We’re investigating mobility solutions for South Bend; here’s what we’ve learned
Microtransit. Ridesharing. Ridehailing. Bikeshare. Scootershare. Vanpooling. Carsharing. Autonomous vehicles. First and last mile solutions. Multimodal. Demand-responsive.
These are just a few of the buzzwords flying around the mobility space these days. The array of new ideas and concepts emerging can be dizzying.
Here on the ground in South Bend, ridehailing has grown steadily with the entrance of both Lyft and Uber. We also were one of the first cities to launch a dockless bikeshare program back in 2017.
But the reality here, in the city where Studebakers were once manufactured, is that the personal car is the dominant mode of getting around. A minority of residents get around via bus, bike, or scooter.
South Bend is positioned in a rapidly evolving mobility landscape with a local transportation system dominated by personal car ownership. That’s the backdrop for our Bloomberg Mayors Challenge work to develop a new Transportation-as-a-Benefit program, in partnership with local employers.
A key decision in designing this program is determining the modes of transportation we’ll try to bundle into our solution. Our (eventual) goal is to integrate a set of mobility options and make them available to commuters, to ease their trip to and from work.
To figure out what options make sense, we asked why an employee might need an alternative to their existing commute mode. In our analysis of data from our 2018 pilots, two features emerged that distinguished the use cases for our program:
- Frequency signifies how often a particular use case might occur for a single user
- Schedulability signifies how far in advance a user would be able to plan a trip given a particular use case
Understanding the use cases for when an alternative commute option is needed has helped us clarify which modes of transportation make the most sense, since the same matrix allows us to map which modes serve the use cases most effectively and efficiently:
High Frequency, Low Schedulability
Low schedulability forces the deployment of more costly modes of transportation such as single-occupant on-demand ridehailing services. Where it makes sense, micromobility options like bike and scootershare could supplement ridehailing. But in general, these use cases are difficult to serve because they could constitute a major cost.
High Frequency, High Schedulability
High schedulability enables the deployment of highly-responsive yet cost-effective modes of transportation such as carpool, vanpool, or app-based “microtransit” vanpooling. High frequency enables this service to be better tailored to each user since, in aggregate, higher frequency means more total trip requests.
Low Frequency, Low Schedulability
These use cases are important to serve in South Bend — for residents struggling to hold a job, one missed shift due to car trouble could be devastating. Low schedulability forces the deployment of costly modes of transportation such as single-occupant ride-hailing services, but low frequency means their overall cost is less of a factor.
Low Frequency, High Schedulability
These use cases are the most rare, and theoretically the least costly to serve. Carpool-type transportation might be the ideal service provided here, but single-occupant ride-hailing may also work for these very-low-frequency use cases.
These analyses have informed how we’re approaching the three-year implementation of our program. Recently, we’ve started conversations with multiple mobility solution vendors as part of a Request for Information we conducted in June. And now we’re on track to launch “phase one” of our implementation with a few local employer partners this fall, and expect to develop new partnerships with transportation and mobility solution providers later this year.
Time will tell whether the hypotheses we’ve developed about what will work in South Bend hold true — and what else we’ll learn in the months to come.
Aaron Steiner is the Director of South Bend’s Bloomberg Mayors Challenge program.
