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Colin Murphy, Terra Curtis, Evan Costagliola, Regina Clewlow, Stephanie Seki,and Ruoying Xu; Transit Cooperative Research Program; Transportation Research
Board; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

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Transit and Micromobility

TRANSIT COOPERATIVE RESEARCH PROGRAM

TCRP RESEARCH REPORT 230
Transit and Micromobility
Colin Murphy

Shared-Use Mobility Center
Chicago, IL

Terra Curtis
Evan Costagliola

Nelson\Nygaard
San Francisco, CA

Regina Clewlow
Stephanie Seki
Ruoying Xu

Populus Technologies, Inc.
San Francisco, CA

Subject Areas

Pedestrians and Bicyclists • Public Transportation

Research sponsored by the Federal Transit Administration in cooperation with the Transit Development Corporation

2021

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Transit and Micromobility

TRANSIT COOPERATIVE RESEARCH PROGRAM

TCRP RESEARCH REPORT 230

The nation’s growth and the need to meet mobility, environmental,
and energy objectives place demands on public transit systems. Current systems, some of which are old and in need of upgrading, must
expand service area, increase service frequency, and improve efficiency
to serve these demands. Research is necessary to solve operating problems, adapt appropriate new technologies from other industries, andintroduce innovations into the transit industry. The Transit Cooperative Research Program (TCRP) serves as one of the principal means bywhich the transit industry can develop innovative near-term solutions
to meet demands placed on it.
The need for TCRP was originally identified in TRB Special Report
213—Research for Public Transit: New Directions, published in 1987
and based on a study sponsored by the Urban Mass Transportation
Administration—now the Federal Transit Administration (FTA). A
report by the American Public Transportation Association (APTA),
Transportation 2000, also recognized the need for local, problemsolving research. TCRP, modeled after the successful National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP), undertakes researchand other technical activities in response to the needs of transit service providers. The scope of TCRP includes various transit research
fields including planning, service configuration, equipment, facilities,
operations, human resources, maintenance, policy, and administrative
practices.
TCRP was established under FTA sponsorship in July 1992. Proposed by the U.S. Department of Transportation, TCRP was authorized
as part of the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991
(ISTEA). On May 13, 1992, a memorandum agreement outlining TCRP
operating procedures was executed by the three cooperating organizations: FTA; the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, andMedicine, acting through the Transportation Research Board (TRB);
and the Transit Development Corporation, Inc. (TDC), a nonprofit
educational and research organization established by APTA. TDC is
responsible for forming the independent governing board, designatedas the TCRP Oversight and Project Selection (TOPS) Commission.
Research problem statements for TCRP are solicited periodically but
may be submitted to TRB by anyone at any time. It is the responsibilityof the TOPS Commission to formulate the research program by identifying the highest priority projects. As part of the evaluation, the TOPS
Commission defines funding levels and expected products.
Once selected, each project is assigned to an expert panel appointed
by TRB. The panels prepare project statements (requests for proposals), select contractors, and provide technical guidance and counsel
throughout the life of the project. The process for developing research
problem statements and selecting research agencies has been used by
TRB in managing cooperative research programs since 1962. As inother TRB activities, TCRP project panels serve voluntarily withoutcompensation.
Because research cannot have the desired effect if products fail toreach the intended audience, special emphasis is placed on disseminating TCRP results to the intended users of the research: transit agencies, service providers, and suppliers. TRB provides a series of research
reports, syntheses of transit practice, and other supporting material
developed by TCRP research. APTA will arrange for workshops, training aids, field visits, and other activities to ensure that results are implemented by urban and rural transit industry practitioners.
TCRP provides a forum where transit agencies can cooperatively
address common operational problems. TCRP results support andcomplement other ongoing transit research and training programs.

Project J-11/Task 37
ISSN 2572-3782
ISBN 978-0-309-67437-9© 2021 National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION
Authors herein are responsible for the authenticity of their materials and for obtaining
written permissions from publishers or persons who own the copyright to any previously
published or copyrighted material used herein.
Cooperative Research Programs (CRP) grants permission to reproduce material inthis publication for classroom and not-for-profit purposes. Permission is given withthe understanding that none of the material will be used to imply TRB, AASHTO, FAA,
FHWA, FTA, GHSA, NHTSA, or TDC endorsement of a particular product, method, or
practice. It is expected that those reproducing the material in this document for educationaland not-for-profit uses will give appropriate acknowledgment of the source of any reprinted
or reproduced material. For other uses of the material, request permission from CRP.

NOTICEThe research report was reviewed by the technical panel and accepted for publicationaccording to procedures established and overseen by the Transportation Research Boardand approved by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
The opinions and conclusions expressed or implied in this report are those of theresearchers who performed the research and are not necessarily those of the Transportation Research Board; the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine; orthe program sponsors.
The Transportation Research Board; the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, andMedicine; and the sponsors of the Transit Cooperative Research Program do not endorse
products or manufacturers. Trade or manufacturers’ names or logos appear herein solely
because they are considered essential to the object of the report.

Published research reports of the

TRANSIT COOPERATIVE RESEARCH PROGRAM
are available fromTransportation Research Board
Business Office
500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001
and can be ordered through the Internet by going tohttps://www.mytrb.org/MyTRB/Store/default.aspx
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Transit and Micromobility

The National Academy of Sciences was established in 1863 by an Act of Congress, signed by President Lincoln, as a private, nongovernmental institution to advise the nation on issues related to science and technology. Members are elected by their peers foroutstanding contributions to research. Dr. Marcia McNutt is president.
The National Academy of Engineering was established in 1964 under the charter of the National Academy of Sciences to bring thepractices of engineering to advising the nation. Members are elected by their peers for extraordinary contributions to engineering.
Dr. John L. Anderson is president.
The National Academy of Medicine (formerly the Institute of Medicine) was established in 1970 under the charter of the National
Academy of Sciences to advise the nation on medical and health issues. Members are elected by their peers for distinguished contributions
to medicine and health. Dr. Victor J. Dzau is president.
The three Academies work together as the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to provide independent,
objective analysis and advice to the nation and conduct other activities to solve complex problems and inform public policy decisions.
The National Academies also encourage education and research, recognize outstanding contributions to knowledge, and increase
public understanding in matters of science, engineering, and medicine.
Learn more about the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine at www.nationalacademies.org.
The Transportation Research Board is one of seven major programs of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.
The mission of the Transportation Research Board is to provide leadership in transportation improvements and innovation throughtrusted, timely, impartial, and evidence-based information exchange, research, and advice regarding all modes of transportation. The
Board’s varied activities annually engage about 8,000 engineers, scientists, and other transportation researchers and practitioners fromthe public and private sectors and academia, all of whom contribute their expertise in the public interest. The program is supported bystate transportation departments, federal agencies including the component administrations of the U.S. Department of Transportation,and other organizations and individuals interested in the development of transportation.
Learn more about the Transportation Research Board at www.TRB.org.

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Transit and Micromobility

COOPERATIVE RESEARCH PROGRAMSCRP STAFF FOR TCRP RESEARCH REPORT 230
Christopher J. Hedges, Director, Cooperative Research Programs
Lori L. Sundstrom, Deputy Director, Cooperative Research Programs
Gwen Chisholm Smith, Manager, Transit Cooperative Research Program
Mariela Garcia-Colberg, Senior Program Officer
Emily Griswold, Program Coordinator
Natalie Barnes, Director of Publications
Heather DiAngelis, Associate Director of Publications
Doug English, Senior Editor

TCRP PROJECT J-11/TASK 37 PANEL
Field of Special Projects

Mauricio Hernandez, Alta Planning, Oakland, CA (Chair)John C. Andoh III, County of Hawai’i Mass Transit Agency, Hilo, HI
Alexandra Baca, Greater Greater Washington, Washington, D.C.
Dave Fotsch, Valley Regional Transit, Boise, ID
Lauren Grabowski, Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Los Angeles, CA
Robert C. Hampshire, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
Kimberly Lucas, City of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA
Jennifer K. McGrath, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UTLouis Pappas, Electric Avenue LLC, Brooklyn, NY
Prachi Vakharia, Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA), Washington, D.C.
Natalie Marie Villwock-Witte, Western Transportation Institute (WTI), Nashotah, WI
Matthew Lange, FTA Liaison
Elliot Sperling, FTA Liaison
Matthew Dickens, APTA Liaison

AUTHOR ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The researchers wish to acknowledge the following local jurisdictions for providing permission to use
shared-scooter data collected from their programs:• Arlington County, VA• City of Baltimore, MD• City of Cleveland, OH• City of Indianapolis, IN• City of Oakland, CA

The researchers also acknowledge the shared-scooter operating companies that provided permission
to use aggregated data from their scooter operations in the applicable regions:• Bird• Lime• Lyft• SpinThe data used in this report are for the sole purposes of this research and cannot be used for any othernon-project-related research or products without permission from the jurisdictions and operators.

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Transit and Micromobility

FOREWORD

By Mariela Garcia-Colberg
Staff Officer
Transportation Research Board

TCRP Research Report 230: Transit and Micromobility (Project J-11/Task 37) provides ananalysis of the full benefits and impacts of micromobility on public transportation systems
in transit-rich markets as well as in medium-sized and smaller urban areas. The report
includes case studies and lessons learned from different collaborations among cities, transit
agencies, and micromobility companies. This report will provide public transit agencies with areference on the benefits, impacts, and opportunities of micromobility to transit ridershipand the built environment. The report was developed for public transit systems of all sizes
and their stakeholders, including policymakers, transit board members, and elected officials
who are seeking better understanding of the micromobility environment and their options.
The report will also be useful to DOT officials who regulate and manage micromobility.
Micromobility refers to small, low-speed vehicles intended for personal use and currently
includes station-based bikeshare systems, dockless bikeshare systems, electric-assist bikeshare, and electric scooters. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, micromobility was evolving
rapidly, and new types of devices were being introduced to the market every year. Bikesharecompanies had indicated an interest in increasing cooperation with transit agencies, andsome transit systems were operating their own bikeshare systems. Further, micromobility
services like bikeshare and scooter sharing had helped provide first- and last-mile connectivity to transit, further supporting a multimodal lifestyle. This symbiotic relationship meant
micromobility had the potential to increase the number of transit trips by expanding thereach of multimodal transportation, but it also could replace transit trips.
This research had four key objectives: identify the impact of micromobility on bus andrail transit ridership, identify the economic impacts of micromobility for the community
and the transit agency, identify the impacts on the built environment (e.g., bike lanes andparking spaces) of the implementation of micromobility, and identify ways to strengthen
the relationship between micromobility and transit to maximize sustainable trip modes.
The report uses survey and trip data to help transit agencies understand their role in thegrowing micromobility market. The report also presents information and lessons learned
from transit collaboration with micromobility companies.
The report is organized into seven chapters; the initial chapters define micromobility andthe business models and operational arrangements of the market and provide an overview
of the policy and regulatory environment surrounding micromobility. Subsequent chapters
describe micromobility users’ characteristics, implications for transit agencies, and different
partnership approaches. The report concludes with a toolkit that provides action items thata transit agency can follow in order to make decisions on these micromobility partnerships.
The appendices provide several valuable resources public transit agencies can use to expand
their understanding of digital policy and compliance and make informed decisions on how
best to incorporate the available resources into their strategies going forward.

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Transit and Micromobility

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Transit and Micromobility

CONTENTS

1

Summary

10

Chapter 1 Micromobility Devices and Business Models

22

Chapter 2 Regulatory and Policy Review

44

Chapter 3 Micromobility Users and Utilization

59

Chapter 4 Implications for Transit Agencies

76

Chapter 5 Agency–Micromobility Partnership Approaches

82

Chapter 6 Suggestions for Further Research

83

Chapter 7 Partnership Toolkit

91

References

97

Appendix A Data Methodology

99

Appendix B Digital Policy and Compliance

10
18
22
28
29
44
44
59
69
76
79
79

83
89

Defining Shared Micromobility
Business Models and Industry Trends

The Range of Local Regulatory Approaches
The Transit Agency’s Regulatory Role
Micromobility and the Built Environment

Grouping of Metro Areas by Density and Transit Use
User Characteristics

Micromobility Usage Patterns and Impacts
Funding/Financing Impacts, Civil Rights, and Other Agency Concerns
Transit Agency–Led Operation or Integration of Services
Subsidizing Specific Ride Types or Creating Connections
City–Transit Agency Policy Collaboration

Toolkit
Key Case Studies and Pilot Examples

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Transit and Micromobility

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Transit and Micromobility

SUMMARY

Transit and Micromobility

When docked bikeshare appeared a decade ago, few could have imagined the explosive
evolution of small, low-speed mobility into the variety of devices, business models, andoperational arrangements that characterize the sector now known as “micromobility.” This
growth has been accelerated by infusions of private capital, popular enthusiasm for thedevices, and economies of scale for the vehicles and technologies that underpin micro­
mobility services.
This report combines survey and trip data with operational lessons from agencies andcities that are working to maximize the public benefit of the expanding micromobility
market. This information is intended to fill gaps in understanding of public transit agencies’role with regard to micromobility by helping agencies identify:
Characteristics of micromobility devices and business models;
The range of regulatory levers for micromobility (generally at the municipal level), transit
agencies’ role in regulation, and micromobility’s interaction with the built environment;• Who is using micromobility and how it is used, both on its own and connecting totransit; and• The impact of micromobility on bus and rail transit ridership, operations, and economics.
••

This study considers micromobility’s interactions with transit in a range of urban environments, agency sizes, economic circumstances, and transportation contexts. The reportconcludes with a Partnership Toolkit, which, building on the analysis and case studies
presented throughout the report, provides a guide for transit agencies that are considering
whether and how to collaborate with micromobility providers.

Impacts of COVID-19
This report was written at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, but most of the datacollection and analysis took place earlier. Likewise, operational examples and case studies
cited throughout largely cover the pre-COVID period. In 2020 and 2021, micromobility
appeared to serve as a mode perceived as providing a lower risk of exposure than riding inshared, closed vehicles like those of transit or ride-hail services. However, as travel overall
fell to historic lows, so did micromobility ridership in most places, and usage patterns of
the micromobility trips that remained differed from those before the crisis, with longer
trips and a shift away from peak-hour and transit-connecting usage (Holder 2021; Heineke
et al. 2020). As the pandemic’s longer-term impacts on communities, travel choices, andpublic agencies are still emerging, it is difficult to describe them with confidence. For
that reason, this report describes the transportation context as it existed on the eve of
COVID-19—acknowledging that massive changes will have taken place by the time the1
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Transit and Micromobility

2   Transit and Micromobility

pandemic’s direct effects subside, but that these outcomes are unknowable while we arestill in the middle of the crisis.

Defining Shared Micromobility
The term “micromobility” can encompass a broad variety of small, low-speed vehicles
intended for personal transportation in urban areas. In popular usage, it is commonly
applied to shared bikes, motorized kick scooters, and other personal transportation devices[National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) 2019a, 5; Chang et al.
2019, 2; National League of Cities (NLC) 2019, 6]. This study will follow the vehicle taxonomy
provided by SAE International, which classifies powered micromobility vehicles based
both on form factor and on physical characteristics. Expanding on the powered micromobility taxonomy provided by SAE J3194 (SAE International 2019), this study defines“micro­mobility” as services using vehicles with the following characteristics:
Designed for human transport on pavement (excluding mobility aids intended for use
by people with disabilities and low-speed vehicles like golf carts),• Top speed of 30 mph or less, with full or partial human power,• Unloaded weight of less than 500 pounds,• If motorized, an electric motor rather than an internal combustion engine, and• Deployed as part of a shared fleet available for use by the general public.
•

The Micromobility Market
With the introduction of free-floating modes of micromobility, many jurisdictions haveshifted to managing the public right-of-way for these services, including regulating how
they may operate on sidewalks and roads or in other public spaces. Micromobility adoption
has grown rapidly since shared scooters’ appearance in 2018. The number of shared micromobility trips in the United States more than doubled between 2017 and 2018 (NACTO
2019b). Shared scooters and bikes operated legally in some 180 U.S. municipalities on theeve of COVID-19 in 2020, which is nearly double the count of the 2018 season (Smart Cities
Dive 2020; NACTO 2019b).
Dockless scooter services in U.S. cities are dominated by a few major operators, but manysmaller regional operators also offer shared bicycles and scooters, with some specializing
in working with smaller jurisdictions or campuses. Large programs, with thousands ofvehicles, are in place in large or fast-growing cities, while smaller cities or college towns
may have fleet counts in the dozens or hundreds.

Regulatory and Policy Review
Transit agencies generally lack the regulatory powers that state or local governments
possess, and they achieve policy goals largely through partnerships with operators and coordination with regulating agencies. Put another way, cities regulate, while transit agencies
partner. City departments of transportation (DOTs) use regulation as a tool to manage
micromobility; transit agencies partner with private or nonprofit operators and with surrounding jurisdictions. This section surveys the whole of the regulatory environment, starting at the local level and then moving to the transit agency’s role.
Key Areas of Local Regulation
Most local enabling statutes and permit requirements for micromobility typically coversome combination of several key regulatory approaches [Shared-Use Mobility Center

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Transit and Micromobility

Summary  3(SUMC) and New Urban Mobility Alliance (NUMO) 2020]. (The Micromobility Policy Atlas,which contains several dozen local micromobility regulations from the United States andelsewhere, is available at https://learn.sharedusemobilitycenter.org/atlas/.) These regulatory
levers are detailed in the main text of this report, with examples from relevant jurisdictions.
The most common areas of local regulation include the following:
Vehicle location: Operation, parking, and geographic limitations.
Limiting overall scale and impact: Fleet caps, utilization targets, and provider counts.
Rider and public safety, which center on– Speed limits,– Vehicle requirements (international standards, federal consumer regulations, or state
standards for bikes or personal e-mobility vehicles),– Helmet use,
– Rider age restrictions/license requirements, and– Hours of operation and curfews.
• Operator responsibilities: Parking enforcement, rebalancing, maintenance, andcommunications.
• Social equity considerations: Geographic distribution and access for the unbanked or
people without smartphones.
• Data-sharing requirements and standards/specifications.
• Risk management, including insurance coverage and performance bonds.
•••

The Transit Agency’s Regulatory Role
Most of the regulatory mechanisms described previously sit outside the control of transit
agencies. Transit agencies’ specific policy areas of interest include:• Safe station access,• Managing network demand,• Risk management,• Digital policy and data sharing,• Fare integration, and• Equitable access.

Partnerships take place in the physical, digital, and policy realms. Transit agencies partnerwith cities to plan and build physical infrastructure to enhance access to transit, increase ridership, and increase customer safety. On the digital front, to enable station-area planning andinformed decision making, transit agencies coordinate with city regulators to ensure agency
access to micromobility data. In the policy realm, agencies partner with cities to develop equitable
access, contribute financial or in-kind resources for program management, and pursue otherpolicies needed to achieve their vision and goals.
We are still early in understanding the transit agency role in the governance of micro­
mobility systems. Given their ability to regulate, city DOTs are the natural leaders for micro­
mobility governance. The understanding that transit agencies need to become partners andbegin their own micromobility policy development has only been realized recently as agencies
across the United States begin to interact with micromobility vendors. As more agencies experiment and develop their own micromobility policies and partnerships with cities, best practices
will become clearer.
Government subsidization of micromobility is possible today, but a fully validated payment model has not yet been achieved. While publicly subsidized docked bikeshare is common,transit agency subsidies for dockless micromobility are only starting to emerge. To exclusively

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Transit and Micromobility

4   Transit and Micromobility

subsidize trips that provide first- and last-mile access, a transit agency would either need a fully
integrated payment system (subsidizing only those trips that take place both on transit andvia micromobility) or access to trip data (subsidizing trips that definitively start or end within a
specified geofenced area of transit service). Alternative models, such as offering free transit witha micromobility receipt or subsidizing trips based on vendor invoicing, are administratively
burdensome and leave opportunities for fraud.
Mobility hubs provide a new framework for city and transit agency partnerships at
the physical, digital, and policy levels. However, there are few examples of mobility hub
implementation, and it is too soon to tell whether hubs further empower transit agencies toachieve their policy priorities. Mobility hub best practices and demonstrated outcomes are anecessary area of further research.

Micromobility and the Built Environment
As major mobility destinations and transfer points, transit stations and stops are natural
centers of mobility activity—including those related to personal bikes and other small
devices, docked bikeshare, and shared dockless micromobility services. Historically, transit
agencies have implemented and managed bicycle parking on their property and coordinatedthe siting of docked bikeshare and bicycle parking nearby. Agencies saw benefits with thisapproach; reports have found that over 50% of docked bike users frequently linked bikeshare and transit trips (NACTO 2016).
The appearance of private, dockless micromobility increases the need for coordination
between transit agencies and cities. By taking a more active role in the development andmanagement of micromobility systems in collaboration with municipal partners, transit
agencies can ensure that these services meet both agency and city goals. There are five key
areas in which this built-environment coordination takes place:• Transit access and parking• Street management and first/last mile
• Demand management• Data (and its relationship to the built environment)• Infrastructure funding

Cities and transit agencies can rely on existing bike parking and station siting guidance around transit but must expand the array of approaches to accommodate dockless
micro­mobility. Transit agencies and local jurisdictions have long managed the access andright-of-way for personally owned bicycles and bikeshare stations to ensure first- and lastmile connectivity and pedestrian access. Dockless micromobility provides new connections
to transit and heightens the need to manage access and redesign rights-of-way. The ability
to park dockless vehicles anywhere necessitates new design guidance and forms of infrastructure such as mobility hubs, while incentives and enforcement should explicitly support
transit access.
Cities and transit agencies must coordinate on data sharing and availability to achieve
beneficial outcomes concerning the built environment around transit stations and stops.
The growth of dockless micromobility requires policy coordination between local jurisdictions and transit agencies.
When infrastructure supports the use and growth of micromobility, micromobility is ademand-management tool for cities and transit agencies. Because of its atomized presence
and permeability throughout a city—with vehicles’ ability to reach, but also be abandoned in,

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Transit and Micromobility

Summary  5

a nearly infinite number of locations—the growth of dockless micromobility heightens regulating agencies’ responsibility to manage the vehicles’ use in streets, on sidewalks, and in otherpublic rights-of-way. Growth in transportation options has long been understood as a remedy
for car reliance and a complement to transit ridership.
Micromobility companies can support the expansion of on- and off-street infrastructure
in multiple ways. Cities, transit agencies, and micromobility companies share an interest in thegrowth of safe, accessible micromobility infrastructure. Permit fees could support limited infrastructure investment, but companies’ primary support of infra­structure investment will comethrough demonstration projects, advocacy campaigns, and community organizing.

