A Review of E-Scooter Policies Informed

The relatively recent introduction of e-scooters and the popular demand for the devices in North America has outpaced lawmakers' ability to adequately regulate them. The result has been a patchwork of legislation and regulation that is not necessarily comprehensive or supported by data collected on users and those who interact with them. To date, e-scooter policy reviews have focused on trends, and public perceptions of policies through media, but have not examined the policies through the lens of those who interact with the devices. To evaluate the policies based on public opinion toward e-scooters, and identify gaps or failures in the policy documents this research uses Twitter data from users in Western countries. The methods used to inform the policy evaluation include text mining, sentiment analysis, and word frequency, which inform a novel method for judging the effectiveness of e-scooter regulations in addressing the complaints being shared by Twitter users on the topic. This research highlights blind spots in existing policies, while also identifying issues of over-regulation that may impede the ability of e-scooters to achieve known benefits such as expanding access to public transportation and increasing multimodal travel.