Micromobility and Congestion: What the US Evidence Actually Shows

Research from the University of California, Davis — the most comprehensive US dataset on the question — finds that a median 41% of micromobility trips substitute for car trips. The 2024 follow-up study (American Micromobility Panel Part 2, covering 48 cities and over 183,000 trips) measured the effect more precisely: each e-scooter trip reduces vehicle-miles-travelled by a median 0.15 miles; each bike-share trip by 0.25 miles. The finding's importance lies less in its magnitude than in its policy consequences.

What the evidence supports

The UC Davis team (Fukushige, Fitch-Polse et al., 2022–2024) collected 21-day smartphone travel diaries from 2,206 participants across 48 US cities. Their results show that where shared micromobility is available and integrated with public transit, a meaningful share of short urban trips shift away from cars — particularly the trips most inefficient to make by car and most easily substituted. The congestion relief is real but modest and highly location-dependent: strongest in dense urban cores with good cycling infrastructure, weaker or absent in sprawling, car-oriented environments. Trip distance is the single strongest factor affecting car substitution. Anyone presenting micromobility as a universal congestion cure is overreading the data.

Why the finding is politically useful

The importance is less the precise percentage than the direction. For cities weighing investment in cycle infrastructure, protected lanes, or subsidies for e-bikes and cargo bikes, evidence that micromobility reduces congestion provides political cover to act. Policy follows plausible evidence, not proof, and a credible study from a Tier 1 research university showing a 41% car-trip substitution rate is enough to unlock spending that the status quo would otherwise block. The finding's real function is to lower the political cost of building for bikes.

The limits to be honest about

Micromobility's congestion impact is capped by infrastructure, weather, and the fact that it competes with transit as much as with cars. The UC Davis data shows 36% of micromobility trips substitute for walking and 8% for transit — meaning a significant share does not reduce vehicle traffic at all. The effect fades where trip distances grow, weather is hostile, or road design makes cycling impractical. Overselling the effect invites backlash when reality disappoints, which then undermines the case for the very infrastructure that would make the effect real. The credible claim is that micromobility is a useful component of an integrated urban mobility mix, not a standalone solution to congestion.

What it enables

The practical consequence is that cities gain a justification for the infrastructure the bicycle industry needs: protected lanes, secure parking, integration with transit, and freight-cycle accommodation. Each study showing a measurable benefit lowers the political cost of building for bikes. The evidence does not sell bicycles directly — it sells the conditions under which bicycles sell themselves, by making cycling safe, convenient, and normal enough that modal shift actually occurs.

The strategic read

For the industry, the lesson is that advocacy matters as much as product. The single biggest variable in a market's addressable demand is whether its city has built for cycling, and the evidence base that justifies that building is something the industry can help generate and amplify. Funding and publicising credible research on micromobility's benefits is not philanthropy — it is investment in the market conditions that determine how many bikes ultimately get sold.

Sources: Fukushige et al., "Micromobility Trip Characteristics, Transit Connections, and COVID-19 Effects" (UC Davis ITS, 2022); Fukushige & Fitch-Polse, "American Micromobility Panel Part 2: Transit Connection, Mode Substitution, and VMT Reduction" (UC Davis / National Center for Sustainable Transportation, 2024).