Micromobility Users and Utilization
This study used survey and operational trip data to provide a picture of who is using
micromobility, as well as the services’ impact on transit and docked bikeshare. Using
representative survey data from 18 U.S. metro areas, the authors present demographic
and travel behavior data for scooter and non-scooter users. While the data include information from metros of a variety of sizes, transit system extents, and urban forms, theresearch was limited by data availability and operator participation, and for that reason
does not include metro areas at the smaller end of the population scale or cities or towns
in rural areas.
Overall, almost 10% of survey respondents had ridden a shared scooter. About twice
this number had used either a shared bike or scooter (here called “micromobility users”).
In general, cities with lower levels of regulation, especially caps on fleet size, had higher
scooter adoption rates.
The survey also found the following about the demographic characteristics of micro­
mobility users:
Scooter and micromobility users are younger than the general population of their
metros, with peak use in those under 35 and few users above 55.
• In contrast to micromobility, in which the gender split is fairly even, a slight majority ofscooter-only users are female.
• Compared to the general population, more non-white people use scooters and micro­
mobility. Hispanic and Asian people make up the bulk of this difference.
• People of all income levels use scooters and micromobility, with a fairly small variationfrom the general population across income levels. However, adoption rates do rise withincome, especially for micromobility.
•

The survey also examined how scooter users make use of other modes of transport:
Scooter users are less likely to commute alone by car and more than twice as likely tocommute by transportation network companies (TNCs) across all metro types, but useof transit and carpools varies. In areas with higher transit use, scooter users commuteby transit at a lower rate and carpool more than non-adopters, while in low-transit-use
areas, the inverse is true.
• Scooter users’ households have more cars in general than non-adopters’ households, andnotably, more scooter users’ households have three or more cars. This is consistent withthe higher income associated with scooter adoption but may also point to younger people
who live in group households with several roommates.
•

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Transit and Micromobility

6   Transit and Micromobility

The survey also examined how and why people use scooters. The responses were weighted
by frequency of use:
Trips on public transit represented 0.5%–10% of trips replaced by scooters. The largest
portion of journeys replaced by scooter trips (46%–78%) would have taken place incars—either alone, with another passenger, or in a ride-hail vehicle. Walking trips were
the next most likely to be replaced: 15%–37% of trips, with the most replacement in areas
with the least density and transit service.
• Users choose scooters for many trip purposes. The most common trip purposes for
scooters were commuting (in denser metros) and socializing (in the less dense metros).
• Asked why they chose a scooter on their most recent trip, “It was just for fun” was themost frequent response in all but the densest metros, where utilitarian considerations
like speed, reliability, and parking were dominant. Scooters’ competitive prices comparedto other modes were also important to a significant minority of users.
•

Implications for Transit Agencies
This section explores the benefits and impacts of micromobility with an emphasis on
outcomes likely to be valuable to transit agencies. It begins by extending the micromobility
analysis from the prior section and examines trip patterns in proximity to high-frequency
fixed-route transit. The second part of the section examines the broader implications ofshared micromobility’s impacts on transit agencies, including funding and the financingof public infrastructure; agencies’ civil rights obligations under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and Title VI of the United States Civil Rights Act of 1964; and the rider
experience.
Micromobility Usage Patterns and Impacts
Scooter Impacts on Docked Bikeshare

Using daily trip counts, the researchers examined docked bikeshare use before and after
the addition of dockless shared vehicles in Oakland, CA, and Arlington County, VA. Bothregions saw a decline in dock-based bike trips soon after the introduction of scooters, but it’sunclear whether this was a result of the introduction of dockless services or a consequenceof seasonality or other factors. And in both cases, docked bikeshare recovered at least its
prior level of ridership, and in Oakland reached new heights after scooters’ introduction.
Dockless Vehicle Use near Transit Stations

The researchers also examined aggregated micromobility trip data to observe patterns inscooter trips starting or ending near high-capacity transit stations [heavy or commuter railand bus rapid transit (BRT)] in five urban jurisdictions: Oakland, CA; Arlington County,
VA; Cleveland, OH; Indianapolis, IN; and Baltimore, MD.
In every region, the vast majority of micromobility trips occurred in the urban coreand university campus areas.
• Oakland and Arlington County—densely populated jurisdictions in large metro
areas—saw most scooter trips clustered along rail corridors, with 56% and 70% of trips,
respectively, starting or ending within 1⁄4 mile of a rail stop, and 30% and 42% within
1⁄8 mile.
• The less dense cities of Indianapolis and Baltimore showed less association between
scooter trips and high-capacity transit stops, as did Cleveland’s rail transit and light-rail•

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Transit and Micromobility

Summary  7

lines. Cleveland’s three BRT lines, with many stops throughout the dense urban core, hadmuch greater association, with 83% of scooter trips starting or ending within 1⁄4 mile ofa stop, and 68% within 1⁄8 mile.
• In every region except Baltimore, over 90% of scooter trips started or ended within 1 mileof a high-capacity transit stop.
Funding/Financing Impacts, Civil Rights,
and Other Agency Concerns
Docked bikeshare systems are a strong precedent for publicly subsidized micromobility
operations, but at present, dockless operations are largely privately supported. The growthof private micromobility has convinced some agencies that the older model of subsidized
micromobility is no longer needed. However, reliance on private services leaves jurisdictions vulnerable to market whims. In this model, some public entities have found it difficult
to effectively convince private operators to provide micromobility access across different
geographic, income, and racial populations, as well as for people with disabilities, and havein some cases turned to subsidies or other incentives to ensure deployment in support ofpublic goals.
Funding and Financial Implications

Transit agencies weigh the costs and benefits of funding micromobility infrastructureand subsidizing services to encourage their use, and thus possibly increase ridership andrevenue for the public transit system. Transit agencies have limited operational funds
to invest in new service types, but capital funds (including some FTA formula monies)
can be used to support micromobility infrastructure such as dedicated parking and bikeshare docks.
Civil Rights and Social Equity Implications

Transit agencies are federally required to ensure equitable access to their programs but
do not have specific guidance from the FTA on what exactly that means for partnerships
with micromobility services. Existing guidance focuses on two key questions: which funding programs include micromobility (specifically, bikeshare) as eligible expenses and what
requirements apply depending on the funding source used. The ADA applies regardlessof funding source, and Title VI applies when federal funding is used. Federal sources ofoperational funding are limited, and FTA’s guidance on what the use of those funds requires
in terms of ADA compliance focuses on the use of ride-hailing or other demand–response
services, not micromobility. Aside from then-Secretary Foxx’s 2016 Dear Colleague letter(U.S. DOT 2016), there is little guidance on Title VI requirements for federally funded
micromobility services.
Transit Rider Experience Implications

Whether or not it is operated in partnership with transit agencies, micromobility has thepotential to improve transit riders’ experience by alleviating peak-period crowding on transit (Pucher and Buehler 2009) and rider demand for bringing personal bikes and scooterson board. However, shared micromobility services could also reduce the quality of the rider
experience if vehicle parking and use are not well planned at stations and stops. Further, thecurrent multimodal digital experience of trip planning, booking, and payment is scatteredand inconsistent.

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Transit and Micromobility

8   Transit and Micromobility

Agency–Micromobility Partnership Approaches
As the micromobility marketplace continues to take shape, new types of collaboration
between cities, transit agencies, and private operators are emerging to align mobility goals,
regulate sensibly, and improve transit access. City and transit agency partnership roles
depend on market and transit system characteristics. In urban areas with supportive infrastructure and large and willing customer bases, private operators are eager to deploy. In
this case, DOTs take a regulatory approach, and transit agency partnerships focus more on
coordination with the city.
But in smaller or shrinking cities, vendors may not be clamoring to enter the marketplace
like they are in larger or more affluent metros. Public agencies in these areas might still
decide that micromobility is worthwhile and seek to attract and actively shape the service inways that are applicable to their particular needs.
Engagement between public agencies and micromobility providers falls along a spectrumof public/private partnership arrangements, from direct agency operation of micromobility
services to more private-sector–dependent collaborations in which agencies have little or nocontrol over the private operator’s activities. The following subsections provide summaries
of case studies of how transit agencies of various types are working to ensure desired policy
outcomes in partnerships throughout this spectrum.
Transit Agency–Led Operation or Integration of Services
Partnerships with the greatest level of agency control employ a vendor’s vehicles andtechnology platform, but operations, including customer support, rebalancing, charging,and other fleet maintenance activities, are the responsibility of the public agency or a closely
allied nonprofit. The Greater Dayton Regional Transit Authority (RTA) appears to havegone further than any other U.S. agency in its level of operational involvement, but a numberof transit agencies in metros large and small have worked closely with micromobility
vendors to create systems that are effectively extensions of the transit system and are clearlymarketed as such to the public. Other examples:••••

Kansas City Area Transportation Authority: RideKC Bike and Scooter
Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (LA Metro): Metro Bikeshare
Austin Capital Metro: MetroBike
The Central Midlands Regional Transit Authority (COMET; Columbia SC): Blue Bike SC

Subsidizing Specific Ride Types or Creating Connections
Several agencies have sought to take advantage of the popularity of micromobility to
subsidize or encourage service at times and places where transit is not available or to create
new first-/last-mile options. Examples:••

Sacramento Regional Transit District: free light-rail trips for same-day bikeshare users
Sonoma–Marin Area Rail Transit: capital support for hybrid e-bikeshare for first-/last-mileconnections throughout a rail corridor

City/Transit Agency Policy Collaboration
Another approach is to use policy levers, enforced through local regulatory powers, toencourage desired public outcomes without either direct outlays or subsidies to private
operators. City/transit agency partnerships, with formalized communication and shared

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Transit and Micromobility

Summary  9

goals, enable more effective planning. While this is a well-established approach in otherareas of mutual city/transit agency interest, fewer examples of this type of collaboration
exist for micromobility.
Denver Regional Transportation District (RTD)/City and County of Denver. An
interagency collaboration is using the city micromobility permitting process to build on
an existing transit amenity program, promoting vehicle placement at transit stops. This
local action is matched by a coordinated transit agency program to designate micromobility
parking at transit properties both in the city and in the wider RTD operating area.
• Mobility Hubs. Transit agencies can also partner with cities to plan, build, and operatea system of mobility hubs, which colocate micromobility and other shared mobility
services, community amenities, and electric mobility charging infrastructure at key
transit stations or stops. Examples are:– Move 412 and the Pittsburgh Mobility Collective. Moving toward modal integration with transit, micromobility, and mobility hubs at the center of a comprehensive
consortium-based transportation approach.
– Metro Transit, Twin Cities. Agency-led pilot of placemaking mobility hubs along BRT
lines.
– LA Metro/Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADOT). Integrated mobility
hubs in a variety of contexts, focused on expanding access for low-income communities.
•

Partnership Toolkit
The report concludes with a Partnership Toolkit that distills the findings of this study into
a set of concrete action items. For transit agencies that are interested in going further andpursuing more direct engagement with micromobility providers, this toolkit provides a setof steps that will help agencies decide why and how to build micromobility partnerships,
define goals, and measure success.

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Transit and Micromobility

CHAPTER 1

Micromobility Devices
and Business Models
When docked bikeshare appeared in North American cities a decade ago, it emerged as avaluable service that offered wider access to clean, low-speed urban transportation and helped
extend the reach of public transit networks. Few could have imagined the explosive evolution of small, low-speed mobility into the variety of devices, business models, and operationalarrangements that characterize the sector now known as “micromobility.” This growth has
been accelerated by major infusions of private capital, rising popular enthusiasm for micromobility devices (both personally owned and deployed as shared services), and economies ofscale for the devices and technologies that make micromobility possible. Public agencies face a
moment of inflection; as the landscape of mobility options evolves, profound impacts for urban
transportation may emerge from the shared bikes and scooters found in ever greater numbers
in our cities.
To date, much of the discussion about shared bikes and scooters has focused on impacts andregulations at the municipal level, with little consideration of the ways these new services interact
with public transit or how transit agencies in particular can leverage the benefits and address theimpacts of these new ways of getting around. In investigating these impacts and relationships,
this study considers micromobility’s interactions with transit in geographies representing a rangeof urban environments, agency sizes, economic circumstances, policy climates, and existing
mobility networks.
Agency responses to micromobility, particularly in its dockless and motorized forms, havevaried widely, from free-market pilots to bans. Municipalities were more prepared and knowledgeable than during the largely unregulated appearance of ride hailing, but some cities haveclamped down severely, prohibited the services outright, or been very slow to create permit
regimes before the services’ uptake or impacts could be understood. Transit agencies, more
focused on their own operations, facilities, and ridership, have a different set of responses
available to them than do municipalities and others with more regulatory roles.
For transit agencies, the question often comes down to how to collaborate with micromobility
companies in order to best build partnerships. As public transit agencies consider whether towork with providers, it is essential that they understand the actual benefits, impacts, and risksof various forms of micromobility to their riders and their bottom lines.

Defining Shared Micromobility
The term “micromobility” can encompass a broad variety of small, low-speed vehicles
intended for personal transportation in urban areas. In popular usage, it is commonly applied toshared bikes (whether fully or partially human powered), motorized kick scooters, and, at times,
personal transportation devices like Segways [National Association of City Transportation
10
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Transit and Micromobility

Micromobility Devices and Business Models    11Officials (NACTO) 2019a, 5; Chang et al. 2019, 2; National League of Cities (NLC) 2019, 6]. Thisdefinition crosses several modes and does not necessarily accord with statutory definitions ofbicycles, electric bicycles, motorized scooters, and other small, low-speed vehicles. In fact, eventhe definitions of “small” and “low speed” are fuzzy and often vary by jurisdiction or publication.
While electric bicycles, or e-bikes, have been described in federal law since 2002 (15 USC § 2085)
and a number of state laws since then, electric scooters exist in more of a legal gray area, and bothindustry and regulators have raced to define them (People for Bikes 2019).
The standards organization SAE International published a flexible descriptive taxonomy of
micromobility vehicles. The taxonomy is based both on form factor (e.g., scooter, bicycle) andphysical characteristics (e.g., top speed, weight, width, and power source). The frameworkis limited to vehicles that are at least partially motorized (i.e., excluding bicycles that are fully
human powered) and without regard for their deployment characteristics (i.e., whether they are
personally owned or part of a shared fleet) (SAE International 2019). This provides a useful way
to describe micromobility vehicles that is independent of who owns them and how they are madeavailable for use. It also allows future vehicles to be classified based on their physical qualities.
This study follows the general parameters of the SAE International micromobility vehicle
definition, but it will limit itself to those deployed in shared or rental fleets and will also include
standard, unpowered bicycles that are part of a bikeshare service. Specifically, this study considers
as micromobility those vehicles that:• Are designed for human transport and use on paved roadways and paths, but excluding

mobility aids mainly intended for use by people with disabilities (such as powered wheelchairs and mobility scooters) as well as low-speed vehicles like golf carts,• Have a top speed of 30 mph or less (regardless of local regulations, which may cap the permitted
speed lower), with full or partial human power,• Have an unloaded (curb) weight of less than 500 pounds (SAE International 2019, 6),• If motorized, rely on an electric motor rather than an internal combustion engine, and• Are deployed as part of a shared fleet available for use by the general public.
Beyond e-bikes and powered seated and standing scooters, a variety of other devices fall undera general definition of low-speed, powered personal transportation devices, such as Segways,
powered skateboards and skates, and powered self-balancing boards (or hoverboards). Since
these are largely intended for the individual consumer market rather than fleet deployment,
the types are not detailed here. This study focuses on the micromobility modes outlined by theservice and vehicle types described in the following.

Service Types
Bikeshare
Bikeshare is a service that offers short-term rental of fleet bicycles, usually for durations of anhour or less. Usage periods can range from a single ride, to 1 or more days, to unlimited rides
over the course of an annual subscription (Feigon and Murphy 2016, 5). Regardless of whether
it is docked or dockless, bikeshare may use bikes that are fully human powered or that provide
motor assist. For more on the latter, see Electric Bicycles in the Powered Vehicle Types section.
Operating Characteristics.   Bikesharing comes in two major service configurations, dockedand dockless, with a third, hybrid bikeshare, growing in use.
Docked bikeshare (also called “station-based bikeshare”; see Figure 1) is a station-to-station
system in which users unlock bikes from a fixed dock, which generally contains the information technology (IT) hardware through which it processes payments, unlocks bicycles, andCopyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Transit and Micromobility

12 Transit and Micromobility

Credit: SUMC.

Figure 1.   Docked bikeshare: Divvy bikes
in Chicago.

communicates with the system operator’s network about the status and availability of bicycles.
The bicycles themselves may contain little or no networked IT hardware. Users can purchaserides or passes via a mobile app or from interactive kiosks located on the docks, and use a key
fob or radio-frequency identification (RFID) card, keypad, or app to release bikes from thedock. The location of the technology among the various system components leads to an industry
shorthand using the terms “smart” and “dumb”: the dominant dock-based systems can be describedas “dumb bike/smart dock” since the bulk of the IT hardware is located in the dock, with none
located on the bike [Shared-Use Mobility Center (SUMC) 2019; Hernandez et al. 2018].
Docked bikeshare was the service configuration used in the early 2010s in several large U.S.
metro areas for the rollout of public bikesharing, including Denver B-Cycle, Citi Bike NYC,
Chicago’s Divvy, and LA’s Metro Bike Share. Due to the larger non-vehicle capital costs andbureaucratic burdens involved in placing dock infrastructure in the public way (and often
connecting it to power and communications networks), private operators have been less likely
to build docked systems using their own capital, instead generally acting as vendors for public
systems (NACTO 2019b). The clear chain of custody for the bikes, along with secure locking at
the start and end of rides, seems to result in a lower risk of vandalism and theft than with docklesssystems (Hernandez et al. 2018, 13).
Hybrid bikeshare uses a mix of technologies from docked and dockless bikeshare. Early on in
the evolution of bikeshare, some bikeshare vendors experimented with a smart-bike/dumb-dockapproach, which, although it did not become the dominant paradigm in extensive systems, wasuseful in smaller areas and in limited deployments and provided a precursor to the technologies
underlying dockless micromobility. More recently, some systems have begun to fold smart
bikes into dumb-bike fleets as other bikes reached the end of their operational life.
Enabled by dockless technology, these bikes can be parked using both the traditional smart
docking hardware and at “virtual docks” (i.e., anywhere the operator designates, whether it is a

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Transit and Micromobility

Micromobility Devices and Business Models    13dock at all) (SUMC 2019). Hybrid systems are less common than docked systems but appear to
be expanding in numbers, while many fully dockless bikeshare operations have contracted orconverted entirely to scooters since the height of the dockless bikeshare bubble in 2017 to 2018
(Hirsch et al. 2019).
Most hybrid systems are smaller to midsized public operations, such as Portland’s Biketown,
Boise GreenBike (Figure 2), Grid Bikeshare in Phoenix, and Relay Bikeshare in Atlanta; there
are a number of campus operations as well.
Dockless bikeshare (also called “free-floating bikeshare”; Figure 3) locates IT hardware,
including a locking/unlocking mechanism, network communications, and global positioning
system (GPS) hardware, directly on each vehicle, making them smart bikes. Users locate andunlock bikes via a mobile app. At the end of a ride, users can leave the bike in any permitted location within an operating area. Locking mechanisms depend on the vehicle. In the simplest
design, they contain only a wheel lock. A wheel-locked vehicle cannot be ridden but can still
be picked up and moved (or knocked over). Other vehicles provide lock-to equipment—a cable or other device that allows the bike to be locked to a rack or another immovable object.
Many jurisdictions require lock-to equipment to help reduce clutter and obstruction of theright-of-way.
Dockless bikeshare is characterized by lower capital costs than docked bikeshare. The lower
costs are achieved in large part through the avoidance of costs associated with docking infrastructure, but for some providers (few of which are still in operation), at least partly fromlower per-vehicle costs—as low as $200 per bike, which was reflected in their more frequent
breakdowns and replacement as compared to the heavy-duty bikes used in docked systems
or by most e-bike providers (Nikolewski 2018). As a result, user pricing per trip can be lower
than docked systems or transit (Hernandez et al. 2018, 32; Nikolewski 2018).

Credit: Vanessa Fry.

Figure 2.   Boise GreenBike, a hybrid
bikeshare system.

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Transit and Micromobility

14 Transit and Micromobility

Credit: Flickr user waltarrrrr/Creative Commons.

Figure 3.   Wheel-locked dockless bikes in Los Angeles.

However, the operating burden may be greater due to the greater need for rebalancing,as opposed to a system where docks provide an organizing principle. Rebalancing entails
moving vehicles from one location to another in order to match demand and to alleviate pileupsof vehicles at popular destinations. In the case of scooters and e-bikes, rebalancing is often also
combined with charging operations.
A far greater number of dockless services in the United States have been private, for-profit
operations than have been public or nonprofit systems. Because of the lower costs, operators
can show up in a city and rapidly deploy hundreds or thousands of units, and often disappear
just as rapidly. Dockless bikeshare appeared suddenly in many U.S. cities in 2017 and expanded
even more widely in 2018, but even before the interruption caused by COVID-19, the mode waslargely in retreat, with most providers either shutting down U.S. operations or converting operations entirely to scooters (Hirsch et al. 2019). Only a few fully dockless public systems remained
as of mid-2020, including Orlando’s Hopr [formerly Juice (Gillespie 2019)] and Tampa’s Coast
Bikeshare.
Scooter Sharing
Scooter sharing (see Figure 4) is a service similar to dockless bikeshare that uses the same
basic technologies to enable the service but relies entirely on motorized scooters (operated
either standing or seated—see Powered Vehicle Types section). A version of scooter sharing
using larger electric vehicles, more akin to mopeds or Vespa-type scooters, is a growing subsetof this market.
Most scooter-sharing services are operated entirely by the private sector. Scooter sharing first
appeared in Los Angeles County in late 2017, and over the next year spread to a great numberof cities, especially in warmer climates (NACTO 2019b). By 2018, starting from almost zero
the year before, scooters saw more trips in the United States than all station-based bikeshare

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Transit and Micromobility

Micromobility Devices and Business Models    15Credit: SUMC/Creative Commons.

Figure 4.   Electric kick scooters parked in a corral.

combined (NACTO 2019b), and more than twice as many in 2019 (86 million scooter trips
versus 40 million on docked bikeshare) (NACTO 2020).
Operators use a mix of employee labor and independent subcontractors to accomplish
charging and rebalancing. While some vehicles do have batteries that can be quickly swapped(which may present additional safety challenges) (Dickey 2019), most devices still need to be
directly plugged in for several hours to recharge. This period is often when operators perform
other maintenance and checks on the vehicles.

Powered Vehicle Types
Electric Bicycles
Electric pedal-assist bicycles, or e-bikes (see Figure 5), provide riders with a slight motorized
boost that increases speeds and eases hill climbing. While state and federal laws define threeclasses of e-bikes depending on top speed and whether they provide motor assistance, the typemost commonly deployed in bikesharing services is a Class 1 electric bicycle, which provides
assistance only when the user is pedaling (as opposed to control via throttle) and has a maximum
speed of 20 mph [15 USC §2085 defines a “low-speed electric bicycle” as a “two- or three-wheeledvehicle with fully operable pedals and an electric motor of less than 750 watts (1 hp), whose
maximum speed [is] less than 20 mph.” This definition is the core of federal consumer productsafety regulations (16 CFR §1512.2) that exclude bicycles and low-speed electric bikes from thedefinition of motor vehicles. At higher power and speed levels, two- and three-wheeled vehicles
fall under Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards (49 CFR §571.3), which regulate motorcycles
and motor-driven cycles under 5 hp. Several states have adopted laws similar to California’s
Vehicle Code §312.5 (2016), which defines three classes of e-bikes conforming to the federal
definition. Class 1 and Class 2 e-bikes comply with 15 USC §2085, and are distinguished bywhether the motor provides assistance only when the rider is pedaling (Class 1) or can becontrolled with a throttle (Class 2). Class 3 e-bikes (also called “speed pedelecs”) are similar toClass 1, but with a top speed of 28 mph.]
E-bikes offer a number of potential benefits to bikeshare by expanding the distance covered
within a given ride time, expanding the reach of the system, making bikeshare viable in areas

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Transit and Micromobility

16 Transit and Micromobility

Credit: Flickr user Mike Licht/Creative Commons.

Figure 5.   A Jump e-bike.

with steeper topography, and allowing people with some disabilities or lower levels of physicalfitness to use the services (Hernandez et al. 2018). Users respond to these benefits; when Citi
Bike NYC introduced e-bikes into its bikeshare fleet in 2018, the new vehicles saw roughly threetimes the daily usage (15 rides) of the typical human-powered bike in the fleet (NACTO 2019b).
Electric Scooters
Electric Kick Scooters (e-scooters or Powered Standing Scooters).   The first wave of
scooter-based micromobility relied almost exclusively on electric kick scooters, or what SAE
J3194 calls a “powered standing scooter” (see Figure 6). These one-person electric vehicles have
two or three wheels, a platform for the operator to stand on, and are controlled by a throttle,
brakes, and handlebars (SAE International 2019, 9–10).
Powered Seated Scooters.   A second scooter type, mechanically nearly identical to standing
scooters, is intended for seated operation, which makes it more useful for people with physicallimitations or on longer trips for which standing would be uncomfortable. At the smaller end,
these vehicles look like a standing scooter with a bicycle seat post grafted on (see Figure 7), butlarger versions of these vehicles segue into vehicles that are difficult to distinguish from motor
scooters or e-bikes without pedals. These vehicles are distinguished from their larger motorizedcousins (mopeds and motor-driven cycles/motor scooters) in that they stay below statutory limits
on speed and power that require a motorcycle or driver’s license.
Motor Scooters/Electric Mopeds.   The largest of the vehicles deployed as micromobility are
Vespa-like motor scooters, which are being offered for rental in at least a few cities around theUnited States (see Figure 8). These registered motor vehicles are the only micromobility mode
requiring titles and license plates, are heavier and more substantial than e-scooters (thoughstill below the 500-lb curb-weight micromobility limit), generally require a driver’s license tooperate, and cannot be used in bike lanes or parked on the sidewalk. Despite these somewhat

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Transit and Micromobility

Micromobility Devices and Business Models    17Credit: Flickr user Tony Webster/Creative Commons.

Figure 6.   Several generations of Spin electric kickscooters.

Credit: BikePortland.org/Bryn Dearborn.

Figure 7.   A powered seated scooter by Razor.

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Transit and Micromobility

18 Transit and Micromobility

Credit: Flickr user Phillip Pessar/Creative Commons.

Figure 8.   Revel shared mopeds in Miami.

greater user accessibility and regulatory hurdles (and greater vehicle costs), rental rates are in linewith other micromobility services (O’Kane 2019). Most operators provide motorcycle helmets
as part of the rental (Small 2019).

Business Models and Industry Trends
The Micromobility Market
Shared mobility services have expanded and diversified since the advent of round-trip or
station-based carshare in the early 2000s, as illustrated in Figure 9. In the early 2010s, a newwave of shared mobility services led by ride-hailing companies (most notably Uber and Lyft)were increasingly deployed by private companies, with limited regulatory intervention at theoutset. Starting in the mid-2010s, more state and local jurisdictions began to regulate sharedmobility services’ pricing and accessibility, labor and contracting practices, use of public space,and requirements around data sharing. Several key regulatory actions have led to legal challenges
from private operators and others that are likely to be working their way through the courts forsome time. The regulatory controversy most relevant to this study is the Los Angeles Departmentof Transportation’s (LADOT) requirement for micromobility operators’ use of the Mobility
Data Specification (MDS), which has attracted privacy lawsuits from Uber/Jump and civil liberties

Source: SUMC. Note: P2P = peer to peer.

Figure 9.   Shared mobility services have expanded and diversified since the turn of the 21st century.

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Transit and Micromobility

Micromobility Devices and Business Models    19and privacy advocates (Hawkins 2020). The subject of MDS and data policy is explored at greater
length later in this report.
Dockless micromobility represents the most recent evolution of shared mobility. With theintroduction of new free-floating modes, more jurisdictions have shifted to managing the publicright-of-way for these services, including regulating whether they may operate on sidewalks orroads or in other public spaces.
Micromobility adoption has grown rapidly, accelerating since shared scooters’ appearance
in 2018 (Figure 10). NACTO estimates that the number of shared micromobility trips in the
United States more than doubled to 84 million between 2017 and 2018, with the increase almost
completely attributable to the introduction of scooters (NACTO 2019b). In 2019, nearly twice as
many U.S. micromobility rides took place on scooters (86 million) than on docked and docklessbikeshare of all types (50 million) (NACTO 2020).
Shared scooters and bikes from 19 companies operated legally in some 180 U.S. cities andmunicipalities on the eve of COVID-related disruptions in 2020 (Figure 11), nearly double thecount for the end of 2018 (Smart Cities Dive 2020; NACTO 2019b). The trend is not limited to
the United States: the New Urban Mobility Alliance (NUMO) counted micromobility operations
in more than 625 cities and over 50 countries around the world as of mid-2020 (NUMO 2020).
Dockless scooter programs in U.S. cities are currently dominated by a few major operators,
but many smaller regional operators also offer shared bicycles and scooters in a few markets, withsome specializing in smaller cities or university campuses. Large programs, with thousandsor tens of thousands of vehicles, are in place in large or fast-growing cities like Los Angeles,
Washington, D.C., and Austin, while smaller cities or college towns may have fleet counts inthe dozens or hundreds.

