3 cities, Passport partner on solution for shared scooter use

Charlotte, North Carolina; Detroit; and Omaha, Nebraska announced a collaborative pilot program to manage micromobility in a new way, through sharing best practices and leveraging Passport’s mobility platform. With the solution, the cities can maintain visibility and control over scooter deployments and better manage their curbs, while enabling mobility providers like Bird, Lime, Spin, and Razor to more flexibly and conveniently manage their fleets.

Pioneering this new approach to micromobility management, these cities will be the first to apply parking principles, data analysis, and a software platform to charge for scooter parking to balance the supply, demand, and distribution of scooters. Instead of capping scooter volumes or imposing flat fees, this methodology and technology from Passport allow each city to incentivize behavior by charging for curb space fairly across all modes of mobility. Just as cities charge cars to park at the curb, they can apply an existing digital parking infrastructure for scooters.

The first-of-its-kind software platform from Passport will leverage data from micromobility providers and allow cities to:

• Analyze scooter distribution and usage patterns.
• Power curbside pricing and payments.
• Manage scooters to address city-level objectives like equitable access and first/last mile solutions for transit.

Focused on the needs and challenges of cities, Passport has invested $5 million to help cities build the digital infrastructure necessary to coordinate complex urban transportation ecosystems. Passport’s work alongside its clients helps cities keep pace with technological innovation and more effectively integrate services to improve urban mobility offerings. Leveraging Passport’s mobility platform, cities will now have the ability to effectively work with private entities to quickly integrate new transportation services.

“Working with Passport, we can now gather insight on how our citizens are using these new forms of mobility and be more strategic about managing scooters using supply/demand economics,” said Mark de la Vergne, chief of mobility Innovation for the City of Detroit. “With this pilot program, we are now connected to a network of cities facing the same challenges and we can effectively work together to develop a new regulatory model that can be scaled nationally.”

Charlotte, Detroit and Omaha are already part of Passport’s existing base of nearly 600 partnerships with municipalities, universities, and private operators worldwide. As a large facilitator of curbside payments in North America, Passport works closely with clients to effectively manage urban mobility and charge for access to the curb with current products, including:

• Mobile payments for parking
• Digital parking permits
• Enforcement software
• Public transit mobile ticketing