Movements | March 20th, 2020
Issue #87 - Brought to you by Michal Naka and Adam Feldman. Join thousands of others who receive this analysis and curation of emerging mobility news in their inbox every week — subscribe now.
Hello All - We hope you and your families are staying healthy out there in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Please continue to send us stories of how the broader mobility community is adapting and responding during this crisis. This week want to welcome our good friend Harry Campbell (aka ‘The Rideshare Guy’) as our guest DJ editor of Movements.
I’m a big fan of the Movements so appreciate the opportunity to Guest DJ! Some people call me the Michal Naka of rideshare but really I am just someone who started driving for Uber and Lyft back in 2014 and wrote a blog about my experience as a driver.
The blog has come a long way since then and while my team is now pumping out a ton of great content on all the major media, I like to spend my time recording interviews on my podcast, content strategizing with my team, consulting, working with new mobility start-ups and more.
So let’s see how I do with this week’s newsletter! If you’d like to follow my work, head over to The Rideshare Guy and subscribe, follow me on Twitter or just shoot me an e-mail and let me know how I can help!
Micromobility
Lime is pausing its shared scooter service in multiple countries around the world amid the coronavirus outbreak. Spin meanwhile, has said it will continue to operate so that residents may have access to its scooters for essential trips like those to the grocery store or pharmacy. Interesting juxtaposition of strategy here. | TechCrunch
Mayor De Blasio has suspended New York City’s e-bike crackdown during the coronavirus outbreak. Couriers continue to play an important role as more restaurants shift to take-out and delivery only orders. Here’s to hoping that enforcement remains suspended once things get back to normal. | Streetsblog NYC
CitiBike trips are up 67% compared to one year ago. And NYCDOT is even considering carving out bike lanes and taking away car lanes - all it took was a pandemic. | New York Times
Arnold goes for a bike ride and sets a great example of social distancing. | Twitter
Voi is attaching gloves to its scooters in Stockholm, while Spin is including hand sanitizer on its vehicles in San Francisco. | Spin
Gruv is offering free scooter rides to essential workers in Oakland and San Jose. | Gruv
Brooklyness is offering free scooters to health care workers in New York City. | Brooklyness
Product Launches & Updates
Self-driving scooters are here - in Peachtree, Georgia! | Curbed
How coronavirus is disrupting public transit. | Transit app
Ridehailing & Carsharing
Uber and Lyft drivers are struggling to make ends meet: lower demand and higher risk of spreading coronavirus is putting gig workers in a tough spot. | New York Times
Uber suspends UberPOOL rides in the US, Canada, Paris and London. Many drivers and driver organizations had been calling for this and the real question now is whether Uber and Lyft will stop their service completely. | BuzzFeed News
Uber’s stock price closed Wednesday down 22%. As of Wednesday, the Dow Jones is down almost 30% since its February peak but the rideshare giants have been hit especially hard. Uber’s share price is down 64% from its February peak and Lyft is down 70% over the same span | Barron’s
Investment & Deals
Brian Hughes, early Uber GM, has started a new mobility fund (Integrity) with Pat Wilkison | Linkedin
Cities & Policy
Transit agencies around the country are reporting significant drops in the use of public transit as commuting and other travel grind to a halt. An industry association is asking Congress for nearly $12.9 billion in aid. I hope they get it. | GovTech
[Podcast] Jeffrey Tumlin shares his thoughts on transit, efficiency, congestion and more. I felt a lot smarter after listening to this podcast. Highly recommend if you’re stuck indoors with nothing to do. | No Parking Podcast
Cities are putting up temporary protected bikelane networks to help with social distancing and transit service reductions. | Smart Cities World
Please send us stories of how the mobility world is responding to COVID-19. We would love to share them with the Movements community! Just reply to this email.