An Analysis of the Service Coverage and Regulation of E-Scooter Sharing in Rome (Italy)

In recent years, electric scooters (e-scooters) have become a major successful expression of micro and shared mobility and have widely spread across the world. Because of this ample success, numerous e-scooter sharing companies have started their business in an increasing number of cities. A typical company puts a fleet of vehicles at disposal of its users, allowing to rent them by a smartphone application and paying a per-minute fee. Each company identifies a service area, namely a portion of the territory of the city where shared e-scooters may be rented, ridden and parked. The service area is commonly provided under the form of a geofence, namely a virtual limit that can be set through Global Positioning System (GPS) technology and is drawn on the map provided by the smartphone application of the company. In this work, we study the e-scooter sharing systems that have been created by a number of private companies in Rome, the capital city of Italy. Specifically, we focus on identifying and analyzing the service coverage guaranteed by the companies through their service areas and the overlap of areas managed by different sharing companies. We also provide an overview of the e-scooter sharing regulation of Rome, identifying some first recommendations that could lead to a more effective deployment of e-scooter sharing services.