Source: NACTO 2020.

Figure 10.   Micromobility adoption—particularly uptake of scooters—is taking placeat an accelerating rate.

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Transit and Micromobility

20 Transit and Micromobility

Source: Smart Cities Dive 2020.

Figure 11.   Locations of dockless vehicle operations in the continental United States in early 2020.

Business Models
Transportation researchers have identified a number of ways to classify the business models
at work in micromobility. In general, these are based on the public, private, or nonprofit statusof the entities that own the service’s assets and operate the services from day to day. Most of thework in this area was done with respect to bikesharing, and for the most part, these frameworks
continue to hold for micromobility more broadly.
Shaheen et al. (2014) discuss five models: nonprofit; privately owned and operated (the modelthat applies to most dockless bike and scooter services); publicly owned and operated; publicly
owned, contractor operated; and vendor operated. Writing about bikeshare only, Hernandez
et al. simplify this classification to three types that cover the vast majority of existing micromobility services in the United States: nonprofit owned and operated, privately owned andoperated, and publicly owned and operated by a third party (Hernandez et al. 2018). This classification scheme is applied to the micromobility market in Table 1.
The variety of permitting, franchise, and regulatory arrangements under which micromobility
operations take place within these business models will be explored in case studies later inthis report.

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Transit and Micromobility

Micromobility Devices and Business Models    21Table 1.   Micromobility business models.
Business
Model

Nonprofit
owned and
operated

Privately
owned and
operated

Sources ofCapitalization andOperating Revenue• Startup/capitalfunding often
through publicgrants, privatesponsorships, orphilanthropic
monies• Operations
supported by user
fees, sponsorships,
ad revenue.

Operational
Functions andCharacteristics• Can access a wide
variety of funding
sources andoperatingarrangements• May contract withthird-party vendor tooperate

Notes

•

•

Often the same
company bothmanufactures
equipment andoperates service.
Rapid startup andexpansion ofoperations
Daily operations
activities(rebalancing andcharging especially)
often rely on
independent
contractors, withmaintenanceperformed andoverall ﬂeet
deployment plannedand overseen by
employees.

•

Operations provided
by a private operator
that works closelywith the sponsoring
public entity on
system planning andadministration
Operating partners
often have revenue
guarantee andincentives tied tosystem performance.
Often have exclusive
or preferential accessto right-of-way••

Publicly
owned, thirdparty operated

•

•

•

Private investors
fund startup andoften much ofoperations.
Operation supported
through user fees,
sponsorship, ad
revenue, ongoinginvestor infusions

Startup funding
often throughfederal or local
grantsOperations fundedby public revenues,
user fees,
sponsorships, andadvertising.
Operations may be
performed by
nonproﬁt or private
vendors.

•
•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

•

Responsive to
public interest andlocal/regionalgoals
A dwindling model,
with moreorganizations
turning over someor all of operations
to a mix of public
and private
entities
Most common
model for dockless
micromobility
Often little
coordination withlocal authorities
beyond what isrequired bypermit/regulation
Does not require
public money for
operation, but may
increaseadministrative
burden on
regulating agencies
Industry marked
by ongoing
consolidation andvertical integration
may present risks
for jurisdictions
relying excessively
on fully marketbased solutions
Model mostcloselytied/responsive to
local public agency
goals

ExamplePrograms or
Operators• RideKC Bikeand Scooter(Kansas City)• Pacers
Bikeshare(Indianapolis)

•

•

•
•
•

Most scooter
operations:Lime, Bird,
Jump, Spin
Spin Dayton(privately
owned,
operations andmaintenanceby transit
agency)Divvy (Chicago
area)
CapitalBikeshare (D.C.
area)
Link Dayton
Bikeshare

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Transit and Micromobility

CHAPTER 2

Regulatory and Policy Review

This chapter examines the policy environment surrounding shared micromobility, including
areas of regulation and areas where regulatory approaches are still in flux. Since this report isfocused particularly on transit agencies and their interaction with micromobility, a large part ofthis chapter examines the specific policymaking and regulatory role of public transit agencies.
However, public transit agencies generally lack the policymaking or regulatory powers thatstate or local governments possess, and they achieve their policy goals largely through partnerships with operators and coordination of goals with regulating agencies. Put another way, cities
regulate, while transit agencies partner. For that reason, this chapter begins with an examinationof the main levers that jurisdictions—of all types—commonly use to regulate micromobility.

The Range of Local Regulatory Approaches
Most local enabling statutes and permit requirements for micromobility typically cover somecombination of several key regulatory approaches. The Shared-Use Mobility Center’s Micro­
mobility Policy Atlas provides summaries of policies in a number of cities in the United States
and worldwide for a common set of regulatory fields, and provided much of the documentarybasis for this chapter (SUMC/NUMO 2020).

Vehicle Location: Operation, Parking, and Geographic Limitations
Regulations on vehicle location can govern where in the right-of-way riding is permitted or
prohibited (particularly with regard to bike lanes and sidewalks) and where and how vehicles
should be parked between rides (including bike rack, corral, and lock-to requirements), andoutline broader zones where operation is permitted or prohibited (such as certain paths orgeographic areas of a city).
Atlanta’s 2018 scooter ordinance, for instance, regulates operation and parking location, withscooter riding prohibited on sidewalks and limited to certain areas of the public way (in cityparks, including the Atlanta BeltLine, and in vehicle travel lanes, bike lanes, and shared-use
paths throughout the city). Scooters must be parked upright and only at bike racks or against
a building or curb, and in a way that provides at least 5 feet of clearance for pedestrians, with aminimum of obstruction. Parking is prohibited in a variety of locations, including at bus stops,at bikeshare stations, or where it obstructs pedestrian or wheelchair access to buildings, public
facilities, or accessibility features like ramps and handrails (Atlanta 2018).
In many jurisdictions, operation is further limited to specific geographic areas. During
Chicago’s 2019 scooter pilot, the city limited operations to a 50-square-mile area on thewest and northwest sides of the city (see Figure 12)—about a quarter of the city’s geographic
22
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Transit and Micromobility

Regulatory and Policy Review   23Source: Chicago 2020a.

Figure 12.   Operating area for Chicago’s initial 2019 scooter pilot, limited to the city’s west
and northwest sides. The dotted lines delineate the two “priority areas” that were thefocus of the program’s equity provisions.

area—excluding downtown business and entertainment districts, heavily populated areas
along the lakefront, and several major transit corridors (Chicago 2020a). Two western sections
comprising about half of the pilot area were further designated as “priority areas” where theprogram’s equity requirements were focused.
In the city’s 2020 pilot (see Figure 13), the area of permitted operation was expanded to
the whole of the city except for the core of downtown, two heavily used mixed-use paths, andO’Hare Airport, with the equity priority area expanded to most of the west and south sides(Chicago 2020b).
Operators are generally expected to communicate these geographical limits to riders and,in many cases, to use geofencing to physically disable micromobility vehicles if they enter aprohibited area.

Limiting Overall Scale and Impact: Fleet Caps,
Utilization Targets, and Provider Counts
Many jurisdictions seek to limit the impact of micromobility by placing caps on the numberof vehicles that can operate and requiring that deployed units see a minimum level of utilization.

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Transit and Micromobility

24 Transit and Micromobility

Source: Chicago 2020b.

Figure 13.   Expanded operating area for Chicago’s 2020 scooter pilot, with exclusionareas overlaid in red and the equity priority area outlined in blue.

Fleet caps can appear as a per-operator cap, a citywide fleet cap, a limitation on the numberof permitted operators, or some combination of the three approaches. A number of jurisdictions use fleet caps as a central part of a performance-based regulatory approach that aligns
operator incentives with public goals. In this approach, operators that meet certain performancerequirements (such as hitting vehicle utilization targets, providing vehicles in every part of thecity, or demonstrating a commitment to recruiting users or employees from disadvantaged
communities) are rewarded with higher fleet caps, lower fees, or other incentives that help them
reduce operating costs and boost potential margins.

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Transit and Micromobility

Regulatory and Policy Review   25Utilization targets, usually expressed as an operator’s fleet-wide average trips or rides
per vehicle per day (rvd), can help ensure that the right number of vehicles are deployed,with jurisdictions ideally adjusting fleet caps to reflect market signals: raising caps as growing
utilization demonstrates sufficient demand or reducing them if low utilization suggests that
too many vehicles are on the street.
The ideal target range is still being established and likely depends on the specific market
characteristics, but a number of jurisdictions seem to have settled on 3 rvd as the thresholdfor fleet cap increases. For example, the Austin Transportation Department’s 2018 Rules forDockless Units use fleet caps and utilization requirements to address a number of public goals:
starting from an initial cap of 500 units per operator, the transportation director can award
increases of 250 vehicles for each additional 5-square-mile area (outside of downtown) that an
operator services, as long as each additional area maintains a minimum utilization level of 3 rvd(Austin Transportation Department 2018).
An examination by the research team of more than a dozen shared-scooter pilots from 2018
to 2019 found typical actual utilization rates clustered between 2 and 4 rvd. This accords withanalysis by NACTO, which found that for scooters, smaller systems tended to have higher utilization than larger systems (4 and 2.6 rvd, respectively, for fleets below and above 2,500 vehicles),while the inverse was true for bikeshare, in which utilization rose from less than 1 to around 3 rvd
as fleets grew over 2,500 (NACTO 2020).

Rider and Public Safety
While much of the micromobility regulatory regime touches incidentally on safety, especiallythose regulations focused on locations of operation, several areas of regulation do so more
explicitly. The most clearly safety-focused areas common to local regulations center on:• Speed limits,• Vehicle requirements [generally ISO 43.150/4210-1 (ISO 43.150 sec. 4210, 2014), federal

consumer regulations (16 CFR §1512.2), or state standards for bikes or personal e-mobility
vehicles],• Helmet use,
• Rider age restrictions/license requirements, and• Hours of operation and curfews.
Washington, D.C.’s 2020 shared-scooter permit agreement touches on nearly all these points,
setting a 10 mph speed limit (less in specific areas) enforced by a speed governor, requiring thatvehicles meet applicable international and federal vehicle standards, encouraging provision offree helmets, and requiring operators to inform users of local regulations on age restrictions
and hours of operation (addressed elsewhere in local code or user agreements) [District Department of Transportation (DDOT) 2019a]. Santa Monica provides similar rules, and in addition
to setting a minimum age of 16 years for shared bikes and scooters, requires scooter users tohold a valid driver’s license or learner’s permit (Santa Monica 2020).
In a scan of some 30 U.S. policies collected in SUMC’s Micromobility Policy Atlas (SUMC/NUMO 2020), operation by riders under the influence of drugs or alcohol appears to be rarely
addressed in local regulations, which tend to focus on the providers’ responsibilities, althoughsubstance-impaired operation and other facets of safety are generally also part of the terms of
the private operators’ own user agreements (Bird and Lime user agreements 2021). However,a number of cities do list intoxicated operation among the prohibitions in informal guidelines
provided to users (Tampa 2020; Chicago 2020c).

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Transit and Micromobility

26 Transit and Micromobility

Operator Responsibilities: Parking Enforcement, Rebalancing,
Maintenance, and Communications
Many jurisdictions place the onus of regulatory enforcement on private operators, outlining
regulations dependent on user behavior, such as parking and permitted locations for riding, as
well as regulations more centered on fleet operations, such as rebalancing, vehicle maintenance,and outreach to and communications with users.
In the case of user behavior, especially around vehicle parking, operators often pass fines or
penalties through to the responsible riders under their user agreements. In order to encourage
compliance and create a clearer chain of custody for vehicles that can be easily moved, somejurisdictions and many operators require users to photograph their legally parked, upright vehicle
at the end of a ride (Bird, Lime, and Skinny Labs/Spin user agreements 2021; Chicago 2019a).
Parking regulations and transit access.   Some local policies recognize that micromobility
vehicles will be used for transit access and include provisions that encourage positioning ofvehicles near transit stops and also discourage blocking access or pileups of vehicles aroundtransit stops. Denver’s collaboration between the city’s public works department and the Regional
Transportation District (discussed as a case study in Chapter 5: Agency-Micromobility Partnership Approaches) is an example of this kind of policy applied on a regional scale.
Rebalancing constitutes the regular repositioning of vehicles throughout a service area andis a common mechanism for meeting equity goals as well as for placement near transit assets.
For instance, in Chicago’s scooter pilots, operators were required to deploy at least half of theirdevices to the south and west side “priority areas” daily (described previously), while many of
those vehicles tended to end the day in more centrally located (and more affluent) commercial
and entertainment districts (Chicago 2020a; Chicago 2020b). Without rebalancing requirements, those more affluent areas are where the majority of the fleets would likely stay over time.
Rebalancing is also central to fleet operations, providing the opportunity to charge, clean,
and inspect vehicles, as well as to pull any that are malfunctioning or due for maintenance.
Rebalancing and maintenance provisions may set required intervals for inspection and time
limits (usually on the order of hours) for addressing inoperable, abandoned, or improperly
located vehicles.
Communications requirements commonly cover:• Identification and contact information on the vehicles themselves;• The ways operators notify users of rules, regulations, and other information (e.g., throughpre-ride tutorials and in-app notifications);• Customer support requirements as well as means for receiving and handling complaints

from the public;• Launch, marketing, and outreach plans, often targeting specific communities or populations; and• Communication (other than data-sharing requirements) with regulators or other agency
staff (e.g., activity reporting, coordination meetings).

Social Equity Considerations: Geographic Distribution and Accessfor the Unbanked or People Without Smartphones
Many agencies incorporate equity requirements in their micromobility regulations, mostcommonly to ensure geographical distribution of vehicles throughout a jurisdiction (so thatthey are readily available to people of all income levels and not concentrated only in commercial
areas or higher-income districts) and to provide access for users without mobile phones or for
those who are unbanked.

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Transit and Micromobility

Regulatory and Policy Review   27Geographical equity approaches may be enforced through a combination of increased fleet
caps for better performance and reduced fleet caps or even fines for subpar performance or
noncompliance. Each operator is commonly required to submit an equity plan detailing its
approach.
Denver’s 2018 micromobility pilot set initial fleet caps of 400 dockless bikes and 250 scooters
per operator but raised the caps by 100 vehicles if the additional vehicles were located in“opportunity areas” (including a subset of “high priority opportunity areas” where the mostvulnerable populations are located) during daily rebalancing (Denver 2018). It also required
operators to file equity plans “outlining how their services will be available to those without
smartphones or those who are under-banked or un-banked” (Denver 2018), as well as to outline
rate structures and discount programs for specific populations.
Most major micromobility providers offer company-wide equity programs, which are often
available even in areas where they are not explicitly required, and several have programs thatallow unbanked users to load accounts using cash at retail locations or use prepaid debit cards(Chicago 2019b). Access to discount programs is often tied to enrollment in a means-tested
public assistance program such as SNAP, Medicaid, or HUD Section 8.
Access for people without smartphones or mobile data plans can generally be accomplishedby using short message service (SMS) or voice calls to unlock and lock vehicles and accomplish
other account functions. While these allow users without smartphones to use the services, they
still generally require a mobile phone of some kind in order to use SMS or call from a verified
number at both ends of a ride, thus excluding people with no mobile phone at all.

Data-Sharing Requirements and Standards/Specifications
Public agencies typically seek some level of data reporting from micromobility providers
operating in their jurisdictions. These can range from periodic ridership summaries to near–real-time records and GPS traces of individual vehicles, and can also include user surveys andinformation on other aspects of program participation.
These data may serve a variety of purposes, including identifying trends in transportationand patterns of use of various services, service planning, monitoring operational delivery,accounting and auditing (especially in the case of subsidized services), and regulatory compliance (including establishment and enforcement of geofenced areas) (Gururaja and Faust 2019).
Even if most of these data are ultimately drawn from trip- or vehicle-level records, each of thesetasks is best accomplished using data with varying levels of granularity, aggregation, timing,and frequency.
Two major data standards have emerged for the collection, management, and distributionof micromobility data. The General Bikeshare Feed Specification (GBFS) and the MDS bothprovide standard data definitions and methods for data to be shared between providers andjurisdictions.
GBFS is the open-data standard for bikeshare and was originally developed under the leader­
ship of the North American Bikeshare Association (NABSA), along with public, private-sector,
and nonprofit bikeshare system operators (NABSA 2019). Derived from the General Transit
Feed Specification (GTFS) at the heart of many transit trip-planning tools, GBFS takes real-time
service availability data (such as vehicle and dock location and status) from micro­mobility
systems and makes these data publicly available online. GBFS data allow individuals to see
the current status of micromobility vehicles, and because of GBFS’s similarity to GTFS, it canalso easily be adapted to be displayed alongside transit information in a variety of ways, suchas through mobile applications, display boards, or websites. It does not include historical

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Transit and Micromobility

28 Transit and Micromobility

information (although this can be derived from it) nor can it communicate information aboutpaths of travel. Effective use of GBFS can increase the integration between micromobility
and public transit, allowing agencies to take advantage of micromobility’s transit-supportive
qualities. GBFS is a one-way standard, providing a means only for operators to broadcast theirservice availability but no way for jurisdictions or users to communicate back to operators.
MDS, originally created by LADOT, is a more complex two-way standard with goals to“provide a standardized way for municipalities or other regulatory agencies to ingest, compare,and analyze data from mobility service providers, and to give municipalities the ability to express
regulation in machine-readable formats” [Open Mobility Foundation (OMF) 2019a]. MDS was
widely adopted and is currently being used by more than 50 cities across the United States tomanage micromobility services (OMF 2019b). Unlike GBFS, MDS includes path-of-travel
information and enables two-way communication between city and vendor. As such, MDS
enables compliance tracking, digital enforcement, and data-driven infrastructure planning.
However, its provision of trip-level data to public agencies has also raised privacy concerns, bothfrom vendors and privacy advocates, and by 2020 it was the subject of litigation in Los Angeles
and elsewhere (Hawkins 2020). (This is explored in more detail in Appendix B: Digital Policy
and Compliance.)
Many local policies specify that data provided to the jurisdiction must use one or both of thesestandards, while others simply state that micromobility operators must provide an unspecified
application programming interface (API) for sharing data or use a data portal or API provided
by the city. Several jurisdictions designate third-party services or apps to ingest and process
micromobility data, and some require that mobility providers work with the data aggregator,
trip planner, or ticketing vendor of their choice as a condition of their operating permit.

Risk Management
Permit programs commonly require operators to carry property damage and personal liability
coverage in amounts of $1 million to $2 million or more. Many jurisdictions also require vendors
to post performance bonds to ensure payment of fees and regulatory actions.

The Transit Agency’s Regulatory Role
DOTs and transit agencies differ in tools available to them: as stated before, cities regulate,while transit agencies partner.
Many of the key policy and regulatory mechanisms described in the previous sections sit
outside the control of transit agencies and are instead located with local and, occasionally,
state governments. Transit agencies’ key policy areas of interest include safe station access, risk
management, digital policy and data sharing, fare integration, and equitable access.
This section explores the transit agency’s role in the regulatory landscape and examines
strategies for aligning local policy with agency priorities.

Defining Transit Agency Interests in Shared Micromobility
City DOTs and transit agencies have different roles, responsibilities, and interests when it
comes to shared micromobility operations. Similarly, city DOTs and transit agencies differ inthe fundamental tools available to them to achieve their interests. While cities have regulatory authority over micromobility operators, transit agencies primarily influence micromobility
operations and outcomes through partnerships with cities, vendors, or other local partners.

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Transit and Micromobility

Regulatory and Policy Review   29Through these partnerships, transit agencies seek to:• Enhance transit access and increase ridership – Transit agencies and cities are bothconcerned about safe and efficient access to transit stops to foster first- and last- mile micromobility access.
• Support cities in managing network demand – Micromobility is one of many demandmanagement tools that engender mode shift. Micromobility can substitute short trips via
driving alone or ride hailing, particularly in medium-to-high-density settings. Shared micromobility pilot evaluations in Santa Monica (Santa Monica 2019a), Portland [Portland Bureauof Transportation (PBOT) 2019], and Chicago (Chicago 2020a) found that between a thirdand one-half of trips would have otherwise been made by driving, ride hailing, or taxis. This
diversion of car trips is also supported by the Populus Groundtruth survey data describedlater in this report. Likewise, access to shared micromobility can alleviate demand for bringing
personal bikes and scooters onto transit vehicles, a strategy that many transit agencies like
Caltrain in the Bay Area seek to increase in-vehicle capacity. Shared micromobility’s potential to shift peak-period trips, alleviate transit crowding, or reduce delays deserves further
research.
• Make informed service and infrastructure decisions with mobility data – City DOTs canrequire that micromobility providers share trip and vehicle status data, can set standards
around how those data are structured and shared, and can influence whether the data can beshared with third parties such as transit agency partners. Transit agencies have interests in
micromobility data for their ability to help them identify priority locations for micromobility
infrastructure, identify transit service gaps, and evaluate whether agency partnerships meet
program goals.

Policy Areas and the Role of Transit Agencies
Transit agencies and city DOTs have different roles in achieving their common policy
objectives of enhancing transit access and ridership, managing network demand, and making
informed service and infrastructure decisions. While city DOTs regulate and permit sharedmicromobility services, transit agencies’ primary role is partnership, marketing services toreinforce first- and last-mile opportunities, and providing real estate to accommodate shortterm device storage. Table 2 identifies key policy areas where cities and transit agencies have aninterest in micromobility outcomes and identifies each entity’s role in ensuring those outcomes.

Micromobility and the Built Environment
As major mobility destinations and transfer points, transit stations and stops are natural
centers of micromobility activity, including activity related to personal bikes and other small
devices, docked bikeshare, and shared dockless services. Data from docked and dockless systems
demonstrate this nexus through the number of trip starts and ends and targeted deployment
activity near transit services (Lime 2019; Clewlow 2019a). Historically, transit agencies have
implemented and managed bicycle parking on their property and coordinated with othergovernment partners on the siting of station-based bikeshare on their property and bicycle
parking nearby. Agencies saw benefits with this approach; studies have found that over 50% of
docked bike users frequently link bikeshare and transit trips (NACTO 2016).
The evolution and growth of shared micromobility services into private dockless models
increases the need for coordination between transit agencies and cities. What can transit agencies do on their own, and what is the role of their municipal partners in ensuring the safe andseamless experience of transit and micromobility? By taking a more active role in the development and management of micromobility systems in collaboration with their municipal partners,

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Transit and Micromobility

Table 2.   City DOT and transit agency policy roles in key areas of regulatory interest.

Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Key Policy Areas(Mutual City/Transit Agency
Interest)

City DOT Roles

Safe access at stations•

Install bike racks and designatedmicromobility corrals on city rightof-way•

Regulate and ensure compliancethrough digital policy thatmicromobility devices cannot beparked in places that block
pedestrian right-of-way and transit
access (e.g., through geofencing)

Safe access to stations•First-/last-mile infrastructure•

Transit Agency Roles

Transit Agency Interests
Enhance
AccessandIncrease
Ridership

Parking organization and waysidesupport••Install bike racks or corrals ontransit agency property•

Partner with cities to install theinfrastructure to facilitate ﬁrst/last-mile travel to transit stops
and stations, and keep personal
micromobility devices oﬀ transit
vehiclesInstall protected bike infrastructure•

Regulate micromobility vehicle
speeds through speed throttlingand geofenced zones wheredevices are not allowed to beridden, parked, or deployed

Partner with cities to identify
conﬂict areas with transit fortargeting separated bikeinfrastructure or routing onparallel facilities•

Audit vehicle quality and ensurecompliance with safety regulations

Partner with cities and vendors
on educational campaigns•

Fund and implement
micromobility infrastructure on
agency property•

Maintain wayﬁnding for users toﬁnd designated areas where
micromobility devices can bepicked up and parked•

Partner with vendors on
educational campaigns•

Implement building of
micromobility infrastructure suchas bike lanes, racks, and corrals•

Use vendor-shared data to inform
priority infrastructure investments

SupportCities inManaging
Network
DemandInformService andInfrastructure
Decisions and
Evaluate
Partnerships

Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

App/fare integration•

Adopt common data speciﬁcations(e.g., GBFS and MDS)•

Establish data-access agreementswith cities•

Require the use of data
speciﬁcations to enable operational
restrictions and associated digitalcompliance and enforcement•

Communicate agency data needs
related to micromobility andestablish data use agreements••

Establish data-sharing agreementswith transit agencies and vendors•

Require geofencing of certain areas
to meet safety, saturation, andsensible deployment objectives

Partner with cities to geofencetransit conﬂict areas and supply
transit facilities with enoughmicromobility devices while
minimizing oversaturating•

Ensure that cities can share datawith agencies for planningpurposes and that this is built
into any permit program•

Work with cities and providers
toward API integration for
multimodal trip planning•Work toward digital fare
integration in partnership withvendors•

Establish and digitally enforce staticor dynamic device caps•

Set data-sharing requirements in
micromobility operating permit•

Ensure that contracted or internal
data platforms can ingest, store,
and protect sensitive mobility data•

Ensure that data can be shared withtransit agency partners•

Require or incentivize sharing realtime vehicle availability in mobility
as a service or other multimodal
trip-planning applications•

Require or incentivize integrated
fare payments in coordination withvendors

Transit and Micromobility

Digital policy and data sharing(continued on next page)

Transit and Micromobility

Table 2.  (Continued).
Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Key Policy Areas(Mutual City/Transit Agency
Interest)

City DOT Roles

Enforcement and compliance•

Establish compliance thresholds
and enforcement actions fornoncompliance (e.g., reductions in
ﬂeet size, ﬁnes, permit suspension,or revocation)•

Set incentives or penalties forvendor compliance and market
entry

Risk management and insurance

Transit Agency Roles

Transit Agency Interests
Enhance
AccessandIncrease
Ridership•

Track and respond to improper
parking complaints•

Audit vendors for compliance with
deployment, distribution, customer
service/311 responsiveness, andparking requirements•

Require a certain level of insurance
from private operators before
allowing legal operations•

Coordinate with cities toestablish parking anddeployment standards at or neartransit agency property•

Partner with cities to audit andenforce standards•

Partner with cities to ensure
regulatory penalties for improper
micromobility parking or riding at
stations and stops•

Partner with cities to ensure thatsafety risks on transit property
are accounted for within city
regulations
Note: Establishing separatetransit-speciﬁc insurance
requirements for vendors will
limit partnership opportunities.

