COVID-19’s Impact on Urban Transport

COVID-19’s impact on urban areas will be far-reaching as nearly every mode of transport is being affected, so municipalities need to begin planning how they will prepare for these changes to guide society once we remove the virus's choke hold. After the pandemic, traffic congestion caused by single occupant vehicles could drastically increase due to a wider preference for greater personal space. This could result in urban areas becoming even more difficult to get around and lower air quality than pre-COVID-19 years.

Mass transit is taking a big hit as reported by Transit as ridership declines with many needing to telework or loss of employment. This decline likely will continue after the pandemic as the public grapples with its post-traumatic stress of physical distancing from even friends and neighbors and not wanting to be in the close confines of a train or bus with strangers. Many former mass transit riders will turn to single occupant motor vehicles such that cities could see a huge increase in motor vehicle traffic and congestion. The use of carpooling, slugging, ride-hailing, and taxis also could decrease from pre-COVID-19 times also as people remain skittish about sharing space with even a few others.

Private bikes, bikeshare, and scootershare have the potential to replace trips from all modes without negatively impacting urban areas with greater traffic congestion. Bikes and e-scooters have physical distancing as a built-in feature that wasn’t important until the present era. 

Urban areas will see a boom in both modes once COVID-19’s infection curve has flattened and life begins to return to normal, albeit a new normal. As cycling and scootering increase, those new to these modes will have greater need for safer streets, protected bike lanes -- space that is physically separated for people who bike and scoot from people who drive -- is greatly needed. 

City and county leaders must counteract the potential for heavier motor vehicle traffic congestion than pre-COVID-19 times by providing protected bike infrastructure to those that do or will cycle and scoot to get around. This infrastructure need not be expensive or take years of planning. As reported in SmartCitiesWorld, Bogotá, Colombia recently opened 47 miles of temporary bike lanes during the pandemic. Bogotá’s mayor, Claudia López, said the bicycle “represents one of the most hygienic alternatives for the prevention of the virus." 

Use of rubber curbing, flexible posts, street markings, and/or new signage can be enough to create protected bike infrastructure on existing streets. Municipal leaders need to think big and provide this critical infrastructure on arterial streets where it's most likely to be useful and used. This infrastructure would be well-used during the pandemic as the public needs safe and healthy modes in which to travel and exercise in a way that is socially responsible and permissible by many localities’ stay-at-home orders.

The pandemic has the potential to reshape how we get around, just like other historic events have in our nation’s past. Visionary leaders should seize this opportunity to plan for how society will get around after the pandemic by creating more public infrastructure that better encourages biking and scooting. 

photo credit: Move DC

Battery Management of E-bikeshare and E-scootershare

Recently, I attended an excellent presentation about battery management at the North American Bikeshare Association (NABSA) conference. With more electric bikeshare and scootershare vehicles hitting the streets around the world, this topic is of increasing importance. As an e-bike owner, I personally have seen how it has changed how I get around in the hilly Washington, D.C. region as I bike a lot more now than before I bought the e-bike. While these e-bikeshare and e-scootershare vehicles can be great and increase getting around town without needing drive or be driven; unless their rechargeable lithium-ion batteries are managed well during their useful life and recycled properly into steel, stainless steel, and new batteries; e-bikeshare and e-scootershare can cause more harm than good to our customers, staff, and the environment. As MetroBike manages e-bikeshare and e-scootershare systems for local governments, I took note.

E-bikeshare & e-scootershare parking corral

The reason lithium-ion batteries are so popular and omnipresent is because they can hold a lot of energy in a small package, called “energy density”. According to Battery University “The energy density of lithium-ion is typically twice that of the standard nickel-cadmium. … Most of today's mobile phones run on a single [lithium-ion] cell. A nickel-based pack would require three 1.2-volt cells.”

Lithium-ion batter (credit: B&H)

However, a major problem with lithium-ion batteries are that they, “have a tendency to overheat, and can be damaged at high voltages. In some cases this can lead to thermal runaway and combustion,” says the University of Washington’s Clean Energy Institute. Not being familiar with the term “thermal runaway”, I had to look it up. It’s defined by Lithium-Ion Battery Chemistries as, “when a cell has reached the temperature at which the temperature will continue to increase on its own and it becomes self-sustaining as it creates oxygen which feeds the fire (literally).”

