Shared E-scooters: Business, Pleasure, or Transit?

Abstract: Shared e-scooters have become a familiar sight in many cities around the world. Yet the role they play in the mobility space is still poorly understood. This paper presents a study of the use of Bird e-scooters in the city of Atlanta. Starting with raw data which contains the location of available Birds over time, the study identifies trips and leverages the Google Places API to associate each trip origin and destination with a Point of Interest (POI). The resulting trip data is then used to understand the role of e-scooters in mobility by clustering trips using 10 collections of POIs, including business, food and recreation, parking, transit, health, and residential. The trips between these POI clusters reveal some surprising, albeit sensible, findings about the role of e-scooters in mobility, as well as the time of the day where they are most popular.