Source: Fluctuo

The Q2 Shared Mobility Index reveals that Europe’s shared mobility market continues to grow in terms of fleet size, with ridership remaining stable.

Fluctuo’s latest report for Q2 2023 examines the data for shared mobility in 33 European cities, across five vehicle types: station-based bikes, dockless bikes, scooters, mopeds and cars. The report can be viewed in full here.

General trends

Compared to 2022, the overall shared mobility sector has increased by 7% year-on-year, though ridership saw a slight decrease of -1%.

A notable trend is a decrease in the number of shared service operators, which is an effect of cities increasingly putting out tenders to limit the numbers of operators in a city. Where a city might once have had five operators deploying scooters, there might now only be two. The number of vehicles available has continued to grow, and cities are finding that fewer operators with more vehicles each can provide a better service.

Scooters have the largest share of ridership at 42%, though have seen a reduction in growth year-on-year. This dip can be attributed to several factors, including market saturation in some under-regulated markets, and the introduction of stricter regulations in other markets.

Bikes have seen strong growth, and this is expected to continue. Notable data from individual cities include operators in Paris adding to their bike fleets ahead of the city’s ban on e-scooters which came into force in September; a fresh dockless-bike system in Marseilles operated by Inurba seeing ridership grow by 429%; and Madrid’s BiciMAD bike system remaining popular, thanks to its free-to-use status to the end of 2023.

A global overview

Europe continues to be a global leader in shared mobility usage. The North American Bike and Scooter Share Association (NABSA) 2022 report allows direct comparison, demonstrating that Europe’s shared mobility sector leads in terms of fleet size, total trips, trips per vehicle per day (TVD) an per-capita usage. In short, Europe’s shared mobility fleet is used more frequently, and on an individual level, Europeans are taking nearly double the number of trips than North Americans do.