City Turning Green: Scooter Sharing in Groningen

To GO or not to GO, that’s the question… You literally cannot avoid the hundreds of green scooters that have flooded the city in the last year. Scooter sharing in Groningen is big.

Many say Groningen is the bike capital of the world, but lately this seems to be threatened by the appearance of huge amounts of rental scooters of GO Sharing and Felyx.

Benefits and downsides
Why do so many students switch from bikes to scooters? What are the benefits? And what are the downsides? Octavian Badea asked avid user Andrew Oduber, non-user Sabrina Stroe and GO Sharing’s regional manager Arno Tijmens to tell us their perspectives on the trend.

Will users ever learn to park them correctly? Does GO Sharing feel responsible for the mess? Is using the scooter cheaper or more expensive than taking a bus? Is it worth it to sell your bike and only use a shared scooter? And what’s the future of scooter sharing in Groningen?

Last mile solution
Game Design student Andrew Oduber never drove a scooter before. He saw the green scooters all over Groningen and when he discovered you could rent them, he was immediately interested. ‘So I rented one, and fell in love with it.’

Sabrina Stoe admits that the scooters are good for the environment, because they are electric, but she thinks they are too expensive. ‘I made a calculation and it would cost me more than taking the bus every day’. Even better, she thinks, is taking the bike, because that’s free, except for the initial 75 euro you have to pay to get one.

GO Sharing’s regional manager Arno Tijmens admits that renting a scooter for long distances is expensive, but according to him, they serve another purpose. ‘It is actually meant for the last mile. It’s a solution for the last two to three kilometers of a trip, not for long distances or all day driving.’