Crossroads for the curb
Why curbs need an open digital ecosystem & how we get there — Emily Eros, Kevin Webb & Mollie Pelon McArdle
After years of all eyes being on the curb in cities, we have arrived at an important moment. Contention for this street space has always existed, and conflicts have risen as more vehicles, like scooters, bikes, and delivery trucks, demand access to the side of the street. But the curbside holds great promise for the future of cities: the ability to reimagine and reprioritize precious street space away from single occupancy vehicles and towards walking, biking, transit and shared mobility modes.
Before cities can reimagine the future, they need better data to understand and communicate current regulations.
Digital regulations should support our existing uses of this public space and expand possibilities for future uses. In order to do that, it’s crucial this new data infrastructure be built on the same values as the cities it serves. It needs to be driven by public governance rather than private business interests.
SharedStreets envisions a future with an open ecosystem for curb data. In this ecosystem, cities can access the tools and vendors they need to create digital curb inventories that are machine readable by many technologies. This will enable innovation across the industry. With a shared language for the curb, consultants and data analysis platforms can build tools and work together to help cities better understand their curbside supply and demand — helping them make informed decisions about where and when to convert a parking space to a flex zone, or how to charge appropriately for this space. Cities stay in control of their data and public spaces, and companies are free to innovate and build upon information. The result: cities and technologies that better reflect today’s mobility needs.
This open ecosystem benefits city government, residents, and mobility operators. But it’s not a sure thing.
What we’re concerned about
We’ve been hearing from many cities who are interested in mapping their curbspace. However, regulations are very difficult to map, and there hasn’t always been a standard approach for cities to take (see our work on CurbLR, a data standard for curb regulations, below!). In the absence of consistent, city-led strategies, substantial private capital is being invested into platforms that solve cities’ technical challenges in return for private control of curb data or curb space.
Some companies are marketing mapping services that lock regulatory data into proprietary platforms — discreetly restricting cities’ rights to their own regulation information, which prevents them from sharing data how they choose, or even taking it out of a company’s platform. Cities end up paying an ongoing subscription fee for access to data about their curb rules. This control over canonical regulatory information may enable control over future transactional curb services.
Other companies rely on a demand “aggregation” model where they build exclusive relationships with curb users (e.g. Amazon, UPS etc.) and leverage those relationships to negotiate curb access terms with cities.
In both cases, companies offer technical solutions as an entry point to controlling information, access, and transactions regarding the curb — ultimately shaping the policies and regulations that govern public space.
These concerns are what drew us to the curb. SharedStreets’ view is that cities need to have ownership over their curb inventory data. Likewise, no company should “own” a city’s curbspace, determine how it is priced, or control who has access to it. This is a city government’s purview and it requires the public participation and accountability that government brings. To help, we’ve been focused on building open and collaborative alternatives to support curb management.
Where we see ourselves
Over the past six months, SharedStreets has been developing digital infrastructure that fosters an open and collaborative ecosystem, beginning with the release of CurbLR, an open data standard for curb regulations.
Since then, we’ve been experimenting with existing data collection tools and methods to create datasets like this example from downtown Portland, along with an accompanying interactive CurbLR viewer:
The goal of this work is to create the building blocks to support cities interested in taking the lead to map and manage their own curbspace, and ensure that they own the resulting data. By supporting cities to create essential information, we’re laying the groundwork for an open ecosystem.
How we create an open ecosystem
While tools can be helpful, this work isn’t really about products. It’s about cities. Whether they’re using SharedStreets’ tools or methods of their own, we’ve seen that curb data management can and should be led by cities, on their own terms.
We’ve been excited to see cities like DC and Minneapolis leading their own projects to create and manage information about their curbs, and to see partnerships from organizations like Transportation for America, who will be funding and supporting upcoming pilot projects in Bellevue, Boston, and Minneapolis. We know that public agencies have become highly interested in the curb, and we look forward to seeing more and more cities taking action.
By ensuring that cities are in the driver’s seat, and building tools to enable collaboration, we can ensure that the future of the curb is open.
If you’re a city interested in the curb, feel free to reach out! We’re happy to talk about different ways you can get started. SharedStreets is a non-profit; our tools are all free and open, and we do not charge cities for our support.
