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 and Announcements
Visit a 2009 Chicago Mobility Hub
The Mobility Hub is an integrated network of multi-modal options accessible for everyone at a safe, comfortable location. Found throughout Europe for over a decade, they were still a burgeoning concept in America when our executive director Sharon Feigon, then CEO Of IGO carsharing, laid out her vision for a Chicago Mobility Hub in 2009.
Rendered by IGO fleet staff member and artist Pete Rangel, this image captures with simplicity how a Mobility Hub can expand mobility options by making them more accessible, how it can serve as a safe community gathering place, even act as a functional tool to “power the grid.”
There is no one-size-fits-all mobility solution. There are many options that, together, can reduce our dependence on personal cars and solo driving. Given that transportation is the leading cause of climate change today, we need to use every tool at our disposal. Learn more about Mobility Hubs in our 2019 resource guide.
Smart Cities Dive Feature on our Virtual Shared Mobility Summit
How do you transition from a physical to a virtual event in less than 60 days and what are the long-term implications? Smart Cities Dive’s Cailin Crowe interviews SUMC Executive Director Sharon Feigon and others on how the pandemic has shaped industry events, and what the future may hold.
FREE WEBINAR:
Mobility On Demand for First/Last Mile Solutions
MOD for First/Last Mile Solutions
Date: Tuesday, June 30
Time: Noon – 1:30 p.m. PT / 1:00 – 2:30 MT / 2:00 – 3:30 CT / 3:00 – 4:30 ET
REGISTER FOR JUNE 30
Don’t miss the second in our series of Lessons Learned from the Mobility on Demand On-Ramp Program (MOD). We want to thank the six participating agencies (BART, MDOT MTA, MATA, Tompkins County, IndoGO, and CapMetro) and the attendees of the first webinar, which focused on MOD for Mobility Integration. For the upcoming event, the six agencies will share how they overcame hurdles and learned from SUMC and each other to develop innovative first/last mile mobility pilots. Following the presentations, attendees have the opportunity to ask questions and discuss strategies to develop MOD projects in their communities. Please email [email protected] with any questions.
Mobility Justice
Jaywalking laws have turned public streets into private havens for drivers ever since the automobile industry lobbied for them in the first half of the 20th century. Now that study after study has shown that these laws disproportionately affect Black and Brown communities, they need to be abolished.
Police enforce traffic safety laws more in greater numbers in minority communities, leading to assumed suspicion, traffic debt, and incarceration—not to mention many tragic instances of unnecessary force. Major policy changes on an institutional level will need to happen in cities to create more equitable streets today.
In Chicago, Uber and Lyft riders are more likely to pay a higher cost for a trip if they are going to or coming from neighborhoods with higher populations of ethnic minorities, according to ridehailing data analyzed from researchers at The George Washington University in DC.
How can defunding police budgets help break the long history of inequities that have targeted Black communities in cities like Baltimore? Giving it to public transportation for better job access would be a great start.
Ridehailing/Carsharing/Carpooling
In a bold announcement, Lyft has promised that “100 percent” of their vehicles will be electric or zero-emission by 2030.
Carpooling has taken a major hit during the pandemic, but DC startup Go Together aims to raise funds and get more schools back on its CarpooltoSchool service as parents look at smaller group rides in our age of social distancing.
Uber has started selling its ridehailing software to transit agencies in California, a first for the company, as part of a new service to diversify its mobility offerings in a time when consumer rides are down across the board.
While the tale of carshare in the US may seem like an agglomeration of difficult starts and shuttered services, P2P carsharing platform Turo shares its recent findings of usership that seem to tell a different story.
Bikesharing and Micromobility
Streetsblog outlines three major signs that show micromobility is poised to hit its stride as cities are seeing a consistent rise in bikeshare and dockless scooter use around the world.
First they envisioned a new way to electrify bikes with their popular Copenhagen Wheel; now they’re launching a shared scooter in the US and Europe. Read about Superpedestrian on Medium.
Vice’s Motherboard takes a deep look into the Uber acquisition of JUMP bikes, formerly Social Bicycles, and how JUMP’s original vision of dockless bikeshare was twisted and altered to fit the profit-over-people nature of 21st-century tech startups.
You can now get daily and monthly passes for Lime’s micromobility offerings in 18 countries around the world, with more global markets set for later this month.
Transit
Stacey Matlen from the City of Detroit’s Office of Mobility Innovation addresses three major goals for transit agencies during the transportation sector’s battle with the ongoing health crisis and how that can create more resilient mobility networks. Read about it on TheCityFix.
Chicago’s CTA and Pace transit will reinstate front-door boarding—and start collecting fares—this Sunday as the city moves through phased reopening and riders come back from the COVID-19 lockdown.
Check out all the latest updates on public transit in the Bay Area and what measures are being taken to ensure rider safety and reliable service on KQED.
“We are facing crises on multiple fronts: a climate crisis, an economic crisis, and a racial justice crisis. The COVID-19 crisis illustrates how these issues converge in our public transportation system and how transportation is central to addressing them all.”
In Securing Safe Transit: Before and after COVID-19, Dream Corp’s Green For All campaign does an excellent job in explaining how public transit is at the core of our most pressing racial, environmental, and economic issues. It then provides a path forward complete with findings from a targeted landscape analysis of transit agencies and a comprehensive set of recommendations.
Technology
Over the next few months, New Jersey Transit will be studying the use of ultraviolet-c rays to disinfect buses during the pandemic.
Mobility software company Bytemark has a new platform for transit agencies that offers trip planning, booking, and paying in one suite that can be configured for seamless MaaS services.
It looks like Google may be experimenting with first/last mile connections in Google Maps to help people plan trips to transit with bike, car, and even ridehail.
Charging dock startup Swiftmile is collaborating with scooter tech company Tortoise to help clean up sidewalk clutter with remote-controlled scooters that can be driven to nearby EV charging docks after a trip.
Sustainability
Check out this feature on maps created by Bloomberg CityLab readers that depict the diversity of visualized experiences people are documenting from their pandemic lockdown and how that shapes the way we see our built environment.
After years of pushing the adoption of EVs, major public transportation initiatives, and improving cycling infrastructure, Norway is set to hit a record low of 48.6 billion tons of CO2 emissions this year after setting the goal in 2012. Great work!
“As I told the Development Director at my city, I could have provided an additional 12 desperately needed small apartments at my site if minimum parking requirements had not held me back.” Read about the constraints parking minimums have on neighborhood-friendly development on Parking Reform Network.
Electric vehicles get a big boost in Germany as the country will now require gas stations to provide charging for EVs as part of a new €130 billion stimulus plan.
Requests for Proposals, Inquiries, and Information
RFI: Expansion of the BlueLA EV Carsharing Program in Phase II
The Los Angeles Department of Transportation
Los Angeles, CA
Deadline: July 13, 2020
RFP: Paratransit and Flex Route Services
City of DeKalb
DeKalb, IA
Deadline: July 16, 2020
RFP: On-Demand Microtransit Software and Support
By Green Mountain Transit Authority
St. Albans, VT
Deadline: July 17, 2020
RFI: Creative Uses for Utilizing Existing Curbside Electric, Telecommunications, and Electric Vehicle Infrastructure
IndyGO
Indianapolis, IN
Deadline: August 14, 2020
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