Wind reports high e-scooter demand in first six months of Nottingham trial

Wind Mobility has reported high demand for its e-scooters after the first six months of its trial in Nottingham.

Since the launch of the trial in October 2020, residents have taken more than 240,000 rides on Wind’s yellow e-scooters with an average distance of 1.9 miles per trip. In total, city residents have covered more than 435,000 miles and spent more than 75,000 hours on the sustainable transport alternative.

Lukasz Rybak, Wind’s city manager in Nottingham, said: “The first six months of the trial have proven to be very successful and indicate a high popularity of our e-scooters among people living, working and studying in Nottingham.

“More than 100 users in Nottingham download the Wind app every day and we see a high rate of five to six daily rides on each scooter. Taking into account that Wind has achieved these high numbers during the fall and winter months with lockdown restrictions in place for most of the time, we expect a significant growth and even higher usage of our scooters for the second half of the trial.”

As part of the trial, Wind Mobility has also seen a high demand for its subscription e-scooters that are offered to key workers living and working in Nottingham, and has recently introduced free ride coupons for key workers that can be used towards Wind’s pay-per-minute service offer. The coupons are part of Wind’s Helping Hands initiative to support key workers and hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Wind Mobility is working with Nottingham City Council to address issues that have come up over the last six months of the trial, such as parking and pavement riding. The operator has already taken a number of measures to address these, by educational videos and communication, the introduction of penalties such as penalty fees and/or a suspension of the user account, and marking parking bays.

The penalty fee for wrongly parked scooters has recently been tripled. Wind Mobility has rolled out number plates across the fleet, to make it easier to identify users who have behaved irresponsibly. This will also enable the council’s Community Protection team to take action.

In addition to defining areas where scooters cannot be ridden or can only be ridden at reduced speed, the latest step Wind Mobility has taken is to employ patrollers, who are roaming around the city and are able to identify and take action against anyone caught pavement riding, or riding or parking their e-scooter irresponsibly.