Sharing Culture

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EXPERT OBSERVER
Can e-scooters solve the 'last mile' problem? They'll need to avoid the fate of dockless bikes.
As urban planners, we have not been good at integrating land uses, such as homes, shops and offices, with our transport infrastructure. Thus many people find the nearest train or bus stop is too far too walk and too close to drive (even if they could be sure of finding parking). This has created what is commonly known as the “last mile” problem.
In some Australian cities, hilliness and hot summers add to this problem. The consequences for people’s work commute are obvious. In the end, many people find it’s simplest to drive to and from work.
Over the past 12 months, something new has been promoted as the solution to the last mile problem. Shared e-scooters are <a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/state-politics/dockless-scooters-are-coming-but-may-push-their-luck-with-the-law/news-story/a9f588609ec0c0688e93b2ea7d16a5d6" target="_blank">reportedly on their way to Australia</a>. Powered by a rechargeable battery, these are dockless, have a range of 20-60 kilometres per charge and a top speed of 24 kilometres per hour.
Businesses on the move
The two main e-scooter companies, Lime and Bird, have attracted the most interest. Several other smaller companies have entered the e-scooter market this year, including Scoot, Skip and Spin.
While both are new ventures, Bird and Lime have raised considerable funding in a short time.
Bird (whose scooters are pictured above), founded by a former Uber executive late last year, has a <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com.au/scooter-startup-bird-raises-400-million-in-4-months-rockets-to-2-billion-valuation-2018-6?r=US&amp;IR=T" target="_blank">market valuation of US$2 billion after raising US$400 million</a> in venture capital over the past four months. Bird has e-scooters in <a href="https://www.bird.co/" target="_blank">74 US cities, Windsor (Canada), Tel Aviv and Paris, as well as on 22 university campuses</a>.
Lime was founded in January 2017 as a bikeshare business, but has branched out to e-bikes and e-scooters in the past six months. It operates in <a href="https://www.li.me/locations" target="_blank">49 US cities and seven European cities, as well as on 20 university campuses</a>, although e-scooters have not been deployed at all locations. A group of investors including Uber recently <a href="https://www.cnet.com/news/google-and-uber-invest-335-million-in-lime-scooters/" target="_blank">put US$335 million into Lime</a>, which is valued at US$1.1 billion.
Some believe Uber will buy Lime as a step in its quest to build a multi-modal transport platform that provides car, bicycle and scooter sharing services.
What’s the appeal of e-scooters?
Uber is interested in e-scooters and e-bicycles because <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/dr-gridlock/wp/2018/07/25/a-new-study-says-services-like-uberpool-are-making-traffic-worse/" target="_blank">many of its ridesharing trips are short ones</a> that could be made by e-scooters.
If Uber could shift its short-distance passengers from cars to e-scooters, it would be able to use fewer drivers and reduce operating costs. The remaining drivers would be transporting passengers over longer distances for higher fares.
Shared e-scooters provide a number of advantages over shared e-bikes. The rider can stand up which, for office workers, means no wrinkling of clothes. The posture is also easier for women wearing skirts and dresses.
Scooters are also easier than bicycles to manoeuvre along narrow paths. In some places, e-scooters are not subject to helmet requirements (unlike bicycles).
How to avoid the fate of dock-less bikes
E-scooters are not without some disadvantages. Because they are dockless, they tend to litter footpaths, parks and even rivers.
This is similar to the problems presented by dockless share bikes. A number of dockless bike share companies have been forced to withdraw services in Australia because of this.
Many communities lack appropriate means of regulating them. The question of whether e-scooters should be allowed on footpaths or only on roads and bike paths remains unanswered. (Given that they have a top speed of 24km/h, e-scooters travelling on footpaths pose a safety concern.)
Lime and Bird have tried to deal with these problems. For example, Bird has committed to a <a href="https://www.bird.co/sos-pledge-mar272018" target="_blank">Save our Sidewalks (SOS)</a> pledge and has encouraged other e-scooter share companies to do the same. The pledge has three components:
<ul>
<li>daily pick-ups of e-scooters every evening and redeployment the next day</li>
<li>responsible growth in the number of scooters deployed based on actual usage</li>
<li>revenue sharing of US$1 per scooter per day with host cities for the purposes of building and maintaining bike lanes and promoting safe riding.</li>
</ul>
Adopting an Uber idea, Lime pays for people to collect and charge the scooters each night.
