HEaLth iMpact of E-bikes and e-scooTers (HELMET)

Funding

National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Public Health Research (PHR) Ref. NIHR163726

What is the Research Question?

Do people’s travel choices change when e-bike and e-scooter share hire schemes are available
What do people think about these types of share hire schemes?
What encourages or discourages people from using these types of share hire schemes?
How much physical activity do people get from using e-scooters?
What is the environmental impact of e-bike and e-scooter share hire schemes?
How do e-bike and e-scooter share hire schemes impact road accidents?
Do these types of schemes provide value for money?
What information can we share with local and national government to help them make decisions about these types of schemes?

What is the problem?

The government has not yet decided whether to legalise the private use of e-scooters. The government has been testing e-scooter hire schemes in some parts of the UK since 2020. People can pay to use them for trips within each of these areas. While certain types of e-bikes are currently legal in the UK, they can be expensive to buy and tricky to store safely at home. Being able to pay to use them only when they are needed may encourage greater use.

Physical activity is important for physical and mental health. Walking or cycling between places is one way to be physically active. E-bikes are pedal bikes which have a battery to make cycling easier, especially on hills, whilst still maintaining a level of physical activity. Using e-bikes could be a good option to increase physical activity, but we need more scientific evidence. E-scooters run on batteries, meaning you don’t have to push them. E-scooters may decrease physical activity if people use them instead of walking or cycling.

What is the aim of the research?

We don’t know whether people’s travel choices change when e-bike and e-scooter hire schemes are available. For example, do people who would have driven before or taken a bus, choose to take an e-bike or e-scooter instead? Do people who would have walked before, choose to take an e-scooter instead? This would impact on physical activity levels.

We don’t know how much physical activity you get from using e-scooters. We also do not know the impact of e-bike and e-scooter schemes on the environment and if they reduce the amount of Carbon dioxide emissions, which affects climate change. E-bike and e-scooter hire schemes may increase or decrease road accidents. Having this information would enable local and national governments to make better choices. Information about value for money could also help them to decide whether to encourage e-bike and e-scooter use.

How will this be achieved?

Bristol added e-bikes to their e-scooter hire scheme in the autumn of 2023. At the same time Leeds introduced an e-bike only hire scheme. We conducted a survey of residents in Bristol, Leeds, Bradford and Sheffield during the summer of 2023, to understand if these hire schemes changed how active people were or how they travelled. We repeated the survey in summer 2024 to be able to compare the answers and see if the hire schemes changed how active people were or how they travelled (This was funded by a rapid grant from the Public Health Research Funding panel). We will also ask people how they feel about such hire schemes. We will check how much activity people get when using a share hire scheme e-scooter. We will look at whether the number of accidents change when these hire schemes start or stop. We will assess the costs and benefits, and their environmental impact. Finally, we plan to work with a range of groups to create guidelines to help councils and the government make decisions on how to promote e-bikes and e-scooters in the future.

We have worked with members of the public and local Councils to design this study. Members of the public and local authority-based colleagues’ have been involved in all parts of the project. We plan to continue working with these groups. This will help project findings to be as useful as possible to the public and to policy makers.

Who is leading the Research?

Dr Miranda Armstrong, Associate Professor of Physical Activity and Health, University of Bristol.

Further Information

CI Email: miranda.armstrong@bristol.ac.uk

For more information or to get involved in this project, please contact bnssg.research@nhs.net.

The views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care.