lmportance of safety and road surface for route choice when riding shared e-scooters vs. bicycles

The rise of micromobility, most notably electric standing scooters (e-scooters), has resulted in new challenges for traffic planning and road safety. One such issue is the fact that in most European countries, e-scooter users are obliged to ride their vehicle on cycling infrastructure and thereby share this infrastructure with bicyclists. This increases the use of and, subsequently, demand for bicycle lanes, which is an obvious challenge for transport planning. However, for adequate planning and construction of cycling infrastructure, information on route choice behavior of bicyclists and e-scooter users and its influencing factors is necessary. While research on bicyclists' route choice is well advanced, research on e-scooter riders is still in its infancy. For bicyclists, the presence of bicycle facilities, traffic volume, and travel time are among others particularly important for route choice. However, the question arises whether this also applies to e-scooter riders as vehicle dynamics are different and riders are, at least for now, less skilled due to lack of training and exposition. In order to fill this research gap, we aimed to analyze the determinants for route choice of e-scooter users in comparison to bicyclists in a field study. [from Introduction