Danish commuters scooting their last mile to work

Shared e-scooters will soon be lined up and waiting to take people from five allocated train stations in Denmark directly to their place of work. In a bid to make public transport even more attractive, the Danish State Railways is rolling out a pilot project together with a series of large Danish companies to nudge their employees into leaving the car at home.

The companies that sign up to the service will offer scooter rides to their employees from the train station to work and then back to the station at the end of the day. Already on the first day of launch, the hearing health care company Demant has signed up for the service and more will follow.

Research shows that commuters tend to take the car if the distance from a train station to their place of work is more than 800 metres away. It also shows that if you can provide an attractive public transport option, then commuters will choose that over the car.

By providing the last mile of transport on a shared e-scooter, these companies and Danish rail are finding that attractive public transport option.

At Voi, we’ve been given the task of rolling out these scooters, starting in Kildedal station. The service will run under another brand name, ‘Kørmit’, but we’ll be operating it, ensuring the scooters are where they should be, that they are up to date, safe and reliable to use.  We’ll even be providing guidance to the new riders at the companies that have signed up.

And we’re pretty happy about it. This is both a way of making public transport more attractive but also helping large companies meet their sustainability commitments and provide greener commuting alternatives. We really welcome this at Voi since it’s in line with our own vision to create cities for living. This has the potential to bring about a real alternative to car-use and everyone wins from that.