[NEWS]Micromobility:Bucharest sustainable transport

In recent years, the growing number of vehicles crossing Bucharest has led to an increase in the level of pollution caused by congested traffic in this region. Authorities have already taken important steps at local, regional and national level to reduce air quality deterioration and one of them was to raise awareness level among population about this. In this respect, more and more Bucharest-Ilfov region’s citizens are using non-polluting individual means of transport both, to reduce travel times and to join the fight against pollution and climate change.

Electric scooters have the advantage that they can move faster during periods of peak hour traffic congestion, are powered by electricity and do not emit any polluting gases, such as conventional vehicles. These also take up less space on the streets, so more people can travel faster than with personal cars.

Wolf-E was the first electric scooter service launched in Romania. Their vision was to create a mobility service complementary to public transport, recommending the use of electric scooters over short and medium distances, up to 3 km. The initial investment was at least half a million dollars represented by the development of the application and a fleet of over 500 vehicles in Bucharest. The micro-vehicles are marked on a map available in the application with Android and iOS versions. The e-scooters have a range of around 25km and the price for renting them consists of a single unlocking fee of 40 cents and 10 cents for each minute of use, without exceeding an interval of up to one hour per user. These have the average rate of use about 3 trips, on an average distance of 3.2 km - representing about 10 minutes of using. In the first 5 months of operation, the company announced over 18,500 people who used the application at least once, the growth rate being accelerated, given that Bucharest has a density of over 10,000 inhabitants per km2.

Flow - one of the e-MOPOLI stakeholders actively involved in the project - is a Romanian start-up that created the first electric scooter rental system in Bucharest. In the first 4 months after the launch of the service, the rented micromobility vehicles performed over 80,000 trips, each used on average over a distance of 16 kilometers, which leads to a reduction in emissions of up to 3,500 kg of carbon for each one, according to company representatives. The renting price for these vehicles it’s the same as Wolf-E.

While other types of scooters can be rented from their own applications, Lime can be booked directly from the Uber application. Users will be able to see the electric scooters that are near to them, thus having the opportunity to choose in simple steps a new way of moving. In order to maintain a high level of safety for users and other traffic participants, the means of transport are limited to 20 km/h. In the first 6 months, the company recorded 400,000 trips. Most lasted between 5 and 60 minutes, and the distances traveled reached an average of 8-10 km.

On average speed about 17km/h the Bucharest traffic is on the 3rd place in Europe for traffic congestion. For those who want to travel longer distances at higher speeds, the Blinkee.city service offers the rental of electric mopeds. The fleet currently includes 82 units, with a power between 1.2 and 3.1 kW and can travel at a speed of up to 45 kilometers per hour. Their autonomy is a maximum of 65 km representing a fast and ecological solution that responds brilliantly to major current problems: air and noise pollution, congested traffic and lack of parking spaces.

Therefore, the field of sustainable mobility is in full development also in the country but especially in Bucharest, where the inhabitants of this region have more and more ecological alternatives modes of transport trying to reduce both, pollution generated by the transport sector and time spent in congested traffic.