Welcome to the Shared-Use Mobility Center’s weekly guide to the most impactful news, thought-provoking articles and innovative technologies that are shaping our transportation future. We believe in sharing information, just like sharing cars, bikes, and scooters, so if there’s anything additional you’d like to see, just drop us a line.
SUMC News
Following SUMC’s Top Ten Takeaways from the 2019 Shared Mobility Summit, we’re diving into the 30+ sessions and workshops and giving ten key insights that can help you design, plan, and implement your shared mobility initiative.
Read the Ten Key Insights from the 2019 Summit Sessions.
Ridehailing and Carpooling
Ello is a new ridehailing company in New Mexico that offers the option of a female driver to increase safety for women, pays 60% of every ride to the drivers, and skips the surcharges.
The road to profitability for ridehailing companies has led to a visible shift in transportation trends around the world, but has this downgraded safety measures for riders?
Ridehail service for kids HopSkipDrive has launched its service in Northern Virginia with plans to expand further in the region in coming weeks.
Read about Kabu, the underground ridehailing service for Mandarin or Cantonese-speaking Chinese riders that is thriving in Vancouver, a giant North American market where Uber has yet to operate.
Carsharing
If you are looking to cut your car payment, become more multi-modal, or utilize space more efficiently, carsharing offers people the ability to become less car-dependent and even make some money while doing it.
The Atlanta region is getting peer-to-peer carsharing by way of San Francisco-based Getaround, which lets users rent and drive cars owned by their neighbors.
Check out this interview from EVgo CEO Cathy Zoi about the state of EV charging infrastructure in the US and how it’s building on carsharing and ridehailing.
Carsharing flipped the car rental game on its head by offering an attractive service with high flexibility and now rental companies are looking to evolve with them.
Bikesharing and Micromobility
Streetsblog Chicago outlines the finer details of the Lyft/Divvy contract amendment as the countdown for the approval meeting nears its April 10 date.
Iowa-based mobility operator Koloni, one of the ten finalists for SUMC’s 2019 Summit Startup Spotlight, is helping often overlooked small towns get on board with dockless bikeshare.
Columbia, SC bikeshare system Blue Bike is getting a big boost in funding from local bus system COMET to add more stations—and more bikes in the future.
Orlando’s Juice bikeshare program is shutting down after three years, but a possible dockless system could be in the works to replace it.
Transit
Dedicated bus lanes, Ridehailing fees, and congestion pricing are all on LA’s dream list to help curb traffic and fund transit. Read more about the city’s plan discussed at the 2019 National Shared Mobility Summit on Forbes.
The $2.7 billion Durham-Orange Light Rail Transit project has been officially shut down with GoTriangle’s board unanimously voting to end it. What happened and how can we learn from it?
LA Metro wants to give the Orange Line busway “light rail-like improvements” with gated crossings, bus-only streets, road signal modifications, and street redesigns.
The Central Ohio Transit Authority and Smart Columbus initiative are aiming to connect bus riders to first/last mile services at 18 park-and-rides and transit centers, integrating shared mobility alternatives into one MaaS app.
Technology
The mobility landscape is always changing and the road for shared, autonomous, and electric vehicles will need to maneuver culture-shifting policies and large infrastructure development to see a future.
“What are you willing to pay for your complete freedom? Being able to go anywhere, anytime on a whim?”, said MaaS Global CEO Sampo Hietanen. Read more about what Forbes calls the “Netflix of urban transport”.
Google’s urban tech arm Sidewalk Labs has launched the new CommonSpace app that allows park operators and community organizers to easily gather data about people use public spaces, making it seamless to compare data.
Need a place to park your wheels? There’s a car-sized, pop-up bike rack going around Amsterdam that legally takes up a vehicle parking space to hold up to 8 bikes.
Urban Sustainability
Starting in late 2020 (or early 2021), New York will apply congestion pricing charges to drivers in Manhattan’s business district south of 60th Street.
Emerging shared modes and new mobility options can help cities plan transit-oriented development in low-parking, dense areas to offer more options to get around without a car. Streetsblog Chicago covered CNT’s Equitable TOD (eTOD) workshop series to find out more.
As a booming cyclist town with over 119 miles of dedicated bike lanes, New Orleans has an emerging bike culture that brings out people from all walks of life through community night-time social rides.
What could cities learn from slums? The World Economic Forum invites us to see past the “spatial irregularity, the surface grime and the patchy aesthetic to understand the economic resilience, the social cohesion, the autonomy, the technological ingenuity, the remarkable skills of everyday living that flourish…”
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