Urban Micromobility in Practice: Insights from a Full-Year Analysis of Shared Scooter Use in Tel Aviv

Highlights: What are the main findings? Using a full-year, city-wide dataset, shared e-scooter demand in Tel Aviv shows clear temporal patterns—peaking in late afternoons, dipping on holidays and in rain, and surging on Thursdays, the start of the local weekend. Trips are concentrated within already well-served central areas: over one-third occur between the highest-accessibility zones, while low-access areas contribute less than 4%, indicating limited first/last-mile use. What are the implications of the main findings? The strong temporal regularities highlight that shared micromobility use follows habitual, socially driven patterns rather than spontaneous travel choices. Without targeted policy, shared e-scooters risk reinforcing existing mobility hierarchies; regulators could pair licenses with service-area obligations and invest in peripheral infrastructure such as lanes, lighting, and parking. This paper investigates the spatiotemporal patterns and accessibility implications of shared e-scooter use in Tel Aviv, drawing on a complete year (2024) of trip-level data from all licensed providers. Shared micromobility services are often promoted as tools for reducing car dependency and improving urban accessibility, yet their actual usage patterns and equity outcomes remain underexplored, especially outside North America and Western Europe. This study aims to address this gap by integrating over 9 million reconstructed scooter trips with public transport accessibility data, local weather records, and institutional calendar effects. Multivariate regression was applied to quantify temporal and environmental determinants of demand, seasonal-trend decomposition to reveal cyclical usage patterns, and spatial analysis to assess whether scooters extend or reinforce existing mobility hierarchies. Findings indicate that scooter use in Tel Aviv is highly structured, peaking during afternoon hours, dropping during holidays and rain, and reflecting the weekly rhythms of the workweek in Tel Aviv. However, spatial patterns show a strong concentration of usage within already well-connected central areas, with limited activity in low-accessibility zones. These results suggest that shared e-scooters are not currently fulfilling their potential as first- or last-mile connectors; instead, they primarily serve as short-range, intra-core alternatives to walking.