Skip to main content

Bird: e-scooters will ‘replace short car trips in London’

More than half of car trips in the city of London are less than three miles with an average occupancy of just over one person, says Bird. 
By Ben Spencer February 17, 2020 Read time: 1 min
Bird reckons its e-scooters can reduce a 25-minute car journey in London to around 10 minutes (Source: © Tobias Arhelger | Dreamstime.com)

Speaking at Move2020, Caroline Hazlehurst, senior director of EMEA operations, says: “The journey takes much longer than it should with the average time for a trip around 25 minutes. Alternatives like electric scooters could do that same distance in roughly 10 minutes or less.”

“If you give people a true alternative to the car they will use it, and adoption has been unprecedented,” she added. 

Hazlehurst said the company is aiming to take cars off the road, reduce congestion and emissions while also making cities more liveable. 

“In the US, over a thousand million metric tonnes of CO2 is produced from car travel and we want to replace as many of those trips as possible with emissions-free transportation,” she continued. “If we were to do that by 10%, that would be the same as taking about 28 coal-fired power plants offline for a year.”

Hazlehurst claimed the firm’s Bird 2 scooter has a 60% longer battery-life than the previous generation.

“The vehicle self-reports damage through sensors which flag potential issues, a dual anti-tipping kick stand to help keep the vehicle upright and puncture-proof tyres which self-seal,” she added. 

 

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • Tolling systems - interoperability is key
    January 25, 2012
    Is US tolling as fragmented and divided as some would have you believe? And are the technology suppliers so very entrenched? ITS International spoke to the market's leading suppliers. A few years back, the prevalent view was that the North American tolling market was characterised by fragmented, proprietary solutions, each existing in splendid isolation. The reality is that a combination of pragmatism and good old market forces have seen some concerted moves made towards interoperability in many areas.
  • NACTO: 136m US micromobility trips in 2019
    September 7, 2020
    But rides on biggest docked bike-share systems plummeted 44% from March to May 2020
  • Carrots are proving cost-effective in Netherlands
    October 3, 2018
    There are lessons to be learned from congestion avoidance schemes in the Netherlands. David Crawford welcomes some new thinking in road pricing. Highway operators worldwide are being urged to learn from Dutch experience in using financial carrots rather than sticks to encourage drivers to avoid contributing to congestion. A Netherlands/UK group makes a convincing cost/benefit case in a new global survey of road pricing technologies, economics and acceptability. Representing the Rijkswaterstaat section of
  • Plume Labs and Bird capture air quality data
    April 6, 2020
    Plume Labs has partnered with Bird to obtain air pollution data in hard-to-reach areas in the French capital Paris.