SupportCities inManaging
Network
DemandInformService andInfrastructure
Decisions and
Evaluate
Partnerships

Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Equity•Set incentives (e.g., ﬂeet cap
increases, service area expansion,
fee reductions) for meeting or
exceeding policy goals•

Ensure that regulations are not soonerous that they generate
disinterest in a market•

Ensure equitable distribution of
micromobility devices throughpermit requirements•

Require operators to develop lowincome and accessible device
programs to increase equitable
access and reduce cost burden•

Partner with vendors on stationarea operations and policy goals
on transit access/connection•

With future digital fare
integration, there is potential toprovide user subsidies for
micromobility services as anextension of the transit system•

Ensure that equitable accessprograms consider access to andfrom transit, enhance
multimodal connections, andprioritize areas with service gaps•

Combine reduced-fare programswith micromobility low-income
programs to establish integrated
mobility programs•

Partner with operators orcommunity organizations toprovide equitable access andeducational programs

Program funding and revenue•

Set permit fees and ﬁnes to coverprogram administration, systemmanagement, enforcementadministration, staﬃng needs, andother needs that meet the fee
nexus

•

Possibly contribute ﬁnancial orin-kind resources to cities tobetter operate and manage
micromobility programs

Customer service•

Require a certain level of vendor
responsiveness to customer service
complaints (e.g., address sidewalk
obstructions within 2 hours ofcustomer complaint)•

Rely on station agents to ﬁlecomplaints for vendor
noncompliance on transit
property•

Require 311 integration toautomatically route customer
service requests to vendors

Transit and Micromobility

Market incentives

Transit and Micromobility

34 Transit and Micromobility

transit agencies can ensure that these services meet agency and city goals. There are five key areasin which this built-environment coordination takes place:• Transit access and parking• Street management and first/last mile
• Demand management• Data (and its relationship to the built environment)• Infrastructure funding

The relationship between micromobility and the built environment is changing as the adoptionof both docked and dockless micromobility services grows. This section explores the extent towhich new micromobility services have increased the need for new infrastructure as well as thedifferent roles for cities and transit agencies in managing the built environment.
This section synthesizes key themes from existing city and transit-agency policy frameworks,
pilots, and permitting programs that are contending with the challenges presented for the built
environment given the growth of micromobility services. The section is organized around five
key areas in which micromobility impacts on the built environment can be seen and is supportedwith case studies from around the United States, as well as primary sources that include existingbikeshare station siting guidance applicable to dockless micromobility infrastructure design andpublicly available information regarding transit agency involvement in micromobility planningand regulation.
Additionally, important insights are sourced from the 2019 Dockless Mobility Summit, which
took place in Santa Monica, CA, in October 2019. The summit brought together representatives
from 17 cities and institutions across the United States. (The summit included representatives
from the following jurisdictions and institutions: Anaheim, CA; Atlanta, GA; Beverly Hills, CA;
Culver City, CA; Denver, CO; Detroit, MI; Long Beach, CA; Los Angeles, CA; Minneapolis, MN;
Oakland, CA; Portland, OR; San Francisco, CA; San Jose, CA; Santa Monica, CA; Seattle, WA;
University of California, Los Angeles; and Washington, D.C.) The summit was convened withthe goal of helping cities think through the big questions about dockless mobility and venturebacked mobility models and had a strong focus on experiences and insights from municipal
regulatory and right-of-way management efforts.

Built Environment Challenges
The tools to manage the interface between transit and micromobility are in flux. As managersof public rights-of-way, cities are the entities primarily leading the development of pilots
and permitting programs for dockless micromobility. Cities have quickly progressed in theirapproaches in the several years since the major expansion of these services across the UnitedStates, but even they are still in a cycle of experiment-evaluate-iterate.
On the other hand, transit agencies are primarily concerned with the operation and management of the transit network and, as such, have been less actively involved in partnering withmicromobility companies and have had a limited role in their regulation. This section outlines some of the key challenges that emerge specifically for transit agencies given the state ofpractice today.
Transit Access and Parking
Transit agencies and cities seek to balance safe and convenient micromobility parking
locations without impeding safe and efficient pedestrian movement. Micromobility device
parking is also important because transit vehicles have capacity constraints for bicycles andmicromobility devices carried inside buses/trains or on vehicle-mounted racks, limiting the

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Transit and Micromobility

Regulatory and Policy Review   35maneuverability of these devices within a transit system and increasing the need for adequate
device parking at stops and stations.
Street/Sidewalk Management and First/Last Mile
Transit agencies and local governments are concerned about the design and management ofstreets and sidewalks given the rise in use of micromobility devices. Cities and transit agencies
alike share this concern for ensuring safe rights-of-way for all street users and for people of
all abilities. Cities’ regulations address specific challenges around sidewalk access management, especially for people with disabilities. Transit agencies also have concerns for ensuring
Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) compliance and safe pedestrian access within stations
and stops and along streets feeding into stations, but they may have limited ability to addressthese concerns on property they do not directly control. Additionally, micromobility devices
have the potential to provide first-/last-mile access for individuals using the public transportation system. Agencies can also incentivize and encourage the use of these devices by pursuingpolicies and partnerships that make the built environment around stations safe and comfortable
access points.
Demand Management
Micromobility is a potential demand-management tool in congested areas and a complementary mode for transit systems. For example, some cities’ early evaluation reports suggested
that shared micromobility was supporting shifts away from car travel (Santa Monica 2019a;
PBOT 2019). However, the full potential of shared micromobility to manage demand has not
yet been realized due, in part, to existing built-environment factors and a lack of integrated
operations.
Data Relationship to the Built Environment
In most cases, cities regulate dockless micromobility services. Cities determine whether torequire these services to share data, how the data are structured and shared, and whether thedata can be shared with third parties such as their transit agency partners. In order to makeinformed decisions about micromobility infrastructure and the expansion of equitable access,transit agency staff need data at a fine geographic level on transit customers’ use of and relianceon micromobility services.
Infrastructure Funding
The private and public sectors have shared interests in the provision of safe and accessible
on- and off-street infrastructure. While some hope the private sector can, on its own, provide
a funding source for micromobility network investments or parking provisions, there is a lackof evidence that this approach is feasible or sustainable. Some cities are testing new revenue
mechanisms—such as fees per trip, fees per daily vehicle mileage, or varying rates dependingon location—but they are aware that private operators need to operate these services profitably
in order for them to be sustained, so a balance must be struck (Santa Monica 2019b). However,micromobility companies can support infrastructure investment in other ways besides directly
providing financial resources, such as by activating constituencies to advocate for micromobility
infrastructure or by organizing pilots and demonstration projects.

Emerging Responses and Findings
Transit Access and Parking
With the increase of micromobility vehicles in and around transit stations and stops, agencies
are reacting to specific infrastructure needs such as for parking, locking, and charging. But

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Transit and Micromobility

36 Transit and Micromobility

transit agencies and cities are also proactive in coordinating and organizing around designatedparking areas and mobility hubs. Agencies have leveraged physical and digital tools to manage
the capacity, parking, and infrastructure demands of these services. These tools include:• Mobility hubs,• Formal and designated micromobility parking corrals,• Geofencing technology (i.e., using the mobile app to disallow micromobility operation or

parking in specified areas), and• Fleet and operations management partnerships.

Mobility Hubs.   As an organizing concept for all mobility services in a marketplace, mobility
hubs provide a natural framework for coordination between cities and transit agencies looking
to organize micromobility parking and transit access.
The mobility hub concept is a relatively new framework for mobility coordination at thephysical level. For the purposes of this document, a mobility hub is the intentional colocation of
two or more publicly accessible travel modes within a public space or facility and complemented
by information/services such as wayfinding and placemaking elements to make these options
broadly useful and accessible. It can also include digital integration of those travel modes andmay feature safe bike and scooter parking and curb space dedicated to shared-ride providers(Feigon et al. 2018). More evaluation is needed to understand the effectiveness of mobility hubs
at achieving various goals, which could include mode shift, greenhouse gas reduction, economic
and community development, and an improved customer experience.
Mobility hubs have been built at neighborhood to regionally oriented scales in several
European cities, including cities in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Italy (Feigon et al.
2018). Though the mobility hub concept is still in the early stages in the United States, one international example illustrates the potential effectiveness of the intentional colocation of mobility
services: Bremen, Germany’s Mobil.Punkt mobility hubs. In 2003, the city started expanding
its multimodal coordination strategy and set specific objectives for its mobility hub program,including to remove 6,000 cars from its streets by 2020, to enroll 20,000 people in various
carsharing programs, and to reclaim 30 linear kilometers of curbside road space from parking(Hurley 2014). The most important achievement of the program was a reduction in private
car ownership. Estimates from the European Union were that the carshare component of themobility hub program had reduced demand for on-street parking by about 5,000 private
vehicles (Team Red 2018). For more recently implemented examples in U.S. cities, including
Minneapolis and Los Angeles, outcome data are not yet available, particularly related to transit
agencies’ interest in micromobility.
The infrastructure needs of micromobility services—and the elements provided by a mobility
hub—differ depending on the transit context (e.g., bus stops, light-rail stations, and regional/
commuter rail hubs). These parking and access infrastructure needs include:• Demarcated parking areas or corrals located close to transit services but out of the way of

the flow of pedestrian traffic,• Electric scooter and bike charging facilities (particularly to support hybrid docked/docklessmodels), and• Traditional bike racks and other lock-to infrastructure.

Transit agencies have the authority to site and provide this infrastructure on their property,
and they work in partnership with cities on access infrastructure around their stations, whether
as part of a formal mobility hub or not. As such, transit agencies can play a direct role indetermining the seamlessness of the mobility experience and the protection of right-of-way
for other transit customers.

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Transit and Micromobility

Regulatory and Policy Review   37Santa Monica’s experience demonstrates an example of designated micromobility parking
areas in locations across the city, including several near transit. The city designated 107 micromobility parking areas at on- and off-street locations during its dockless mobility pilot. They
were intended to provide locations for riders to park micromobility devices without obstructing
sidewalks, ADA access, and pedestrian access to transit stations and stops. Additionally, micromobility operators were required to encourage riders to end trips in these designated parking
spaces through incentives, such as discounted pricing and monthly raffles for free rides. However, the city’s 2019 evaluation found that only 0.08% of rides ended in these designated areas.
Santa Monica took the lessons learned from its 2019 pilot to increase the efficacy of designatedparking areas with better education, in-app signals, parking incentives/disincentives, and moredesignated parking spaces (Santa Monica 2019a, 30).
Transit agencies can also form partnerships with jurisdictions to plan, build, and operatea system of mobility hubs. Mobility hubs colocate micromobility and other shared mobility
services, community amenities, and electric mobility charging infrastructure, among otherfeatures, at rail stations and high-frequency bus stops. In Minneapolis, Metro Transit has
collaborated with the city of Minneapolis, Hennepin County, mobility service providers, andneighborhood organizations to pilot a mobility hub program. These mobility hubs are intended
to not only enhance first- and last-mile connections, but also to serve as centers of placemaking
for residents to gather and learn about new ways to travel in the city (Gray 2019).
Transit Agencies’ Shifting Role in Managing Personal and Shared Micromobility Is
Supported by Existing Siting Guidance.   Transit agencies have actively managed docked bikeshare and personally owned micromobility (e.g., bike lockers, racks, and corrals) storage for
decades because of the natural use of these modes for transit access. In cities with high transit
ridership, 50% of docked bikeshare users linked their bike and transit trips (NACTO 2016). This
study’s data explore the linkages between transit and micromobility trips (see Chapter 3), andthis has been established by a number of other studies as well. Among dockless systems, theproportion of trips that start or end at transit stations varies, but data suggest a similar linkage.
Santa Monica found that 4% of all trips were used to access its Expo Line Downtown station(Santa Monica 2019b), and Denver found that 56% of scooter riders used the scooters to accesstransit at least occasionally (Denver 2019a). According to Lime’s 2018 Year-End Report, 20% ofLime riders in major urban markets worldwide reported traveling to or from public transit
during their most recent trip (Lime 2019).
Given the natural relationship between micromobility (docked, dockless, shared, or personally owned) and transit, much of the existing guidance on how to design physical, designatedmicromobility parking or docking areas within transit stations still applies. The NACTO Bike
Share Station Siting Guide (NACTO 2016) collects the best practices from around the UnitedStates concerning the siting of bikesharing stations and discusses the different street typologies
for siting, such as curbside, parking lanes, sidewalks, and open spaces. According to NACTO’s
research, bikesharing and transit are linked, and it suggests practitioners site stations as close totransit stations as possible (NACTO 2016). However, high-ridership transit stations and stops
are also locations with high volumes of pedestrians, and practitioners should make sure pedestrian
access to transit is not degraded.
The Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) board in the San Francisco Bay area played an activerole in the siting of Bay Wheels bikeshare stations at BART stations during a system expansion in 2018. This example illuminates the impact of community input on siting decisions andapplies to the management and siting of docked and dockless systems. In meetings, the board
balanced input from local community and bicycle advocacy groups about the specific locationsof stations. Some community groups view bikesharing as a symbol of gentrification. At its
24th and Mission station, for example, the BART board directed staff to locate a bikeshare station

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Transit and Micromobility

38 Transit and Micromobility

at a nearby library instead of directly in a plaza due to gentrification concerns raised by local
advocates (Rudick 2019).
The guidance for the siting of station-based bikeshare discussed in the NACTO Bike Share
Station Siting Guide can also be applicable when thinking about both protecting and enhancing
pedestrian right-of-way for the siting of designated areas for dockless micromobility devices.
Best practice when placing a bikeshare station on a sidewalk is to leave at least 6 feet of clearance for the pedestrian right-of-way, with more recommended at locations with high pedestrianvolumes. The same clearance rules should apply to designated dockless device parking areas;
when 6 feet of clearance isn’t possible, on-street configurations should be considered. Bikeshare station siting can also help enhance the pedestrian realm by operating as traffic calming
tools and increasing pedestrian visibility at intersections (NACTO 2016). However, designateddockless micromobility parking areas usually do not have the same large, fixed elements (e.g.,
advertisement boards, information and payment kiosks) as bikeshare stations, so additional
permanent and highly visible elements could be considered to help those areas reach the same
traffic calming potential. In fact, in some cities, such as Austin (Bliss 2019a); Washington, D.C.
(Lazo 2019); Arlington, VA (Bliss 2019a); Tampa (De Jesus 2019); and Ann Arbor (Afana 2019),
micromobility docking stations for otherwise dockless services are already being tested.
Cities and Transit Agencies Are Starting to Coordinate on Access and Parking Policies
Unique to Dockless Models.   Instead of developing their own permitting programs andpolicies, transit agencies can partner with local jurisdictions and co-develop mutually beneficial
permit conditions that incentivize rebalancing (the regular redistribution of vehicles to areas
preferred by the agency) and operational excellence in exchange for vendor bonuses.
Important vendor incentives include performance-based fleet cap increases and relaxed
permit fees. The regulating jurisdiction or agency initially sets a cap on the number of vehicles
a vendor can operate, but that cap can increase if the vendor exhibits desired behavior such as
distributing vehicles in underserved communities or providing parking locations.
For example, Oklahoma City’s EMBARK (formerly Metro Transit) partnered with the cityof Oklahoma City (Oklahoma City 2018); both were seeking to increase first- and last-mileconnections to transit by offering micromobility operators incentives related to fleet size andagency property parking space. Operators can apply for higher fleet caps if they work with thetransit agency to provide vehicle parking locations (including some form of physical parking
zone or digital geofence restricting parking to specific areas) and ensure that pedestrian andbicycle access to stations is not impeded. Increases in fleet size are approved jointly by the cityand the transit agency (Brus 2019).
Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (LA Metro) plans to go one
step further in its micromobility vehicles pilot program for vehicles parked or operated on
its property. In July 2019, LA Metro adopted a 2-year micromobility vehicle pilot program,with the goals of ensuring safe access for transit patrons in and around stations, developing anorganized micromobility parking system, and providing equitable access to micromobility
vehicles. Through the program’s license agreements, LA Metro requires that participating micromobility operators be approved to operate in the local jurisdiction where a given LA Metroproperty is located and pay a fee per parking space on agency property prior to any deployments
or vehicle storage on LA Metro property, parking facilities, or right-of-way. Vehicles mustbe parked upright in designated parking zones, and any incorrectly parked vehicles must be
addressed within 2 hours. ADA violations (parking in ADA spaces or blocking access to them)
are strictly prohibited (LA Metro 2019a). Though it was adopted by the board in July 2019,as of spring 2020 the program had yet to be launched; it is unclear whether micromobility
operators will participate in the program to gain a competitive advantage or if customer parking
and operator deployment will spill over onto city right-of-way.

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Transit and Micromobility

Regulatory and Policy Review   39Some agencies are going beyond regulatory approaches and directly partnering with micromobility operators. The Greater Dayton Regional Transit Authority (RTA) partnered withe-scooter sharing operator Spin to provide service in the city, building on an earlier docked
bikeshare partnership with similar parameters. This partnership and the process leading to it aredescribed at greater length later in the report.
A partnership negotiated between Big Blue Bus, the city of Santa Monica, and Lyft includes
geofencing prohibited areas (i.e., using the app to disallow micromobility vehicle parking incertain areas) and targeted rebalancing around transit stations. Lyft offers a dollar discount tousers who park in a designated “Transit Zone” (Lyft 2018).
Transit agencies are wary of crowding and liability associated with bringing micromobility
devices on board transit vehicles. Shared micromobility, which is regulated and permitted bytransit agencies’ municipal partners, can alleviate some of that pressure. While transit agencies
such as BART and Caltrain promote shared dockless micromobility as an enhancement tofirst- and last-mile connectivity, the vehicles themselves are for the most part forbidden fromplatforms and trains (Skinny Labs/Spin 2020). Personal bikes and (folded) scooters are allowed
on Caltrain cars in limited numbers; BART allows access at all times except for in the first car,but peak-hour trips often do not have capacity for micromobility devices on trains (Caltrain
2019a; BART 2019).
Street/Sidewalk Management and the First/Last Mile
Transit agencies, which have traditionally focused on providing reliable bus and rail services,
are increasingly positioning themselves as mobility agencies. Agencies’ newfound focus onbridging travel needs with mobility choices resulted in a vested interest in supporting andencouraging multimodal access to stations and stops. In fulfilling this role, transit agencies
need to coordinate with their city partners on built-environment investments outside agency
property.
Together, cities and transit agencies are responsible for the safe, convenient, and comfortable
multimodal movement of people. The rapid growth of dockless micromobility services, coupledwith the new ways these services interact with the built environment, heighten the need for city/transit agency coordination. Transit agencies concerned with how riders access transit have had
to react to an increase in infrastructure needs related to micromobility services (such as more
bike lanes and protected infrastructure). Similarly, agencies are grappling with conflicts between
transit vehicles, boarding and alighting passengers, and parked/in use micromobility vehicles.
Cities’ Requirements for the Equitable Distribution of Micromobility Devices Illuminate Gaps in Protected On-Street Infrastructure and Cities’ Overall Accessibility. Transit
Agencies Can Be Partners in Addressing These Inequalities.   Though it does not identify
specific cases of cities investing new or expanded protected bike lanes resulting from the growthof shared micromobility services, Transportation for America’s Shared Micromobility Playbook
recommends the following (Transportation for America 2019):
Cities should be clear with companies and users about where these vehicles should be operated. As mostactive transportation and micromobility riders are vulnerable road users, it will be important to designate
safe spaces for their operations. Cities will also need to check that their choices aren’t in conflict with theirstate’s law governing these vehicle types.
The rapid popularity and proliferation of micromobility services offers cities an opportunity to dedicate
greater lane space and create protected spaces for micromobility and active transportation users. Cities
should strive to open as many spaces as reasonably possible to micromobility and create a consistentculture for where and how these vehicles may be operated.

Cities are regulating shared dockless scooters and bicycles to advance racial and social equity
outcomes, but those efforts are not always coordinated with infrastructure planning and

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Transit and Micromobility

40 Transit and Micromobility

implementation. Washington, D.C., requires every company to deploy at least 400 docklessvehicles (approximately 52% of the total fleet) in “Equity Emphasis Areas” (DDOT 2019a and2019b; Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments 2019). Similarly, Chicago’s 2019
shared-scooter pilot required that half of each operator’s fleet be deployed daily across two“Equity Priority Areas” on the city’s historically disinvested West Side (Chicago 2019a). However, compliance with these policies has underscored the lack of safe on-street infrastructuresuch as bike lanes in these areas. D.C.’s Wards 7 and 8 lack designated bicycle lanes due tohistoric disinvestment, and protected infrastructure on Chicago’s West Side mainly provides
access between the area and downtown rather than strong connections between neighborhoods
within it. An expansion of safe infrastructure to accompany these new services is vital because
expansion of shared micromobility services in these areas will inevitably lead to more clashes on
sidewalks with pedestrians or on streets with motor vehicles if there is a lack of safe infrastructure dedicated to bikes and micromobility (Su and Wang 2019).
Transit agencies’ interests in first-/last-mile connectivity make them cities’ natural partners
in finding opportunities to increase the provision of on-street micromobility infrastructure.
Transit agencies can support equitable access by facilitating micromobility access around stations
and stops in underserved communities. However, there are other barriers to equitable access to
micromobility beyond just geographic distribution and infrastructure. Seattle’s 2018 bikeshareevaluation report identified barriers such as technological access, banking, affordability, knowledge of micromobility services and their potential benefits, and helmet access [Seattle Departmentof Transportation (SDOT) 2018].
Demand Management
Micromobility has the potential to help cities and transit agencies manage demand if thebuilt environment supports its safe and convenient operation. Cities and transit agencies alikehave a responsibility to manage demand across the mobility system to advance environmental,
economic, and equity outcomes. Jurisdictions and agencies generally agree that dockless micromobility has the potential to meet climate-change goals by reducing greenhouse gas emissions,extending the reach of transit and providing first- and last-mile connections, mitigating transit
congestion and core capacity issues, and reducing car reliance in low-density areas or late atnight when many agencies provide limited or no service.
Dockless Micromobility Can Extend the Reach of Transit.   Some transit agencies see
micromobility services as part of their mandate to enhance local and regional mobility. To
that end, transit agencies are developing and managing micromobility programs or directly
partnering with private micromobility operators to achieve transit access and coverage objectives.
In partnership with the Sonoma County Transportation Authority (SCTA) and the Transportation Authority of Marin (TAM), Marin County’s Sonoma–Marin Area Rail Transit (SMART)
plans to become the focal point of a new bikeshare system. An $800,000 pilot received funding
through the regional metropolitan planning organization (MPO), the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC). In February 2020, SCTA and TAM approved a multiyear pilot with
Gotcha Mobility to provide a hybrid (docked/dockless) shared e-bike system. Riders will also
be able to link their bikeshare accounts to the Bay Area’s Clipper Card system, which SMART
uses for fare collection (Fixler 2020). The system will provide bicycles at SMART train stations
and key destinations along the rail corridor. The goals are “to increase access to transit, promote
active transportation and provide a direct first and last mile to SMART, and give people anotheroption for travel in Marin County” (Prado 2018). As a pilot, the program will be evaluated for the
possibility of future expansion (Fixler 2019).
Caltrain, also in the San Francisco Bay Area, was, at the time of writing, planning for micromobility and considering how it could be leveraged for first-/last-mile transit access. Caltrain

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Transit and Micromobility

Regulatory and Policy Review   41is one of the leading carriers of bicycles on board trains in the United States, and its onboard
carrying capacity is filled almost daily. In 2019, Caltrain began work on the “Caltrain Bike Parking
and Micromobility Analysis and Implementation Plan” (Caltrain 2019b). The plan includes:• A comprehensive policy about the quantity and type of bicycle parking and shared micro­

mobility options to provide at stations over time;• Station-specific designs and implementation plans for additional secure bicycle parking at

stations; and• Analysis, coordination, and recommendations for the rollout of bikeshare and potentiallyother shared micromobility devices along the Caltrain corridor.

