Impact of Weather on Shared Electric Scooter Utilization

Abstract

Shared electric scooters (e-scooters) have been deployed over the past year in urban areas around the world with widely varying weather conditions. Many agencies have trip level record data sharing agreements with e-scooter providers to provide insight into how this new transportation mode is used in the urban ecosystem. There are considerable anecdotal media reports of usage during widely varying weather conditions, but few studies have been conducted to examine the weather impact on urban e-scooter utilization. This paper uses statistical modelling to analyze hourly weather factors (surface temperature, precipitation, snow, wind speed) with hourly trips to understand the impact of weather on e-scooter usage. A six-month period of historical e-scooter trip data was acquired from City of Indianapolis for this study. Although the number of trips reduced over 80% during the winter months, the median trip distance and duration only dropped slightly. Scooter utilization rate per day also dropped by approximately two-thirds during winter months. Usage was more sensitive to temperatures below freezing and snowfall than rain.