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.