Commuters who take their folding bicycles on trains may soon have a new method of transport to carry instead – electric scooters.
Currently strictly controlled, not allowed on public roads or cycleways, MPs are pushing the government to legalise this latest mode of transport.
However, some cities will be able to accommodate e-scooters more easily than others. Uswitch has analysed data across 40 of the UK’s biggest cities to reveal which locations are geared up for the e-scooter revolution.
Newcastle topped the leaderboard for the most e-scooter friendly city in the UK with a score of 50 out of the possible 70, followed by Westminster and Carlisle.
Stoke-on-Trent found itself at the opposite end of the scale, with the study revealing it to be the worst city in the UK for electric scooter users, scoring just 20.3 out of 70.
The top-10 E-Scooter friendly cities:
- Newcastle upon Tyne – 50/70
- Westminster – 49
- Carlisle – 47.1
- Kingston upon Hull – 46.7
- Salford – 46.0
- Preston – 43.5
- Oxford – 42.2
- Manchester – 42.0
- Sunderland – 39.4
- Peterborough – 39.3
The E-Scootability Index from Uswitch explores which cities are the most suitable for e-scooters, based on all of the elements included in the research. The cities can only be suitable as long as legislation changes. The report looked at a) what is there already and b) what is planned to gauge which cities have the best infrastructure to support e-scooters.
In total, Uswitch analysed data from 40 UK cities with a population over 100,000 and analysed seven different data sets that related to the infrastructure of each city and their suitability for e-scooter uptake.
Ministers have said that they would like to see e scooters legalised within the next 18 months, saying that drivers should look to replace shorter journeys with them.
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