Scooter couriers face their last delivery amid green push
As Britain adjusted to the early throes of pandemic lockdowns, the waiting list for roles at Deliveroo started to rack higher.
“I’ve currently been on the waiting list for three months in Leicester,” one person hopeful of becoming a courier wrote on a rider forum in summer 2020. “I was wondering whether to wait or apply again in a different city like Birmingham or Loughborough."
By early 2021, waiting times had spiralled to a year for some and Deliveroo’s rider numbers had doubled to 50,000.
On Britain’s high streets, the delivery scooter boom has been in plain sight. Rows of mopeds and motorbikes sporting delivery bags emblazoned with an UberEats, Deliveroo or Just Eat logo, are commonplace outside restaurants. A journey through any major city centre is peppered with scooters zipping in and out of traffic.
The number of licenced motorbikes, scooters and mopeds on UK roads last year hit 1.3 million, according to official figures, up from 1.27 million in 2020 and 1.25 million a year earlier.
A “massively accelerated” shift to online commerce during the pandemic has caused a ramping up of congestion on UK streets - not just of scooters, but also delivery vans - says Claire Harding, a research director at the Centre for London.
Estimates from the RAC Foundation suggest van traffic was up 7.3pc in 2021, compared to a 1.7pc decline in car traffic over the year.
Harding says this has increasingly occurred in previously quiet areas: “There has been more traffic on minor roads, because these companies are delivering straight to people’s houses, so these are roads where otherwise there wouldn’t have been this traffic.”
In a post-pandemic world, however, there are questions as to whether the scooter phenomenon will survive. Scooters have posed serious safety concerns, while some companies are focused on more environmentally-friendly alternatives.
Earlier this week, Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer, announced plans to launch a fleet of e-cargo bikes, and use more on-foot delivery workers in a drive to replace van deliveries in London. It said this will mean 5m of its deliveries to customers will be zero emission, coming on top of its electric van push.
“E-cargo bikes directly replace thousands of traditional van trips on London’s roads and reduce traffic congestion,” said Amazon UK manager John Boumphrey.
It comes as more of its delivery workers - and many at food delivery apps - consider using their bicycles over motorbikes. It is hardly unsurprising: for years, city centres have cracked down on emissions, with schemes such as London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ), sparking a shift away from vans.
Choosing to ride mopeds, motorbikes and scooters come with their own issues, meanwhile.
There were more than 10,000 thefts of motorbikes, scooters or mopeds in London in 2020, according to a report from the Police Foundation think tank. It suggested these stolen vehicles are then used to commit other crimes. A separate study from union IWGB found that nine in ten of its members had experienced harassment at work.
“These have been people who have been quite targeted,” says director Rick Muit. “People see them and they think they might be carrying money with them, and even if they’re not, they’ll be carrying this equipment. People might want to steal their mopeds, or their helmets.”
However, there have been far more serious safety issues that hit headlines over the past few years.
Last year, for instance, a Deliveroo rider was killed in a collision in Merton while he was driving his moped. Official figures suggest in both 2019 and 2020, there were more than 30 fatal collisions in London involving “powered 2 wheeler” vehicles, which include motorbikes, mopeds and scooters. In the first five months of this year, there were already eight fatal collisions, including one double fatality.
Such a situation means many in the delivery industry are bullish on the prospect of fewer such vehicles on UK roads - something only buoyed by the potential environmental benefits. “Ideas like those put forward by Amazon are good,” says Harding. “Especially because for a long time, delivery has been almost an invisible form of congestion and pollution that people haven’t really thought about. Of course, there’s still a very long way to go.”
A growing number of options are starting to be levied by businesses. On Tuesday, DPD said it was launching autonomous delivery robots in two neighbourhoods in Milton Keynes. “We genuinely want to find out if they could help us take vans off the road in future,” UK boss Elaine Kerr said.
It is a decarbonisation drive which some say still requires some more thorough thought.
More cyclists on e-bikes may be more environmentally friendly, but illegally riding on paths by some “creates a bit of a war zone really on footway”, says Rachel Lee from walking charity Living Streets. That is something small delivery robots are likely to only worsen. “Basically everything ends up on the pavement,” she adds.
For now, it is the roads where couriers are darting and diving. Delivery vans line residential streets and zippy scooters swerve in and out of traffic.
“I can’t see this delivery drive ever going back to where it was pre-pandemic,” says Harding. For couriers, though, how they are getting around could soon change.
