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DCist is providing special coverage to climate issues this week as part of Covering Climate Now, a global collaboration of 250 news outlets designed to strengthen coverage of the climate story. Many of these stories originated as\u00a0questions from our readers<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Eighteen months after the rechargeable, dockless scooters began popping up in the city, they\u2019ve evolved from an oddity to a ubiquitous presence on streets and sidewalks. The District Department of Transportation says seven firms<\/a> (two others have conditional approval) are operating 4,635 total scooters here.<\/p>\n While D.C.\u2019s drivers and pedestrians have complained<\/a> of obstructed sidewalks and restricted accessibility for the visually or physically impaired, not to mention rider injuries and one fatality<\/a> last year, scooter companies and transportation advocates say they\u2019re getting more cars off the road\u2014and are starting to amass some data and research to support that narrative.<\/p>\n A city-issued 2018 survey<\/a> in Portland, Oregon, found one in three residents said they\u2019d have driven themselves or taken a ride-hailing service during their last trip if not for the e-scooter they hopped on; the rate was higher among tourists and visitors at 48 percent. The same was true for 50 percent of e-scooter and rentable bike riders in a survey this past winter<\/a> by the City of Santa Monica. And a study<\/a>, partially funded by Bird, by two professors from DePaul University\u2019s Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development, determined they offer a \u201cpreferable alternative\u201d to privately owned autos for trips between half a mile and two miles.<\/p>\n The District Department of Energy and Environment declined to comment on e-scooters and carbon emissions, deferring to the District Department of Transportation. DDOT did not respond to multiple requests for comment.<\/p>\n Companies have touted their disruptive technology\u2019s green benefits on apps and in marketing materials. Bird notes in a recent PR email that \u201cresearch shows 30-50 percent of scooter trips would have otherwise been made by car.\u201d Lime says every mile traveled on one of its scooters mitigates 350 grams in carbon emissions.<\/p>\n But a first-of-its-kind study published last month<\/a> in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Research Letters<\/em>\u00a0casts doubt on that angle by attempting to account for all of the emissions produced in an e-scooter\u2019s life cycle.<\/p>\n Calculating carbon output from a single e-scooter in Raleigh\u2014from making its parts to shipping it from overseas to rounding it up and recharging it\u2014North Carolina State University researchers concluded the vehicles produce more emissions per mile traveled than a bus with high ridership, electric mopeds, conventional and e-bicycles and, unsurprisingly, walking. They did<\/em> find the devices have a smaller carbon footprint than cars.<\/p>\n Production was to blame for half of one e-scooter\u2019s emissions, while 43 percent was tied to the charging and redistribution process, which often involves freelance chargers driving around in cars.<\/p>\n Researchers also surveyed 61 Raleigh riders and gathered that, had no e-scooters been available at the time of their last trip, 49 percent would have used a bicycle or walked and 11 percent would have ridden the bus, all greener options, they found. Thirty-four percent said they would have the less eco-friendly option of a personal automobile or rideshare.<\/p>\n The authors recommended, among other proposals, that companies aiming to cut emissions build longer-lasting scooters and streamline the whole scheme of charging, by incentivizing contractors to use more vehicles with better gas mileage or letting them \u201cclaim\u201d e-scooters ahead of time to keep multiple people from driving to the same spot.<\/p>\n That part of the study bears out the experience of Alexis Fearing. Hoping to bring in some extra cash, she gave charging e-scooters a shot in in May 2018. Several nights a week, Fearing would grab five or six Birds and squeeze them into her Honda Accord, then drop them off around 6 a.m. the next morning.<\/p>\n She called it quits by August, finding the extra $25 to $50 she made daily wasn\u2019t worth the money she spent on fuel, not to mention the wear and tear inside her car.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was not all that super-lucrative. It started getting more competitive,\u201d she says, noting that competing freelance chargers were beating her to her targeted two-wheelers. \u201cI was using up gas, driving to the scooters, and people were already there.\u201d<\/p>\n Outlets\u00a0<\/a>quickly\u00a0<\/a>picked\u00a0<\/a>up<\/a> on the most damning part of the study\u2019s conclusion\u2014that e-scooters \u201ddo not necessarily reduce environmental impacts from the transportation system.\u201d The MIT Technology Review<\/a> summed it up as, \u201cSorry, scooters aren\u2019t so climate-friendly after all.