Mobility & Transportation - Issue #60

GoDurham (the paratransit service for the City of Durham, North Carolina) leveraged its contractor (National Express), and UZURV - an adaptive TNC to expand GoDurham’s ride options with a non-dedicated fleet of drivers. The average cost per trip has been 30 percent less than the previous sub-contractor and UZURV is achieving an average on-time percentage of 98.5 percent

The micro-transit pilot program led by L.A. Metro’s Office of Extraordinary Innovation aims to bring rideshare to L.A. residents underserved by companies like Uber and Lyft and expand upon the agency’s existing fixed route buses and trains. The service leverages technology from the Canadian company RideCo.

On-demand shuttle and software company Via has raised another $130 million (total $800 million to date), pushing its valuation to about $3.3 billion. They landed their first city partnership deal in Austin in 2017 by offering a free trial, built case studies, and in 2019 the partnerships business took off. Today Via has about 950 employees.

One problem with the transition to electric vehicles is that all the necessary chargers will clutter up sidewalks. Two charities in the UK have called on the government to make sure the new public electric vehicle (EV) charging points won’t impede pedestrians.

A federal grant program that had become a honeypot for rural highway-building in the Trump years has pivoted in favor of projects for sidewalks, bikes and public transit.In the new tranche of almost $1 billion in RAISE grant selections in the U.S.