters available.

In WA, shared e-scooter trials are underway in Rockingham, Esperance and Bunbury through Beam, the biggest micromobility operator in the Asia Pacific, while the City of Stirling is running a 12-month beachfront trial of 250 e-scooters with operator Neuron Mobility.

In many locations, though, share schemes have had mixed success.

In other Australian cities, the popularity of share schemes has led to complaints about abandoned or trashed e-scooters, unsafe riders, and risky behaviour.

But as the micromobility movement grows, there’s hope some of these teething problems will be resolved, as better models develop and technology limits misuse.