Planning suitable transport networks for e-scooters to foster micromobility spreading

Micromobility has a high potential to change mobility habits towards the use of sustainable transport modes. The shared mobility paradigm encourages the development of new mobility services, such as bike and e-scooter sharing, potentially reducing the need of car ownership, enlarging the accessibility of public transport and enriching the transport options needed to exploit Mobility as a Service solutions. While bike-sharing services have been used in urban areas for many years, shared e-scooter services (and private e-scooters) have been spreading only in the last few years. Due to the novelty of this mode, few attempts have been made for proper micromobility network planning. This paper proposes a multicriteria GIS-based analysis aimed at planning priority networks for e-scooters, focusing on safety, transport and land use characteristics. The case study is Catania, a medium-sized city in southern Italy, which suffers from a lack of adequate infrastructures for such sustainable modes of transport. By applying the methodology, it is possible to prioritise the road network elements that better fit the needs of e-scooters, thus paving the way for suitable infrastructures and network planning.