February 2023
On 23 February 2023, Micro-Mobility for Europe (MMfE) had the chance to participate in the Clean Cities Campaign summit, dedicated to the topic of Micro-Mobility.
The Clean Cities Campaign hosted by Transport & Environment and is a network of over 70 NGOs and grassroots groups in Europe with the goal of accelerating cities’ transition to zero-emission mobility by 2030. In November 2022, CCC has joined MMfE and the Urban Intergroup of the European Parliament and published a joint letter outlining how cities benefit from micro-mobility.
With more than 400 million kilometers ridden on e-scooters alone in 2021 in more than 200 Cities micro-mobility has proven potential in accelerating cities’ transition to zero-emission transportation. Between 35% and 55% of our users report regularly using shared e-scooters to go to or from a public transit station. During the summit, Micro-Mobility for Europe touched upon three overall themes: sustainability, safety and regulation.
MMfE emphasized that micro-mobility providers have made tremendous progress to reduce the carbon footprint of their service so cities can reduce theirs. In just 3 years, the industry has been able to extend the lifespan of shared e-scooters to over 5 years, reducing their carbon footprint by 80%. According to the latest research on the topic, shared e-scooters reduce transportation carbon emissions in cities around the globe from Paris to Seattle, Stockholm and Melbourne.
Moreover, MMfE provided an overview of its recent publication of the first-of-its-kind factsheet on shared e-scooters incident data in Europe. Taking into account more than 240 million aggregated trips from 2021, the data shows that there is a 60% lower risk of incidents compared to 2019, that the fatality risk is twice as low than on private e-scooter, and rather similar to cyclists rate. MMfE is calling for hamonised incident reporting standards across Europe and more investment in protected infrastructure to improve the safety of vulnerable road users.
Looking ahead, MMfE called for regulatory action to boost the uptake of micro-mobility, while ensuring the safe integration of these services in cities. MMfE reiterated the importance of reallocating the urban space from cars to build dedicated infrastructures fro micro mobility and harmonizing regulations across Europe.
