Movements | September 10, 2018
Issue #14! brought to you by Michal Naka and Adam Feldman. If you’d like this newsletter delivered to your inbox every Monday, you can subscribe here.
Micromobility
Shoutout to all the Movements readers who attended the Micromobility Summit in Copenhagen! Here is Horace Dediu’s ‘When Micromobility Attacks” slide deck, quantifying the impact of micromobility vehicles on trips and VMT. “Micromobility looks like a weapon of mass destruction for cars and other modes” | Slideshare
San Francisco issued scooter permits to Skip and Scoot. A few notes here: SF is the only US city to deny operators permits who launched early without permission (Lime, Bird & Spin). Scoot is launching the first electric kick scooter service with 24/7 operations and vehicles with field swappable batteries. | The Verge
Santa Monica issued scooter permits to the BIG 4: Bird, Uber, Lyft and Lime (BULL). | TechCrunch
Uber is building its own scooters and exploring other lightweight electric vehicle designs. | Bloomberg
Does bike-share exhibit a network effect? Kinda — research suggests that as more bikes enter a market from multiple providers, overall utilization rates increase. | Asher
Lyft launches a scooter share service in Denver. One interesting feature is that riders can pay to reserve scooters by the minute. | The Verge
Estonian ridehailing company Taxify launches a scooter service in Paris, joining Bird and Lime. Taxify plans to deploy scooters in other European and Australian cities later this year. “One in five Taxify rides are less than 3 km, which is the perfect distance to cover with an electric scooter.” | TechCrunch
TNCs
A must-read blog post on why shared ride services such as UberPool haven’t yet supplanted vehicle ownership. It goes deep on the time, cost, and convenience tradeoffs of making these services efficient from both rider, driver, and overall marketplace angles. Read it! | John Marck Nichols
An analysis of the potential of microtransit services: “microtransit and other shared modes have the potential to: 1) provide first-and-last mile connections to public transportation, 2) augment or replace underperforming routes (particularly in lower-density environments), and 3) provide supplemental late-night transportation service.” \ Move Forward
Lyft’s partnership with the city of Monrovia, CA is “the largest and most utilized partnership program ever deployed”. Ridership is 10x higher over the city’s traditional ‘dial-a-ride’ program. | City of Monrovia
Ride-hailing app InDriver, who lets riders bid for trips, looks to enter the US market in Q4. | Bloomberg
Product Launches and Updates
Our favorite urban mobility app gets a big update: Transit 5.0 is here. | Medium
Bird launches Gov Tech tools to enable governments to monitor usage and specify geofences to restrict usage. | Bird
Bird is experimenting with dedicated pickup and drop off zones in Santa Monica. | Carter Rubin
Syncromatics launches it’s new unified Dispatch tool for bus operators. This gives a behind-the-scenes look at how software is streamlining transit operations. | Medium
Uber launches a mode switch feature that makes it easier to swap between rideshare, bikeshare, and carshare offerings. Here’s a neat GIF of the feature in action. | TechCrunch
Uber launches a closed-loop payment system called Uber Cash. You can now load value to your Uber account and spend it on the services they offer. It also makes it easier to cross-subsidize different services with offers, points, and loyalty incentives. | Pymnts
Enterprise and Hyundai invest in $9M round for ‘Netflix of transportation’ app Migo | Geekwire
Auto OEMs
VW launches an electric car-share brand in Berlin, We Share | Intelligent Mobility Insight
Toyota invests $500m in Uber and strikes autonomous vehicle partnership. | WSJ
Amazon orders 20,000 Mercedes vans to build out its own logistics operation. | WSJ
Cities
Here’s more than you ever wanted to know about the London’s buses and the open data policies that make them easier to use. | Wired
The Los Angeles City Council has voted to allow scooters to continue operating. | Curbed
Here are the US cities where access to jobs by public transit is improving. | Streetsblog