Study: Atlanta’s e-scooter ban increased travel time

In the event you’re trying to trip an e-scooter or e-bike in Atlanta between 9 p.m. and 4 a.m., you’re out of luck. The scooters are geared up with expertise that disables them in a single day to adjust to Atlanta’s ban, which took impact in 2019.

That ban, enforced by GPS monitoring and “geofencing” expertise to make sure common compliance, offered a chance for Georgia Tech researchers. They in contrast consumer habits earlier than and after the ban utilizing knowledge from Uber Motion in sure areas across the metropolis, says the research’s principal investigator Omar Asensio.

“We regarded on the Midtown space as a proxy for city facilities and we additionally regarded round MARTA stations,” Asensio mentioned.

They discovered that with out the e-scooters and e-bikes, folks largely turned to non-public autos and ride-sharing, which added 784,000 hours of journey time annually for Atlantans. 

Asensio says that additional time on the street prices drivers tens of millions of {dollars} in time misplaced. “You could possibly think about that if these sorts of bans had been prolonged through the day, the prices would compound, for certain.”

Asensio says he is aware of of no plans to increase the ban through the day.

The rise in journey time was even higher round massive sporting occasions at Mercedes Benz stadium. Researchers discovered drivers spent 37 % extra time traveling–about 12 minutes on average–because of the scooter ban.

Whether or not such habits is a sign of how folks in different U.S. cities may reply to an identical band is an open query, Asensio mentioned.

“Clearly in the event you had a public transit system that is extra dependable, you may need extra substitution going to public transit [as opposed to cars],” he mentioned. “However I believe that this research exhibits is that when scooters aren’t accessible, folks simply return to automobiles for last-mile journey.”

The findings had been revealed within the journal Nature.