Time-based utilization rate of the fleet: measuring deep inefficiencies in e-scooter services in Atlanta and Rome

Resumen

E-scooter services have been deployed in cities worldwide, as a clean, flexible, and enjoyable mobility mode that contribute to reaching sustainable objectives. Given its recent advent, we still need to understand its actual operation and efficiency, and the corresponding result from users. This work contributes to this aim, providing a novel metric, the time-based utilization rate of the fleet, to measure the performance of escooter services. Its time-based nature implies a novel approach in the field, separating from traditional approaches that use the number of trips as the basic variable. We will mathematically demonstrate that these metrics are approximations of the exact value we provide as they intrinsically depend on the time interval they select for the calculation. In order to feed our method, we have retrieved e-scooter data from an operator (Helbiz) in Atlanta (USA) and Rome (Italy), corresponding to February 2021. These data include the state of each e-scooter in time, which allows us to precisely know whether they were used, out of service, or parked. Results show utilization rates of the fleet of 0.2021% and 0.3310%, respectively and high percentages of out of service vehicles that exceed 25 %. However, this inefficiency was not reflected in the profitability of the business. The economic analysis we conducted shows revenues close to 1 million euros in Rome, which may detach profitability from efficiency.