News / Transport
Rental e-bikes and e-scooters could be provided for home owners within new developments
New housing developments across the Bristol area could have e-scooter and e-bike provision provided for residents when they buy their home, according to a senior manager at Dott.
Love them or loathe them, Bristol’s rental e-bikes and e-scooters are now part of the fabric of our city and will be here for some time yet.
A UK-wide rental e-scooter trial was first launched by the Department for Transport in July 2020 and only meant to run until November 2021. But it has since been extended an astonishing five times and is now due to end in May 2028.
That means that Dott’s fleet of blue and orange vehicles will continue to provide an alternative method of ‘micro-mobility’, with a new and smaller e-bike now introduced.
Dott business development lead, Tim Caswell, told Bristol24/7 that expansion is the plan for the future of the Amsterdam-founded company, which merged with Tier in 2024 and is the second provider to serve Bristol and Bath, following the success of Voi.
Caswell said: “We’ve been working very hard with the new Brabazon area where there’s a lot of housing development going in there, so there are ways to provide for example a membership.
“When you buy a house there, you can get a (Dott) membership built-in. You can choose to do that.
“So it’s getting into that process to say let’s not act reactively but let’s make it part of new placemaking…
“We’re working closely with developers up there who recognise the value of having that network and its reach.”
Tim Caswell is Dott’s business development lead – photo: Martin Booth
Caswell was talking at the launch of the new smaller rental e-bikes. While the majority of bikes in Bristol will continue to be of the larger design, around 100 smaller versions are now on the streets.
The lighter bikes’ handlebars and saddles are the same height but the frame and wheels are smaller, making them more manoeuvrable.
Bristol is among Dott’s top-five cities in Europe for e-bike and e-scooter usage, with Caswell telling Bristol24/7 that their micro-mobility network “overlays everything else”.
While trains and buses have fixed timetables and destinations, e-bikes and e-scooters now operate 24 hours a day.
“We can provide a method of people getting around when other modes aren’t available or aren’t convenient,” said Caswell.
“It’s about flexibility. Giving people the option to do trips when and where they want to.”
Caswell said that different modes of transport should be “all about giving options”.
He added: “I think we all have a belief that we should be driving less and that single-occupancy cars in cities are not a good thing.
“That’s what we’re all driving towards and actually Bristol is a really good example because it’s really hard to own a car in Bristol which is perhaps a good thing from an environmental perspective.”
In that respect, Caswell said that Dott is “most closely aligned with a bus network in terms of the competition for bringing people around but, like I say, we overlay that and provide an additional option for people”.
“It’s about giving people choice. I think that’s important.”
Main photo: Martin Booth
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