While we have no e-scooter share systems in Australia yet, both Lime and Bird are reportedly <a href="https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/other-industries/if-youre-celebrating-the-end-of-obikes-be-prepared-for-something-much-worse/news-story/4ee06f9d00c124654611b42795a500a9" target="_blank">looking to launch here soon</a>. How will they fare? Are Australian cities prepared for them?
Neil Sipe, Professor of Urban and Regional Planning, The University of Queensland and Dorina Pojani, Senior Lecturer in Urban Planning, The University of Queensland
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. 
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j.ballantyne1990-6AQqhLzZaK

Can e-scooters avoid the fate of dock-less bikes

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GUEST OBSERVER
Many cities are keen on dockless share-bike schemes such as oBikes or Reddy Go, and for good reason. They promote greater physical movement, help solve transport problems in congested cities, and can be fun.
But there’s a downside. Share-bikes can litter our cities and be found in rivers, up trees, in gutters, and strewn around public places. One of the reasons for this is culture.
There are three factors influencing the use of share-bikes:
<ul>
<li>
There’s behaviour, or making choices about how to act.
</li>
<li>
There’s cognition, or how our brain works to process information.
</li>
<li>
And there’s context, or the environment we’re in at the time of the behaviour. National culture is a significant aspect of context.
</li>
</ul>
Cultural differences
To understand Australian culture and see why it’s problematic for share-bikes, let’s compare it to one of our neighbours – Singapore.
While there has been poor behaviour with share-bikes in Singapore, there are three key cultural reasons why a business model that could be successful in Singapore is much less likely to be so in Australia: power distance, individualism, and uncertainty avoidance.
The Hofstede model describes national culture using six dimensions, three of which apply here. A comparison of Australian and Singaporean national culture is shown in the figure below.
<img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dz9xllyip/image/fetch/c_scale,w_580,q_auto:good/https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/po.images/2018/1/31/5362a5da41204752a04209d06c15b397.jpg" alt="">
Power distance could be thought of as respect for authority, or as the likelihood to be influenced by an injunctive norm.
Australians are much more likely to consider an edict from someone in authority as a general guideline or the starting point for negotiation, whereas Singaporeans are much more likely to take such messages literally. This is reflected in the relative scores on the Hofstede model, showing much greater power distance for Singapore at 74 versus Australia at 36.
So, how might this impact share-bike use?
Australians and Singaporeans both know share-bikes should be returned to a designated parking space, but Singaporeans are more likely to be open to messages telling them to park appropriately than Australians.
Put together with injunctive norms in Australia having been quite faint and you can see why Australians are not as likely to do the right thing at the end of a trip.
The second major difference is individualism. Australians are reported to be much more individual than Singaporeans; Singapore is a more collectivist society than Australia. If you add in the other differences in indulgence and long-term orientation, you can see why Australians are more likely to do what feels good for the individual in the short term rather than what’s best for society in the long term.
So, at the end of a share-bike trip, an Australian is more likely to leave the bike in a non-designated area if it suits them than a Singaporean is.
Uncertainty avoidance, or worrying about the unknown, is the third major way the two countries differ.
Singapore has one of the lowest uncertainty avoidance scores in the Hofstede database. This means Singaporeans are much more likely to be open to change, for instance, than almost any other country in the world. As a result, Singaporeans are more open to being influenced by what they see their friends do than almost anyone else.
This openness helps the adoption of new business models such as share-bikes. And if the right social norms around behaviour can be engineered, Singaporeans are much more likely to behave in pro-social ways, such as leaving the share-bike in the right place.
What Australia can do about share-bike littering
Changing national culture to make Australians better users of share-bikes would be extremely difficult, if not downright impossible in the short term. It’s questionable whether that would be a good thing to do, anyway.
So, if we can’t or shouldn’t change our culture, then we should try to modify the share-bike business model to better fit Australian ways.
It’s highly unlikely that the dramatic examples of share-bike littering we see, such as bikes in rivers or up trees, are caused by share-bike users themselves, as they would pay a penalty under most business models. What’s much more likely is that share-bikes are left in awkward or undesignated places for the “free spirits” in society to take advantage of.
By their carelessness, known users are contributing to the problem. As such they are a priority target for behavioural change.
Loss-aversion theory says we are much more likely to be motivated by the prospect of a loss than a gain. And the sense of being observed – for example, a visible police presence – can change our behaviour.
So, if it was made clear to a user that they were being watched when they were about to return a bike to a non-designated place – and that there would be immediate and certain consequences – they would be much more likely to do the right thing.
