With more than 8 billion people in the world and only 900 million cars, we’re learning that the one person, one car model is not a sustainable or even desirable one for the future of urban mobility. More and more people are shifting their dependency toward public transportation, relying on buses, trains and other publicly owned modes of transit to move about their cities. But beyond just a reliance on public transit to get around, there is a greater need for multi-modal options and shared-mobility solutions as cities and their surrounding areas become increasingly crowded. This begs the question of how transit agencies can help to provide these kinds of solutions in a cost-effective manner.
Rather than expending effort providing new technologies and mobility solutions for transit riders, transit agencies are generally better off focusing on what they do best: moving people from point A to point B. There are a number of third-party apps and technology companies that focus on the multi-modal aspect of transportation that are already working toward greater shared-mobility solutions. It is by partnering or integrating with these kinds of companies that transit agencies can help to shape the future of urban mobility without incurring a large cost.
At Moovit, our goal is to provide users with access to all of their local transit options in a single app so that they only need one source of information about how to get around their cities or towns. In many urban areas, we provide real-time data about lines and schedules for all available options like trains, buses, light rail, and ferries, while also integrating a number of shared-mobility options like bike sharing and car sharing services like Uber. Users have the freedom to choose which of the available transit methods best suits them for that particular journey, while also having the flexibility to choose to take multiple modes of transportation for a single trip.
For a transit agency to create their own technology linking all these shared-mobility options would be a great undertaking, not only in terms of manpower and resources, but also from a financial standpoint. However, publicly funded transit agencies can benefit from partnering with apps and other companies in the private sector that have already done the legwork of aggregating the data from these different mobility options, with minimal spend involved. Additionally, by cooperating with technologies that implement shared-mobility services like Uber or Lyft, transit agencies can provide their riders with even more options for the first- and last-mile conundrum.
Furthermore, by integrating with technologies that have mastered the ability to scale with the crowd, transit agencies — and their riders — can benefit from the increasing addition of real-time alerts provided by the crowd, without developing any new functionality or increasing their headcount to keep up with these kinds of demands. Thus, it is by truly working together, and with the vast community of transit riders, that agencies can define their place in the future of urban mobility.
Alex Mackenzie Torres, CMO, Moovit, San Francisco, Calif.
