Electric scooter sharing: How do people value it as a last-mile transportation mode?

With its advantages in urbanized areas, the electric scooter sharing (ESS) system has received considerable popularity as a transportation mode for short-distance trips. In this paper, people's preferences toward ESS for last-mile trips were analyzed using a stated preference experiment. We designed the experiment to scrutinize how people value ESS-riding compared with other conventional last-mile transportation modes. The values of travel time components such as access and riding times are estimated using a mixed logit model. The values of riding transportation modes were significantly greater than that of walking for a last-mile trip. However, none of the time values of two modes—those from a conventional last-mile mode and ESS—was dominating because the difference in the dispersions of each made the time value curves intersect around their medians. Considering the results, we have concluded that ESS is a competitive transportation mode in last-mile situations.