Micromobility in Smart Cities: A Closer Look at Shared Dockless E-Scooters via Big Social Data

The micromobility is shaping first- and last-mile travels in urban areas. Recently, shared dockless electric scooters (e-scooters) have emerged as a daily alternative to driving for short-distance commuters in large cities due to the affordability, easy accessibility via an app, and zero emissions. Meanwhile, e-scooters come with challenges in city management, such as traffic rules, public safety, parking regulations, and liability issues. In this paper, we collected and investigated 5.8 million scooter-tagged tweets and 144,197 images, generated by 2.7 million users from October 2018 to March 2020, to take a closer look at shared e-scooters via crowdsourcing data analytics. We profiled e-scooter usages from spatial-temporal perspectives, explored different stakeholders (i.e., riders, gig workers, and ridesharing companies), examined operation patterns (e.g., injury types, and parking behaviors), and conducted sentiment analysis. To our best knowledge, this paper is the first large-scale systematic study on shared e-scooters using big social data.

I. Introduction

Micromobility is an emerging term usually referring to the usage of docked and dockless lightweight devices (e.g., bikes) for short- and medium-length trips. As a new mode of micromobility, shared dockless electric scooters (e-scooters) are gaining popularity in recent years. A recent survey conducted in February 2019 showed 11% of Paris residents reported using e-scooters either frequently or from time to time [1]. Aiming at closing first- and last-mile transit gaps for residents, many ridesharing companies, such as Lime, Bird, and Lyft, deployed thousands of e-scooters in more than 60 cities across the United States. According to the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) [2], people took 38.5 million trips on shared e-scooters in 2018.