The boss of the company that set up Bristol’s e-scooter hire scheme has said how ‘massively disappointing’ it was to lose the contract, and said they are trying to work with politicians to see if there’s a way back in to the city.
The UK general manager of Voi, James Bolton, criticised the current operator of the e-scooter trial, which now incorporates a e-bike hire scheme too, saying they warned the officials at the West of England Combined Authority that the level of service would drop if a different scooter company was chosen promising to share more of the income with the council.
Mr Bolton said the company was still monitoring the situation in Bristol closely, 18 months after they were told they had lost the contract to run the scheme in Bath, Bristol and South Gloucestershire.
Back in June 2023, West of England metro mayor Dan Norris announced that WECA had chosen a different company to operate the e-scooter scheme, and it would then include e-bikes for the first time. The scheme first began in the West of England back at the end of 2020 and had been run by Swedish ‘micro-mobility’ firm Voi.
Mr Norris said the switch to a different European company called TIER would bring in an estimated £9.7 million to the WECA region over four years, with the money ring-fenced for public transport.
TIER got off to a troubled start in October 2023 – after a slow roll-out, most of their e-scooters had to be recalled and fixed – and then in September this year, TIER was taken over by French firm Dott, prompting another change to a different app, and another firm running the scheme in Bristol and Bath.
Dott took over with a promise to improve the service that had led to complaints from users about a lack of scooter availability and parking spaces. The firm introduced cheaper deals for passes, and its chief executive came to Bristol to meet WECA chiefs in late September, and told Bristol Live they would be better because of the affordability of the scooter hire.
Less than a fortnight later, Dott hiked the prices up by around 37 per cent, and ended many of the most affordable multi-ride deals, prompting councillors in Bristol to call for a review.
In September, WECA’s politicians met to hear from the authority’s chief executive that the ‘current status of the service’ was being reviewed, and the authority could decide to extend the contract with Tier/Dott or put it back out to tender again, if it is decided the service isn’t up to the standard WECA wants.
When Voi ran the e-scooter scheme in Bristol they said more people used the scooters in the city than anywhere else in Europe they operated, so Voi are keen to get back into Bristol. The Swedish firm are currently in talks with council leaders in Cardiff and Swansea, after the authorities there expressed a desire to set up the first e-scooter hire scheme in Wales, and speaking to Wales Online, Voi’s general manager James Bolton, said they wanted to get back to Bristol too.
“It was massively disappointing [to lose the contract]. Bristol was one of the most successful trials we had in the UK in terms of total number of rides,” he said. “We did work with the West of England Combined Authority to look at what they were putting into that tender in terms of the requirements on the operator. And we did urge caution on their side of making it basically unsustainable, whether through the revenue share payments that were due or the SLAs that they put in place.
“Ultimately, in the tender we committed to what we thought was achievable and, safe to say, if you look at the levels of service now, I don’t think the new operator is meeting the requirements set out by the combined authority. You can just look at the headlines from Bristol or browse the Reddit thread, which I must say I’ve got bookmarked to understand what’s going on in the city.
“I know the combined authority has got Freedom of Information requests going back to the start of the summer that are about three months past due, relating to this.
“We understand there is an option for the combined authority to re-tender next year, if they choose to do so. We’re trying to work with some politicians and council officers to understand which path they’re likely to take, whether they extend the current operator, or they deem that the current operations aren’t sufficient and therefore would re-tender. You can obviously guess what our preference would be,” he added.