THE mobility offer in cities It has grown at a dizzying pace in recent years, far faster than the capacity of local councils to adapt. In a very short time, it exceededtraditional coexistence between … private vehicles and public transport, such as buses or taxis, to the overflow of shared mobility vehicles. These are, for example, the cases of scooters or rental and electric bikesincreasingly common in the streets of major capitals. Its arrival changed the way citizens travel and led to the creation of large transport hubs in which it is possible to move from one system to another in a matter of seconds.
Seville is not a foreign city this commitment to sustainability in transportalso extended to the rest of the country and major European capitals. To organize this reality and make decisions for the future, the Seville City Council commissioned last February a study carried out at the Sustainable Urban Transitions (SUT) laboratory at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zurich (ETH Zurich)a Swiss public university, thanks to the agreement signed with the Bolt Foundation. A few months after this mission, the Mobility Delegation of Seville City Hall already has in its possession the first conclusions of this document which confirm the initial analysis on the need to continue to progress in the integration between modes of transport, as is already being done in Santa Justa or San Bernardo.
Concretely, one of these deductions makes it possible to show that shared micromobilitythanks to the use of electric bicycles, becomes an integral part of daily urban travel. And this, in turn, is strongly linked to public transport and influenced by the state of road infrastructure. Thanks to the data obtained to date, in which Trips taken between May 2024 and March 2025 were analyzedwith millions of sensor measurements during travel and data provided by the Municipality of Seville on public transport and advanced modeling techniques, ETH Zurich has created a database which, according to the first advance, provides particularly relevant data in the Seville capital.
Delving deeper into these trips, the findings warn that shared e-bike travel has an average of 2.7 km of travel and 17 minutes of use. Among the user group, the majority are people between 18 and 30 years old (59%) and, in terms of gender, men predominate (67.5%) compared to women (32.5%). If it’s much more equal the criterion between its use by visitors and by residents of the capital of Seville. Here the document prepared by the University of Zurich and the Bolt Foundation is very clear when it talks about the fact that there is a “balance” between the percentages obtained when analyzing the data obtained by the different means studied.
In this regard, this first conclusion indicates that Visitors make 54% of trips by shared bikes in Seville and that, during these, they carry out different routes through the areas of the old town and around the river. Of course, they also do it at a slower speed, which shows that these are routes of a tourist nature. This reality differs with the use that city dwellers make of electric bicycles, thus reflecting the ability to balance leisure routes with daily mobility needs. Finally, temporal patterns show usage peaks between 3:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m. and 5 p.m., which would be the time window where the most notable increase in demand levels occurs of this system, with a concentration of roads along the Guadalquivir and in the most historic areas.
Concerning the road safety of the trips studied, the analysis based on the telemetry of the sensors present on the bicycles identified points in mixed traffic sections and peripheral areas where there is a greater increase in braking or turning by users. Faced with this, we also conclude that the segregated areas along the banks of the Guadalquivir present a lower risk for cyclists and, therefore, they would be classified as safer areas for those who use this means of transport to move around the Seville capital.
Over the next six months, the University of Zurich laboratory plans to complete this study by carrying out a comprehensive simulation model of Seville. Inside Data analysis of Bolt chauffeur-driven car services will be included for the first timewith the aim of exploring and understanding ways of using the car. All the data obtained in this paper will enable a detailed analysis of the benefits on the best locations for new public transport infrastructure, which will allow Seville City Hall to define improvements in terms of mobility to solve the challenges faced by the overflow of this type of more sustainable vehicles.
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