MICROMOBILITY
NEW MOBILITY
Micromobility is set to play a crucial part in the future of travel, but what does that future look like? Daniel Blackham sits down with TRL’s head of new mobility, Dr. George Beard, to get his thoughts
M
icromobility is a broad spectrum. From private to shared, bicycles to e-bikes, cargo models to e-scooters, tricycles to other Light Electric
Vehicles (LEVs). Whichever guise it takes, micromobility is set to play an
ever-growing role in human life. TRL, formerly Transport Research Laboratory, is an independent private company offering a transport consultancy and research service to both the public and private sector. With a history that can be traced back more than 90 years, and a tagline of “the future of transport”, there aren’t many places with more gravitas when it comes to discussing what the next decades could hold for micromobility. Dr. George Beard heads up TRL’s new mobility sector. With a background in psychology, human factors, research methods and statistics, he leads studies of road user attitudes and behaviours to understand how to encourage greener travel whilst also ensuring transport is safe and accessible for all.
In recent years, innovation has unlocked endless potential for micromobility, but challenges remain with infrastructure, Government policymakers and public perception. “Overall I would say the ‘mood music’ in the industry is a mix of excitement around the tremendous opportunity that micromobility brings, with a range of innovations going on, coupled with some frustrations about the regulatory barriers that remain in place,” said Beard.
“In particular there is lots of opportunity with ‘e-powered’ products. Batteries are much more accessible, more efficient and cheaper than they used to be and that has opened up opportunities for innovation in electric micromobility. “As a result, all sorts of new vehicle form factors are emerging.E-scooters obviously get a lot of attention, but I think there is a lot of potential in the broader micromobility sector. “To really unlock that opportunity, certainly for the UK, we need some fairly substantial regulatory change because at the moment the market is hindered in a number of different ways.”
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E-scooter regulation TRL, in partnership with Warwick Manufacturing Group, is currently working on a project for the Department for Transport (DfT) to provide them with evidence and recommendations regarding what the technical requirements should be for e-scooters in future regulations.
“Broadly speaking, we’re looking at three areas. Safety, sustainability and accessibility,” explained Beard. “We are really trying to understand the role of regulation for driving good outcomes in those three areas. “The shared e-scooter trials have demonstrated the tremendous demand for e-scooters as a mode of transport, and so moving forward it really is crucial that there is a suitable long-term regulatory framework in place.” Beard believes the key is setting the right detail in the regulation to overcome any concerns and challenges. “To drive good safety outcomes, it’s really about setting minimum technical requirements for the design and construction of the vehicles themselves,” said Beard. “In thinking about the ‘philosophy’ of how to regulate, we might consider two broad approaches; we could set very specific ‘feature-based’ regulations which specify the precise design and nature of e-scooters (for example, setting limits in wheel sizes, numbers of wheels, platform widths and so on), OR we could define a set of ‘performance-based’ regulations – in a broad sense, how does it handle, how stable is it, how well does it brake? etc. “If you can set some sensible minimum standards around those performance characteristics, but keep regulation quite open in terms of the features and designs, then that can bring benefits in terms of encouraging future innovation rather than blocking it, whilst still putting appropriate controls in place to drive good safety outcomes.“
With any regulation, Beard accepts there are always trade-offs to manage.
“In one sense a feature-based approach would make it very clear exactly what an e-scooter is in law,” he said.
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