Tag: urban transport

• Electric scooter startup Lime raises $310 million series D round

  Earlier this month it was announced that the on-demand electric scooter and bike startup, Lime, had closed a $310 million series D round. This values the 18-month old company at around $2.4 billion and brings its total raise to $867.1 million. For comparison, Bird — its main competitor — has raised around $400 million.

  These numbers should tell you about the kind of growth that the “micromobility” startup is seeing. They are now in 15 countries and its riders have taken over 34 million trips. In the last 7 months alone, the company reports that it has seen a 5.5x increase in ridership. They are seen as an affordable last-mile solution. Supposedly 1/3 of its users report an income of less than $50,000 per year.

  Lime entered the Canadian market last fall via Waterloo. They have yet to expand anywhere else, though I suspect we’ll see them in Toronto this spring/summer. One of the barriers is that their scooters (with airless tires) aren’t equipped to deal with snow, so they currently pack them up during the winter months.

  This is in addition to the regulatory challenges they are facing in cities all around the world. But like Uber, I am sure there is a compromise to be had.

  2019.02.25

• 1 out of 5 commuters in Manila relies on ride-hailing

  Earlier this year Uber sold its Southeast Asia business to Grab. At the time, it was estimated that Grab had 95% of the ride-hailing market in Southeast Asia. That’s why Uber decided to sell. Instead of continuing to bleed, they figured it would be better to instead merge businesses in exchange for a “sizeable stake in Grab.” This is similar to the deal that it struck in China with Didi.

  It’s clear evidence of cultural advantage. Though maybe you could argue it’s first mover advantage. Either way, many, including Wired, have argued that while Uber has dominated in the West, it has often struggled in the developing world. Different markets. When Grab launched you could pay with cash because so many users didn’t have a credit card.

  

  Here is another interesting insight from Bloomberg (see above): Nearly 1 out of every 5 commuters in Manila relies on a ride-hailing service because the public transit situation is allegedly so dire. Grab controls 90% of the market with 35,000 vehicles receiving somewhere around 600,000 requests a day.

  When Uber launched it was positioned as “Everyone’s private driver.” It was expensive. It was luxurious. And it was done because they knew they weren’t going to be able to compete on speed and/or price in the early days. But now ride-hailing services are tackling the very opposite end of the spectrum.

  2018.05.15

• Toronto exploring road pricing on downtown highways

  Road pricing is on the table in Toronto. (Somebody has to fund the expensive Gardiner Expressway East rebuild.) On March 11, 2016, the City issued a Request for Proposal for: “Options for Establishment of Toll Facilities on F.G. Gardiner Expressway/Don Valley Parkway.”

  As a vocal supporter of road pricing, I am happy to see us headed in this direction. And I bet that today’s post will just be the beginning of my ruminations on this topic.

  Because naturally, it raises a lot of questions:

  Should the pricing be fixed or variable? Similar to how Uber’s surge pricing model is intended to ensure that there are always enough drivers on the road, should our road pricing model strive to eliminate traffic congestion by increasing the price of the road as demand rises beyond road capacity? I like the idea of a “congestion charge” rather than just a road toll. There’s something very efficient about it.

  Who should pay? Should anyone and everyone who uses the road pay? Or should it just be be non-Toronto residents who aren’t already paying property taxes in the city? I would imagine that this latter scenario would be easier for Toronto politicians to get behind, since there will obviously be a segment of people who flat out don’t want road tolls/pricing. But if we stick with the principle that it’s a “congestion charge”, then everyone should pay. It doesn’t matter where you live when you are demand trying to exceed the available supply of road.

  (I’m running a Twitter poll right now with this exact question. At the time of writing this post, “everyone should pay” is winning.)

  Should electric vehicles be exempt from the road tolls or congestion charges in order to help accelerate our transition away from fossil fuels? With Tesla getting ready to announce its mass market Model 3 (price $35,000), I’ve been thinking lately that the car I currently own may very well be the last gasoline car I ever own.

  It’s still early days for road pricing and our mayor doesn’t seem to be a fan. So who knows how far we’ll get with this RFP. But I for one hope that we find the courage to make the difficult decisions and that this new revenue stream is leveraged for the purpose of building more sustainable forms of urban transport in this city. 

  Let’s make a 50 year decision and not an election cycle decision.

  2016.03.16

• How we perceive commuting

  

  https://500px.com/embed.js

  Wharton real estate professor, Mariaflavia Harari, recently published a paper that looks at the relationship between urban geometry (specifically compactness) and inner city commuting efficiency across 450 cities in India.

  Consistent with previous research done in this space, she finds that people generally prefer compact cities and that they are willing to pay a premium for it. It increases overall welfare. Here’s an excerpt from her paper:

  “My findings are broadly consistent with compact city shape being a consumption
  amenity. All else being equal, more compact cities grow faster. There is also evidence that
  consumers are paying a premium for living in more compact cities, in terms of lower wages and,
  possibly, higher housing rents.”

  So her recommendations for the Indian cities she analyzed was that they should relax land use restrictions to allow for more vertical / compact development and that they should focus on improving urban transport in order to offset some of the negatives externalities associated with sprawl. This is no different than the approach that many cities in the developing world are adopting or looking to adopt.

  One of things that really stood out for me in her paper though is the way people perceive commuting:

  “The loss associated with non-compact
  shape appears to be substantial: a one-standard deviation deterioration in city shape, corresponding
  to a 720 meter increase in the average within-city round-trip, entails a welfare loss
  equivalent to a 5% decrease in income. This is considerably larger than the direct monetary and
  opportunity cost associated to lengthier commutes. Less compact cities also appear to attract
  fewer low-income immigrants, as captured by the share of slum dwellers.”

  What this is saying is that we tend to overvalue the negatives of commuting, beyond the direct costs of gas, insurance, car payments, our time, and so on. We hate it so much that we also want to be compensated for the mental anguish. Here is that same idea said differently:

  The estimated welfare loss from longer commutes appears to be large, relative to the immediate
  time and monetary costs of commuting. This is consistent with the interpretation that
  commuting is perceived as a particularly burdensome activity. The behavioral literature has
  come to similar conclusions, albeit in the context of developed countries. Stutzer and Frey
  (2008) find a large and robust negative relation between commuting time and subjective wellbeing,
  using German data. They estimate that individuals commuting 23 minutes one way
  would have to earn 19 percent more per month, on average, in order to be fully compensated.

  So I guess I’m not the only one who thinks commuting and driving sucks.

  2015.10.31