While most share-bike business models have deposits, incentives and penalties, they are too vague and uncertain when it matters.
The sense of being under scrutiny needs to be front of mind at the time of the behaviour. For some share-bike operators, such a solution is either in development or close at hand. And much more precise geolocation capability could give users a sense of being watched.
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/90312/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1">If the share-bike business model is tweaked, Australians could embrace a clever and fun form of transportation.
Conor Wynn, PhD Candidate at BehaviourWorks, Monash Sustainable Development Institute, Monash University.
This article was originally published on <a href="http://theconversation.com" target="_blank">The Conversation</a>. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/three-reasons-why-share-bikes-dont-fit-australian-culture-90312" target="_blank">original article</a>.
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Three reasons why share-bikes don’t fit Australian culture: Conor Wynn

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GUEST OBSERVATION
Car sharing arrived on the Australian scene in the early 2000s. These are commercial services that give people access to vehicles they can rent by the hour.
Services in Australia currently include GoGet and Car Next Door. While GoGet has a fleet of vehicles available for rent, Car Next Door supports private vehicle owners renting out their cars to others in the community (kind of like Airbnb).
Car sharing is now an established transport option in most major Australian cities, but it’s faced its fair share of teething problems. Some of these are unique to Australia, with its powerful system of private car dependency. We’re now on track to overcome many of these issues, but more work is required to really make Australian car sharing a success.
Why is car sharing important?
Car sharing is key component of any transition away from a dependence on private cars. Most of us are now aware that using private cars is one of the most carbon intensive and least healthy ways to get around.
To challenge the place of the private car, we need to supply a network of options. The hope is that owning a car will one day become unnecessary in an integrated system of public and active transport options, where shared cars would play a role in more complex or load-carrying trips.
Car sharing is particularly important in a world on the cusp of the arrival of autonomous vehicles (AVs). AVs could herald either “carmageddons” of congestion, where private autonomous vehicles roam the city at the whim of their owners, or a more palatable system, where on-demand AV services seamlessly match trips to riders. Which version of the future we get depends on whether AVs are shared or privately owned.
Here are some key factors that will shape future success of car sharing in Australia.
1. Car sharing is an inner city thing
Heading the list of barriers to increased uptake of car sharing is that it’s currently a service that is generally contained within the inner urban core of our cities.
Commercial options – where companies maintain their own fleet of vehicles – rely on a critical mass of people, the allocation of prized on-street car parking, and a viable public transport system to satisfy the day-to-day mobility needs of their members. These things generally don’t exist outside of the inner city, so neither does commercial car sharing.
Peer-to-peer (P2P) options – where the carsharing company facilitates the sharing process between individuals – offer some hope of a breakthrough in this space. P2P car sharing is more likely to succeed in lower density areas because it does not need the critical mass of users, nor the gift of on-street car parking.
While the slow creep of P2P services into the suburbs is a process bound by the notorious sluggishness of cultural adjustment, we are witnessing some increased suburbanisation of car sharing as a result of P2P services.
2. Australians don’t share
The need for cultural adjustment raises a second key barrier to car sharing in Australia. Anyone living through the recent bike sharing fiasco in Sydney or Melbourne, where bikes were dumped in parks and rivers, will attest to the fact that (some) Australians are not great at respecting property that is shared. In fact, there are indices of national culture that could have easily predicted the vandalism associated with this catastrophe.
And when it comes to our cars, we are a nation particularly attached to the independence, autonomy and privacy of our own vehicle. Sharing – whether it be lending your own car to a stranger, or making use of a car regularly driven by others – challenges these notions.
But parts of our cities are slowly but surely adapting to living in closer proximity to one another – albeit by necessity, not by choice. And as a nation, we are becoming less attached to owning the spaces and objects we depend upon.
This shift away from personal space and private ownership can primarily be seen in changes to residential densities and tenure-types. But it’s also seen in the way we work, play and eat. Think of the rise of hot-desking, the shift from private backyards to public parks, and the move from the family table to the café.
3. It’s all too hard
At first, car sharing wasn’t easy. Car sharing parking spaces were few and far between, insurance arrangements were somewhat obtuse, and the platform for sharing enforced rigid time frames and payment structures.
The pioneers of car sharing in Australia – both the business entrepreneurs and the policy makers – have had to navigate some pretty tricky regulatory, legislative and technological territory.
Commercial operations have negotiated with local government for parking space, and P2P ventures have had to work through complex registration and insurance regulations that vary from state to state. Both approaches have had to design and implement technology that allows cars to be booked and accessed seamlessly.
