Charlotte Takes E-Scooter Data for a Test Ride is a short article describing Charlotte, North Carolina’s e-scooter pilot program and how data is used to make decisions on how to move forward.

In 2018, the city of Charlotte, NC began an e-scooter pilot program 1 . They used a private 3rd party, Passport, to manage and analyze the data. In addition to understanding how much the system was used and how it was being used, they implemented a 6-month trial period of a dynamic pricing system for service providers, rather than a flat per-vehicle charge.

For the dynamic pricing pilot, the city was divided into different zones with different prices to incentivize access to transit and discourage over-concentration in congested areas. In addition, the fee varied by how long each vehicle was parked. 

Hot spot visualizations of the data helped the city determine where scooter corrals should be located.