Pittsburgh launches initiative to improve community mobility

The City of Pittsburgh announced a first-of-its-kind initiative — the Pittsburgh Mobility Collective (PMC). PMC is a self-organized collective of last-mile and alternate-commute mobility providers.

Selected through a competitive solicitation process, the collective organizes a range of different mobility service providers into a unified mobility service offering providing last-mile connections to transit and sustainable transportation alternatives to private drive-alone auto trips.

The PMC pilot will complement and expand access to and utility of mass transit services and Healthy Ride public bike share. PMC is led by Skinny Labs (a.k.a. Spin) joined by the Transit app, Zipcar, Ford Mobility, Waze, and Swiftmile.

The collective will provide a suite of mobility services, platforms and infrastructure tailored to the needs of Pittsburgh residents, workers and visitors. The PMC mobility “toolbox” will include 150 electric pedal-assist bicycles, expanded car-share, new carpool and shared-ride services, multimodal trip planning built around existing backbone mass transit service, up to 50 public curbside micromobility electric charging stations, and, when available in the Commonwealth, shared e-scooter vehicles.

These new urban mobility services will be deployed after engagement with local neighborhoods to develop community-defined pilots and mobility trials. The pilots will help the city and community gather public feedback and planning insight to deliver more resilient transportation options for all. Mobility experts from the NUMO Alliance, together with a local innovation non-profit, will help facilitate engagement, design, monitoring and measurement activities.

“Expanding non-auto dependent mobility options is vital to meeting our affordable livability and climate change action objectives — needs that are getting increasingly more urgent,” said Karina Ricks, Director of the Department of Mobility and Infrastructure, which will oversee the initiative.

Community discussions around the first mobility trials will initially launch later this summer.