This plan will provide crucial direction for an investment of $3.5 million in micromobility
infrastructure in advance of Caltrain’s electrified train service in 2022, which is expected togenerate significant new ridership. It will also set the framework for additional capital investments and grant funding in first-/last-mile infrastructure in the future (Caltrain 2019b).
Dockless Micromobility Reduces Car Reliance and Alleviates Core Capacity Issues.  
Nearly every dockless micromobility pilot has found that shared electric scooters and bikes
reduced car use. In 2019, Santa Monica found that 49% of dockless micromobility trips replaced
drive-alone/other car (e.g., taxi or ride-hail) trips (Santa Monica 2019b). Portland reported
in 2018 that 34% of Portland residents, and 48% of visitors, used a shared e-scooter instead ofdriving a personal car or using a taxi or ride-hailing service (PBOT 2019), and a 2019 Denver
survey found that 32% of e-scooter trips replaced some kind of automobile trip (Denver 2019a).
This is true among docked systems as well: one study found that about half of all (docked)
bikesharing members reduced their auto and taxi reliance (Shaheen and Cohen 2019).
Dockless micromobility also has the potential to alleviate crowding on some of the mostcongested parts of a transit system and at certain high-use times of day. Santa Monica foundthat 4% of users shifted away from transit trips to scooter trips (Santa Monica 2019b), although
the data are not detailed enough to demonstrate from which routes or times of day people
switched. It is clear that dockless micromobility displaces automobile trips to some degree
whenever it is made available, and the development of these services can be encouraged toachieve the greenhouse-gas or congestion-reduction goals of cities and transit agencies.
Data and the Built Environment
At a time where mobility data are increasingly managed as a core infrastructure asset, cities
and transit agencies are increasing their role in data collection, management, and distribution.
Two widely used mobility data standards, the GBFS and the MDS, provide standardized data
definitions and methods for sharing data between cities, vendors, and transit agencies. Thesestandards were described in the Data-Sharing Requirements and Standards/Specifications section
earlier in this chapter and are further explored in Appendix B: Digital Policy and Compliance.
Data Partnerships Enable Cities and Transit Agencies to Manage Micromobility Parking
and Access at and near Transit.   Shared dockless micromobility has the same basic opportunities and constraints of docked and personal micromobility access at transit stations. However,what has changed is the scale and speed of growth of these services, which creates an urgent
challenge for cities and transit agencies. If managed, these systems could support access andparking investments at transit stations and stops.
Transit agencies’ management of dockless micromobility must be firmly rooted in accessplanning best practices [as exemplified by planning/design guidelines such as the BART
Multi­modal Access Design Guidelines (BART 2017) and Denver Moves: Transit (Denver 2019b),
both discussed in the Infrastructure Funding section that follows] and supported by new digital

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42 Transit and Micromobility

management tools that empower cities and transit agencies to better understand their riders’movement across the system, control where companies deploy micromobility devices, andmanage where riders park them. These digital management objectives are enabled by thedevelopment of the MDS, which was pioneered by LADOT and is now managed by the OMF.
MDS defines a set of connections between computers (APIs) that standardize two-way communication between cities, transit agencies, and private companies. This allows mobility providers
and mobility managers to share operational and digital policy information.
Some cities analyze, visualize, and report shared micromobility trip and operation datafrom MDS feeds using in-house tools, while others contract this work out to third parties thatspecialize in ingesting, auditing, processing, and securing mobility data. However, in both cases
the capacity to collect, analyze, and interpret the large amount of data produced by dockless
micromobility systems varies among jurisdictions and is dependent on the data-sharing
requirements imposed on the private operators (Santa Monica 2019b).
LADOT has also developed a geofenced “Special Operating Zone” in the Venice neighborhood to solve problems related to deployment oversaturation, conflicts with pedestrians on the
Venice Boardwalk, and user parking issues. The Special Operating Zone factors in new digital
tools, such as no-ride and exclusion zones, throttle zones (vehicles entering an excluded area areautomatically slowed to a stop), and enhanced compliance and enforcement auditing. Other
cities, like Santa Monica and San Antonio, established similar geofencing tools for non-transit
use cases. In each of these cases, the cities use trip and operations data to track provider performance and compliance at geofenced locations (Sharp 2019).
Trip-level data provided to permitting entities can also be used to identify specific routes
with high-volume micromobility use. Third-party data tools, such as Populus’ Mobility
Manager (https://www.populus.ai/solutions/mobility-manager), Remix’s Shared Mobility platform (https://www.remix.com/solutions/streets-shared-mobility), and Ride Report’s data tools(https://www.ridereport.com/), can be used to aggregate and visualize path-of-travel data forshared micromobility services (Clewlow 2019b). When compared with other information suchas that from a high-injury network or key transit access corridors, these path-of-travel data canhelp identify near-term capital investments, such as for protected bike lanes, bike racks, anddockless parking areas.
Shared Micromobility Data Illuminate Inequitable Distribution of Resources and Inform
Infrastructure Investment Priorities.   Use of shared micromobility data can help identify
areas that are underserved or oversaturated. Agencies and cities can use these data to not only
ensure equitable deployment but also to develop future micromobility infrastructure in the areasof most need. This is particularly important because, without intervention, dockless systems
potentially exacerbate existing mobility and access inequalities. For example, the city of Detroit
found that micromobility operators concentrated their services in affluent areas, leaving traditionally underserved communities with service gaps in the new services (Santa Monica 2019b).
At the time of writing, LA Metro was developing an equity platform for micromobility
policies and was planning to use data to develop recommendations for the improvement of
disadvantaged communities’ access to micromobility vehicles. Staff planned to monitor metro
stations in disadvantaged communities to determine if they were underserved by shared micromobility operators (LA Metro 2019a).
SDOT also used micromobility data to understand the equity implications of its docklessbikeshare program. Its initial pilot in 2018 required that at least 20% of the areas in whichdockless bikeshare operated be Tier 1 equity areas, which were defined as places with low accessto opportunity and high risk for displacement. In its 2018 bikeshare evaluation, SDOT useddata provided by operators to monitor operations, finding that while ridership was highest in

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Transit and Micromobility

Regulatory and Policy Review   43the center city, the entire city was covered by bikeshare supply. However, the city’s most dis­advantaged neighborhoods saw low ridership, suggesting that providing an option does equate
to access, nor does it overcome barriers to use in underserved neighborhoods (SDOT 2018;
Cohen 2018).
Infrastructure Funding
The Public and Private Sectors Both Have an Interest in Supporting Infrastructure Needs.  
The basic tenets of bicycle infrastructure design—that the infrastructure should provide safe
and comfortable places to bike—also apply in a world with expanded access to dockless bicycles,
scooters, and other micromobility services. With the growing popularity of these services, cities
seek to expand the number of bike lane miles, the width of bike lanes, and lane-adjacent spaces
for parking and pedestrian throughways.
According to responses from the Santa Monica Dockless Mobility Summit (Santa Monica
2019b), some jurisdictions are contending with an increase in demand for micromobility
infrastructure such as bicycle or micromobility lanes, bicycle racks, and parking areas to accommodate scooters. Guidance and plans established before the proliferation of dockless micro­
mobility models, such as BART’s Multimodal Access Design Guidelines (BART 2017) and Denver’s
Denver Moves: Transit (Denver 2019b), acknowledge that transit agencies share an interest in
improving access to stations and stops through new infrastructure investments.
Micromobility companies’ growth and sustainability also rely on the provision of safe,
comfortable, and ubiquitous on- and off-street infrastructure. However, despite some of thecompanies’ early attempts to fund protected lane expansion, their business models do notsupport the funding of major infrastructure investments (Schmitt 2019). While the primary
funding source for parking and on-street infrastructure is the public sector, mobility service
providers can support expansion through:• Advocacy, community organizing, and promotion of customers’ stories and demand forbetter infrastructure;• Public messaging campaigns;• Demonstration projects and tactical bikeway and parking installations; and• Limited funding to support the introduction and management of the new service model.

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Transit and Micromobility

CHAPTER 3

Micromobility Users and Utilization

This chapter discusses a variety of characteristics of micromobility users, as well as the nature of
micromobility’s use in a variety of urban environments (including large and small metro areas), with
an emphasis on understanding micromobility’s interaction with public transit systems. The analysis
utilizes two datasets gathered by Populus Technologies, Inc. (one of the author organizations).
First, to understand user characteristics and contrast them with those of non-users, thisanalysis incorporates Populus Groundtruth data collected through regional surveys. Conducted
in 2019 in 18 metropolitan areas with representative sampling, these surveys assess transportation choices. Akin to regional travel surveys typically conducted once a decade, this opt-in
data-gathering effort captures basic demographic data, household characteristics, vehicle ownership, and key transportation decisions, including the adoption and use of new mobility services.
Here, the focus is on a subset of the data related to micromobility adoption, comparing micromobility users and non-users.
Second, to illuminate patterns of micromobility usage in space and time, Populus has also
leveraged relationships with cities and operators to use select micromobility vehicle andtrip data from docked and dockless systems, both to observe how the introduction of dockless
micromobility may have changed docked system use and to evaluate dockless micromobility
use around transit stops. More information on the methodology behind these two data sources
is provided in Appendix A. The research team acquired permission from several cities andoperators to share the data included in this report.

Grouping of Metro Areas by Density and Transit Use
Populus’ 2019 Groundtruth survey resulted in over 15,000 responses across 18 metro areas. To
identify common patterns across different metro area types, the researchers grouped the regions
into subsets with common population and transit characteristics, using population, population
density, housing unit density, gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, and transit ridershipper capita. Survey responses are presented according to these groupings throughout this study.
Figure 14 displays the metro groupings in terms of population density (persons per squaremile) and transit use (unlinked passenger trips per capita).

User Characteristics
Micromobility Adoption Rates
Among survey respondents, nearly 20% had some experience using a shared bike or scooter(together considered “micromobility adoption”), as shown in Figure 15. About half as many
had used a shared scooter alone.
44
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Transit and Micromobility

Micromobility Users and Utilization   45Notes: Only two of five factors used in the clustering are shown in the figure. MSA = metropolitan statistical area.

Figure 14.   Result of metro grouping analysis (top) and location map (bottom).

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Transit and Micromobility

46   Transit and Micromobility

Source: Populus Groundtruth survey 2019.

Figure 15.   Micromobility (shared bikes and scooters) adoption (left); adoption of scooters alone (right).
Note: “Yes” indicates the respondent had ridden a shared bike or scooter before.

Higher Scooter Adoption Rates Are Associatedwith Lower Levels of Regulation
Among the cities where scooters were available at the time of the survey, most had scooter
adoption percentages near the 10% range, with San Jose, San Diego, and Austin having significantly higher rates (Figure 16). This is likely explained in part by the lightly regulated nature ofscooters in those cities. While many cities restrict the number of vehicles that can be deployed,
the cities with significantly higher adoption rates had higher fleet caps (or none at all) at the timeof the survey.
This pattern is also visible in micromobility users as a whole (Figure 16a). The New York City,
Chicago, Boston (except Brookline), Seattle, and Houston metros did not permit, or severely
restricted, shared scooters at the time of surveying, but several of them had docked bikesharesystems. This is reflected in the much lower scooter adoption rates in these metros comparedwith their micromobility adoption overall (with the scooter figures in those cities likely reflecting experience with shared scooters in other markets).

Demographics
Age
Scooter Adopters Tend to Be Younger Than the Typical Residents of Their Metros, with PeakUse in Those Under 35 and Few Users Above Age 55.   The average respondent age was 43,
while the average age of scooter adopters was 31 years old. Figure 17 shows the age distributionof respondents. In general, scooter users and micromobility users tended to be younger than
non-users. The greatest micromobility use was among people under 35, with usage tapering off
in older cohorts. Only a few users of scooters or micromobility generally were age 55 or older.
GenderMicromobility Users Were Split About Evenly Between Males and Females, in Contrast
to Scooters Alone, in Which Females Were Overrepresented.   Similar to previous studies(Clewlow 2019a), the survey shows a gender gap between how people have adopted micromobility

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Transit and Micromobility

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(a)

(b)

Source: Populus Groundtruth survey 2019. Note: Some bar lengths vary from percentages due to rounding.

Figure 16.   Micromobility adoption by metro area (a, top); scooter-only adoption by metro area (b, bottom).

Transit and Micromobility

Copyright National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
Source: Populus Groundtruth survey 2019. Note: Some bar lengths vary from percentages due to rounding.

Figure 17.   Age distribution for scooter-only users (red), all micromobility users (green), and all respondents (gray) across all metro areas.

Transit and Micromobility

Micromobility Users and Utilization   49generally versus scooters alone (Figure 18). Combining bikeshare and scooter services, 48% ofusers identify as female versus 51% as male. The gender gap for scooter-only adoption is the inverse,
favoring women, and slightly larger, with 54% of users identifying as female and 46% as male.
Race and Ethnicity
More Non-White People Were Users of Micromobility and Scooters.   The rates of micromobility and scooter use by race and ethnicity differed from those for the overall population of
respondents (Figure 19). A smaller proportion of both groups was white (42% to 43% versus
52% among all respondents), with Hispanic and Asian people seeing greater representation
among both micromobility generally and scooter-only users. The data do not suggest a significant
difference in micromobility or scooter adoption by Black people.
IncomePeople of all Income Levels Used Scooters and Micromobility, with Only a Small Variationfrom the General Population Across Income Levels.   Adoption rates did rise with income tosome degree, with the highest income brackets somewhat overrepresented among scooter andmicromobility users (Figure 20). Compared to micromobility generally, in which higher income
brackets contained somewhat more users, scooter use appears to be more equitably distributed.
For all groups, the most users came from households in the middle of the income spectrum

Source: Populus Groundtruth survey 2019.

Figure 18.   Gender distribution for scooter-only users (red), all micromobility users (green), andall respondents (gray) across all metro areas.

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Transit and Micromobility

50   Transit and Micromobility

Source: Populus Groundtruth survey 2019. Note: Some bar lengths vary from percentages due to rounding.

Figure 19.   Race and ethnicity distribution for scooter-only users (red), all micromobility users (green),
and all respondents (gray) across all metro areas.

($50,000 to $99,000). Some 42% of scooter users had an annual household income under $50,000,
about the same as the general population, compared to 37% for micromobility generally.

Use of Other Transportation
To better understand how shared mobility options fit into broader travel decisions, Populus’
regional travel surveys gather data on traditional transportation behavior, including commute mode, vehicle ownership, and mode shift. This section presents analysis based on data
gathered in 2019, with a focus on assessing how scooter adoption fits into broader travel
decisions.
Commute Mode
Scooter Users Were Less Likely to Have Solo Car Commutes and More Likely to Use Ride
Hailing, but Use of Transit and Carpools Varied by Region.   Scooter users made different
commute choices than the general population, with slightly lower rates of solo driving andnotably higher rates of ride-hail commuting (double or more) across all metro types, suggesting

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Transit and Micromobility

Micromobility Users and Utilization   51Source: Populus Groundtruth 2019. Note: Some bar lengths vary from percentages due to rounding.

Figure 20.   Household income distribution of scooter users (red), all micromobility users, (green)
and all respondents (gray).

that they are people who are already comfortable with using shared mobility. In the high-transituse metros (Figure 21a), scooter users commuted by transit at lower rates, and carpooled at
higher rates, than the general population. The inverse was true of the low-transit-use metros(Figure 21b): scooter users were somewhat more likely to be transit commuters, and less likely
to carpool.
Given that the average scooter trip is approximately 1 mile, commutes by scooter (assessed
only among scooter adopters) represent only a fraction of respondents’ primary commute mode.
That being said, this figure reached 1% in the high-transit-use metro areas (Figure 21a), which
is surprisingly large given that scooters are a new entrant to the transportation mix and that
commuting by bike even in higher-use cities is below 3%. Given that a substantial proportionof frequent scooter users said that their last scooter trip was for commuting, a number of first-/
last-mile trips may not be being picked up by a question focused on a single commute mode.
Commuting patterns more generally appear to be mostly driven by urban context. Survey
respondents in the medium- and high-transit-use metro areas had the highest share of public
transit use for commuting (15% and 24%, respectively) and the lowest shares of driving alone(64% and 55%), regardless of scooter use. Both low-transit-use metro groups were dominatedby solo driving as the primary commute mode (74% to 76%), with only 6% of the population
relying on public transit. (Note that medium-density, medium-transit and medium-density,
low-transit metros are not shown in the figure.)

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Transit and Micromobility

52   Transit and Micromobility(a). Commute mode for high-density, high-transit-use metro areas for all respondents (top) and scooter users (bottom).

(b). Commute mode for low-density, low-transit-use metro areas for all respondents (top) and scooter users (bottom).
Source: Populus Groundtruth survey 2019.

Figure 21.   Respondent commute modes.

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Transit and Micromobility

Micromobility Users and Utilization   53Note that these figures simply describe the differences in the commuting habits of scooter
adopters compared with non-adopters across metro types; they do not represent causal relationships or tell us anything about non-commute trips.
Household Vehicle Ownership
Scooter Users Live in Households with More Cars Than Non-Adopters Do.   Acrossall user groups and metro types, respondents were consistently most likely to live in one- or
two-vehicle households (Figure 22). But scooter users had a larger share of households withthree or more vehicles than the general population—consistent with scooter users tending tohave higher incomes, but also possibly pointing to younger people living in group householdswith several roommates. Given that many scooter users have multiple household vehicles,
there may be greater opportunity for personal vehicle shedding due to increased micro­
mobility options.

How and Why People Use Scooters
The Populus Groundtruth survey also asked scooter users how frequently they rode sharedscooters, as well as safety-related questions and how scooters fit into their overall transportation mix. This section highlights several key findings based on those questions; the findings arebroken out by the metro clusters described previously. Results are weighted by frequency ofscooter use; the weighting method is described in Appendix A.
Trip Purpose: People Use Scooters for a Variety of Reasons
Commuting in the More-Dense Places, Socializing in the Less Dense.   There was highvariability in the reasons that people use scooters across metropolitan areas, as shown in
Figure 23. In higher-density regions with greater transit service and usage, shared-scooter use
was primarily associated with commutes to/from work (38% in the medium- and high-transit
metros). This contrasts with low-density, low-transit regions, where less than 14% of trips were
for commuting and the majority of trips were for social activity (51%). Since less than 1% of
respondents said that scooters were their primary commute mode (see previous section), manyof the commute trips here may represent first-/last-mile trips connecting to other modes.
Although they are not shown here, the unweighted results find social activities as the mostcommon trip purposes across all metro types. But since the frequency-weighted results placecommutes in the top position in denser metros, this suggests that repeat users are those who
find ways to incorporate scooters into their travel in more utilitarian ways.
Reasons for Choosing Scooters
Fun Is Key Almost Everywhere, but Utility Is Central in the Densest Metros. Competitive
Prices Are Also Important.   Mirroring the results for trip purpose, the reasons that people chosescooters over other transportation options also varied significantly by metro type (Figure 24).
In higher-density, high-transit regions, scooters were chosen over other alternatives for utilitarian reasons the majority of the time, especially because they are the fastest and most reliableoption (33%) and because of the difficulty of parking at their destination (22%).
In medium-density and low-density metropolitan areas, scooters were chosen as a mode
“just for fun” more than a third of the time, likely including “joyrides” and trips made to get toor from social activities. While it was nowhere the top reason, scooters’ low price compared toother modes was a key rationale 11% to 15% of the time in every metro type.

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Transit and Micromobility

54   Transit and Micromobility(a). Number of household vehicles, high-density, high-transit use.

(b). Number of household vehicles, medium-density, medium-transit use.

(c). Number of household vehicles, medium-density, low-transit use.

(d). Number of household vehicles, low-density, low-transit use.
Source: Populus Groundtruth survey 2019.
Notes: “Yes” (red) bars represent scooter use; left axis is vehicles per household.

Figure 22.   Number of household vehicles owned, by metro type.

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Transit and Micromobility

Micromobility Users and Utilization   55Source: Populus Groundtruth survey 2019.

Figure 23.   Trip purpose for last scooter trip, weighted by trip frequency.

Together, the trip purpose and reasoning results suggest that shared scooters were more likely
to be used for utilitarian purposes in high-density, transit-oriented areas, as compared withlower-density regions where they were used less frequently and primarily for social trips. Scooters’
low prices also appear to remain an important selling point for a significant minority of users.
Modes Replaced by Scooters
Similar to other recent reports, this national, statistically based sample of data suggests thatscooter trips replaced a significant number of automobile trips, although mode substitution
also varies by region (Figure 25).
Most Scooter Trips Replaced Trips in a Car, and Many Replaced Walk Trips.   While inmost regions, a larger portion of scooter trips replaced car trips as compared to walking, biking,or transit trips (Figure 25), an analysis across different types of U.S. metros suggests that urban
context—population density, the built environment, and existing transit services—influences
shared scooters’ potential to provide substantial positive impacts as opposed to simply replacing
existing sustainable transportation options.
In high-density, transit-oriented regions, 55% of scooter trips replaced trips that would haveotherwise been made by a car—either alone, with another passenger, or via a ride-hail service
like Uber or Lyft. This number increased to 78% of trips in medium-density, low-transit areas,suggesting that there is potentially an even greater opportunity for shared electric scooters to

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Transit and Micromobility

56   Transit and Micromobility

Source: Populus Groundtruth survey 2019.

Figure 24.   Reason for using a scooter on last scooter trip, weighted by trip frequency.

influence mode shift to more sustainable modes in these auto-dependent regions. However,in the lowest-density regions, scooter trips were likely to have replaced a car trip less than half
the time (46%).
Across all regions, walking was the second most common mode replaced, with results ranging
from 15% of replaced trips in medium-density, low-transit metros, to as high as 37% of replaced
trips in low-density, low-transit metros (the group that also had the lowest level of car trip replacement). Trips on public transit represented 0.5% to 10% of those replaced, and private bikes andbikeshare were an even smaller proportion, ranging from 0.5% to 6%. Scooters appear to create
some trips that would not have taken place otherwise, between 6% to 13% of the time (likely
representing many of the “joyride” trips just for fun noted in the previous section).

Scooting to and from Transit
Populus Groundtruth survey data were also used to better understand whether and to what
degree scooter adopters used scooters for first-/last-mile connections to/from public transit.
Scooter users were asked how often they used a shared scooter to get to or from public transit(Figure 26). Similar to the analysis of scooter trip purposes, reasons for mode choice, and mode
substitution analysis, these results are weighted by frequency of scooter use.

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Transit and Micromobility

Micromobility Users and Utilization   57Source: Populus Groundtruth survey 2019.

Figure 25.   Modes replaced by scooters, weighted by trip frequency.

Source: Populus Groundtruth survey 2019.

Figure 26.   How often scooters were used to get to/from
public transit, weighted by trip frequency.

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Transit and Micromobility

58   Transit and Micromobility

Where Transit Is More Available, More Scooter Trips
Are to or from Transit
In the high-density, high-transit-use metro areas, slightly more trips were “sometimes” or“always” made to or from transit (36%) as opposed to “never” or “rarely” (33%). In lower-density,
low-transit metros, the majority of trips “never” or “rarely” (nearly 60%) were made to or fromtransit, which largely reflects the lack of transit availability in these metropolitan areas. However,even in areas with low transit and low density, scooters were used to connect to transit morethan a quarter of the time, and the most frequent occurrence of this purpose was in the mediumdensity metros, suggesting a connection with the longer distances and diminished walkabilityof these areas.

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Transit and Micromobility

CHAPTER 4

Implications for Transit Agencies

This chapter explores the benefits and impacts of micromobility with an emphasis on outcomes
likely to be valuable to transit agencies. It begins by extending the micromobility use analysis
from the prior chapter, specifically examining trip patterns in proximity to high-frequency
fixed-route transit. The second half of this chapter examines the broader implications of sharedmicromobility’s impacts on transit agencies, including on funding and the financing of public
infrastructure, interaction with agencies’ civil rights obligations under ADA and Title VI of theUnited States Civil Rights Act of 1964, and implications for the rider experience.

Micromobility Usage Patterns and Impacts
The impact of dockless shared micromobility on other forms of transportation, particularly
public transit and docked bikeshare, is a key question in this report. To supplement theuser-focused survey data in the previous chapter, this chapter uses publicly available docked
bikeshare data to observe total trips before and after the addition of dockless shared vehicles.
For dockless vehicles, which can start or end a trip at any location, aggregated trip data also
were used to observe the use of the vehicles near transit stops. There is some overlap between
the cities here and the metro areas surveyed in the previous chapter, but the data in this section
were dependent on established relationships with cities and operators and their willingness toprovide aggregated data for this study.
The question of data availability also affects the cross-section of metro types examined,
especially on the less-populated end of the scale: although the research team strived to represent
smaller cities and less-populated regions, the places available for analysis were limited toPopulus partner cities where all parties to the data consented to data sharing.
The Populus research team collaborated with cities, counties, and scooter operators to use
aggregated shared-scooter data to show scooter use around transit stations. Four major scooter
operators, Bird, Lime, Lyft, and Spin, consented to use of their data in these aggregated forms.
Note that in many of these cities, smaller scooter companies also operate but were not includedin the analysis. The five regions were chosen from Populus’ existing partner cities and wereselected based on a few additional criteria in order to create a range of cities in terms of density
and access to transit. Figure 27 shows the jurisdictions: Arlington County, VA; Baltimore, MD;
Cleveland, OH; Indianapolis, IN; and Oakland, CA.
Arlington County and Oakland were selected to represent dense, urban environments withmore access to transit. Cleveland and Indianapolis were selected to represent more car-centric
cities. However, Cleveland is also distinct from Indianapolis in that Cleveland provides numerous
transit options as well as a vehicle rebalancing requirement whereby operators are asked to leavescooters in locations that are often near transit stations. Finally, Baltimore has a popular scooter
59
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Transit and Micromobility

60   Transit and Micromobility

Source: Populus.

Figure 27.   Cities or counties where scooter use data were approved for use in this study.

program and is a relatively dense city, but public transit is less accessible across the city. The
regions are shown in Table 3 along with the major transit services used in the analysis.

Scooter Impacts on Docked Bikeshare
To examine the trend in bikeshare trips in relation to the introduction of shared scooters,
this report shows weekly or monthly trip docked bike volumes in Arlington County (for Capital
Bikeshare, which operates across the D.C. region) and Oakland (Bay Wheels, which operates
around the Bay Area; until June 2019 the system was known as Ford GoBike).
Figure 28a shows weekly trip volumes for Oakland’s docked bikeshare system from July 2017
to October 2019. In Oakland, dockless shared scooters were introduced in September 2018(indicated by the vertical dashed line). As shown in the figure, trip volumes for the docked
bikeshare system declined from October to December 2018, around the time of the introductionof scooters, but also coinciding with likely seasonal variation. Then the docked trip volume
increased again starting in January 2019, and despite considerable fluctuation, the overall trend
was growth in the use of docked bikeshare.
Arlington County shows clearer seasonal fluctuation in docked bike use (with large drop-offs
in winter) than is visible in the Oakland example. Figure 28b shows weekly trip volumes fromJanuary 2017 through November 2019. Shared e-scooters were launched in early October 2018,

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Transit and Micromobility

Implications for Transit Agencies   61Table 3.   Study regions and their major transit services.
City/County

Population(2018 est.)

