Micromobility is often sold as a simple promise: fewer car trips, more freedom of movement, better cities. In practice, it’s a constant negotiation between two groups with fundamentally different incentives.

That tension is the backbone of this Micromobility Europe panel moderated by Lars Christian Grødem-Olsen (Movability), with Duncan Robertson (Micromobility Partners) and Øyvind Kragh Kjos (Ruter AS) bringing experience from both the operator side and the public sector side.

The result is a rare conversation about the messy reality of shared e-scooter operations. Not the glossy launch decks, but the real operational trade-offs, the tender games, and the trust failures that shape what riders actually experience on the street.

Why cities and operators are misaligned by design

The panel sets the frame early: cities want order, safety, equitable coverage, and fewer complaints. Operators want profitability. That’s not villainy, it’s the business model.

But the consequences are predictable. Cities push for availability across whole regions, including low-demand areas. Operators focus on the core zones where rides are frequent and unit economics are survivable. Even if both parties claim they want “good outcomes,” the mechanisms pull them in different directions.

And when incentives are misaligned, people get creative.

The ugly: ghost scooters and selective truth

One of the first “ugly” examples is a story of an operator allegedly hiding the true number of vehicles deployed in a capped market. If a city limits fleet size, and enforcement relies on shared data, then withholding or manipulating that data becomes a direct route to more rides and more revenue.

The point is not the gossip value. It is the mechanism: when operators believe the framework makes compliance economically painful, some will try to dodge the framework.

Robertson’s takeaway is blunt: if an operator is willing to go that far, it signals a deeper structural failure. The market rules are not producing aligned incentives, and the city-operator relationship is not transparent enough to catch problems early.

Complaints reveal what actually runs the system

Public frustration often surfaces as a simple complaint: scooters blocking a bike rack, overcrowding at a metro station, a messy parking cluster. But complaints are where the system’s real operating model is exposed.

Øyvind Kragh Kjos explains that in Oslo, scooters are integrated into Ruter’s app, which means complaints can land on the public transport authority even when the operator is responsible. That creates an operational zigzag: public entity receives the issue, then routes it to the operator, or tries to solve the rider-facing part while the operator fixes the street reality.

Robertson adds the key shift the industry has learned the hard way: you cannot solve everything with software. Early on, it was tempting to treat geo-fencing as the answer to every complaint. Over time, the emphasis has moved back to physical operations: the right people in the right place at the right time, moving vehicles, responding fast, and preventing predictable hot spots.

The “Mobike era” matters, even if it was chaotic

Robertson’s career path mirrors the industry’s evolution: from Transport for London and docked systems (where authority permission and fixed infrastructure made regulation almost implicit), to the dockless explosion powered by GPS and IoT.

That 2014 to 2016 era lowered the barrier to entry. Operators could launch without asking, cities had to retrofit rules, and the street became the battlefield. It was chaotic, sometimes embarrassing, and often destructive to public space.

But the panel makes an important point: we likely wouldn’t be talking about micromobility at scale without that phase. The door got kicked open, and the world saw what was possible.

The hidden cost was real, though. Not financial cost to cities, but “negative externalities” paid by the urban realm: clutter, nuisance, bike piles, and the long tail of public backlash that still shapes regulation today.

The tragedy of the commons, explained in plain terms

Kjos brings the economist’s lens: the tragedy of the commons is what happens when individual players gain by taking more, but everyone loses when the shared resource is degraded.

In micromobility, that shared resource is space. There is only so much curb space, footpath tolerance, rider attention, and city goodwill. In an unregulated market, each operator benefits by adding more vehicles in the best zones. But collectively, the outcome is oversupply, clutter, and political blowback.

This is why “free launch, sort it out later” collapses eventually. The system runs out of public patience before it runs out of scooters.

Tendering is not broken, but it often isn’t fit for purpose

One of the most useful parts of the panel is the tender discussion, because this is where incentives get baked in.

Robertson argues tenders struggle for two reasons:

1. Procurement processes were built for traditional buyer-seller relationships, but early micromobility flipped that dynamic. Cities became “the product” in a land-grab expansion era, and operators pursued footprint above all else.
2. Tender scoring often struggles to measure innovation sensibly, which encouraged operators to stuff bids with promises that sounded impressive but were difficult to deliver.

The industry is sobering up. Vehicle testing before launch is one concrete example. If a city tests vehicles and capabilities, lofty promises become risky.

But the panel’s most practical insight is about weighting: tender weight dictates behavior. If 10% of the score is real operational capacity and 30% is flashy technical features, you will get bids optimized for the scoring system, not for the street.

A simple fix: move obvious expectations (like recycling) into minimum requirements rather than weighted differentiators, then put the weight where it matters: operations, vehicle quality, and service delivery.

Revenue share can quietly destroy service quality

Here is the uncomfortable reality many cities underestimate: scoring heavily on revenue share can incentivize operators to “buy” their way into a market.

If 30 to 40% of the bid score is financial commitment, an operator can bid an aggressive revenue share, win the tender, then struggle to fund adequate operations. Remember, revenue is not profit. It is topline income, and a high share can strip out the very money needed to maintain quality and compliance.

Robertson describes living this from the operator side: reasonable bids built on P&L reality did not even register against competitors bidding dramatically higher.

Cities do have levers here:

• cap the financial component
• reduce its weight
• structure it so quality cannot be sacrificed to win the tender

Micromobility should not be treated as a city profit center if the goal is a reliable service.

Incumbency advantage is real, and data access drives it

Another overlooked issue: incumbents know the city. They have demand patterns, heat maps, operational constraints, and hard-won street learnings. That knowledge is a massive advantage in tenders.

The panel raises a fairness problem: when authorities do not share even basic historical usage data during re-tendering, they unintentionally tilt the process toward the incumbent. New entrants cannot model the market properly, which reduces competition and can lead to less responsible bidding.

The fix does not require exposing sensitive detail. Cities can share aggregated usage data at a level that supports credible bids without handing over trade secrets.

So how do you build trust?

Trust is not built on panel-stage goodwill. It is built on structure.

Robertson argues that contract length matters more than most people admit. Short contracts encourage short-term thinking. Longer contracts make it rational to invest, improve, and build a sustainable operating model.

But there is a balance: the industry changes fast. A five-year contract with sensible break clauses can provide stability without freezing innovation.

The broader theme is the same throughout the panel:

• transparency beats suspicion
• operational reality beats tech fantasies
• incentives beat intentions

Micromobility works best when cities design markets that make good behavior economically viable, and operators treat public space as a shared resource.

That is the good. The bad and ugly are what happens when either side forgets it