Electric bike and scooter will be easier than ever to find on the go as Google Maps includes Bird, Spin and Lime into its transport options.
By CLARA MURRAY
Hopping on an electric bike or scooter has become a surprisingly popular way to get around the UK’s cities, with London, Bristol and Portsmouth among the areas already welcoming scooter rental companies to the streets. To help you find one of these grab-and-go options near you, Google Maps is integrating several e-scooter and e-bike operators into its transport options.
Bird, which rents out scooters in cities around the world, is the latest to sign up. Now, whenever you search for the best way to get from A to B, Google Maps will show you nearby Bird scooters ready for you to hop on.
It’s an incredibly handy feature for fans of electric scooters. Because Bird’s scooters are dockless, meaning they don’t have to be left in a specific place (unlike London’s famous Boris Bikes), it can be a bit of a gamble trying to track one down.
So far the company operates in two (rather unlikely) places in the UK: Canterbury in Kent and Redditch, Worcestershire. However, locals there will have to wait to take advantage as the integration is only being rolled out in the US for now – but more countries are expected to follow quickly.
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Travis VanderZanden, Bird’s CEO, said the move would help cities cut down on congestion: “Through our integration with Google Maps, we are making it easier for individuals to embrace new modes of eco-friendly travel and to ultimately eliminate our collective reliance on congestion inducing, gas-powered cars – especially in urban settings across the globe where a majority of trips are under five miles.”
Spin, another dockless scooter company, also announced it would be coming to the map app this week. The San Francisco-based company is already in Basildon, Braintree, Brentwood, Chelmsford, Clacton-on-Sea, Colchester and Milton Keynes.
Its CEO, Ben Bear, said they wanted to make it “just as easy, and even more convenient to get around with bikes, buses, trains and scooters as it is with a personal car.”
Another big player in scooting is Lime, whose distinctive lurid screen bikes and scooters you’ll find dotted around the streets of London and Milton Keynes. It’s been an option on Google Maps since 2019.
Can’t wait to try it out? All the ebike and escooter options available in Google Maps will appear under the “bike” toggle on the app, along with information on price, journey time and battery life. Once you’ve tracked down a scooter, you’ll still need to register with the company’s app to unlock and pay for your ride.
Originally published at Express