NIU and partners offer free electric scooter rides to healthcare workers

At a time when most people should be staying at home to help contain the coronavirus pandemic, healthcare workers need safe transportation options to their hospitals and clinics more than ever. Electric scooter company NIU has stepped up and created the MoveSafely program with its scooter-sharing partners to provide free rides to healthcare workers.

MoveSafely program offers free electric scooter rides

As one of the largest electric scooter companies in the world, NIU finds itself in a unique position to help healthcare workers safely access their places of work.

NIU has over a million electric scooters on the road and maintains partnerships with at least 20 scooter-sharing companies globally. Such programs generally offer free-floating electric scooters around cities that riders can rent by the minute. This provides an alternative to private car ownership or crowded public transportation.

Now NIU has worked with many of its scooter-sharing partners to establish the MoveSafely program.

As part of the program, healthcare workers will get free rentals of NIU’s electric mopeds, which can reach speeds of up to 30 mph (51 km/h) in many markets and are particularly useful for navigating urban areas.

The following scooter-sharing companies are taking part in the MoveSafely program:

Revel: Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan, US

Scooty: Brussels and Antwerp, Belgium

Poppy: Brussels and Antwerp, Belgium

Frank-E: Frankfurt, Germany

GoVolt: Milan, Italy

Ewe-Go: Oldenburg, Germany

Revel has also announced similar offers to healthcare workers in other cities in which it operates including Miami, Oakland, Austin, and Washington, D.C.

“We are so proud of our partners for their willingness to give back to their community in a time of such need,” NIU’s director of international Joseph Constanty explained in a statement to Electrek.

To take part in the program, healthcare workers simply need to download the app and upload a few credentials to verify their healthcare worker status. More information on the program can be found here.

Electrek’s Take

At a time like this when healthcare workers are doing perhaps the most essential jobs in our society, anything we can do to get them safely to work should be explored.

Many doctors and nurses used to rely on public transit to reach their hospitals and clinics, but now that option is a near no-go after cancellations and reductions have left the few remaining buses and subway cars packed to capacity. Such tightly packed conditions are exactly what experts are advising to avoid due to the risk of contracting the novel coronavirus COVID-19.

A personal form of transportation like an electric scooter is one of the best ways to get around cities right now — at least for anyone who absolutely must leave the house. So I say “Bravo!” to all the companies who are stepping up and offering free use of their electric scooters and mopeds to healthcare workers.