Modes
Micromobility
Also Known As Micro-mobility
Micro Mode
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Micromobility refers to small, lightweight vehicles for short distance urban travel that are operated by the user rather than by a driver or motor carrier, including bicycles, e-bikes, cargo bikes, electric scooters, electric skateboards and shared bicycle and scooter fleets. The vehicles are low speed and meant for a single person over a short trip, commonly used to cover the last mile between a transit stop and a final destination. In the United States alone, micromobility services recorded 136 million trips in 2019, split between 96 million on dockless vehicles and 40 million on vehicles returned to a fixed dock; some shared electric scooter programs have shown among the fastest adoption rates of any transport mode, reaching nearly four percent uptake within a single year in the markets studied.
Facts
Disputed
Origin YearThe term is usually credited to Horace Dediu, said to have coined it in 2017, but internet references to the term already existed by 2010, so the exact date of coinage is not firmly settled. Core ConcernFilling the last mile gap in urban travel with lightweight, low-speed, single-user vehicles that are cheaper to operate than a car and more flexible than fixed-route transit, most often bicycles, e-bikes and electric scooters offered through docked or dockless shared fleets. 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
Exemplified By
Preceded By
Cycling, Modes Bicycles, the vehicle of the cycling mode, were in everyday urban use through the 19th and early 20th centuries, before automobiles displaced them and long before micromobility was named as its own category.
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