Leading Micromobility Trends for 2024: From Urban Streets to Regional Implementation

Whether it’s getting to work, home, school, or leisure activities, the way people travel is changing. With increased congestion and limited transit, people’s choices have grown from simply taking their car or selecting a bus or train route. Today, shared and private micromobility options are growing across the United States, impacting the way landscape architects, urban designers, and transportation engineers design streets and public spaces. In 2022, more than 400 North American cities had a shared micromobility program or system, and shared micromobility customers took over 130 million trips (63 million on bikes and 67 million on scooters), up from just 42 million in 2017.

Transportation strategies such as shared micromobility programs create low-commitment opportunities for people to explore alternatives to private motor vehicles. But what do we mean when we talk about micromobility? Micromobility devices are small, lightweight, human- or electric-powered vehicles with low speeds (up to 15 MPH), which may be shared or privately owned and can replace cars for short trips. The most common of these devices are bicycles, electric bikes, cargo bikes, and standing and seated electric scooters. 

These devices build connections that make public transportation more viable by providing first/last mile solutions in both urban and less dense environments. In a post-COVID-19 world, many trips are more local, making micromobility an even more viable standalone option. The flexibility of micromobility allows people to rethink what livability means, how we design our built environment, and how we consider congestion mitigation.

While micromobility isn’t new (the bicycle has been around since at least 1817), the advent of new devices and technology (e-mobility) and its reasonable affordability have given it a recent bump in popularity. In North America, there has been a steady rise in the use of bikes and other micromobility devices in recent years due in part to cities investing in bicycle infrastructure that gives riders a greater feeling of safety on the street, and in part to the uptick in shared mobility services that make it easy to try. Between 2020 and 2022, the number of shared micromobility systems in North America with e-bikes doubled. It’s not just shared micromobility systems that are seeing a boom in e-device uptake: US e-bike sales increased over 145 percent between 2019 and 2020.

These devices change how people navigate their cities and towns, and they begin to change how people see and want to interact with those places. Through the windshield, a driver is removed from the surrounding landscape; on a bicycle or scooter, the rider is integrated into the space. They are more likely to notice storefronts, parklets, and other attractions along the way, and to interact with other people on their routes. Micromobility users experience the streetscape and the public realm at a distinctly human scale, creating a desire for their environment to reflect that scale to them. The new perception of micromobility users should prompt designers, landscape architects, urban planners, and municipal officials to create plans and initiate projects at a human scale; projects that promote accessibility, livability, and a vibrant public life. This could mean including public amenities that encourage street-level vibrancy and provide utilitarian benefits to micromobility users in plans, continuing the virtuous cycle of micromobility and good, human-scale design.

Micromobility use can have a major impact on the design of spaces near every developable parcel adjacent to the transportation network. Here are a few key trends shaping micromobility today.

1. Mobility Hubs: This includes mini-stations that provide the public with essential personal mobility choices from scooters, bike-sharing, and ride-sharing to private mobility and charging stations. At The Point of the Mountain Development (The Point), a planned 600-acre mixed-use development in Draper, Utah, mobility hubs are central to the vision of the site, promoting choice and convenience in personal mobility for residents and workers alike. The network of mobility hubs across The Point site brings together the many mobility options, including new public transit, and offers information and wayfinding, to create a unified, easy-to-use, and convenient system. The availability of transportation information and wayfinding empowers smart decision-making. Mobility hubs provide convenient parking to encourage the use of micromobility devices and manage sidewalk clutter. The site also supports these mobility options through a dense, connected network of on-street bikeways and off-street trails that will enable people to walk or take micromobility to access destinations across the development. 
2. Streetscapes: When it comes to streetscape improvements, it’s important to remove cars as the focus and to dedicate a portion of the right-of-way to a demarcated and protected area for micromobility users. With planned micromobility use, street design, whether retrofitting existing streets or constructing new greenfield developments, should provide a more equitable distribution of roadway space. At The Point, the design and engineering team is designing a dedicated micromobility network that prioritizes this infrastructure over the car.

Such an approach will not only provide enhanced safety for all road users but will further incentivize the uptake of public transit, walking, and micromobility as viable options for all. 

In New York City, the first protected bicycle lanes were installed in 2007, and by 2022 grew to a network of 644 miles of protected bicycle infrastructure. This network investment has resulted in 94 percent growth in daily cycling and micromobility trips between 2012 and 2022 while the risk of being killed or seriously injured on a bike has continued to decline. Shared micromobility schemes further incentivize the uptake needed to warrant this redistribution of space. New York’s Citi Bike program saw over 32 million rides last year alone (July 2022-June 2023). In New York, that redistribution of space takes vehicle lanes or parking lanes and repurposes them for pedestrians, cyclists, and other micromobility users. New York is now looking to tackle the next adjustment on streets to address fast-growing e-micromobility ridership, with expanded micromobility lanes to account for varying speeds and increasing volumes of users. New developments and retrofits of existing cities and towns should consider wider or separated lanes with pedestrian amenities and beautification projects.

3. Reduce footprint needed for parking vehicles. As more and more people use micromobility, the need for parking private motor vehicles can decrease. Robust shared micromobility programs, and incentives such as subsidies and proper infrastructure to promote use, may lead to a decline in vehicle ownership and subsequent reductions in the need to provide both on- and off-street parking. A 2022 study by the North American Bike Share Association (NABSA) found that 37 percent of shared micromobility trips replaced vehicle trips, and research published in 2022 indicated that bikeshare can lower daily vehicle miles traveled per capita in urban areas by 1.46 miles. The jury is still out on how much these systems can reduce vehicle ownership, but early studies indicate there is a correlation. The added oomph of electric devices has opened up the possibility of micromobility to more users than ever before by making its use accessible to a range of ages and abilities and allowing users to cover greater distances. The hauling capacity of cargo e-bikes adds an even stronger incentive to replace motor vehicle trips with micromobility. These trends indicate that a glut of parking may not need to be provided in new and retrofitted developments and in street redesigns if accompanied by strong support for the use of micromobility and transit. Micromobility use can help cities move to more sustainable transportation by reducing vehicle miles traveled (VMT) and creating a smaller footprint on the street.

As cities, developers, urban planners, and designers envision their next projects, it is essential to factor in the impact that micromobility can have on their designs. The compelling door-to-door solution micromobility offers allows for a wholesale rethinking of how roadway space is allocated, how much motor vehicle parking is needed, and how public investment and land can be dedicated to micromobility infrastructure rather than personal vehicles. The public realm benefits are clear; integrating micromobility options and infrastructure into a city is one of the most promising ways that cities can limit traffic congestion, reduce emissions, and improve safety and livability for all road users.

Jim MacRae is a principal urban planner and landscape architect with Design Workshop. Stephanie Shaw is a principal and West Coast general manager with Sam Schwartz.