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E-scooter provides alternative travel option on campus
For students of the University of Indonesia (UI), commuting between buildings inside the 320-hectare campus might require effort
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span>For students of the University of Indonesia (UI), commuting between buildings inside the 320-hectare campus might require effort. Besides walking, they can use private vehicles, or choose between a free shuttle bus and public bicycles provided by the campus to get around.
Adding to the available options, students of UI’s School of Engineering now have an electronic scooter service called GrabWheels.
During the launch ceremony on Wednesday, some gathered students were eager to be among the first people on their campus to use the new facility.
“I like it. It’s fun and the scooter is cool. I think many students will use it,” said a student of the Civil Engineering Department, Mirandika Julitarani.
The 19-year-old noted that she and her fellow students usually use the “bikun”, an abbreviation of bis kuning (yellow bus), UI’s official shuttle bus, to move around in the campus area.
Mirandika was one of the lucky few who had tried the scooter even before the service was officially launched that afternoon. Her first experience riding one was last month, when the company actually introduced them to the campus.
“Now we have an alternative choice. We no longer have to walk to the bus shelter and wait for the bikun. We rarely opt for online-based ojek [motorcycle taxi]; it takes them too long to pick us up,” she added.
The launch of GrabWheels resulted from a partnership between the university and the Southeast Asian ride-hailing company Grab.
The dean of the School of Engineering, Hendri Budiono, said the e-scooter service fit with the university’s mission to develop facilities based on information technology (IT), which are also environmentally friendly.
“I hope the presence of the electronic scooters could also be part of our students’ learning process,” he said.
“Today they are the users of the e-scooters; in the future they will be inspired to develop such electronic and IT-based vehicles. In the long run, we aim to contribute more to the development of IT in our country,” he added.
Hendri, however, refuted accusations that the service was aimed at limiting the number of vehicles commuting on the campus every day.
Grab Indonesia president Ridzki Kramadibrata said there were 45 e-scooters on campus, 30 of which were for daily operations, while the remaining 15 were on standby. There are three parking lots for the e-scooters within the School of Engineering area.
“We are ready to add more scooters when the service gains popularity in the near future,” he said while refusing to state how much money Grab invested in the service.
“This is a customer-oriented service. Our main goal is to popularize technology-based mobility. We already have services with motorcycles and cars as transportation modes; now this is our new development,” he added.
In order to use the service, people should first have the GrabWheels app installed on their mobile phones. They are required to scan a bar code attached to every scooter using the app to turn on the scooter’s motor.
The scooter can carry up to 100 kilograms and runs at 15 kilometers per hour. Every scooter is equipped with a helmet, which the rider should wear.
Ridzki said that during the first month after the launch, the service was to remain free. GrabWheels already operates in Singapore, where e-scooter riders are charged 20 Singaporean cents (15 US cents) per 30 minutes via GrabPay.
For Sauqi Malikai, the e-scooters were an opportunity to change the way he commuted daily on campus. The motorcyclist said sometimes he had to go through hassles just to move around with his motorcycle.
“I had to put on a jacket and mask before riding my motorbike. Then I had to pay parking fees here and there. So inconvenient,” he said.
“I will use the opportunity while the service is still free,” he said. “In the future, when they want to start renting out the vehicles and charging people, I think the best price would be not more than Rp 5,000 [35 US cents]per 30 minutes.”
UI is the first campus in Indonesia that joined with Grab to provide the GrabWheels service.
Previously, GrabWheels was launched at The Breeze in the BSD office compound and Bintaro in South Tangerang and in the domestic arrivals area of the Soekarno-Hatta International Airport’s Terminal 3 in Tangerang.
According to Grab, as of today, 200 of its electronic scooters are operating in total.