Fortunately, for those doing the sharing, a lot of these barriers have now been broken down. Most metropolitan local councils now maintain a policy for the allocation of car sharing parking spaces. Insurance cover for P2P sharing is now a standard option.
The future of car sharing
There are changes on the horizon all designed to make the concept of sharing even easier. One of the most interesting is the imminent arrival of “share ready” cars on the Australian market.
Designed primarily for the P2P market, these are cars that come with an app, which connects owners’ vehicles to their phones, enabling them to list their car for rent on car sharing websites. The sharer will then be able to access and drive the vehicle using their smart phone, entirely negating the need for traditional keys.
Involvement of the auto-industry is always an interesting development in car sharing. It has been proven empirically that people who use car sharing services drive less and own less cars. This implies less business for car manufacturers. Does this mean the car industry is accepting fissures in the dominance of private cars and protecting whatever share of the transport market it can? Or is it another way of keeping cars king in our cities?
Only time will tell. For the time being, car sharing’s survival is one positive sign that a sustainable transport future is possible.<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/104389/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important; text-shadow: none !important;">
Jennifer Kent, Research Fellow, University of Sydney
This article is republished from <a href="http://theconversation.com" target="_blank">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-car-sharing-had-a-slow-start-in-australia-and-how-thats-changing-104389" target="_blank">original article</a>.
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Why car sharing had a slow start in Australia - and how that’s changing: Jennifer Kent

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GUEST OBSERVATION
If you’ve been in central Brisbane recently, you will know there is a new visitor in town. <a href="https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/politics/queensland/hundreds-of-electric-scooters-appear-on-brisbane-streets-20181116-p50ghq" target="_blank">Lime e-scooters have popped up all over the CBD</a> and neighbouring suburbs. It’s early days for this new mobility provider, so we can’t say if this is a permanent fixture with certainty, but here’s a transport research team’s view on the Brisbane trial and its implications.
Transport disruption makes life difficult for policymakers and transport agencies. Queensland at first <a href="https://www.propertyobserver.com.au/https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-21/taxi-drivers-vs-uber-ride-sharing-drivers-face-heftier-penalties/7344300" target="_blank">attempted to deter illegal ride-sharing</a> but then <a href="https://www.propertyobserver.com.au/https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-11/uber-to-be-legalised-in-queensland/7719078" target="_blank">legalised Uber and Ola</a> in response to public demand. E-scooter sharing systems might be just as transformative for people’s travel.
You can download an app, sign up quickly and for only a dollar unlock a scooter, hit the accelerator and zip down the street at up to 25km/h. Scooters can be picked up and dropped off on footpaths throughout the central city. They offer low-cost travel and produce low carbon emissions.
Previously, North American cities, such as San Francisco and Washington DC, were inundated with e-scooters. In response, some cities banned e-scooters outright, others used regulations to control the new players.
The trial in Brisbane is helping the city and state see if it works and <a href="https://www.propertyobserver.com.au/https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-23/the-rules-around-scooter-sharing-in-australia/10639170" target="_blank">determine an appropriate regulatory approach</a>. Lime was initially given a “<a href="https://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/state-politics/scooters-given-a-temporary-weekend-pass-in-brisbane/news-story/f81f9d19fd99327923077337d009a6b4" target="_blank">temporary pass in Brisbane</a>”, allowing up to 500 e-scooters. As long as riders wore helmets (either provided by Lime and attached to each scooter, or bring-your-own) and rode them responsibly, there would be no problem.
Kudos to the Queensland transport minister and his department for being the first in Australia to allow a trial and, more recently, for improving the regulation of these operations. Well done also to Brisbane City Council for allowing the trial in the central business district and working with Lime on the roll-out. It was especially helpful that the council’s contract with its bikeshare operator did not prevent e-scooters from competing for riders.
When you take off on one of these e-scooters, it is liberating. If you’ve used a kick scooter before, even as a child, these new versions are relatively intuitive to ride. The electric motor means Brisbane’s hills are suddenly no problem. A trip from our South Bank campus across the river and through the botanic gardens to connect to a downtown meeting took six minutes and cost just over $3.
No other mode of transport would compete in terms of either time or cost for such trips, unless you bring your own bike or e-scooter with you into town. <a href="https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/politics/queensland/lime-wants-to-roll-out-more-scooters-on-brisbane-streets-20181204-p50k1c" target="_blank">Thousands of residents and tourists are using the e-scooters</a> in Brisbane each day. Our sources tell us over 100,000 users have made over 300,000 trips since the mid-November launch.
