The Year in Review: 2018 Shared Mobility Snapshot

2018 was a big year for shared mobility in Oakland. The City’s bike share system, Ford GoBike, celebrated both its one-year anniversary and the completion of all 80 planned stations in Oakland. Now owned by ride-hailing company Lyft, Ford GoBike deployed its first fleet of e-bikes, encouraging more people to ride and increasing accessibility for users with long or steep commutes. The City’s free floating car share operator, GIG, took a big step forward, with a doubling of their vehicle fleet and expansion into the Fruitvale and San Antonio neighborhoods.

As in many cities across the country, e-scooters took Oakland by storm. Almost 3,000 scooters popped up on our streets, providing a new affordable and environmentally friendly way to get around — and raising several challenges and concerns that needed to be addressed. After a citywide community input process, we are excited to implement an official scooter share program that prioritizes equitable access, safety, and connectivity.

In 2019, we are looking forward to rolling out our official permitted scooter share program, expanding the bike share and car share programs into east Oakland and adding new forms of shared mobility, such as water-bikes and e-mopeds.

How do Oakland’s various forms of shared mobility compare? We crunched the numbers and have some initial findings to share:

Different Modes Serve Different Needs

Fig. 1: Number of Trips and Average Trip Distance by Mode

Oaklanders love to share! In 2018, Oakland saw almost 1 million scooter trips (in only 6 months), 250,000 bike share trips, 100,000 free-floating car share trips and 50,000 dedicated-space car share trips. Free-floating car share, bike share, and scooter share were used for shorter trips, averaging 2.4, 2.3 and 1.2 miles respectively. This is not surprising, as most trips taken in the U.S. are under 5 miles. Dedicated-space car share, on the other hand, fills a different need. An average trip distance of 52 miles suggests that dedicated-space cars are used for weekend road trips or regional trips.

Fig. 2: Total Miles Traveled by Mode

In total, shared vehicles accounted for more than 3 million miles of travel in Oakland. Scooters covered the most ground with more than 1 million miles, followed closely by dedicated space car share and then bike share. While scooter trips are the shortest trips on average, they are moving the most people. It is difficult to pin down the exact number of scooter users, however, we estimate that there are more than 100,000 scooter riders in Oakland — that’s roughly a quarter of the City’s total population!

Weather Impacts Mode Choice

Fig. 3: Trips by Month

Bike share reached peak popularity during the summer months, dropped in September most likely due to poor air quality, and spiked again in December with the introduction of electric bikes. Car share, however, did not appear to be impacted by the seasons. While this finding seems intuitive, it illustrates yet another way in which different modes fill different needs. There are benefits of having access to a diverse set of options — get where you need to go rain or shine.

How do shared modes interact?

We were curious to know how the abrupt introduction of scooters impacted the use of other shared modes. Lime launched their scooters on Oakland streets in late April 2018, quickly followed by Bird at the end of May. According to data, bike and car share riders weren’t phased! It appears that scooters had little impact on other shared modes, implying that scooters have a different user base and/or are used for different types of trips. This could have to do with the dockless nature of scooters. Dockless scooters can access new areas of the city and provide service for rides and destinations that bike and car share don’t serve. OakDOT is further exploring this question by surveying scooter riders to better understand how this new mode competes with or complements other modes and public transit. Take the survey here and join to our Shared Mobility mailing list to hear about the results!

How Are We Meeting Our Equity Goals?

Shared mobility services have historically failed to reach low-income communities and communities of color. As shared mobility expands in Oakland, we are committed to ensuring these services grow in ways that increase accessibility and affordability, and break down existing barriers to participation. Along with our Shared Mobility Advisory Committee, we created a set of Shared Mobility Principles to help guide this growth. Let’s check in on how we improved in 2018.

Bike Share For All

Fig. 4: Active Bike Share Memberships by Month

In 2018 Ford GoBike membership increased by 30%, peaking in July with 1,697 members. Roughly 23% of these members are enrolled through Bike Share for All, a discounted membership for riders who qualify for PG&E’s CARE or the Cal Fresh SNAP program. Bike Share for All members account for roughly 10% of all bike share trips. As illustrated above, these memberships have increased throughout the year. However, nearly 70,000 Oakland residents live below the poverty line, meaning they could be be eligible for discounted membership. There is plenty of room for improvement in 2019!

When our official permitted scooter program is launched later this spring, scooter companies will be required to follow suit. Some companies, such as Lime and Bird already have discounted programs.

Scooter outreach informed our Terms and Conditions

OakDOT staff met with neighborhood community groups to gather additional community input on terms and conditions that e-scooter companies will be required to meet in order to get a permit. This feedback guided our program policies, such as:

• Equitable distribution → more than 50% of scooters must be deployed in Oakland’s Communities of Concern
• Affordability → Operators must offer a discounted membership for those with low-income
• Accessibility → Operators must work towards the development adaptive scooters for persons with disabilities

Read more about what we heard and how it was incorporated into our Terms and Conditions here.

Getting the word out about low income discounts

In 2018, OakDOT launched an outreach program to promote widespread accessibility and adoption of existing car and bike share services in low income areas.

From this outreach, we learned about the barriers that low income residents face when considering using shared mobility. These commonly include:

• Possession of credit card or driver’s license
• Access to a smartphones, data plan, and wifi
• Assumed cost — monthly or ongoing fees and high hourly rates
• Limited English proficiency
• Knowledge of how to use
• Lack of trust

We are working to break down these barriers through education, development and promotion of low-income membership programs, and distribution of financial incentives (i.e. promo codes, free trials).

Read more about discounted memberships and our outreach here.

What’s in store for 2019?

Shared mobility is growing rapidly in Oakland. It’s taking on new forms and serving more of the city. In 2019, we want to see car, bike and scooter share trips go up and personal vehicle use of down. We want to see more residents sign-up for discounted programs and we want to see our existing operators expand in underserved areas of the city.

Things we’re excited about:

• We anticipate that our official scooter share program will roll out this spring! Stay updated here.
• Earlier this year Lyft announced a $700,000 partnership with Transform and Scraper Bike team to expand bike share and improve transit access in East Oakland.

To stay updated about all things shared mobility, subscribe to our mailing list!

With questions or comments, contact our Shared Mobility team at scootershare@oaklandca.gov.

Data Source: All data used in this report is proprietary and owned by the individual service operators. Ford GoBike data is available here.

Note: *Bike Share trip distance is calculated using average trip duration and an assumed average speed of 10 mph.