The Emergence of E-Scooters and Their Impact On Our Campus

By: Natalie Gonzalez

Hello everyone and happy Week 6!

When you last heard from the SAR Transportation Team, we were in the midst of conducting our background research to give us more insight into the current state of sustainable transportation at UCLA. After looking through official publications from UCLA concerning statistics, trends, and future plans of transportation on campus, we realized there was a large knowledge gap when it came to e-scooters. This lack of data and regulations have allowed e-scooters to run wild on our campus, often times causing them to be found in areas that are hazardous to pedestrians. Our team will work to help UCLA transportation close this gap in knowledge by collecting data using two different methods: e-scooter spot counts, and an attitude survey to analyze the efficiency of new e-scooter parking spots.

Starting Week 7, our team will begin conducting spot counts at four different locations around campus during peak commuter times. Two of these locations will be locations on campus where there are already official e-scooter parking spots. To study the effectiveness of these spots, we will be observing how many e-scooters are found within the parking spot, how many are parked outside, and how far these outside ones are parked. Our other two locations will be places we believe to be e-scooter hotspots, locations where there is constantly a high number of e-scooters parked. We will observe exactly how many e-scooters are parked in these locations, and whether or not they are parked recklessly.

We are also in the process of composing an attitude survey that will be applicable to all students, regardless of whether or not they use e-scooters. This survey will aim to find out why students use e-scooters, what other method of transport they prefer, and gauge their knowledge of e-scooter parking locations. We plan on distributing this survey to different student groups and list serves within the next week. We look forward to sharing our early results with you in Week 8!