MOBY  sucessfully completes Ireland’s first commercial e-scooter sharing pilot scheme 

MOBY, Ireland’s leading micro-mobility company, is proud to announce the successful completion of its e-scooter sharing pilot program in partnership with the University of Limerick. Over the past six months, MOBY deployed 30 e-scooters on the university campus  and monitored usage patterns, user behaviors and attitudes to e-scooter usage. 

The pilot program, which was Ireland’s first commercial e-scooter sharing scheme, provided useful insights for the industry as Ireland moves closer to passing legislation for e-scooter use on public roads. The program’s results were encouraging, showing a high level of user safety and usage.

Over 1,000 people signed up to use the e-scooters, taking thousands of rides across the campus, with an average ride time of 13 minutes. The highest usage was between 4 pm and 8 pm, which was the enforced cut-off time for the service. Pricing was set at €0.40 to start the ride and €0.10 per minute thereafter, which is below the industry average for a public sharing scheme.

The pilot program revealed that e-scooters did not significantly reduce walking journeys, with an average distance traveled of 1.55 km over the full pilot. The pilot program’s results suggest that e-scooters used in sharing schemes can be safe for users, with no reported accidents or dangerous incidents during the thousands of rides taken.

Very little vandalism or theft was reported during the pilot. The pilot program’s findings support the belief that e-scooters used for sharing schemes are less appealing to thieves or vandals due to their rugged build and proprietary parts.

Helmets were not mandatory for the pilot program, and they were rarely used. The pilot program’s findings suggest that enforcing helmet usage in shared schemes will be problematic, as it can deter users from using the service.

The pilot program received a 90% positive rating from riders, with the main requests for improvement being a bigger ride area, more e-scooters, and lower ride costs. The MOBY e-scooter sharing pilot program at the University of Limerick was successful in gaining preliminary insights into e-scooter usage and travel patterns among a student population.

Addressing challenges such as parking, riding on footpaths, and finding a financially viable pricing structure for operators will need to be fully addressed before e-scooter schemes can be more widely deployed in Ireland.

In a survey of users, 72% of respondents strongly agreed the e-scooter scheme should continue at the University of Limerick, so it is clear e-scooter sharing has the potential to become an important part of the sustainable transportation landscape in Ireland.

Commenting on the pilot program, Thomas O’Connell, Founder and CEO of MOBY said:  “MOBY is proud to have been selected after winning Ireland’s first open tender for an e-scooter sharing scheme license, and we are excited to continue delivering innovative and safe ways to provide more sustainable transport solutions to communities across Ireland. We hope to take the insights and learnings from this pilot into wider public shared e-scooter schemes in the near future, to ensure they can be delivered in a way that benefits the community, ensures user safety and contributes to reducing transport-related emissions.” 

Commenting on the pilot program, Pat McMahon, Building and Estates, University of Limerick said:  “The e-scooter pilot program in partnership with MOBY builds upon our Green Campus program to  develop sustainable transport behaviors and uptake at University of Limerick. As a large campus we want to be able to offer last mile transport solutions that better connect the campus and surrounding areas in a more sustainable way. This pilot provided us with useful insights on the demand for and usage patterns of e-scooters within the campus, which will better enable us to develop clearer operational, usage and safety frameworks into the future”