Movements | June 19th, 2019

Issue #52 — 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.

Micromobility

Uber unveiled new field swappable batteries for its JUMP bikes. “Holt said that by next year the company hopes to have battery kiosks distributed throughout a city, where anyone, even riders, can swap waning batteries for freshly charged cells.” | Business Insider

Lime unveils a new print marketing campaign in Paris. | The Drum

Bird, Uber and other micromobility companies lose a bid for US tariff relief on Chinese made eBikes and Scooters. Uber said the tariffs have “caused disproportionate harm to the innovation and competitiveness of U.S. digital transportation platforms.” | Reuters

Lyft went live with the new Segway MAX fleet model scooter in Denver. | The Verge

A review of Revel’s new moped sharing service in Brooklyn. | The Verge

A thoughtful blog post by a former colleague outlining the potential for eBikes to solve some of our most pressing economic, healthcare, and climate challenges. | Anand Babu

Product Launches & Updates

Bird is testing giving users credits for parking scooters in designated parking zones in Paris. | Adrien Lelievre

JUMP unveils its new scooter hardware. | The Verge

Transit app deploys its own machine learning model to improve public transit arrival predictions by up to 15%. | Transit

Citymapper ends its ridesharing product experiment in London, citing regulatory constraints and a desire to focus on other efforts. | Citymapper

Uber rolls out Public Transit data integration in Boston. | Boston Globe

Ridehailing

Uber and Lyft CEO’s call for updates to ‘century old employment laws’ in California to give way to a middle ground between contractors and full-time employees. | San Fransisco Chronicle

Indian ridehailing startup Ola opens up an Advanced Engineering office in San Francisco. | Ola

German startup Flixbus accelerates growth in the USA. | Bloomberg

Cities & Policy

Chicago opens it doors to electric scooters with 10 companies participating in a summer pilot. | Chicago Tribune

Los Angeles DOT released its first quarterly report on their scooter program. | LADOT

China is standardizing public transit payment across 260 cities on a single card. Why can’t we have this in the US? | ECNS

A thoughtful piece by former NYC DOT head, Janette Sadik-Khan, on the debate around the use of scooter data in cities. It’s worth a read in its entirety but here’s the key quote: “Privacy concerns are real, but that doesn’t mean companies should be able to prevent responsible access to their data. Without the voluminous data that transportation apps gather, cities are left to plan blindly, relying on their old clickers and clipboards. Better cities need better data — to prevent crashes, minimize traffic congestion and get people where they need to go efficiently. So the way to protect mobility data is not to let private companies keep it to themselves; it’s for cities to raise the bar on digital privacy, championing practices that protect both citizens and the public interest.”| Bloomberg