Imagine an “individualized” public transit system where reliable electric-powered bikes/scooters are available for use within walking distance in a city. In base stations, located in major public transportation nods and residential areas, after registration, members are able to swipe their Metro card to release a two-wheelers electronic vehicle (EV) from an auto locking system, fully charged and ready to travel up to 40-60km. After the journey, users return the share EV and pay for the mileage/time used. With designated mobile apps, members can make a reservation and find out where the nearest base stations are and how many shared EV are available now. Taiwan is now operating a two wheeler EV share program along with a state of arts battery exchange system (BES) in ChiaYi City, Taiwan.
Chiayi Mayor Twu Shiing-jer (凃醒哲) encouraged the citizens to rent electric motorcycles instead of oil-powered ones to reduce the number of motorcycles running in the city, which, he said, can mitigate air pollution and noise in the city.
Taiwan’s high vehicle density is equal to nearly one vehicle per person or more than two vehicles for each household. This has made Taiwan as one of the countries with world highest prevalence in personal vehicles per capita- cars and M2Ws combined. This spread use of individual, petro-powered vehicles is the main source of CO2 emission, air pollution and noise in the cities. In Taipei metropolitan, nearly 70% of ambient air pollution is from transportation sector. Most critically, the high personal vehicle usage has shown no sign of decline in the recent years even the city has operated a new affordable Metro Rapid Transit (MRT) since 1998. The Taipei Metropolitan has seen an unprecedented growth in subway capacity in the last 15 years with daily passengers from literally zero in 1998 to more than 2 million per day in 2014. However, the rapid growth of subway service has literally no impact on the car and motorbike usage, especially the M2Ws. The overrun of Taipei by M2Ws is a peculiar feature for a developed country which literally does not happen in other rich countries. Some transportation scholars are hoping that the share model of e-bike can be an alternative solution.
Sources
Sustainable Cities Collective. City-wide e-scooter share launched in ChiaYi, Taiwan. 2016
Focus Taiwan. Chiayi City to launch E-bike rental Dec. 20. 2015