London E-scooter rental scheme could replace five million car trips in capital
As the capital prepares to mark London Climate Action Week which begins on Saturday, June 26, a recently launched e-scooter rental scheme is poised to have significant environmental benefits. One of London’s e-scooter operators, TIER, says each group in the capital will be able to run a fleet of up to 6,600 e-scooters. With three operators currently allowed to rent out e-scooters in London: TIER, Lime and Dott, this equates to 19,800 e-scooters.
By assessing usage data from operations across 115 cities in the UK and wider Europe, TIER has estimated a utilisation rate of four rides per day per scooter in the capital. This means there will be nearly 80,000 rides per day on e-scooters and over 29 million a year.
According to recent consumer research, 17 percent of trips taken on rental e-scooters replace car journeys. When applying this to London, TIER calculates that 4.9 million car journeys can be replaced by e-scooters every year.
TIER also assessed the potential CO2 reduction if all one-mile car trips in the capital were replaced by rental e-scooter trips. This would see a 233-tonne daily reduction in CO2 emissions. That is the same amount of CO2 released by 240 return flights from London to New York.
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