First Data Shows Scooter Share in Canberra is Booming

By Phil Latz | 12th May 2021 |

Scooters like these ones resting in Glebe Park in Canberra’s Civic precinct are being hired multiple times per day.

Canberra, ACT

Take a quick visit to the centre of Canberra on any sunny day and you’ll immediately notice e-scooters being ridden in every direction. The purple Beam and orange Neuron scooter-share schemes were launched in September 2020 as we previously reported.

Each company was given permission to deploy up to 750 scooters in Canberra.

On 9^th April 2021 ACT Minister for Transport and City Services Chris Steel issued a media release showing that the scooters are logging more than 4000 trips per day.

“Since the share scheme commenced in September last year, e-scooters have proven an incredibly popular way for Canberrans to make short journeys linking to workplaces, tourist destinations, social activities and public transport,” he said.

About 75 per cent of trips are short ones of between one and two kilometres with a median trip length of just over eight minutes.

So far Saturdays are proving to be the most popular day of the week for e-scooter use, with Canberrans logging two to three times as many trips as on Mondays.

The single-day record for rides to date was on Saturday 21 November last year when passengers clocked up 9325 trips.

Use of the scooters is higher in the second half of the day, beginning to rise in the afternoon and peaking in the evening.