Dockless Micromobility Service Area

Major Transit Services Used for Location
Analysis

Arlington County,
VA

238,000

County limits with some restricted
areas (i.e., the Pentagon)

Metro

Baltimore, MD

602,000

City limits with equity zone distribution
requirements

Light RailLink, Metro SubwayLink, MARC

Cleveland, OH

384,000

City limits with rebalancing locations
focused in certain parts of the city

Rapid Transit (Red Line), Light Rail
(Green, Blue, Waterfront), Bus Rapid
TransitIndianapolis, IN

867,000

City limits with access zone and highutilization distribution requirements

IndyGo Bus Rapid Transit (Red Line)

Oakland, CA

429,000

City limits

BART

as indicated by the vertical dashed line. Docked bikeshare trips appeared to decline slightly
overall from 2017 to 2019, but it is unclear if that is linked to the availability of scooters.
In both regions, it is unclear whether a decline in dock-based bike trips soon after the
introduction of scooters was a result of the introduction of a dockless system or a consequenceof seasonality or other operational factors. In both cases, docked bikeshare recovered at least
its prior level of ridership, and in Oakland reached new heights after scooters’ introduction.

Dockless Vehicle Use near Transit Stations
To better understand dockless vehicle use in relation to transit stations in the five regions, theresearchers used trip origin and destination counts within the jurisdictions. Overlaid with thetrip starts and ends are the locations of major transit stations. For the regions explored, stops forbasic local bus service were not included because of their ubiquity throughout the cities; stops
more typically within walking distance to one’s home makes the analysis difficult to meaningfully parse. However, bus rapid transit (BRT) was used in Indianapolis and Cleveland, whichin both cases have fewer stops, more frequent service, faster boarding, and more direct routes
through the downtown core.
Using the data from the four major scooter operators where they are active, trip origin anddestination counts were aggregated over the service areas in each of the regions. Figure 29
visualizes scooter use across the regions, with the darker-shaded areas experiencing more trip
starts and ends. Data represent one month of trips in October 2019.
In general, in all the cities, more trips occurred in the urban core and in university campus
areas. What varied between the cities was the type and location of available transit. It is difficult
to link trips starting and ending to connections to transit, but understanding use patterns ofshared scooters is a first step.
The densely populated suburban jurisdictions of Oakland and Arlington County (Figures 29aand 29b, respectively) show more trip starts and ends in the vicinity of major transit stops,
both regional heavy-rail lines. In Cleveland and Indianapolis, both the center cities of smaller
metropolitan markets (Figures 29c and 29d, respectively), there was some correlation with BRT
lines, but in Cleveland there was less alignment with heavy- and light-rail line stations outside
the urban core. In Baltimore (Figure 29e) the areas with the most trip starts and ends did notline up with the locations of the major transit stops as was the case in Oakland and Arlington.

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Transit and Micromobility

62   Transit and Micromobility(a). Oakland GoBike/Bay Wheels docked system weekly ridership, June 2017–October 2019. Dockless scooters were introduced in early
September 2018.

(b). Arlington Capital Bikeshare docked system weekly ridership, January 2017–November 2019. Dockless scooters were introduced in early
October 2018.
Note: The vertical dashed lines indicate the introduction of dockless shared scooters.

Figure 28.   Docked bikeshare trip volumes.

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Transit and Micromobility

Implications for Transit Agencies   63(a). Oakland, CA.

(b). Arlington County, VA.

Figure 29.   Relative numbers of dockless shared-scooter trips in Oakland, CA,
Arlington, VA, Cleveland, OH, Indianapolis, IN, and Baltimore, MD.
(continued on next page)

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Transit and Micromobility

64   Transit and Micromobility(c). Cleveland, OH.

(d). Indianapolis, IN.

Figure 29.  (Continued).

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Transit and Micromobility

Implications for Transit Agencies   65(e). Baltimore, MD.
Source: Populus analysis of scooter company data.

Figure 29.  (Continued).

Trip Proportions near Major Transit Stops
Operator-provided data cannot definitively prove which scooter trips were being used as
first- or last-mile connections to transit, which would require trip-chaining data or continuous
observation of the same individuals to confirm. However, the data can be used to observe where
shared-scooter trips were starting or ending in proximity to transit (as in the previous section andillustrated in Figure 29). To pair with the maps, the five charts in Figure 30 show the percentageof trip origins or destinations (aggregated to the zones visualized in the hex areas in Figure 29)that were within a specified distance of a major transit station: ⅛ mile, ¼ mile, ½ mile, and 1 mile.
The buffer assumes the stations are points, which may not accurately describe larger metro
stations with multiple entrances and exits, but larger metro stations should be captured withthe smallest (⅛ mile) buffer.
In general, Arlington, Cleveland, Indianapolis, and Oakland appear to show some correlation between the location of trip starts and ends and major transit stops. This is also true in thecities without any distribution requirements as there could be other confounding factors, suchas proximity to restaurants, work, and other popular destinations, that are common to the urban
core areas.
Oakland and Arlington County (Figures 30a and 30b, respectively) both primarily have metro
stations in their dense downtowns, with rail lines connecting to the primary urban cores of theirregions. In Arlington County, 42% of trip origins or destinations fell within ⅛ mile of a metro
station, and in Oakland 30% did. At lower levels of association, the rapid transit and light railin Cleveland and BRT in Indianapolis (Figures 30c and 30d, respectively) saw less than 20%
of scooter trips starting or ending within ⅛ mile. In all these cities, three-quarters or more ofscooter trips (and as high as 99%) started or ended within 1 mile of major public transit services.

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Transit and Micromobility

66   Transit and Micromobility(a). Oakland, CA.

(b). Arlington County, VA.

(c). Cleveland, OH. (Note: BRT is the top line.)

Figure 30.   Number of trips within 1/8 , 1/4 , 1/2 , and 1 mile of major transit
stations.
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Transit and Micromobility

Implications for Transit Agencies   67(d). Indianapolis, IN.

(e). Baltimore, MD.
Source: Populus analysis of dockless shared-scooter trip data.

Figure 30.  (Continued).

Standing out among these transit systems is the BRT in Cleveland, which includes threeroutes throughout the city with over 100 stops, and had 68% of scooter trips within ⅛ mile.
Like a more traditional bus route, Cleveland’s BRT has frequent stops, particularly in the dense,
well-connected areas that typically support more scooter activity. It is unclear whether the highproportion of nearby scooter trips was actually being used to connect to transit; however, given
the moderate levels of scooter activity near Cleveland’s other transit stops, it seems unlikely thatthe BRT is unique in attracting an extraordinary number of riders. More likely the data are justshowing trips that are in the same destination-dense corridors but not necessarily connecting.
Also possibly confounding the analysis is Cleveland’s policy requiring that scooters be rebalanced
to locations within commercial districts and near transit stations, bus stops, recreation centers,
libraries, and parks. It is difficult to disentangle the distribution requirements to transit stations
from what is observed with the origins and destinations location data.

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Transit and Micromobility

68   Transit and Micromobility

In Baltimore, the pattern of usage appears to differ from the other cities. Referring to Figure 30e,areas of high scooter use do not appear to line up with the location of Metro, light rail, or MARC
stations. In terms of proximity to transit, the curve of the distance to transit lines is more
gradual and rises to lower peaks (less than 60%) than in the other regions, indicating a smaller
proportion of trips even at some remove from transit but still potentially connecting to it.
In fact, only 2% to 6% of trips started or ended within ⅛ mile of any of the transit stations,and this range only rises to 4% to 15% within ¼ mile of a station. The areas experiencing moretrip starts and ends are located around the Inner Harbor, along main north–south corridors,
and around some of the universities in the city. These locations do not line up with where
non-bus transit is located. Baltimore does have one of the more popular scooter programs
observed, but acting as a first- or last-mile solution may not be one of the main use cases forshared scooter users there.

Changes in Use of Transit and Other Modes
Since the researchers cannot say strictly from the analysis illustrated in the previous section
whether the addition of shared scooters changed transit use, survey data can help inform theunderstanding of scooter user behavior. The metro area survey specifically asked users how
their use of transit and other modes had changed since they started using shared scooters.
Across metro areas (and again using frequency-weighted measures), the largest percentage ofscooter users said they saw either no change, more use, or significantly more use of transit since
they began using shared scooters (see Figure 31).
However, approximately 20% to 30% of scooter users indicated they were using transit lessor significantly less often than before. Given these responses, it is reasonable to say that for some

Figure 31.   Scooter user response to how their transit use
behavior changed since they started using shared scooters.

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Transit and Micromobility

Implications for Transit Agencies   69people, scooters have replaced or reduced public transit trips (as also suggested in Figure 25).
For others, the addition of scooters may have increased public transit use because it enables
them to more quickly and easily access transit.

Funding/Financing Impacts, Civil Rights,
and Other Agency Concerns
Transit agencies may struggle to understand the potential risks and benefits of leveraging,
partnering, and actively managing shared micromobility services. Transit agencies need more
information on the experiences of their peers and the potential funding, civil rights, and service
quality implications of a growing micromobility market. This section summarizes three of the
key risk areas for transit agencies. This analysis is not comprehensive but investigates key
implications for transit agencies in greater detail.
• Funding and financial implications – Transit agencies weigh the costs and benefits offunding micromobility infrastructure and subsidizing services to encourage their use, andthus possibly increasing ridership and revenue for the public transit system. Transit agencies
have limited operational funds to invest in new service types, but capital funds can be used
to support micromobility infrastructure.
• Civil rights and social equity implications – Transit agencies are federally required to ensure
equitable access to their programs but lack specific guidance from the FTA on how that applies
to agency partnerships with micromobility services. Transit agencies seeking mobilitymanager status must consider ways to help transform micromobility services from a private,permitted amenity that is available to those who can access and pay for it to a public mobility
option that breaks down systemic barriers to mobility and access.
• Transit rider experience implications – Whether or not they are operated in partnershipwith transit agencies, shared micromobility services have the potential to benefit transit riders’experience by alleviating peak-period crowding on transit (Pucher and Buehler 2009) andrider demand for bringing devices on board. However, shared micromobility services could
also reduce the quality of the rider experience if device parking and use are not well plannedin and around stations and stops. Further, the current digital experience of trip planning,booking, and payment is disaggregated.
As the global micromobility industry evolves, its full effects on transit agencies and the services
they provide are not yet known. This section uses current research or evaluation outcomes(where available) to demonstrate the range of possible micromobility impacts on transit agency
operations and customer experience.

Funding and Financing Implications
Micromobility has positive and negative effects on transit agency funding and financing.
Micromobility has potential as a first-/last-mile transit access mode, particularly in major urban
areas (Lime 2019). The first-/last-mile use case supports transit ridership and can increase thefrequency of transit use, thus increasing an agency’s fare-box revenue. However, micromobility
may also replace shorter transit trips, such as in cases where taking a bike or e-scooter for shortdistances is more convenient and time efficient than taking a bus or train. Santa Monica’s 2019
shared mobility survey found that 4% of e-scooter trips would have otherwise been made bytransit (Santa Monica 2019a). Similarly, the Populus Groundtruth survey data provided in
Chapter 3 show the proportion of scooter trips that displace public transit at between 0.5%
and 10%, depending on the market.
Public Subsidies for Micromobility Operations.   Some cities are contemplating publicly
subsidizing shared micromobility services to reduce rider trip costs (particularly for riders

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70   Transit and Micromobility

with low incomes), to create a market for micromobility in underserved and disadvantaged areas,
and to support the long-term financial sustainability of these services. Many dock-based bikeshare systems have received public support, and cities and transit agencies could further extend
this level of subsidization so that newer micromobility systems—such as dockless bike ande-scooter share systems—can scale and provide more options when and where people need themand at potentially lower prices in some circumstances. Subsidies could be used to encourage
broader use of active transportation and public transit, and ultimately, a long-term mode shift.
Some cities initially aimed to have bikeshare systems be self-sustaining and funded throughrevenue, but due to the expense of operations, subsidies remained necessary, especially to expand
services into underserved areas. Private interest in operating bikeshare systems without government subsidy has increased and accelerated with the introduction of free-floating micromobility
technology. However, a city takes on inherent risks when it shifts from a publicly owned andoperated mobility model to a privately owned one. As with any other contracted service, if theprivately owned micromobility operator goes out of business or simply leaves a market, a jurisdiction can be left without any micromobility service. The risk of operator exit could be greater
without an operating contract or subsidy.
Limited Operational Funding Sources.   Operational funding for micromobility systems
is harder to come by for cities and transit agencies. For the purposes of federal funding, theFTA does not consider bikeshare a form of public transportation, and it does not define micromobility specifically (FTA 2020d). Certain capital costs associated with bikesharing, such as
the cost of installing docking stations and infrastructure, though not of the bikes themselves,
can be covered by FTA funding programs when functionally related to public transportation.
The Central Midlands Regional Transit Authority (COMET) in Columbia, SC, provides anexample of a transit agency using FTA formula funds to support the expansion of bikeshare
as a first-/last-mile amenity for its riders. The agency’s approach is described in Chapter 5.
The FTA provides some guidance on capital or operational funding eligibility for e-scootersand other micromobility services (FTA 2020a; FTA 2020b). Given the potential for sharedmicromobility services beyond bikeshare to support public transportation, as docked bikeshare does, transit agencies may benefit from further guidance and new sources of operational
funding if they are to financially support micromobility services.
Funding Examples.   Many docked and privately operated bikeshare systems, such as Bay
Wheels (San Francisco Bay Area) and Citi Bike (New York City), rely on advertising revenue for
operational funding. Capital Bikeshare in Washington, D.C., and Divvy Bikeshare in Chicago
were initially operated or capitalized with public funding, including local and federal funds.
Capital Bikeshare still operates with a public subsidy, but in 2019, Divvy shifted to private ownership with Lyft through a 9-year contract. Lyft is investing $50 million in Divvy and is additionallyrequired to make annual payments to the city, starting at $6 million and increasing by 4% eachyear. The city of Chicago and Lyft share revenue (Buckley 2019).
A number of examples exist of micromobility systems subsidized through transit agency
partnerships. Micromobility partnerships that are underway could provide guidance on howtransit agencies could subsidize micromobility in the future, especially in markets whereoperators would have trouble operating profitably. For example, in the Greater Dayton RTA’s
partnership with e-scooter operator Spin, RTA provides staff time (device pickup, charging,and drop-off), while Spin provides the vehicles themselves and operates the digital platform.
The staff time provided by RTA offsets Spin’s overall operating costs, enabling it to operate in
Dayton, which it would have been unable to do otherwise. Another example is Kansas City Area
Transportation Authority’s (KCATA) funding of bike and scooter share through a contract
and partnership with a local nonprofit (RideKC Bike 2020). Los Angeles’s docked Metro Bike

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Implications for Transit Agencies   71Share system is funded by LA Metro (through the region’s Measure R sales tax revenue) and is
explicitly part of its transit system (LA Metro 2020a). Metro’s bikeshare subsidy is about $8 per
ride (LA Metro 2019b). The COMET, in Columbia, SC, uses FTA formula funds to buy stations
and support transit rider use of docked bikeshare. These partnerships are described in greater
detail in Chapter 5.
These examples do not cover direct-to-consumer subsidies, which is a model being used tosupport first-/last-mile connections by ride-hailing companies. In those examples, such as the
Sacramento Regional Transit District’s (SacRT) 2016 pilot to alleviate parking demand at its
Golden 1 sports arena, and Solano Transportation Authority’s (STA) ongoing pilot to connect
county employees with regional rail, the transit agency directly subsidizes each eligible customer
fare. Customers typically use a ride code within the app to access the subsidy; at the end of themonth, the ride-hailing company invoices the transit agency for all eligible trips in the subsidized
program (Curtis et al. 2019).
This subsidy model could be used for a micromobility system. However, because a transit
agency cannot digitally verify the trips, this approach requires a high level of trust between theprivate operators and the governing agency. An invoice-based subsidy system therefore requires
a considerable amount of staff time to verify. The only way for transit agencies to scale such a
program is to use a data-sharing protocol, such as the MDS, to link known micromobility trips
to known transit trips in the data architecture. From the customer perspective, this could
mean booking and paying both for transit and micromobility trips within the same application.
Only those micromobility trips that truly serve the purpose of the program (e.g., first-/last-mileconnectivity) would be subsidized.
Infrastructure Funding
The public and private sectors have an interest in developing micromobility infrastructuresuch as parking corrals and protected bike lanes. Guidance published by local municipalities
and the FTA established before the growth of dockless micromobility models remains relevant
and should be referenced. Pioneering cities like Long Beach, Los Angeles, and Seattle haveexperimented with micromobility infrastructure to achieve better outcomes in public-space
management.
Private companies have yet to show the capacity to fund public micromobility infrastructure
at scale (and likely will never do so), so transit agencies and local jurisdictions should partner
to improve infrastructure. With improved infrastructure, transit agencies can reap the benefitsof more seamless connections between transit and micromobility services. If micromobility
users are supported with safe routes to destinations with dedicated lanes and easy-to-locate
parking locations, transit agencies could see ridership and revenue increase as well as improved
customer satisfaction.
Case Studies.   Examples of private-sector infrastructure funding are limited, and the private
sector’s approach has changed over the last few years. In 2018, Bird created its own voluntary
program to pay cities $1 per scooter per day to contribute to local micromobility infrastructure investments (Schmitt 2019). However, by early 2019, Bird ended the voluntary program(Schmitt 2019). Through their permit programs, some cities now require a similar fee to support
micromobility infrastructure funding. And while the per-scooter-per-day voluntary payment
from scooter companies did not last, at least one company is now piloting the use of its own
charging stations, which controls its operational costs by reducing rebalancing needs andsupports cities’ goals to organize micromobility devices and keep sidewalks clear.
Portland.  PBOT collects a per-scooter-trip surcharge. Revenue collected from the surcharge, fees, and penalties funds the city’s New Mobility Account, which covers costs related

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72   Transit and Micromobility

to program administration and enforcement, safe travel infrastructure, and expanded andaffordable access (PBOT 2020a, 2020b).
Phoenix and San Francisco.   Scooter company Spin installed “Spin Hubs” in Phoenix—
docking stations that also charge scooters. Spin was the only operational scooter company
in the city’s yearlong pilot, which ran through September 2020. The hubs were operational in
two other pilots on private property in Ann Arbor, MI, and Washington, D.C. (Stone 2020;
Teale 2020). In spring of 2020, the company announced an extension of the concept to a larger
transit-adjacent mobility hub concept, located alongside private bike parking at the Caltrain
SF Bike Hub, operated by Tranzito, in San Francisco (Skinny Labs/Spin 2020).

Civil Rights and Social Equity Implications
Shared micromobility services have the potential to increase access and mobility. However,this outcome is not guaranteed for all segments of the population or in all geographies or timesof day, and left unmanaged, micromobility has the potential to exacerbate historical inequalities.
While bike- and scooter-sharing companies have made voluntary investments to broaden thereach of their services, local incentives or requirements are often required to ensure access inneighborhoods with few transportation options, to ensure reservation and payment options forpeople without smartphones, and to ensure options for people with disabilities. Research into
scooter-share perceptions and use indicated that public support for micromobility was higher
among low-income groups (Clewlow 2019a), but several cities’ pilot evaluations since then haveindicated difficulty in reaching this population through low-income fare programs (see PBOT2019 and Santa Monica 2019a, for example). There are implications for transit agencies considering partnerships with micromobility services because they have federal requirements toensure access for people with disabilities and to all regardless of race, color, or national origin,and because communities of color are disproportionately low income.
Background on FTA Guidance
While the FTA provides broad guidance on the relevance of bikesharing for transit agencies,
this guidance is limited to general information and the cases where FTA funding can be used forbikesharing capital costs. As of early summer 2021, FTA had not issued guidance concerning
any other micromobility modes. In an interview with the research team, representatives from
FTA’s legal and innovation groups indicated that they had not received any inbound requests
from transit agencies seeking clarified guidance on transit agencies’ roles and responsibilities as
related to partnerships with other micromobility modes (FTA 2020e).
The FTA does not interpret micromobility—including public bikeshare systems—as public
transportation.
The statutory definition (49 U.S.C. § 5302) of public transportation is “regular, continuing shared-ridesurface transportation services that are open to the general public or a segment of the general public definedby age, disability, or low-income” (FTA 2020a).

Public transportation is considered “shared ride,” in the sense that multiple customers use thesame vehicle concurrently. Bikeshare and other micromobility modes are considered “shareduse” because individuals do not share the same ride on micromobility devices but instead
access a shared fleet of vehicles at different times. There are no plans to adjust or reinterpretthe statutory definition of public transportation. Any changes to the wording of the statutory
definition of public transportation would require an act of Congress. Under this definitionand current guidance, there is also no requirement (nor means) for micromobility rides to be
included in National Transit Database (NTD) reporting, even if provided on services subsidized
or directly operated by a transit agency.

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Implications for Transit Agencies   73However, the FTA considers bicycle facilities and improvements to be “functionally related” totransit when they are located within a 3-mile radius of a transit station or bus stop and, therefore,
considers them eligible capital investments for some FTA funding programs (49 USC 5302).
The ADA and Expanding Micromobility to People with Disabilities
The ADA applies to transit agency services regardless of whether transit services are supportedwith federal funding. The Micromobility and the Built Environment section of Chapter 2 discusses possible access conflicts when micromobility devices block wheelchair and pedestrian
access to transit stations and stops. Public transit agencies clearly understand their responsibility
under the ADA to maintain access to their services; however, transit agencies lack guidance
regarding the eligibility of federal capital funds for micromobility infrastructure (beyond bikeshare). Further, the ADA applies to transit agency actions regardless of whether federal fundingis used. Therefore, when engaged as a micromobility funding or operational partner, transit
agencies could benefit from explicit guidance regarding adaptive micromobility requirements.
Though transit agencies lack specific guidance, some cities have experimented with programs
that include accessible micromobility devices. Adaptive micromobility vehicles include handcycles for individuals with no or limited leg movement; three- and four-wheel cycles for those
who need more stability or support; hand-and-foot–powered cycles, tandem cycles, and cycles
of smaller sizes. Additionally, the private sector’s introduction of e-bikes and e-scooters into
the micromobility market has also increased the accessibility of micromobility for people withcertain types of disabilities. Individuals who find it difficult to power traditional bicycles
unassisted may have an easier time using e-bikes and e-scooters (SDOT 2019a).
Case Studies
Seattle DOT’s Adaptive Cycles Program.   SDOT found that it had difficulty incentivizing
private micromobility operators to provide adaptive micromobility vehicles during its initial
free-floating bikeshare permit program in 2018 (SDOT 2018). In the following permit period,
SDOT partnered with the nonprofit Outdoors for All to provide adaptive cycles for Seattle residents. Though offered at limited times and locations, Outdoors for All provided free rentals ofadaptive cycles throughout the summer of 2019 and brought adaptive cycles to multiple eventsin Seattle (SDOT 2019b).
Oakland Adaptive Cycles and Scooters Programs.   The city of Oakland launched a similar
program with a partnership between the Bay Area Outreach & Recreation Program (BORP), an
adaptive sports nonprofit, and Bay Wheels (Lyft) to provide access to adaptive cycles. Two daysa week during the summer of 2019, adaptive bikes were available to any person with disabilities
with Lyft’s Bay Wheels app. Additionally, Oakland made adaptive options a requirement for its
e-scooter permit program in 2019. Lime has provided e-scooters with a seat, intended for riders
unable to use standing e-scooters (Rudick 2020).
The private market provides accessible micromobility vehicles, beyond e-bikes and e-scooters,in limited markets. Cities struggle to find the best way to operationalize a shared, adaptive
micromobility service that supports the general transportation needs of people with disabilities.
However, the Oakland example demonstrates that with the growth of e-scooters, we may see
more adaptive e-scooter devices enter the market, particularly in major urban markets. Transit
agencies that partner with micromobility operators or operate their own micromobility systems
will benefit from cities’ experiences piloting adaptive devices.
Title VI and Other Racial and Social Equity Concerns
Title VI of the United States Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects people from discrimination
based on race, color, and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial

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74   Transit and Micromobility

assistance. For transit agencies, this covers any activities funded by the FTA (although there arelimited FTA operational funding programs).
While the FTA provides guidance on how to apply Title VI generally to all transit agency
programs, available guidance is not explicit on requirements related to micromobility operations. In a 2016 “Dear Colleague” letter that serves as key federal guidance on transit agencies’
civil rights responsibilities regarding shared mobility, then U.S. DOT Secretary Anthony
Foxx wrote:
Given that communities of color are disproportionally low-income, each public transit agency has
an obligation under Title VI to ensure that alternative methods of both payment and reservations
are available. Most TNCs [transportation network companies] currently lack accessible vehicles for
persons with disabilities, including those who use wheelchairs. When your agency enters into a covered
partnership with a TNC, however, you must ensure that your service is accessible to and usable bypersons along the full spectrum of disabilities, including both physical and intellectual disabilities(U.S. DOT 2016).

The letter references “service operated under contract or other arrangement or relationshipwith private entities,” but does not name bikeshare, scooter share, or micromobility specifically.
Similarly, most of FTA’s shared mobility guidance focuses on the ADA and Title VI implicationsof agency partnerships with ride-hailing and microtransit services. Given the different nature of
micromobility as compared to ride-hail or demand-responsive transit options, transit agencies
could benefit from more specific guidance regarding micromobility.
However, regarding the applicability of Title VI to public transit and shared mobility inways beyond what is specifically discussed in its guidance, the FTA does state (emphasis added):
The Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1987 clarified the broad, institution-wide application of Title VI.
Title VI covers all of the operations of covered entities without regard to whether specific portionsof the covered program or activity are federally funded. The term “program or activity” means all of
the operations of a department, agency, special purpose district, or government; or the entity of such Stateor local government that distributes such assistance and each such department or agency to which theassistance is extended, in the case of assistance to a State or local government.
Therefore, compliance with this Circular does not relieve a recipient from the requirements andresponsibilities of the DOT Title VI regulation at 49 CFR part 21, or any other requirements under other
Federal agencies’ Title VI regulations, as applicable. This Circular only provides guidance on the transitrelated aspects of an entity’s activities. Recipients are responsible for ensuring that all of their activities
are in compliance with Title VI. In other words, a recipient may engage in activities not described in
the Circular, such as ridesharing programs, roadway incident response programs, or other programs
not funded by FTA, and those programs must also be administered in a nondiscriminatory manner(FTA 2020c).

