How can cities boost transit ridership? Add more bike share: Ridership is down on most U.S. transit systems. More bike share might help reverse those losses
JUMP bikes > Uber cars? JUMP bikes beat Uber car trips just 5 months after introduction in Sacramento – a first in a city with both services.
A Lime-y week: Lime hires its first CFO, drops “bike” from its name replacing bicycles with more popular scooters, and deals with wheel-lockups in New Zealand.
The wheels of Portlandia: This two-seater electric half-car is what Portland based Arcimoto believes will push the needle on climate change and better serve single occupancy driving. We’re big fans.
JUMP-starting slowing growth: As IPO approaches and growth for ride sharing slows, Uber proclaims self-disruption via micromobility as part of its master plan.
They wrote the book on biking infrastructure: How the first American design standard for protected bike lanes by NACTO helped spread bicycling in the U.S.
How not to do bike-share: Grossly underestimated bike lifespans and nearly-free unlimited rides were just two of the causes for Chinese bike-share company’s failure. The story of Ofo’s demise.
Micromobility and so much more: Indonesia-based Go-Jek, a ridehailing platform for motor scooters, food, groceries, and even massages, raises $1 billion from Google, JD.com, and others.
Sweet wheels: New entrant into the scooter sharing market, Wheels sports an innovative form factor with a seat, swappable batteries and a modular design, looking to significantly improve unit economics.
E-bikes get an A-list cast: The ease, freedom, and fun of e-bikes has reached Hollywood, with celebrities like Ellen DeGeneres, William Shatner, Miley Cyrus, and Leonardo DiCaprio getting in on the action!
Conferences and industry events. All too often, they are forums where industry actors can perform on stage for clever sound bites and self-congratulation. All fluff, no substance.
Maybe because the industry is young and the participants are naive enough to be speaking their minds, maybe it was because the organizers’ focus was education instead of mere indulgence, the first ever Micromobility Conference was a significant cut above the rest.
On the whole, liberals identify with the following values:
1. Evidence-based, with the ability to change their opinions and quickly adapting when presented with compelling facts
2. Collectivist-minded, concerned with the plights of fellow human beings and society as a whole
3. Deep concerned for environmental issues
Disruption hype seems to hold: City of Portland figures show that in just a few months, 34% of users and 48% of visitors skipped the car over scooters with 6% of riders even getting rid of their cars.
First Birds, now storks? Scooters beginning to solve the 1st/last mile of package delivery, as UPS sees foldable scooters boosting deliveries in congested neighborhoods.
Historically, the expansion of humanity’s horizons has often been paid for by the public. As Neil deGrass Tyson often points out, governments have frequently bankrolled endeavors whose costs were very high and whose risks were unknown such as such as long sea voyages or space exploration. These ventures mapped out the risks, learned by trial and error, innovated, and subsequently paved the way for commercial ventures.
In a curious turn of events VCs and entrepreneurs took on the risk themselves, pushing the boundaries of electric micromobility with the force of hundreds of millions of dollars.
2018 Year of The Scooter: Love them or hate them, you knew they were coming…the year-end scooter retrospectives! CityLab, Vox, Forbes, The Verge, The Atlantic
Boring Is Completely Upside-Down: To solve urban mobility do the complete opposite of what Elon Musk proposes – Part 1
Make infrastructure sexy again: LA CoMotion panelist Rudy Salo connects the dots between mobility and our attitudes towards paying for great infrastructure
