The trial of legal e-scooters rented through the hire scheme run by Voi is to expand to all parts of Bristol in the coming months. Two huge areas in the north west and in the far south of the city have been excluded from the Voi trial ever since it started back in October 2020.
But now places like Avonmouth, Lawrence Weston, Shirehampton in the north west, and Hartcliffe, Hengrove and Stockwood in the south are finally being included. In a report to Bristol City Council’s cabinet, which is expected to rubber-stamp permission for the expansion next week.
Councillors were told between 500 and 900 more e-scooters will be put on the roads of Bristol to cope with extra demand from the extra areas. It will still be illegal to ride a privately-owned e-scooter on public roads, cyclepaths or pavements in Bristol if it is not part of the Voi hire trial scheme.
Read more: Love them or hate them - this is how e-scooters are changing Bristol
Ever since the scheme was launched in October 2020, it has only covered two-thirds of the city. Riders are barred from going south of the Airport Road ring road in South Bristol, and a huge area north west of The Downs, covering everywhere from Westbury-on-Trym, Henbury, much of Southmead and out to Shirehampton, Sea Mills, Lawrence Weston and Avonmouth have been out-of-bounds for the e-scooters - although people who lease them on a monthly basis from Voi have been able to ride anywhere in the West of England area.
The expansion will happen in north west Bristol first, during April, and then in South Bristol in May. The expansion comes after the Voi trial scheme was extended for another six months to October 2022, as part of a national Government-led trial into the safety and usage of e-scooters in cities across the country.
The trial was extended partly because the pandemic affected usage and conditions on the roads, and also because the jury is still out on whether they are safe on the roads and how they can be regulated.
The expansion in Bristol will see an extra 600 parking hubs designated in the areas now being opened up - these will almost all be on pavements and not marked out, just designated by Voi as areas where the e-scooters can be left in a spot that’s, in theory, not in the way of pedestrians.
Bristol City Council is allocating an extra £15,000 to assist the running of the scheme - mainly officer time to work with Voi to check the locations of these extra 600 parking hubs.
The report from Bristol City Council outlined how the trial is being run by Voi in partnership with the West of England Combined Authority, with support from Bristol City Council, and has been deemed a huge success so far.
“One of the main objectives of the trial is to test the demand for rental e-scooters,” the report said. “The scheme has proved very popular, particularly amongst younger people who form most of the ridership, and it has greatly improved travel choices for many people. The Bristol scheme has much higher usage than many other trial cities- over 200,000 people have tried riding a rental e-scooter, and there have been more than 3.5 million rides and nearly ten million kilometres travelled in the Bristol and South Gloucestershire area since the scheme launched in October 2020.
“The full fleet of e-scooters has not been in operation for most of the trial period so the usage figures for 2022 are expected to be much higher. Another objective of the trial is to identify any operational issues and how best to manage these. Significant progress has been made in tackling some of the issues encountered in the early stages of the trial such as overcrowding of parking locations and poor parking and rider behaviour, and these have reduced significantly as the scheme has become more established. Improvements to Voi’s parking management systems and messaging to riders have significantly reduced the level of parking issues, and work will continue throughout the rest of the trial to improve these further and to address issues of poor rider behaviour,” the council report added.
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