UScooter rental to become available next year
The next phase of UBike Rental is electronic scooters, the mayor of Ulaanbaatar announced on Wednesday.
Mayor S.Batbold highlighted that the new service is in line with the global trend to adopt eco-friendly public transportation services. The rental scooters will reportedly run on only electricity.
“As one of the 455 metropolitans in the world, Ulaanbaatar is ready to introduce this modern and innovative service next year in May. Advantages of the UScooter Rental project are the fact that it is 100 percent friendly to the environment and power-consuming technological solution,” the mayor noted.
The rentable scooters will reportedly be able to run for 20 to 30 kilometers after being fully charged and will have capacity to speed up to 25 kilometers per hour. Just like UBike Rental, scooters can be rented through a smartphone application.
The project has hired JCDecaux Group, a multinational corporation known for its bus-stop advertising systems, billboards, public bicycle rental systems, and street furniture, to build parking lots for scooters. The project team hopes to build the parking next to bike racks used for UBike Rental and connect it to a solar charger.
Director of Nickel Ganbaa LLC G.Dashnyam noted, “By May 2019, UScooter Rental will become available and it tariff will have been finalized. We’re discussing where to place the rental scooters based on the experience of carrying out UBike Rental. Both bike and scooter rental services are new to Mongolia. There are some errors and trials. We’re working to fix and improve them.”
The Ulaanbaatar Mayor’s Office is taking various measures to reduce traffic and air pollution, including projects to build large bridges, expand roads, and develop four sub-centers. Another intervention is the UBike Rental, which has been implemented since last summer. It is proving to be effective for supporting public health and saving time. Project implementers hope to boost its results through the electric scooter rental service, which was first introduced in San Francisco, the USA in 2012 and has been adopted into public transportation services of large cities in Europe since 2017.