Motivations and Mode-choice Behavior of Micromobility Users in Washington, DC

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.13021/jmms.2020.2894

Keywords:

micromobility, e-scooter, dockless, bikeshare, Capital Bikeshare, COVID-19, survey, multimodal, logistic regression

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has reduced travel in general and disrupted travel patterns across the United States. The transit and ridehailing service ridership are particularly severely impacted. After an initial dip, shared micromobility services, including bikeshare, e-scooters, and e-bikeshare, have gained popularity as social distancing promoters with fewer points of contact. The findings of this article are based on the first phase of a two-phase mixed-mode survey of users and non-users of micromobility in Washington DC (n=440) in the Summer of 2019. While the phase-2 of the study is impacted by COVID-19 prevalence, results from the phase-1 are expected to serve as a critical baseline for post-pandemic travel behavior analysis and policy design. Findings indicate that each micromobility mode caters to different trip purposes and trip lengths of riders. While pleasure and time are identified as the biggest motivator for users, safety and pricing remain the most prominent barriers to users and non-users. Women and ethnic groups prefer to stay unimodal. Young and low-income users tend to be multimodal in their micromobility usage.   

Author Biographies

Sid Rayaprolu, George Mason University

Ph.D. Student

George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030

Mohan Venigalla, PhD, P.E, F.ASCE, George Mason University

Mohan Venigalla, Ph.D., P.E. F.ASCE

Professor

Sid and Reva Dewberry Department of Civil, Environmental and Infrastructure Engineering,

George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030-4400

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Published

2020-11-27

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