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  • RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT

A natural experiment shows electric scooters really do cut traffic

A US city’s crackdown inadvertently reveals the vehicles’ value.
Low-angle view of a row of Lime-S Electric Scooters parked on a pavement.

Trips on electric scooters displace car travel, not just journeys on foot and public transport. Credit: ICV/Alamy

A night-time ban on electric scooters and bikes in Atlanta, Georgia, led to a spike in traffic congestion as many people reverted to using cars, researchers have found1. The study suggests that scooters do displace car use, as opposed to simply replacing trips that would have been done on foot or public transportation.

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Nature 611, 206 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-03528-4

References

  1. Asensio, O. I., Apablaza, C. Z., Lawson, M. C., Chen, E. W. & Horner, S. J. Nature Energy https://doi.org/10.1038/s41560-022-01135-1 (2022).

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