\u201d<\/p>\n The District Department of Transportation says seven firms (two others have conditional approval) are operating 4,635 total scooters here.Joe Flood \/ Flickr<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Companies have some gripes about how the study was conducted, saying it made incorrect assumptions about their business models and didn\u2019t account for steps they\u2019ve already taken to cut emissions in the less-than-two years that e-scooters have been around.<\/p>\n Melinda Hanson, Bird\u2019s head of sustainability and environmental impact, said in a statement that \u201cassumptions used in the North Carolina study are not reflective of Bird\u2019s operations.\u201d Case in point, she said, Bird\u2019s scooters are custom-produced, unlike the China-made Xiaomi model researchers used in their calculations. (Bird, Lyft, and Spin, who are licensed in D.C., have reportedly all used<\/a> Xiaomi scooters at one point; Bird has since moved on<\/a> to a custom model.)<\/p>\n She added that \u201cthe study\u2019s comparison cases were also based on assumptions that don\u2019t necessarily reflect what we see in cities today,\u201d like the fact that buses often aren\u2019t 100 percent full.<\/p>\n Lime said in a statement that it \u201cwelcomes research into the environmental benefits of new mobility options,\u201d but similarly maintained the findings are \u201clargely based on assumptions and incomplete data that produces high variability in the results.\u201d<\/p>\n The statement didn\u2019t elaborate, but Lime has already announced<\/a> it\u2019s purchasing renewable energy credits and carbon offsets to account for electricity used in charging its scooters (as has Bird<\/a>), and has also already adopted one of researchers\u2019 suggestions in letting \u201cjuicers\u201d reserve scooters<\/a> for 30-minute windows, keeping contractors from duplicating efforts to round them up.<\/p>\n But even with these changes, e-scooters largely rely on people driving cars to charge them. One now-former charger from Northeast D.C., who asked to remain anonymous because of a conflict of interest with his day job in transportation research, said he encountered competitors using rented pickup trucks or vans with far more storage capacity.<\/p>\n Fearing, who tried out the hustle while living in Bloomingdale, said D.C.\u2019s licensed scooter providers could do more to track chargers\u2019 emissions, including asking them to record their mileage on the job.<\/p>\n Both ex-chargers also suggested companies try out a different framework entirely, like bringing the new charge to <\/em>the scooters instead of having people pick up and drop them off daily.<\/p>\n That\u2019s just what Bolt, co-founded by Olympian runner Usain Bolt, is doing by offering swappable, rechargeable batteries in its recently debuted<\/a> devices. A spokesperson said the firm assigns employees with sprinter-style vans to service the vehicles, rather than allowing chargers to sign up and collect them in their own cars.<\/p>\n Skip, which recently returned from an operating suspension<\/a> in the District after multiple\u00a0<\/a>scooters<\/a> unexpectedly caught fire, is doing something similar by rolling out a new line<\/a> of devices with replaceable batteries. In a statement, a Skip spokesperson said that the company testing them out in its only other market, San Francisco, before eventually replacing its existing fleet in D.C. this year.<\/p>\n \u201cRather than trucks and vans driving about to pick-up and re-deploy, a single electric cargo bike can make the rounds to replace batteries with a full (and significantly longer) charge,\u201d Skip CEO and founder Sanjay Dastoor said in a statement.<\/p>\n And Spin, a Ford-owned company that arrived last fall<\/a>, is piloting solar-powered docking stations <\/a>in D.C., in part to eliminate the need for freelancers to come pick them up and charge them overnight. The firm partnered with startup Swiftmile to install 40 total docking stations in busy areas in the District, Alexandria, and Arlington. The idea banks on users taking it upon themselves to dock their scooters to recharge after use, instead of leaving them out on sidewalks.<\/p>\n Lime, for its part, said it\u2019s established \u201ca robust repair and reuse program\u201d to make its scooters longer-lasting, and is \u201cmaking rapid advances in both technology and operations.\u201d<\/p>\n Hanson, Bird\u2019s head of sustainability, said the firm is \u201ccommitted to making Bird a net-zero carbon emission service,\u201d including with those aforementioned renewable energy credits. The company is also exploring other ways to cut emissions and hopes to be able to track its entire carbon footprint, she said.<\/p>\n Only two years have passed since the first e-scooters were dropped off on Santa Monica streets, and even less since they arrived in D.C.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s moving so fast that I don\u2019t think anyone has the right answers,\u201d says Sebastian Castellanos, research lead for the World Resources Institute\u2019s transportation technology-focused New Urban Mobility alliance<\/a>.<\/p>\n But he points out to the positive finding that was overlooked in numerous reports on that recent life-cycle study\u2014\u201cEven if scooters have a shorter life span,\u201d says Castellanos, \u201cit\u2019s still much better\u201d than cars.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/dcist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2019\/09\/scooters2_web-1500x1124.jpg\")
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