The New Urban Mobility Alliance (NUMO) created a mobility data tool – Micromobility & Your City: Leveraging Data to Achieve Policy Outcomes – to help cities evaluate their micro-mobility services against policy goals to foster safe, sustainable, and equitable communities.
NUMO states that data generated by micro-mobility services can help cities better understand how their communities, public spaces, and existing transportation are being impacted by new technologies and services and where there are gaps in needed service.
“As of right now, most cities only track how shared micro-mobility services comply with existing regulations, not how they actually contribute to objectives,” said NUMO research lead, Sebastian Castellanos. “Micromobility & Your City represents a significant shift in how cities and micro-mobility service operators can work together to address transportation systems and mobility needs holistically and proactively.”
In creating the resource, NUMO initially conducted a policy scan which included a review of local regulations for micro-mobility services – along with a number of pilot program evaluations – to better understand current thinking and regulatory practice. It then convened a working group made up of stakeholders from cities, micro-mobility service operators, data aggregators, academia, and non-governmental organizations to review what was gathered from the policy scan, propose ideas, and provide feedback on the research.
The groups focused on three key outcomes: equity, safety, and environment. The site provides example goals within each outcome area, metrics to measure progress, and example policy levers that city’s may choose to implement.
“There is clearly an interaction between cities — their urban form and street networks, the quality and reach of transit, the mix of uses in neighborhoods — and the utility of micromobility offerings in those cities. This platform can help cities, transit agencies and micromobility operators work together more effectively to meet their mutual goals of increasing affordable, safe, reliable, convenient access while lowering carbon and pollution,” said NUMO director, Harriet Tregoning.