Scooters Today, Drones Tomorrow

How Better Shared Mobility Management Can Prepare Cities for the Next Wave of Disruptive Technologies

Though the business models of shared micro-mobility have been novel and disruptive to the transport industry, the effect of devices on city streets has not necessarily been unprecedented. Ancestors of the dockless scooter go back more than 100 years, and private bicycles (electric or otherwise) are a critical transportation mode globally (even more so as cities confront their decarbonization challenges). Though the numbers of devices are exploding and creating new and interesting challenges around public space management and right-of-way allocation, cities generally understand the technology at play.

However, in many ways, shared mobility is the opening salvo of a much more profound revolution in transportation. Dockless scooters and bicycles may seem to be far away from the futuristic possibilities of self-driving vehicles or drones. But in many respects, the management of shared micro-mobility is an early example of the technological shifts and diversity of form factors that cities are going to need to address in coming years. Because precedent is often policy, the practices that cities put into place now are likely to dictate the way that cities address these new mobility options when they arrive en masse.

What’s Coming?

We remain on the precipice of major technology disruptions in the fields of connected, autonomous, and electric mobility. The deployment of autonomous vehicles remains a real possibility within the next five years, and there are already functional deployments of devices with high levels of automation serving as shuttles and taxis by companies such as Cruise, Local Motors, and Argo AI. Even if personal autonomous vehicles remain unavailable in the short term, these shared versions will have profound effects on the course of mobility in cities, where their potential impact is greatest. The capabilities of automation and teleoperations are likely to expand additionally to delivery devices (such as Kiwibot, Nuro, Tortoise, and Starship devices already operating in several cities around the world) as well as to small aerial devices capable of delivering packages.

These technologies are likely to launch differently than shared mobility such as scooters or bicycles. Micro-mobility devices are (comparatively) low cost and benefit from network effects, so there is much value in getting as many devices as possible out as quickly as possible. In contrast, the next wave of mobility technologies will be expensive and capital-intensive, likely leading to smaller, more targeted pilots that gradually scale. From deliveries in pilot areas such as college campuses or business parks, deployments will likely increase to cover larger networks, eventually covering wide swatches of dense urban areas.

Getting Comfortable with Devices as Sensors

Shared micro-mobility is the first large-scale experience many cities have in managing “connected devices”, ie devices which communicate unique information either in real time or with a lag. Though many cars now have some form of connectivity, city governments do not typically receive this data and instead usually rely on some form of observation (sensors, traffic counts, video, etc.) to gather data. Public authorities had neither the technical nor the political capabilities to collect data from vehicles when they first rolled out (and until recently, vehicles did not have much useful data to provide). But when regulating shared fleets, through standards such as the Mobility Data Specification, cities now have access to large amounts of data, virtually in real time. For more on our experience with shared mobility data management, please see our whitepaper.

In the future, cities can and should expect more opportunities to manage the large datasets received from companies operating in the right of way. Instead of an outlier in terms of data availability, shared mobility is likely setting the standard for the new types of data which will be collected and managed by public authorities. This data can include information both about the operations themselves (the location or speed of devices, for example), but also secondary data collected by these devices with additional uses by the city. For example, autonomous vehicles generate significant data about road conditions and deteriorated markings in the course of collecting visual information necessary to operate. This information is useful not specifically for autonomous vehicle management, but for planning infrastructure investment for all road users.

The use of this data is going to need to be carefully considered and weighed against the priorities and use cases of cities, regional governments, and national governments (for a more detailed understanding of how to set use cases for transportation data, see our story here). Successfully unlocking the power of big transportation data will also likely involve building better infrastructure to manage large data sets, investing in human capital within city organizations (such as data scientists), and finding third party partners to help process, aggregate, and present data in useful and impactful ways.

Building Digital Twins And Managing the Rules of the Road

Managing the right-of-way is a process that today is typically done through physical infrastructure- features such as signage, paint, traffic signals, and channelizers. A driver or cyclist typically understands what to do based on the information they receive from this infrastructure. This information is important not just for navigation (“which streets can I turn down?”) but also for curbside parking and loading access, idling restrictions, occupancy thresholds, and other uses. Most cities lack a comprehensive set of all of the rules, and when rule changes are made (whether temporarily or permanently), the changes are not always reflected in the records that do exist.

As new technologies are unlikely to “see” the world in the same way humans do, it is critically important that cities develop a practice of designing digital regulation- a synchronized digital manifest of all of the policies a vehicle needs to know in order to operate in a city. Because automated and connected vehicles are going to exist in mixed environments with drivers, pedestrians, and cyclists, there must still be both physical and digital regulations for most purposes. This is the concept of the digital twin- the virtual mirror image of the on-the-street regulation that is already in active use in some aspects of transport such as railways, aviation, and highways. Over time, and specifically for those policies applying only to the next generation of vehicles, one could envision a world in which regulations are communicated digitally by default.

Shared mobility management is great practice for a future with digital regulation. For example, we have worked with several cities to implement no parking policies, low speed zones, and other policy restrictions for shared mobility devices that are then integrated into the applications and devices of shared mobility operators. Many of these zones do not even have corresponding physical infrastructure in the real world (no signs indicating that parking is not allowed, for example)- they are solely reliant on the digital twin to provide policy guidance. In the future, the same process could be used to communicate speed information, restrictions on vehicle types (ie, only electric vehicles into a low emission zone), temporary restrictions or even routing requirements to vehicles such as robotaxis, automated delivery vehicles, and even aerial drones.

The development of digital twins brings up significant capacity questions for cities, as many already struggle to maintain their existing physical infrastructure. Additionally, the management of digital regulation raises new challenges to ensure reliability and resiliency of the systems and maintain strong cybersecurity protections. Nevertheless, digital regulation allows for a significantly improved process for infrastructure management and communication, and is an inevitable necessity moving forward.

Setting Priorities through Policies

Because of the entrance of shared micro-mobility devices to cities, local transport agencies have been asked to come up with new policies for a technology that was almost certainly not part of their long-term transport vision. As new modes and technologies become available, cities need to grapple with how these options fit into their prioritization of needs and opportunities. Cities do not always get to dictate the pace of technological or business development, and so it is important to be prepared not just to do pilots but to be prepared for when pilots are done to you.

Again the management of shared mobility offers some early lessons. The most successful cities today tend to think on three levels within the context of a clear Sustainable Mobility Plan (SUMP) for the City:

• Compliance- How do I monitor the terms of the agreements I have set with shared mobility operators? How do I make sure the requirements I set are actually having the intended effect, and that there are not additional, unintended consequences?
• Program Evaluation- Is shared mobility helping to achieve the goals I have as a city for safer, more sustainable, more accessible transport? Is there sufficient societal return on investment for having shared mobility in my city?
• Planning- How do I incorporate what I know about shared mobility into future infrastructure investments? What sort of prediction should I make about how travel demand will change in the future as a result of this new technology?

We have applied this thinking in several projects, including a recent study with the City of Helsinki, evaluating different facets of their scooter share program. This framework is valuable to consider as a resource for new technologies as they emerge as well. The more comfortable and confident cities are in asking and answering these questions about shared mobility, the easier the discussion will be when the next generation of technologies begins to appear on the street.

About Vianova

Vianova is a data platform that helps cities better integrate and manage shared, connected, electric and autonomous transport solutions in the urban space, enabling better use of city infrastructure, and promoting safer and more sustainable mobility. Vianova has offices in Paris, Zürich and London.

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