Beyond Title VI, cities and transit agencies recognize their role in ensuring racial and social
equity. As such, jurisdictions regulating or operating micromobility systems have built permit
requirements and incentives to expand access beyond owners of smartphones and to lowincome communities. Many cities require or provide cash payment options, materials in different
languages, non-smartphone access, low-income discount programs, and geographic distribution to underserved areas. Cities are still experimenting with different policy levers to achieve
racial and social equity goals, and most recognize that there is a gap in how their regulationstranslate to outcomes (Santa Monica 2019b).

Rider Experience Implications
Some of the impacts of micromobility on transit rider experience are not yet well understood. The impact of newer micromobility services on transit operations is not well studied, but
guidance on designing for bike/transit integration is well established. In 2018, APTA published

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Implications for Transit Agencies   75

“Bicycle Transit Integration: A Practical Transit Agency Guide to Bicycle Integration andEquitable Mobility,” which states (emphasis added):
Business access and transit (BAT) lanes function as on-street ROW for transit buses. These dedicatedbus lanes are intended to bypass automobile traffic and allow transit vehicles to run faster and maintainschedules during peak travel periods. On high traffic streets without bike lanes, cyclists may gravitate to
BAT lanes for relative safety. While these lower traffic volume lanes (compared with open traffic lanes)
may be attractive for cyclists, the presence of bicycles may interfere with on-time performance and bus
operations. On-street separation of bicycles from BAT lanes is generally recommended but sharing
BAT lanes may be appropriate in some instances, such as short connections with other bike routes,
lower-frequency routes or other unique instances (APTA 2018).

Shared micromobility services also have the potential to alleviate demand for personal micromobility devices on buses and trains. For example, Caltrain in the Bay Area is studying thispotential as it anticipates significant ridership growth over the next 20 years and already has
limited capacity for onboard devices. APTA encourages transit agencies to partner with bikeshare operators to produce consistent educational materials on the proper way to integrate
bikeshare with transit (APTA 2018), but the specific effect of shared micromobility availability
on rider demand for onboard personal devices has not been studied.
Digital Experience
Part of the rider experience comes from the set of digital tools individuals use to navigate amultimodal system. These tools include trip planning, booking, and payment. Often referred toas “mobility as a service,” or MaaS, this integration of the digital experience of multiple transportation modes has been posited as a strategy to generate transit ridership, use other sustainable modes, and improve the overall experience of the mobility system. The theory is that “byproviding tailored solutions to individual users according to their needs and those of the system
as a whole, MaaS enables not only more efficient usage of transport infrastructure, but also a
better customer experience” (Veerapanane et al. 2018, quoted in Smith et al. 2020, 163). To date,
implementation of MaaS has been limited to a few European pilots, such as Whim in Helsinki
and UbiGo in Sweden, but these pilots show promise for MaaS, at least partially due to theintegrated digital experience.
Case Studies
UbiGo – Sweden.   Implemented in Gothenburg as a 6-month pilot between November 2013
and April 2014, UbiGo created a booking, payment, subscription, and incentive platform fortransit, bikeshare, carshare, car rental, and taxis. UbiGo offered a monthly subscription formobility service packages and rewarded customers with points that could be redeemed for goods
and services. A study of the UbiGo pilot found that 44% of participants used private cars lessoften, and 46% used buses more often. Further, it showed a 50% decrease in private car usage
alongside increased use of all other modes except walking (Karlsson et al. 2017).
Whim – Finland.   Operational in Helsinki, Whim is a MaaS platform that combines taxis,
rental cars, bikeshare, and public transit and the ability to plan, book, and pay for trips. The
program offers several mobility subscription packages at different price points. A study ofcustomers’ mode choice in 2018 found that program participants were much more likely to
use transit than the general population (73% versus 48%), but that participants were much lesslikely to walk or bike than the general population (29% versus 44%). The study also examined
the link between bikeshare and transit and found evidence of multimodal trip-chaining. For
example, 12% of bike trips were taken within 30 minutes before a public transit trip, and 30% of
bike trips were taken within 90 minutes after a public transit trip (Ramboll 2019).

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CHAPTER 5

Agency–Micromobility
Partnership Approaches
Transit agencies engage with micromobility providers in a variety of ways, ranging from direct
subsidy of operation to informal relationships in which agencies and private operators collaborate without any exchange of funds or risk. As the micromobility marketplace continues to takeshape, new types of collaboration between cities, transit agencies, and private operators are
emerging to align mobility goals, sensibly regulate, and more effectively provide transit access.
City and transit agency partnership roles may depend on market characteristics such as
regional population, demographics, and transit ridership, as well as transit characteristics
such as mode or system size. In urban areas with bike- and scooter-supportive infrastructure
and large and willing customer bases, private operators are eager to deploy. In this case, city
DOTs take a regulatory approach, and transit agency partnerships focus on coordination
with the city to ensure station-area parking organization and rebalancing. In smaller markets,
where the demand for shared micromobility is lower, either cities or transit agencies mightlead with a partnership approach aimed at incentivizing private operators to launch in theirregion.
But in some markets, especially in areas with static or declining population, private vendors
may not be clamoring to enter the marketplace as they are in larger or more affluent metro areas.
Still, cities and transit agencies in these areas might decide that micromobility has worthwhile
public potential and seek to attract and actively shape the service in ways that are useful for
their particular needs. Dayton, OH, Kansas City, MO, and Pittsburgh, PA, described in thefollowing, provide examples of smaller-market agencies partnering with or funding private
operators to drive the creation of micromobility systems with strong ties to transit service.
Engagement between public agencies and micromobility providers falls along a spectrumof public/private partnership arrangements, from direct agency operation of micromobility
services to more laissez-faire/private-sector–dependent collaborations in which agencies havelittle or no control over the private operator’s activities. This chapter provides summaries of
how transit agencies of various types are working to ensure desired policy outcomes in partnerships throughout this spectrum.

Transit Agency–Led Operation or Integration of Services
Some transit agencies have taken the lead by creating their own market incentives or integrating micromobility operations into their transit systems. Partnerships with the greatest
level of agency control employ a vendor’s vehicles and technology platform, but almost all
aspects of ongoing operations, including customer support, rebalancing, charging, and otherfleet maintenance activities, remain the responsibility of the public agency or a closely allied
nonprofit.
76
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Transit and Micromobility

Agency–Micromobility Partnership Approaches    77RTA seems to have gone further than any other U.S. agency in its level of operational
involvement, but a number of transit agencies in cities large and small have worked closelywith micromobility vendors to create systems that are effectively extensions of the transit
system and are clearly marketed as such to the public.

RTA – Dayton, OH
In 2019, RTA partnered with e-scooter sharing operator Spin to provide service in the cityof Dayton. The unique partnership involves Spin providing the e-scooters and digital platform,
while RTA is responsible for the daily pickups, charging, and drop-offs of the scooters. This
allows for the agency to be fully responsive to any issues concerning e-scooter parking oraccess to transit stops (Metro Magazine 2019).
The arrangement evolved from an earlier bikeshare partnership in which the agency was
similarly heavily involved. In 2014, seeking to foster an integrated multimodal network
complementing fixed-route transit, RTA partnered with the local nonprofit Bike Miami Valley
to bring Link Dayton Bikeshare to the region. While operating partnerships between publicagencies and local nonprofits are fairly common in bikesharing, the Dayton arrangement was
unique in that the transit agency was the owner and operator of the service. RTA procured thebikes and dock equipment and provided day-to-day maintenance, while Bike Miami Valley
focused on customer service, marketing, and business management. On top of maintaining
the fleet, the RTA also provided bike repair services to the public out of a storefront in theagency’s downtown headquarters. In 2020, the system was to transition to a dockless, lock-to
system and would add 100 e-bikes (increasing the fleet size by 50%). In addition to the roughly
2.5 full-time employees it employs to handle maintenance and the bike shop, the agency
provided an annual subsidy to the bikeshare system of about $250,000 (APTA 2020).
When dockless scooters swept through the country in 2019, RTA applied the same agencyoperated-and-maintained model to a partnership with the scooter provider Spin (Skinny Labs/
Spin 2019b)—a model that appears to be unique among transit agencies in the United States.
When the city of Dayton was working on authorizing legislation for scooters, RTA worked
closely with it to require that any provider permitted to operate in the city must provide a public
API and integrate with the city’s chosen mobility app provider (Dayton, Department of Public
Works Division of Civil Engineering 2019).

KCATA – Kansas City
In 2019, KCATA approved an agreement with the local nonprofit BikeWalkKC to operate thecity’s hybrid docked/dockless bike and scooter sharing, as well as to brand all devices with
RideKC, the transit system’s branding (BikeWalkKC 2019). In addition to the growth of thesystem with 150 new bikes, the partnership allowed BikeWalkKC to provide combinationbike and bus passes that allow unlimited 60-minute bike and local bus rides each month(KCATA 2019).
In an example of services marketed as “powered by” a technology provider, RideKC electric
devices are marketed with the branding of platform/vehicle vendor Drop Mobility alongside thetransit agency’s branding on vehicles, stations, and marketing materials (RideKC Bike 2020).

The COMET/Blue Bike SC – Columbia, SC
Columbia, SC, a city of about 130,000 residents at the core of a region of less than a million,
launched docked bikeshare in fall 2018, with 135 bikes (a mix of conventional and electric) and

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78   Transit and Micromobility

18 stations for the program’s first phase. The system was equipped and operated by the Canadianvendor Bewegen Technologies, and BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina was the system’s
title sponsor (Trainor 2018). Soon after launch, the region’s transit agency, the COMET (Central
Midlands Transit), a bus-only system that provides about 2.5 million trips per year, enteredinto a joint partnership with the operator and the city to provide first-/last-mile access to its
customers via the bikeshare system (Trainor 2019).
Under the partnership, which began operating in late 2019, COMET riders get unlimited
45-minute bikeshare rides on days when they pay a bus fare. After initially linking their transit
fare card with the bikeshare system, users unlock bikes electronically via an app or by tapping acard bearing a daily, multiday, or multi-ride transit pass. Alternatively, riders who pay with cash
can ask bus drivers for a unique code, akin to a paper transfer, that will unlock bikes for the day(COMET 2020). Despite the lack of chain of custody for bikes checked out by cash riders witha code, the system has not experienced any equipment loss, according to COMET’s executive
director (Andoh 2021).
The agency used a portion of its FTA 5307 Urbanized Area Formula Grant funds to support
the purchase of bikeshare stations and support transit rider access, activities permitted as“associated transit improvements” under the grant. The agency will dedicate up to $250,000
for the purchase of 10 stations in the system and will pay an annual $70,000 for transit rider
access (Trainor 2019). Under the joint agreement, the city and COMET co-manage the systemand together make management decisions on station siting and overall operations. The city
holds the master contract and handles procurement and right-of-way decisions and permitting,while COMET oversees the transit integration; day-to-day operations and maintenance are
Bewegen’s responsibility (Andoh 2021). COMET-sponsored stations and kiosks prominently
feature the agency’s branding, with additional advertising and marketing materials on buses,
stops, and at the system’s main transfer station.

Other Agency-Affiliated Operational Arrangements:
Metro Bikeshare (LA) and MetroBike (Austin)
Several agencies contract with a third-party vendor, separate from the equipment provider,for fleet operations, rather than using their own employees. LA’s Metro Bikeshare, administered by the transit agency, is operated by Bicycle Transit Systems using BCycle equipment(Metro Bike Share 2020). The system has stations and bikes in the city of Los Angeles, North
Hollywood, Santa Monica, and other LA County cities. From its start, the system was envisioned
as a regional service closely identified with the LA County transit agency rather than with aparticular municipality (Freemark 2015; LA Metro 2015).
In July 2020, Austin’s Capital Metro entered into an agreement to take over co-managementof the city’s existing 500-bike docked bikeshare system under a partnership with the city ofAustin and the system’s operator, Bike Share of Austin (Capital Metropolitan Transportation
Authority 2020). With support from the agency of up to $2.25 million over 7 years, the system
will be administratively folded into the transit agency, rebranded as MetroBike, and incorporated
into the transit agency’s app (along with bundled pricing in future phases) as part of a broader
technological update to the system; there will also be an addition of 200 e-bikes to the fleet (Gates
2020; Thornton 2020a). Bike Share of Austin will continue to handle daily operations, while thetransit agency will take over branding, planning, and programming of the system. The system’s
physical assets, which were originally purchased using Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality(CMAQ) funds, will be owned by the city, which will also manage right-of-way as it relates tothe system (Ballentine 2020; Thornton 2020b).

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Transit and Micromobility

Agency–Micromobility Partnership Approaches    79Subsidizing Specific Ride Types or Creating Connections
Several agencies have sought to take advantage of the popularity of micromobility to sub­sidize or provide services at times and places where transit is not available or to create new
first-/last-mile options in their operational areas.

Sacramento RT – Sacramento, CA
As an incentive for passengers to link micromobility with transit, SacRT offered fare-freelight-rail trips in December 2019 for anyone who completed a JUMP (shared e-bike) trip within
the SacRT service area on the same day. During the program, riders could provide their JUMP
receipt to a light-rail fare inspector in lieu of payment. Additionally, the SacRT had nine JUMP
charging stations at light-rail stations. This incentive was only in place for a short time, but it
provides a model for a market incentive policy to enhance first-/last-mile connectivity withmicromobility and could potentially be expanded more broadly (SacRT 2019).

SMART – Sonoma and Marin Counties, CA
In partnership with SCTA and TAM, Marin County’s SMART is planning to integrate a new
dockless bikeshare system into its rail transit system (Fixler 2020; Prado 2018). This $800,000
pilot received funding through the regional MPO, the MTC. The MTC grant does not cover theongoing operating costs of the system, so SMART sought a sponsor and partner to help defray
operator costs. In February 2020, SCTA and TAM approved a multiyear pilot with Gotcha
Mobility to provide a hybrid docked/dockless shared pedal-assist e-bike system. The program
will offer a fleet of 300 e-bikes near SMART stations along the 45-mile line. Additional pickup/
drop-off locations are planned for popular locations along the rail corridor. Riders will also beable to link their bikeshare accounts to the Bay Area’s Clipper card system, which SMART uses
to collect fares. The system will provide bicycles at SMART train stations and key destinations
along the rail corridor. The goals are “to increase access to transit, promote active transportationand provide a direct first and last mile to SMART, and to give people another option for travelin Marin County” (Prado 2018).

City–Transit Agency Policy Collaboration
Another approach is to use policy levers, enforced through local governments’ permitting
and regulatory powers, to encourage multiple entities’ desired public outcomes without direct
outlay or subsidy of private operators by public agencies. City/transit agency partnerships, withformalized, regular means of communication and shared goals, enable more effective planning.
While this is a well-established approach in other areas of mutual city/transit agency interest,
fewer examples of this type of collaboration exist in relation to micromobility.

Regional Transportation District – Denver
In its strategic plan “Denver Moves: Transit,” the City and County of Denver notes thattransit agencies share interests with cities concerning micromobility infrastructure and policy(Denver 2019b). The city collaborated with the Regional Transportation District (RTD) to put
these shared interests into action in a 2018 micromobility pilot.
Denver’s 2018 dockless mobility pilot (covering scooters and e-bikes) built on an existing“transit amenity program” to promote vehicle placement at transit stops and had the explicit

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Transit and Micromobility

80   Transit and Micromobility

goal of encouraging transit use (Denver 2018). The permit states “vehicles are to be readily
available at transit and bus stops in the public right-of-way” (i.e., within 25 feet of the stop/station
sign, if a designated parking area is not provided) (Denver 2018). Operators were required torebalance vehicles back to transit and bus stops throughout the day and to reset vehicles to thesame locations no later than 7 a.m. daily (NACTO 2018). At the same time, micromobility
vehicles must not impede pedestrian access or boarding/departure of transit users. The city’s
program was matched by a separate license program by the RTD that provided for painting
designated micromobility parking at transit properties in Denver and also at RTD-owned
locations elsewhere in its operating area (Figure 32) (Denver 2018; Skilling 2018).

Mobility Hubs
Transit agencies can also partner with cities to plan, build, and operate a system of mobility
hubs. Mobility hubs colocate micromobility and other shared mobility services, community
amenities, and electric mobility charging infrastructure (among other features) at rail stations
and high-frequency bus stops.
Metro Transit – Minneapolis
In Minneapolis, Metro Transit is collaborating with the city of Minneapolis, Hennepin County,
mobility service providers, and neighborhood organizations to pilot a mobility hub program.
The mobility hubs are intended not only to enhance first- and last-mile connections, but also
to serve as centers of placemaking for residents to gather and learn about new ways to travelin the city (Gray 2019). More recently, Met Council (the Twin Cities’ metropolitan planning
organization and Metro Transit’s governing body) issued a request for proposals (RFP) for
mobility hub implementation planning across the Metro Transit operating area, with the goalof aligning the Minneapolis mobility hub efforts with separate approaches in St. Paul andelsewhere in the region.
LADOT and LA Metro – Los Angeles
LADOT and LA Metro have developed in-depth concepts for mobility hubs throughout
the Los Angeles Region (Urban Design Studio 2019). At writing of this report, Metro and
LADOT had released an RFP for their Integrated Mobility Hubs project. The project seeks toprovide individuals with mobility choices to accommodate seamless trips to and from origins
and destinations through mobility hubs at existing Metro rail stations. There is also a focus on

Source: RTD Denver.

Figure 32.   A designated micromobility parking area
at an RTD station in Denver.

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Transit and Micromobility

Agency–Micromobility Partnership Approaches    81increasing mobility access for low-income individuals and the recipients of government assistance. The infrastructure and service components of each mobility hub will vary and be context
specific, but partnership between LADOT, Metro, and other transit agencies will be essential forthe success of the project (LA Metro 2019c).

Toward Full Modal Integration
Move 412 and the Pittsburgh Mobility Collective: Micromobility andMobility Hubs Within a Comprehensive Consortium-Based Approach
Pittsburgh placed mobility hubs at the heart of a larger consortium-based approach to providing a multimodal suite of public and private mobility services in a pilot branded Move 412.
Led by the Department of Mobility and Infrastructure (DOMI) in collaboration with the Port
Authority of Allegheny County (PAAC, the transit agency), Healthy Ride bikeshare, and thecity’s parking authority, the program brings together a group of private mobility and IT service
providers called the Pittsburgh Mobility Collective (PMC). The PMC, which came together in2019 in response to a competitive process run by DOMI (Skinny Labs/Spin 2019a), comprises
the following private providers and services:• Spin (shared scooters and e-bikes)• Swiftmile (mobility hubs with charging, colocated with transit stops and other mobility

services)• Zipcar (station-based carshare)• Waze Carpool (ad-hoc carpooling)• Transit app (integrated multimodal trip planning and payment)• Masabi (transit fare payment)• Ford Mobility (data analytics backend) (Skinny Labs/Spin 2019a; Move 412 2020)

A network of 50 mobility hubs will be sited to extend service coverage of the existing transit
and docked bikeshare networks. In bringing together a variety of services, along with multimodal trip planning and payment and physical infrastructure, Move 412 is getting close to acomplete MaaS approach. The model creates something of a walled garden, with micromobility
operations in the city to be permitted only under this program. Along with Dayton, this provides
an example of a public agency–led, intentional path for bringing micromobility into a market
that private operators may have been slower to reach on their own (Bliss 2019b). The program is
an expression of DOMI’s guiding principles, which state that all the department’s work should
be in service of five core aspirations: (1) zero road deaths or serious injuries, (2) access to fresh
food within 20 minutes of every home and without the need for a car, (3) short trips are easily
and enjoyably achieved without a motor vehicle, (4) all streets and intersections are capable ofbeing intuitively navigated by an adolescent, and (5) the cost of housing plus transportation
should not exceed 45% of household income (Move 412 2020).

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Transit and Micromobility

CHAPTER 6

Suggestions for Further Research

To inform transit agency actions on micromobility, conducting further research on anumber of questions related to micromobility, transit, and various strategies for improving
their integration could be considered.
• The transit rider experience impacts of shared micromobility have not been widely studied.

As with personal micromobility devices, transit agencies have operational interests related
to onboard devices, customer circulation around parked devices, micromobility use in thesame right-of-way as transit operations, and the digital experience of riders. These subjects
could be explored in future research. Specific areas of inquiry include:– The interaction of micromobility use with transit operations as the modes and markets
mature;– The effect of shared micromobility on customer demand for bringing personal bikes orscooters on board transit vehicles; and– The transit ridership benefits of multimodal integrated trip planning, booking, and payment.
• A growing body of evidence, including the survey data in this study, suggests that scooters
are attracting a different cohort of riders than more bicycle-centered micromobility has done
thus far, with younger riders, women, people from lower-income households, and non-white
people appearing to favor scooters over micromobility generally. Further research could use
data on these nontraditional users’ ongoing ridership (as opposed to adoption rates) andusage as the modes mature.
• In the regions where scooter trips were observed for this study, it was possible to say that
trips were starting and ending near transit, but the data limited the ability to make stronger
conclusions about the links between modes. Future studies could examine trip chaining andmode shift to provide a clearer picture of these connections.
• As the COVID-19 pandemic subsides and its longer-term impacts on transportation become
clearer, the public understanding would benefit from an analysis of micromobility’s role
during the crisis—especially during lockdown periods and when widespread working fromhome began.
• Other areas of research interest are:
– Outcomes from explicit transit agency–micromobility integrations, especially in smallermarkets;– The effectiveness of city, transit agency, and vendor attempts to increase access for people
with disabilities, people with low incomes, and other disadvantaged groups through micromobility regulation and partnerships;– The adequacy of permit fees and fines to support enhancements to micromobility infrastructure;– Outcomes from U.S. experiments with mobility hubs since most research to date comesfrom European implementations but an increasing number of jurisdictions have begun
working on their own interpretations.
82
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Transit and Micromobility

CHAPTER 7

Partnership Toolkit

As this study has established, transit agencies and cities have differing roles and interests
when it comes to interacting with private micromobility operators. In short, cities regulate,while transit agencies partner. In most cases, the overall parameters regarding whether andhow micromobility operates in a jurisdiction will be out of a transit agency’s hands, so theagency must work closely with municipal departments to ensure that transit agency interests
are considered as part of micromobility’s regulation.
For public transit agencies that are interested in going further and pursuing more direct
engagement with micromobility providers, this Partnership Toolkit proposes a set of concrete
steps that will help agencies decide on why and how to build micromobility partnerships,
define goals, and measure success. (In addition to distilling the findings of the main body ofthis study, the Partnership Toolkit draws on partnership frameworks and recommendations
outlined in several TCRP and SUMC publications: Curtis et al. 2019; Gururaja and Faust 2019;
Peterson 2019; Murphy et al. 2019; and Yanocha et al. 2018.)
In addition to suggested steps and decision-support tools for establishing a micromobility
partnership, this chapter also includes a concise list of the case studies and pilot examples
in the report as well as links to key partnership and procurement documents, agreements,
administrative rules and regulations, and statutes that are available.

Toolkit
1. Prepare for Partnership
Decision Tree: Whether to Pursue a Partnership
Figure 33 provides a suggested means for assembling the information and making the initialdecision on whether a micromobility partnership is something that makes sense to pursue.
Each of the nodes is described later in this step, and boxes marked “checklist” refer to supporting
checklists and explanations on the following pages of the toolkit. If a “go” decision is indicated,the checklists will provide key information needed to support decisions in later steps.
Define the public goals or policy objectives a micromobility project would help reachor the agency challenge it will help address.   (A fuller treatment of these goals and policy
objectives can be found in Chapter 2: Regulatory and Policy Review, particularly in the Transit
Agency’s Regulatory Role section; examples of individual agencies’ goals can be found in
Chapter 5: Agency–Micromobility Partnership Approaches. Key studies and pilot examples citedin the text are listed at the end of this toolkit.) Whether an agency is considering soliciting
proposals or has been approached by a vendor, it should be able to articulate the problem amicromobility partnership would solve. Ideally, these goals should connect to larger transportation
83
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Transit and Micromobility

84   Transit and Micromobility

Note: Boxes marked “checklist” refer to supporting checklists and explanations on the following pages of the toolkit.

Figure 33.   Decision tree: whether to pursue a partnership.

strategies, plans, or processes in the region, such as comprehensive planning, bike and pedestrian
master plans, and multimodal access plans.
Checklist: Define Public Goals (See Table 4)
Choose from among the common agency goals in Table 4 for micromobility partnerships, or
add others. If applicable, list the strategy documents, plans, or authorities that provide the goals.
Decision: Assess whether micromobility providers/non-agency operators are likely to independently achieve the agency’s identified goals or whether agency involvement is needed tomake things happen.
If the activity toward achieving those goals is already taking place, or you otherwise havereason to believe greater public involvement is unlikely to be needed at present, pause theprocess of pursuing a partnership for now and revisit if goals or conditions change.
Otherwise, begin to inventory tools and resources at your disposal for pursuing a partnership:
Inventory the tools and resources at your agency’s disposal, as well as what is outside ofits control.
Checklist: Internal Capacity and Staff Roles (See Table 5)
Take stock of internal capacity to manage a collaboration and engage with partners; this process
can also help identify areas where additional staffing or organizational changes may be needed

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Transit and Micromobility

Partnership Toolkit   85Table 4.   Checklist to define public goals.
Goal
Increase the accessibility of the transportation
systemEquitably distribute mobility choices
Reduce automobile dependency; create safer andeasier travel for people outside of cars
Improve local/regional mobility, reducing
congestion
Expand the area readily accessible by transit
Fill transit service gaps/provide alternatives
Relieve peak-hour crowding on transit vehicles
Reduce car parking pressure near stations
Reach new customers
Expand service oﬀerings for existing customers
Reduce demand for personal bike/scooter
storage/transport
Organize micromobility parking near stations
Add non-auto options for station access
Other (list)

Plan or Authority

to move a partnership forward. Depending on the size of the agency and potential partnership, several of these functions may be combined in a single office or for a single staff member.
Understand the scale and nature of available funding sources, including limitations
on their application. Especially in markets where micromobility providers have not alreadyarrived, some level of subsidy may be necessary, and for capital-intensive docked or hybrid
systems, it almost certainly will be. Beyond government monies, sponsorship and advertising
are common components of the micromobility funding picture.
Checklist: Agency In-Kind Value (See Table 6)
Beyond funding, understand what other value the agency can offer that is beneficial to private
operators or their riders (especially if it is possible to offer/award it in a way that provides
exclusive or preferential access to a smaller number of vendors). Some typical examples are to:• Think through the stations, parking lots, storage/maintenance facilities, and other agency

assets that may be relevant to a project.

