This article is written by Stew Langille, Founder/CEO, Float Mobility, an urban mobility start-up

We’re in the middle of what some experts are calling the largest street planning experiment, ever.

Since the start of the pandemic, urban road traffic has dropped significantly and people have turned increasingly to individual modes of transit, requiring the mobility industry to rethink how we navigate our cities and build resiliency in our modes of transportation.

We have the rare opportunity now to reshape urban mobility as we know it, and the solutions we create have the potential to drastically change transportation infrastructure during the pandemic and beyond.

At Float, we’ve seen the impact of Covid on people’s traveling preferences first hand: as an urban mobility app that aggregates travel options, we also tailor our suggestions according to users’ individual preferences, whether that’s saving money, reducing CO2 output, or remaining safe and healthy while moving about their local cities.

In the development of our AI recommendation engine, we have collected preliminary data on how travel behaviours have changed since the start of the pandemic. For example, while used car leases and sales in San Francisco are at record levels, traffic in the city is still 50-75% of pre-pandemic levels, and public transit usage is also down by more than 50%.

This type of data is invaluable to cities that want to become more transportation-fluent and create a more equitable, affordable, and green future that we can all benefit from.

Let the good ideas roll

From car-free urban centers to the seemingly unlikely rebirth of carpooling, urban planners have a wide variety of options to make cities easier to navigate for all residents.

Here are a few key insights from our data that we believe can benefit all urban planners:

1. Offer bundles and perks to city residents and workers

Our research shows that users want the ability to move seamlessly between rideshares, taxis, public transportation, and bike/scooter shares.

If people cannot rely on safe, efficient transportation, they won’t use it

Cities and employers can work together to streamline these bundles and make them more widely available. Motivators like discounts and perks are big incentives for our users, and there are many ways cities can implement them as well, whether it’s rewarding individual travel that reduces congestion or offering incentives to small businesses to encourage traffic-alleviating behaviour among their employees near city centres.

Cities like Sacramento and Boston have already started to offer rewards, discounts and perks to encourage their citizens to choose more sustainable options for travel.

2. Use data to determine transportation provisions

Our user-generated data shows that people are looking for the most efficient path to the door of their destination.

This often means using multiple transportation modes, such as combining public transit with a scooter share.

Placing rideshare pick-ups or bike share drop-offs near public transportation stations is one way that we can develop multi-modal cities that best serve residents no matter how they want to travel.

3. Encourage modal diversity and adoption

If people cannot rely on safe, efficient transportation, they won’t use it. Installing countdowns for public transit and sharing AI-generated predictions with apps like Float will increase reliability, encouraging wider use of shared mobility options among residents.

Fractional ownership is a growing trend among young city dwellers — similar to changing ordinances to encourage multi-family units on single plots, cities can encourage reduced personal car ownership by offering gas discounts for shared ownership carpooling and deals for taxi usage

Additional infrastructure for micromobility and “last mile” solutions in busy downtown and central business districts can also help incentivise travellers. The increase in bike, scooter, and other micromobility traffic has caused a new kind of congestion in urban areas like New York and cities can build on the momentum of micromobility and address the congestion issue by expanding protected bike lanes to ensure travellers have access to a variety of options.

4. Go global with expert partners

It’s easy to go down the rabbit hole of spending millions to develop citywide transportation apps, but today’s reality is that many people are traveling between cities and “working from anywhere,” so city-specific programs no longer meet these global workers where they are.

Collaborating directly with AI companies in the transportation space can enhance urban mobility for everyone and avoid the need to reinvent the wheel.

5. Evolve from personal car to transit

Fractional ownership is a growing trend among young city dwellers — similar to changing ordinances to encourage multi-family units on single plots, cities can encourage reduced personal car ownership by offering gas discounts for shared ownership carpooling and deals for taxi usage.

Data from Zipcar shows that its members save about $633 USD a month compared to car owners by avoiding traditional out-of-pocket expenses associated with car ownership. Roundtrip car-sharing members also drive 40% fewer miles than they did before joining Zipcar.

Prioritising sidewalks to maximise walkability, providing sufficient cycle ways and bike racks, and limiting on-street parking are additional ways to accelerate city dwellers’ transition out of personal car ownership and create a fairer, more equitable urban transportation system.

By working with proven partners that have the technology and knowledge to build comprehensive, streamlined, and reliable transportation networks, cities can encourage residents to travel as sustainably as possible. If cities want a shot at achieving a green recovery post-Covid, we must work together. We can’t let this critical moment pass us by. — Stew Langille

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(Picture credit: Death to the stock photo)