What’s the Regulatory Landscape for Bike/Scooter-Sharing? (Part 2 of 2)
How bike/scooter sharing companies can survive being regulated by city governments
By Billy Hwang
Whether they like them or not, city officials know that the horse has left the barn and that they can’t feasibly prevent the open market for dock-less vehicle-sharing systems from being a part of their cities’ transportation landscape. Cities aren’t going to be able to limit the vehicle sharing market to one vendor as they did with station-based bikeshare programs. They will have to open the market up to applicants that can meet permit terms and conditions — paying the determined fee, operating with the determined number of vehicles, and being regulated under a specified penalty structure — and give all applicants due consideration to operate on public streets and spaces. So, how will the growing number of vehicle-sharing companies be regulated? What will the terms and conditions of the permits they will need say, and will those terms and conditions be onerous to the companies’ business model?
The task in front of shared mobility providers is to find a way to have a say in the permitting terms and conditions they will have to operate under. How? I suggest that they create a model permit that not only balances the company’s best case business scenario and the public interest, but shows that the two are not mutually-exclusive. And make the model permit the outcome of a series of meetings with city officials after a positive relationship has been cultivated. Otherwise, these companies will be subject to regulatory decisions made without them.
Make Friends
For the most part, cities aren’t likely to view private vehicle sharing companies negatively unless the company does something like dump a bunch of scooters or bikes on their streets without warning them or asking for permission first. More on that later. What companies should look to do first is to shift the benign or skeptical perception city officials will likely have of them into a positive relationship.
The point of initial meetings with city officials should be to discuss what the company offers, how it benefits mobility in the city, and listen to any concerns and answer questions the city officials bring up. It should not be to talk about what the company needs from the city. This means that the company needs to start from a position of cooperation, and not aggression. It also means that the company meets regulating agencies, as well as Mayor’s offices and city executives, and approaches them with similarly.
First, a little about who you should target to meet from cities. If you’re a new mobility provider and you want to grow, you’re going to need to get to know and make friends with executives and staff in permitting and transportation agencies. In some cases, key staff coming up with permit terms and process requirements are housed in the same agency, but in others, they’ll be scattered throughout a city’s transportation, public works, and planning departments. Figure out how streets, parking, and right-of-way permitting is managed in a city and seek out staff responsible for regulation development and executive staff managing them.
The advantage of working with staff is that, because they do most of the heavy lifting of regulation and policy development, your input could help shape the regulations and policies affecting you. Plus, they’re easier to access for meetings and calls, and you’ll be passed on to them after meetings with executives anyway. However, staff take directives from their managers who take their orders from senior leadership at the agencies. So, if you have access to and convince the City’s transportation director, deputy director, or chief of staff to take a certain position on a particular policy or regulation, you’re likely to see it reflected in the rules drafted by staff. Without access and influence, your time is better used in building relationships with implementing staff.
Now, back to the question of how you make yourself stand out in a good way with cities. Are there things you could do or offer to put them at ease and have them not see you as a threat?
One is not besieging them at meetings with demands (what they need to give you) and complaints (what they aren’t giving you). Remember, they don’t see themselves as a problem and you as a solution. Not yet. In my experience, people working in city government, for the most part, have good intentions and want to be helpful. They have their guards up though because someone outside government can pounce on them at any moment with a criticism or complaint. And they often do.
Second, to stand out in a good way with city officials, offer something that will make their job easier. In my experience, one of the main pain points as a transportation agency official is having to spend all your time reacting to media, elected officials, and citizen complaints. To not respond costs you a job, so these requests are necessary evils, distractions that must be heard and addressed before you can attend to priorities that change or move the agency forward. So, what’s your job as a company seeking to stand out from the crowd in a good way? Present a solution to a problem they currently face or will face soon, and certainly do not add to the distractions they will have to deal with — a fire to put out and forget — or else they will view you as an annoyance. Launching a vehicle-sharing service in a city without attaining permit approvals is a good way to start off on the wrong foot with a city you want to have a future in. Launching while going through the permitting process or making introductions to city officials may be worse since that undermines trust government partners may want to have in you.
Give and You Will Receive
So what can a new mobility provider offer that will solve problems for public officials? Government workers get a bad rap as red-tape loving bureaucrats protecting outdated, wasteful, time-consuming processes. Especially by private industry. In some cases that may be true. But I’d put my money on the notion that most are in it for good reasons, to be helpful, and to make people’s lives better. Even the most power-hungry and ambitious of them work in the public interest because ultimately, the city’s constituents, its citizens, keep the Mayor and City Council in power and hold them and their city agencies accountable. The social contract, after all, is between government and its citizens.
So, it makes a difference if providers offer something that serves the public interest. For a lot of cities, the top transportation goals are mobility and safety goals — reducing congestion, offering real alternatives to driving, and getting people out of cars, or even better, giving them a reason to give up driving and their cars. Here are three examples of things companies have that, probably with a few tweaks, could be of use to cities, transportation agencies, and the public interest:
· Performance metrics for maintenance and operations — Cities and shared mobility companies share an interest in preserving public safety, so it will pay to have a transparent means of showing the company’s defined expectations and performance for how often equipment is maintained, how long a vehicle will sit locked in one position before it is taken away to be rebalanced, and how many vehicles are in operation at any given time;
· Deployment and operating plan — Shared mobility — and bikes and scooters themselves — takes heat for catering to young urbanites driving gentrification, so a company’s roadmap for how its services and products have and will continue to operate in underserved, disadvantaged communities will deflect those concerns and provide a good talking point for city officials; and
· Data — Cities are probably unaware of the value that data from shared mobility companies can have to their planning and operations — usage numbers, crash data, and origin/destination information can help governments make better decisions for where they spend their road and sidewalk repair dollars and whether streets should be designed for cars, buses, bikes, or anything else — so companies should develop guidelines for the types of data it shares and the form the data takes (I don’t think I’m the first to think data sets could also be monetized by being made available at a price to government consultants hired to do plans and studies).
Of less importance are differentiators that have to do with transportation mode and where the company is headquartered. It probably doesn’t make much of a difference if a shared mobility company is offering bikes versus scooters versus both. City officials just want to get people out of cars. But they might be worried about how much work will need to be done to design streets for scooters and whatever is coming next (and how to get bikes and scooters off sidewalks today).
It also probably doesn’t make a significant difference in the minds of city officials if the mobility operator is a local business, a small business, or a large, multi-national business. There might be procurement preferences for local or small businesses, but shared mobility isn’t likely to continue as government-procured services involving government subsidies. In the open market regulated by permits, local agencies will treat all applicants on an even playing field so long as their points of contact are responsive and handle constituent complaints in a timely and effective manner.
It’s a Small World
So where is the treatment of shared mobility heading in America’s cities? City transportation officials live in a small world and they tend to copy what others have done, what has worked for other cities. The treatment of dock-less bikeshare as pilot projects is an example. The regulations that come out of these pilots are going to be shared and copied across cities who may try to get ahead of the introduction of dock-less bikeshare on their streets. Regulations affecting scooter-sharing will be replicated as well. Eventually, bikes and scooters will blend into the transportation landscape giving people less reason to own and use cars. But growing pains will need to be suffered by all until then. Have fun everybody!
Thanks for reading! I am a consultant based in Los Angeles, after having spent a dozen years working in city and state government. I can be contacted at mr.mobillyty@gmail.com for more information on this and other urban mobility topics.