Electronic bikeshare and scootershare vehicles already have been reported to have had multiple fires on the street and in warehouses in the U.S., such as the reported instances of e-bikeshare in Bicycling Magazine and e-scootershare in The Washington Post. I haven’t read any reports yet of fires happening while someone is on a vehicle and hope it never happens.

Capital Bikeshare Plus (credit BeyonDC)

The NABSA presentation that I mentioned above was given by Todd Ellis of Call2Recycle. He suggested e-bikeshare and e-scootershare operators and municipal system owners both have roles in battery management. Mr. Ellis stated:

Operators should:

-accept that this is an issue;

-size up the issue;

-select a storage area in their warehouse;

-develop standard operator procedures for battery management, including handling used, damaged, and defective batteries;

-train employees on handling; and

-plan for the worst.

How’s that for sobering?

In addition, municipalities should:

-have operators provide their battery management plan as a micro-mobility application requirement,

-require the operator provide their battery recycling partner contract, and

-include the cost of recycling batteries in abandoned vehicle fines.

This just scratches the surface.

E-bikeshare and e-scootershare vehicles are here to stay. Bikeshare has proven for over a decade that it’s successful at getting people around town in a healthy, fun, and environmentally friendly way. E-bikeshare bikes are generating roughly three times more trips than standard pedal bikeshare bikes because the electric version makes it easier to get around without exerting as much effort. E-scootershare didn’t have a non-electric shared version, so there’s no direct comparison. With the immense uptake of e-scootershare around the world, one can see that people like to get around without effort, and the easier, the better. E-scootershare requires even less exertion than e-bikeshare as pedaling is not involved.

E-bikeshare and e-scootershare will continue to evolve. With the popularity of these vehicles, likely there will be many more generations of electric vehicles and they’ll all need batteries. So the need for safe and environmentally friendly battery management will continue to grow.

Please, Don't Call It Dockless

It’s time to reconsider the terms that are presently being used in much of the English-speaking world for the “dockless bikeshare” and “dockless scooter” systems that have popped up around the globe over the past couple of years. As you may have guessed, we here at The Bike-sharing Blog – the specialists in public-use bicycling – have a couple thoughts about this as it’s in our wheelhouse. 

Modern 3rd generation (high-tech) bikeshare systems that don’t need a station at which to park bikes have been around since the dawn of the millennia. However, about two to three years ago with the dawn of these systems in China, a new term was coined which explained not what these systems are, but rather what they are not – they don’t need stations and their pesky docks, so are dockless. The term “dockless bikeshare” somehow caught on.

Then more recently electric stand-up scooters hit the scene and the term “dockless scooters” was creatively coined (pardon the sarcasm) due to its similarity to dockless bikeshare. Did anyone stop to think that this term, dockless scooters, doesn’t make any sense because there were never docks to begin with.

Dockless bikeshare and dockless scooters are transitional terms available to us now as we transition to better, more descriptive and accurate terms. The term “horseless carriage” was a transitional term used in the early years of the automobile as a descriptor because at the time carriages generally were pulled by horses, but this new machine, which later was called the automobile, had its own steam energy source. 

The good news is that existing terms will satisfy the need for more accurate descriptions for these technologies. The terms “fixed bikeshare” and “flexible bikeshare” have been around since the mid-2000s and accurately describe station-based and non-station-based systems, respectively. Fixed bikeshare has stations at fixed points. Flexible bikeshare provides flexibility to customers about where to park. For the few hybrid systems out there that both allow parking at and away from stations, it can be “hybrid bikeshare” or how about “flexed bikeshare” combining both the flex- of flexible and the -xed of fixed. The term “scootershare” is also already in use, but needs the descriptor “stand-up scootershare” so as to not be confused with sit-down scooters which are also being shared.

Why reinvent the wheel when we already have good terms to ride on?

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Paul DeMaio is Principal with MetroBike, LLC – the U.S.’s oldest fixed and flexible bikeshare consultancy.