There are <a href="https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/politics/queensland/fractures-and-head-injuries-scooter-crashes-becoming-a-regular-occurrence-20190120-p50shv" target="_blank">reports of injuries from falling off the scooters</a>. This highlights a need to take it easy your first few trips, to look for problems on any scooter you hire and to wear your helmet.
So what are the problems?
Our observations this last couple of months suggest user behaviour has changed. Some unruly behaviours we saw in the first few days seem have given way to new social norms.
Parking behaviour is also improving. Riders cannot lock the scooter (and stop paying for it) in locations where it might cause a nuisance, such as on the main green bridges. They are both encouraged to park out of harm’s way and forced to submit a photograph of their parking attempt. Park poorly a few times and Lime will suspend your account.
<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zOMYOBBRtM8?wmode=transparent&amp;start=0" frameborder="0" width="440" height="260"></iframe>
Lime itself emphasises the need to ride safely and follow the rules.
There are some issues though. The guidance provided to riders about where you can legally ride, whether on the departmental website, news media, the system app or its website, is at times missing, contradictory or just confusing. Fixing that should be easy enough.
Brisbane has not built much bicycle infrastructure in the last five decades, a few notable bridges and riverside paths aside. Nor have we reduced local street speeds to 30km/h, as is now standard European practice. There aren’t obvious safe routes to use when scootering through parts of the central city.
Fixing these issues will be more challenging, but quiet non-polluting e-scooters are clearly preferable to a city centre clogged with cars.
What are the best regulatory options?
Lime has proven these systems work well in Australian cities. But key regulatory questions remain. North American cities are introducing various regulatory systems. These include:
<ul>
<li>permits (often awarded via tender)</li>
<li>maximum fleet sizes</li>
<li>vehicle regulations – especially maximum speeds</li>
<li>go/no-go zones</li>
<li>parking controls</li>
<li>high fees to pick up and impound scooters that operators fail to collect.</li>
</ul>
Our city managers have to decide what options they prefer.
We have five suggestions.
1. There is no need for scooters in Australian cities that have more power or go faster than the current Lime scooters. The decision to choose 25km/h seems appropriate at present. Restricting speeds to 10km/h, as previous laws did in Queensland, would be nonsensical.
2. E-scooter systems are likely a natural monopoly, or perhaps duopoly. This is because one needs many scooters from the same operator available across a wide area to ensure efficiency in operations, keep costs low and provide wide coverage for users.
Brisbane City Council is talking of a probable monopoly, awarded via tender. This is the approach used since the city’s first tram operations in the 1880s. If Australian cities do award monopoly rights we hope they adopt Santa Monica’s use of a levy on the operator that is hypothecated towards improving the city’s bike lanes and bike paths, to create more safe riding space.
3. We recommend scooter parking locations be designated in key locations, such as close to Brisbane’s Queen Street mall, difficult as this will be given the competition for space on the city’s narrow streets and footpaths.
4. Cities should enter into meaningful partnerships with scooter companies that include data sharing for research and analysis of overall city transportation. <a href="http://www.goldcoast.qld.gov.au/thegoldcoast/bike-share-43914" target="_blank">Gold Coast’s MoBike scheme</a> is, without much fanfare, the best-used bicycle-sharing scheme in Australia and an exemplar partnership model.
5. These scooters need to be part of the coming move towards subscription mobility services. Soon we are likely to be offered “<a href="https://theconversation.com/for-mobility-as-a-service-maas-to-solve-our-transport-woes-some-things-need-to-change-105119" target="_blank">mobility as a service</a>” and pay one monthly fee to get public transport plus rideshare, bikeshare and scooter-share trips, some car-sharing and maybe some taxi kilometres. Based on the demand seen in Brisbane, e-scooters should be included in these packages.
This regulatory mix would cover most of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/can-e-scooters-solve-the-last-mile-problem-theyll-need-to-avoid-the-fate-of-dockless-bikes-102633" target="_blank">issues raised by others</a>. Get all this right and e-scooters can help create a safer, more sustainable and liveable city with a better set of mobility options.
Benjamin Kaufman, PhD Scholar in Transport, Griffith University and Matthew Burke, Associate Professor, Cities Research Institute, Griffith University
This article is republished from <a href="http://theconversation.com" target="_blank">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/limes-not-lemons-lessons-from-australias-first-e-scooter-sharing-trial-108924" target="_blank">original article</a>.
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