Table 5.   Internal capacity and staff roles checklist.
Role
Project management
Capital and infrastructure
planning
Operations planning
Procurement and contracting
Legal/legislative
Data handling and analysis
Labor relations
Construction
Marketing andcommunications
Community outreach
Other

Team Member/Department

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Transit and Micromobility

86   Transit and Micromobility
Table 6.   Agency in-kind value checklist.
Value or Benefit to Operators
Access to key locations on public way
Access to key locations oﬀ public way (on agency
property, parking lots, etc.)
Dedicated parking at transit stops
Trip planning/payment integration with agency
appMarketing support/tie-ins
Advertising locations on transit vehicles/stops
Direct communications with potential customers
Association with trusted local brand
Other

Possible to Offer Preferential/Exclusive?

• Identify other stakeholders: existing mobility providers (especially incumbent bikesharesystems) and trip-planning, ticketing, and data aggregation vendors; community organizations and advocates; local institutions, key businesses, and potential sponsors; and thecommunity itself.

Checklist: Local Regulatory Environment (See Table 7)
Outline the local regulatory environment for micromobility, including key departments
responsible in the jurisdiction(s) where a program might operate.
Decision: Based on this inventory of goals and resources, make the initial go/no-go decisionof whether a micromobility partnership is both worthwhile (in terms of goals and potential
benefits) and possible for your agency given its resources.

2. Engage Partners, Assess Needs, and Outline the Project• Once you get started, be flexible and ready to iterate the partnership’s specific form.

– Approach potential partnerships not as singular events but as processes that will need tobe regularly monitored and revisited. Build in opportunities to reflect on and refine thepartnership. Map out possible phases for the gradual expansion of a successful program.
Table 7.   Regulatory environment checklist.
Public Responsibility
Public way
Streets
Sidewalks
Transit stations
Parking lots/structures
Utilities
Vehicle permitting
Business permitting
Construction
Signage/wayﬁnding
Advertising/sponsorship
Data sharing/aggregation
Law or code enforcement
Other

Agency/Department

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Transit and Micromobility

Partnership Toolkit   87

– Whether you intend to create a one-off pilot or embark on a path to a permanent program,lay out a flexible process that allows for a cycle of information gathering, experimentation,
performance monitoring and evaluation, and refinement (or, if appropriate, ending) of thepartnership approach.
• Activate the internal team, starting with the project manager. Early on, create a succession
plan in case the project manager changes roles or leaves the agency.
• Identify and engage potential project champions within your organization and in the wider
community. Contact local stakeholders, particularly local DOTs or other regulators, to alert
them to the project development underway.
• Define the project’s potential customer base and assess their needs:– If you’re focusing on a specific geography or community, perform a needs assessment that
establishes existing levels of transportation access, walkability, and infrastructure andopportunities for improving access with micromobility. If the city or another entity is alreadyingesting micromobility usage data locally, this should be part of the picture.
– Survey or meet with residents and community leaders to understand needs for reduced-fareoptions, non-smartphone access, cash or retail options for unbanked people, and translationof apps and program materials.
• Based on this assessment, define the geographic or community focus of the project, including
identifying disadvantaged or historically underserved communities within the bounds you
determine.
• Understand the outside operators’ business cases (including private, nonprofit, and othermodels) and potential roles in a partnership.
– Micromobility is a low-margin business, and as with any other good or service, operatorsin the sector must remain solvent to continue providing a product that agencies and the
public find valuable. Transit agency partnerships can be appealing due to their potential
to reach new users and markets, secure predictable revenues through subsidy or otherfunding support, or bolster an operator’s reputation through association with a trusted local
agency. But a project may have trouble attracting private partners if it creates excessive
requirements, unnecessary regulatory burdens, or hurdles for participation (e.g., in insurance levels, fare integration, and data sharing) beyond what is already in existence in thelocal environment.
– Equitable distribution of mobility choices and safer travel for people outside of cars should
be core goals for all transportation programs. Beyond the service itself, cities and agencies
should work together to provide supportive investments in safe infrastructure or link toother efforts like complete streets, mobility hubs, and so forth that can make micromobility(as well as general public biking and walking) safer and more equitable throughout thejurisdiction. Public agencies should be realistic about the ability of private startups (eventhose backed by considerable venture capital) to provide solutions for decades of neglectof communities and infrastructure.
– Consider issuing a request for information (RFI) to better understand potential vendors’
product features, limitations, and business needs. The RFI could include a draft project
scope and could ask respondents to reflect on its realism in light of their capacity and offerings. Requesting cost estimates will also help inform the level of funding the project may
need to secure.

3. Set Project Parameters and Secure Partners• Based on the information gathered and relationships established in previous steps, set theparameters for the initial round of the partnership.
– Define the specific services that the partnership should encompass as well as the geographic,
regulatory, and other broad requirements within which it must operate.

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Transit and Micromobility

88   Transit and Micromobility– Map out operating areas, zones of special focus (e.g., equity priority areas, station areas),and other physical assets that will be part of the project. Define other parameters, such ashours of availability, transit lines, or routes where service will be focused.
– Outline customer service and equity requirements, such as response expectations, discount programs, and access for people without smartphones or credit cards, and related
outreach.
– Identify operational parameters that will be subject to performance-based incentives, suchas fleet caps, service areas, or fees.
– Establish a budget and secure funding commitments from the parties or entities identified
previously. Also decide if a performance bond or other risk-protection mechanism will be
required.
– Create a data policy that balances user privacy with agency needs for monitoring andevaluation and that is, ideally, in alignment with the local DOT. Also include any required
collaboration with a third-party vendor or data aggregator. As data sharing and collaboration
between multiple vendors are often sticking points in negotiations and implementation,
identify the essential components of the policy.
• Establish the priority of the requirements identified previously—rank or score according towhat is “must have” and what is “nice to have.”• Issue an RFP or other competitive call for partners (or respond to unsolicited proposals)with the specific requirements developed in the previous steps and the previously enunciatedagency goals at the core.
• Evaluate proposals based on the established priorities.
• Negotiate the partnership agreement with one or more partners, folding them into the iterative
process already underway through a flexible agreement that allows for the business relationship to be evaluated and revisited.
– As part of the contract requirements, agree on the performance measures and data-sharing
arrangement through which information will be provided to the agency and the frequency
with which this will be evaluated.
– Set the timeline for the partnership’s evaluation and decision on its renewal, expansion, or
winding down.

4. Launch, Operate, and Monitor• Engage local stakeholders and project champions in preparation for launch.

– Center the project’s public goals in outreach efforts and marketing materials.
– Focus on reaching new users in their own communities and through trusted voices. Use
the transit agency’s and the private partners’ communication and advertising channels toreach a broader audience.
• Launch the partnership and begin to measure progress.
– Check compliance with data-sharing agreements early in the performance period.
– For programs that involve a public subsidy or other outlays for specific trips or locations,perform field checks to ensure that geofences, coupon codes, and so forth are working
as agreed.
• Begin to compile regular performance reports based on key performance indicators (KPIs)
and report to the stakeholder group, both within and beyond the agency.

5. Evaluate, Refine, and Start Again• After enough time for the program to get on its feet (at least 3 to 6 months), begin to formallyevaluate the partnership against its broader goals in addition to ongoing performancemonitoring.

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Transit and Micromobility

Partnership Toolkit   89• Be prepared to adjust the parameters of the partnership or service midstream in response tochanging KPIs and findings of the program evaluation or as unforeseen challenges or needs arise.

• Continue to provide stakeholders with regular performance reporting and periodic reportson the progress of the evaluation.

• After a set duration or budget expenditure, make the decision on whether to continue thepartnership in its current form, expand it (e.g., to more partners, more stations, or a largerarea), reduce it, or start to wind it down.
– As part of this decision, think about the path for a project’s transition from a pilot to a morepermanent service offering by the agency and how this would change the shape of thepartnership in the next iteration.
• Regardless of the decision on continuing the project, make the data and operational lessons
created during each phase of the partnership as public as possible. This will both inform futureservice planning within your agency’s service area and provide other agencies with more
knowledge on how to build better partnerships for themselves.

Key Case Studies and Pilot Examples
The following case studies or example pilots, with information relevant to conceptualizing
or forming partnerships, are described in the main text. They are summarized here for quickreference by readers seeking models for specific policy goals or challenges. This section also
contains links to key documents relating to the case studies.

Implications for Transit Agencies
Transit Agency Funding for Micromobility• Dayton RTA, KCATA, LA Metro, the COMET (SC): Public funds used to support micro­

mobility for transit rider connections (details in Chapter 5).

Private Infrastructure Funding• Portland, OR: Micromobility fees support program administration and enforcement, safe

travel infrastructure, dedicated parking, and equitable access.
– Administrative rule: https://www.portlandoregon.gov/citycode/article/690212.
• Phoenix and San Francisco: Company-funded scooter docking/charging stations neartransit.
Expanding Micromobility to People with Disabilities• Seattle: Nonprofit partnership to provide adaptive cycles.
• Oakland: Scooter permit program requires all operators to provide adaptive scooters andaccessible apps.
– Permit terms: https://bit.ly/3l8KbWX.

Agency–Micromobility Partnership Approaches
Transit Agency–Led Operation or Integration of Services• Dayton RTA: Direct agency operation and maintenance of bikeshare and scooter services,with vehicles supplied by vendor; cooperation with chosen data aggregator required bymunicipal administrative rules and regulations.
– Scooter service agreement: https://www.apta.com/wp-content/uploads/Spin-Agreement.pdf.
– City administrative rules: https://www.apta.com/wp-content/uploads/Electric-TransportationDevice-Rules-and-Regs-2.pdf.

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Transit and Micromobility

90   Transit and Micromobility• KCATA (Kansas City): Close collaboration with nonprofit operator for agency-branded bikeand scooter operations.
– Sponsorship agreement: https://bit.ly/3bxy3vn.
• The COMET (Columbia, SC): Agency-subsidized bikeshare stations, free rides for bus users.
Uses FTA 5307 “associated transit improvements” funds to finance system expansion andtransit connections.
• Metro Bikeshare (LA): Agency-branded bikeshare with third-party vendor and separate equipment supplier.
– Board report and resolution: https://boardagendas.metro.net/board-report/2015-1107/.
• Capital Metro (Austin): Inter-local agreement with city to co-invest and co-manage local
bikeshare program, which is branded as an extension of the transit agency.
– Inter-local agreement (p. 67): https://bit.ly/3v5ARrD.
Subsidizing Specific Ride Types or Creating Connections• SacRT (Sacramento, CA): Free light-rail trips for same-day dockless bikeshare users; e-bikecharging hubs deployed at stations.
– Offer details: https://www.sacrt.com/apps/sacrt-to-offer-free-rides-on-light-rail-to-jumpbike-users/.
• SMART (Sonoma and Marin Counties, CA): Hybrid e-bikes deployed at rail stations and key
locations in rail corridor.
City–Transit Agency Policy Collaboration• Denver RTD/City and County of Denver: Interagency collaboration on micromobility

parking program to promote vehicle placement and rebalancing to stops throughout city andregional transit service area. City permit program harmonized with RTD license program anddesignated micromobility parking at agency-owned locations; also intended to limit inter­
ference with pedestrians.
– City permit requirements: https://bit.ly/2PGwN0u.
– RTD dockless guidelines: https://bit.ly/3bv8k6Y.

Mobility Hubs and Modal Integration• Metro Transit (Twin Cities, MN): Transit agency collaboration with city, county, mobility

providers, and neighborhood organizations to pilot mobility hubs for multimodal connections
and placemaking.
• LADOT and LA Metro: At key rail stations, a system of multimodal hubs, including bikeshare,
microtransit, and coordination with other shared mobility and mobility-on-demand services.
Includes payment integration and connections to other community institutions and social
services.
– Integrated Mobility Hubs RFP: https://www.citymart.com/bids/lamobilityhubs.
• Move 412/Pittsburgh Mobility Collaborative: Consortium-based approach to providing a
multimodal suite of mobility options, including shared bikes and scooters, mobility hubswith charging, carshare, carpooling, and apps to facilitate unified payment and information.
– Program information: https://www.move412.com/what-is-move-pgh.
– Selected proposal: https://cdn.theatlantic.com/assets/media/files/pittsburgh_rfp.pdf.

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Transit and Micromobility

References

Afana, D. 2019. “Spin to Deploy Scooter Charging Stations in Ann Arbor.” M Live Michigan, May 23. https://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/2019/05/spin-to-deploy-scooter-charging-stations-in-ann-arbor.html.
Andoh, J. 2021. Personal interview, January 21.
APTA. 2018. “Bicycle and Transit Integration: A Practical Transit Agency Guide to Bicycle Integration andEquitable Mobility.” APTA Standards Development Program Recommended Practice, September 20.
APTA. 2020. “Transit as a Micromobility Manager: The Dayton RTA Experience.” January 31. https://www.
apta.com/dayton-rta-experience/.
Atlanta. 2018. “An Ordinance to Amend Chapter 150 (Traffic and Vehicles) of the Atlanta City Code ofOrdinances to Create a New Article X to Be Entitled ‘Shareable Dockless Mobility devices’ to Establish
Regulations Related to Shareable Mobility Devices; and for Other Purposes.” Ordinance 18-O-1322. Summary
and text at https://learn.sharedusemobilitycenter.org/atlas/amendment-18-o-1322-to-atlanta-traffic-andvehicles-ordinance-ch-150-to-regulate-shareable-dockless-mobility-devices/.
Austin Transportation Department. 2018. “Director Rules for Deployment and Operation of Shared Small Vehicle
Mobility Systems.” (Administrative rule.) Summary and text at https://learn.sharedusemobilitycenter.org/
atlas/director-rules-for-deployment-and-operation-of-shared-small-vehicle-mobility-systems/.
Ballentine, C. 2020. “On-Ramp: Bikeshare + Transit: MetroBike Partnership Concept.” Presentation by Capital
Metro to SUMC MOD On-Ramp Workshop, June 23. SUMC Mobility on Demand Learning Center. https://learn.sharedusemobilitycenter.org/wp-content/uploads/Capital-Metro_SUMC_MOD-On-Ramp-ProgramLessons-Learned-Webinar_June-23-2020.pdf.
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Urban Design Studio. 2019. Mobility Hubs: A Reader’s Guide. http://urbandesignla.com/resources/docs/Mobility
HubsReadersGuide/lo/MobilityHubsReadersGuide.pdf.
U.S. DOT. 2016. “‘Dear Colleague’ letter” (from Secretary Anthony Foxx regarding civil rights obligations related
to TNCs and other private mobility entities). Issued December 5. https://www.transit.dot.gov/sites/fta.dot.
gov/files/Dear%20Colleague%20Letter%20re%20Shared%20Mobility.pdf.
Yanocha, D., Mason, J., Pattan, M., Benicchio, T., Alfred, I., and Laksmana, U. 2018. The Bikeshare Planning Guide.
Washington, D.C.: Institute for Transportation and Development Policy. https://www.itdp.org/publication/
the-bike-share-planning-guide/.

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Transit and Micromobility

APPENDIX A

Data Methodology

Travel Survey
The travel survey discussed in Chapter 3: Micromobility Users and Utilization was derived
from the Populus Groundtruth dataset, which consists of representative data on transportation
decisions, including public transit use, vehicle ownership, and new mobility service adoption
and utilization, ride hailing, carsharing, bikesharing, and e-scooter sharing. The data in thisreport focus on the scooter users surveyed and the decisions they made around micromobility
use and transportation choices.
The results summarized here are based on a representative sampling of the populations of
18 metro areas: Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Houston, Knoxville, Los Angeles,
Memphis, Nashville, New York City, Portland, San Antonio, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose,
Seattle, and Washington, D.C.
For the purposes of this analysis, the researchers examined Populus data collected frommid-May to mid-October 2019 from over 15,000 individuals. Based on rigorous methods, key
demographic variables (age, income, race, and gender) from this sample match those of theactual populations at the metro level.
The 18 metro areas were grouped by common population and transit metrics gathered from
U.S. Census data, which helped to condense the results’ reporting. The metrics used to groupthe metro areas included population, population density, housing unit density, gross domestic
product per capita, and transit ridership per capita. Based on the grouping, most of the metro
areas sampled fell into the low-density, low-transit-use cluster. After reviewing the cluster
standard error, the researchers found that it was not advantageous to increase the number ofgroups as it increased the error.
Micromobility and scooter adoption by region was associated with the home region of theperson surveyed. For example, a person who resides in New York City who had tried usinga shared scooter while visiting San Diego would be counted as a scooter user who would be
included in the New York regional sample.

Weighting by Frequency of Use
The results presented in the How and Why People Use Scooters section of Chapter 3 arebased on trip-weighted responses, with weights equivalent to estimated monthly scooter ridership based on reported frequency of scooter use. While over 1,500 survey respondents had usedshared electric scooters, some users were regular, frequent riders (daily or almost daily), whileothers had not ridden a scooter in the previous 3 months and may have only tried using themonce while traveling. This trip-weighted method of analysis better reflects the impacts of theuse of shared electric scooters in accordance to their actual utilization.
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98   Transit and Micromobility

Micromobility Data
Populus used two sets of data on micromobility for the Micromobility Usage Patterns andImpacts section of Chapter 4:• Trip data obtained from docked bikeshare systems, and• Trip data from dockless shared-scooter operators (with their permission and the permissionof the cities where they operate)

The scooter data were not collected specifically for this project but were used in an aggregated form so that individual trips and sensitive information about individual users andscooter company operations were obscured.
Docked bikeshare data were cleaned to only include the regions in which the researchers
were interested and over the time frame needed for the data comparison.
Scooter trip data were used in the transit analysis to look at trips starting and ending aroundtransit locations. For the maps of scooter usage in Chapter 4, data were aggregated by location(i.e., no individual trips are identified) and across operators. Trip origins and destinations were
aggregated in hex-style representations to create a grid of equal size areas. Each hex area has anedge-to-edge length of approximately 175 meters. For each region, 1 month’s worth of data (fromOctober 2019) were used. The darker areas are those with more trip origins or destinations.
Actual counts are not shown and vary by region. The maps show the relative count quantiles
specific to that region.

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Transit and Micromobility

APPENDIX B

Digital Policy and Compliance

Digital policy, compliance, and enforcement are important tools in shared micromobility
programs as they help ensure that city and transit agency policy outcomes are achieved.
• Digital policy – The universe of data-driven procedures, tools, and policies that a city or

regulating agency uses to manage a micromobility system operating within its jurisdiction.

• Compliance – Cities and regulating agencies use micromobility data that are shared withthem or that they are able to collect to understand if operators are in compliance with agreed
upon regulations and service-level agreements. Performance data convey whether providers
are operating in agreed upon areas adhering to geofenced areas, meeting their maximum
fleet deployment, and responding to complaints in a timely manner.
• Enforcement – When providers are shown to not be compliant with service-level requirements and other digital policies, regulating agencies can impose fines and other penalties
to ensure compliance in the future. Enforcement actions can range in severity and include
impounding improperly parked devices, limiting legal fleet size, fines, suspension, and revocation of permits.

Different Approaches to Digital Policy,
Compliance, and Enforcement
The following sections show examples from cities with a range of different approaches todigital policy, compliance, and enforcement of micromobility operators. These examples focus
on municipalities as opposed to transit agencies. As discussed previously, cities regulate micromobility, and to enact digital policy with transit operations in mind, coordination is critical.

Passive Digital Policy
Early in the development of municipal dockless mobility programs, cities began experimenting with geofences—a tool to communicate that specific rider or mobility service provider(MSP) behaviors are disallowed or required. These actions include disallowing riding in a
specific zone, reducing the maximum operable speed in a specific zone, requiring trips endingin an area to have vehicles left in a designated parking area, slowing trips to a stop in a specificzone, disallowing MSPs from deploying vehicles in a specific zone, and requiring MSPs todeploy in a specific zone (including predetermined daily deployment numbers).
Early examples in the development of digital policy include:• Santa Monica establishing a no-ride zone along a linear beachfront bike path,• San Antonio establishing a no-ride zone around the Alamo national monument, and• Portland (OR) preventing riders from leaving scooters in city parks and on important multi-

use paths.

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100   Transit and Micromobility

While geofencing is an important tool for cities and transit agencies to achieve positive
operational, safety, and policy outcomes, one-way communication of digital policy withoutestablishing a compliance protocol or a means to communicate performance eliminates cities’ability to understand the impact, viability, and efficacy of geofencing tools. This passive approachto digital policy does not allow for enforcement or ensure consistent application of the digitalpolicy as designed by the public agency.

LADOT and Active Digital Policy
LADOT has taken a much more proactive role in developing digital policy to meet public
mobility and right-of-way management objectives. LADOT has also established a clear nexus
between outcomes, service-level agreements (SLAs), and compliance thresholds and enforcement actions. In 2019, LADOT established a special operations zone (SOZ) in Venice, whichsought to address vehicle oversaturation and illegal riding on the Venice boardwalk and canals
and to reduce vehicle speeds to 0 miles per hour. LADOT’s hypothesis was that stronger useof digital policy to enforce parking and deployment rules would ensure a more organizedpublic right-of-way.
The SOZ’s impact was clear: MSPs adhered to restrictions on scooter deployments, and theexistence of geofences led to dramatically lower presence of scooters on the Venice boardwalk
and canals. LADOT also leveraged several enforcement actions once infractions were proventhrough MDS data. While this more sophisticated approach requires resources and investment
in MDS technology, development and implementation of digital policy and compliance checking
has proven to be more effective than passively requiring a type of geofence to be implemented.
While transit agencies like LA Metro have begun to experiment with geofenced parking anddeployment incentives and restrictions at transit stations, digital policy and active complianceand enforcement should be developed and monitored in partnership with the cities that permit
shared micromobility services. This will lead to more robust digital policies that reduce potential
externalities (e.g., MSPs creating their own exclusion zones that respond to onerous parking fees
set by transit agencies).

MDS, Communities Against Rider Surveillance, and Privacy
The MDS is a critical tool for establishing and ensuring the success of the Venice SOZ. MDS
is an open-source system that communicates information and policy details between publicagencies and MSPs operating in the public right-of-way. MDS enabled LADOT to convey andmonitor adherence to digital policy.
Originally pioneered by LADOT, the specification is now managed by OMF. Over 80 cities
and transit agencies have adopted MDS and can collect historical and real-time trip and vehicle
status using MDS. MDS provides the structure for MSPs to share data with cities and also
allows cities to communicate directly with MSPs through digital code.
Some organizations and MSPs have expressed concern about the ability to re-identify specificpeople using MDS trip data that have been anonymized and do not have the appropriate protections and management protocols established. In February 2020, amid a dispute between Uberand the city of Los Angeles over data-sharing requirements, an Uber-backed coalition established
Communities Against Rider Surveillance (CARS), a group of community organizations that is
raising awareness of privacy concerns and protesting MDS being imposed by governments.
While the debate around mobility data and privacy will continue, cities and transit agencies
can adopt privacy principles, establish data use protocols, and partner with data platforms toingest, aggregate, and safely visualize digital policy performance.

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Transit and Micromobility

Abbreviations and acronyms used without definitions in TRB publications:
A4A
AAAE
AASHO
AASHTOACI–NA
ACRP
ADA
APTA
ASCE
ASME
ASTM
ATA
CTAA
CTBSSP
DHS
DOE
EPA
FAA
FAST
FHWA
FMCSA
FRA
FTA
GHSA
HMCRP
IEEE
ISTEA
ITE
MAP-21
NASA
NASAO
NCFRP
NCHRP
NHTSA
NTSB
PHMSA
RITA
SAE
SAFETEA-LU
TCRP
TDC
TEA-21TRB
TSA
U.S. DOT

Airlines for America
American Association of Airport Executives
American Association of State Highway Officials
American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials
Airports Council International–North America
Airport Cooperative Research Program
Americans with Disabilities Act
American Public Transportation Association
American Society of Civil Engineers
American Society of Mechanical Engineers
American Society for Testing and Materials
American Trucking Associations
Community Transportation Association of America
Commercial Truck and Bus Safety Synthesis Program
Department of Homeland Security
Department of Energy
Environmental Protection Agency
Federal Aviation Administration
Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act (2015)
Federal Highway Administration
Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration
Federal Railroad Administration
Federal Transit Administration
Governors Highway Safety Association
Hazardous Materials Cooperative Research Program
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991
Institute of Transportation Engineers
Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act (2012)
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
National Association of State Aviation Officials
National Cooperative Freight Research Program
National Cooperative Highway Research Program
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
National Transportation Safety Board
Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration
Research and Innovative Technology Administration
Society of Automotive Engineers
Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act:A Legacy for Users (2005)
Transit Cooperative Research Program
Transit Development Corporation
Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (1998)
Transportation Research Board
Transportation Security Administration
United States Department of Transportation

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Transit and Micromobility

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