Deep dive: Micromobility equity plans

How to get people to ride in all neighborhoods

Washington, DC was an early leader in establishing solid equity requirements for micromobility operators. My operations team at Skip participated in this evolution from 2018–2020. This article is to showcase the perspective as an operator about what we thought worked, and where improvements could be made. The conclusions and recommendations reached here became the basis for the equity section in my proposal to better regulate micromobility.

As DC’s program evolved, there became two key mainstays to the equity requirements:

1. Each operator needed to have a minimum number of vehicles in each Ward of the city between 5a — 7a
2. Each operator needed to have an open “Low Income Program” to anybody who met the prescribed requirements (exact breakdown here). People approved in the Program could receive unlimited, free 30 minute rides.

Both these requirements had good intentions to start, but I will describe how they became somewhat corrupted and/or ineffective over time. As I discuss in the Regulating Micromobility article, overall success in dockless programs should be about getting people to ride the vehicles, and the equity program should be no different. After weighing the options, I believe the best determinant as to whether a company is successfully being equitable in their operations is if they are getting rides started in every ward of the city. Free access programs and ubiquitous vehicles are important (and the branding, events, partnerships, etc that companies do), but if the vehicles aren’t actually being ridden, there is a missed opportunity.

Measuring the companies on their ability to convert rides in all neighborhoods is more important than just the rides themselves. Rides are needed to create a cultural normalcy around micromobility. It has to be seen as something useful for all people in all neighborhoods. This is the bigger opportunity. If people see other people like them riding frequently, it will be something they will respect and consider doing too. This growing strength in numbers means more safety awareness, more interest in proper micromobility infrastructure in all neighborhoods, and more respect for the vehicles.

Importantly, this momentum in cultural normalcy for micromobility goes beyond just shared dockless fleets. Yes it is great to for people to have access to shared vehicles, but ultimately ownership is better for consistent use. At the end of the day, shared fleets are neither reliable for commuting, nor cheap. A scooter or bike can never be guaranteed to be there when someone needs it — which is something vital for commuting. No matter what a company says about how well optimized their positioning is, this is impossible. And, if a rider doesn’t quite qualify for free trips via a Low Income program, micromobility is getting prohibitively expensive (averaging $5 to $6 per ride — hardly sustainable for commuting regularly). Therefore, when I think about good outcomes for an equity program, it isn’t that someone rides a dockless vehicle every day, even if they do qualify for a Low Income program. Rather, bike share and scooter share should be viewed as an opportunity for someone to try out a scooter or bike with the hope that they purchase their own. One of the reasons I get so excited about micromobility being a game changer for helping people improve their financial condition is that once someone is interested, to have your own bike or scooter is really cheap. Used bikes are available under $200 and used electric scooters go for not much more. If someone tries a scooter for $3, buys a used one for $300, and doesn’t need to spend $500+ month on car, or ~$100 a month on a transit pass, that’s meaningful savings.

With these things in mind, let’s take a look at some of the shortcomings of DC’s two initiatives.

1. Minimum Vehicles in Each Ward

• In our case, since there was no need to have these deployed scooters ridden, it was easier from an operations perspective to have them sit in unpopular areas so that they would still be available to count toward the minimum the following day. No rides meant there is a lesser likelihood that rebalancing would be needed.
• Scooters that sat in a specific place for longer than 2 days would inevitably fall over and piss people off.
• Scooters that had fallen over were a visual indicator to the entire community that these were pieces of junk littering the neighborhood. This made me worry that in some areas we were causing more harm than good.
• On really popular days where we knew we could get a higher utilization in a different part of the city, we would round up these scooters after 6a and bring them to a popular spot. Then later that evening once the surge had died down, we would bring replacement scooters back to make sure we could meet the requirement the following morning. This was very infrequent, but just goes to show how the good intent of the regulation could be worked around if desired

In summary, the rules required us to place the scooters in the wards, but we had no incentive for them to actually be ridden. As a result, they usually became a mess on the streets.

2. Free rides for people who qualified for the Low Income Program

• Initially this program went really well. We had a steady stream of both new participants and churn which kept things at a manageable level (roughly less than 10% of trips).
• In 2020, when the city started offering an increased overall fleet size in exchange for a higher percentage of all trips happening with Low Income Program, we expanded the program rapidly. This expansion process exposed a few flaws in the system, both on our side and the city’s side.
• First, we loosened our restrictions as to who could participate in order to get more people in. Previously, the city wouldn’t have cared if we did this — we would have just been giving up revenue. But, now that there was a competitive advantage tied to doing it (getting a higher fleet cap), the city had to regulate both the existence of the program, and the accuracy of the signups. The city noticed our loosened criteria and slapped us on the wrist for it, and we reverted back, but the exercise made me realize that there was too much trust placed on the operator in a situation where they stood to benefit. If we really wanted to, we could have just randomly designated people as Low Income — who would complain about free rides?
• Second, with a big enough population of people now using the program, we started to see abuse. We would have riders using the program to make food deliveries or joyriding and using scooters for 10 hours straight, burning through 5 fully charged scooters. We debated ways that we could counter this abuse with software changes, but it would go afoul of the regulation. For instance, we wanted to cap free rides to 4 per day, or mandate a “cool down period” where a rider couldn’t ride again for 20 minutes after they stopped. But both of those created problems for non-delivery riders. We also had issues with the 30 minute cap — what happens with a ride that goes beyond that? We could start charging someone at the 30 minute mark, but that is hard to communicate while someone is riding. We could physically stop the scooter at the 30 minute mark, but that is unsafe to the rider.

All this goes to show that these regulations can make things VERY complicated for the operators. Yes, there are potential software solutions, but the issue for the operators is that if every city has its own complicated rules, and then creating different versions for each city is very burdensome. This is an example of how I fear a “death by a thousand cuts” to the industry. Trying to be all things to all cities is impossible, and companies would be more likely to survive and thrive if regulations were more uniform.

In summary, Low Income Programs should be available at the operator’s willingness, but not prescribed by the city, or used by the city in assessing an operator’s worthiness or performance.

• If prescribed, they are complicated to administer, both in maintaining the database of people, and also aligning the software between cities.
• If used in company assessment (how many active Low Income riders, how many rides, etc), the metrics are too dependent on the operators being forthright.

The Pro/Con List to Every Equity Metric

For the full list, see the Google Sheet here

For simplicity’s sake, I wanted to boil down success in an equity approach to one single metric. After considering not only the pros and cons of all the possible metrics, but also the susceptibilities to corruption and counter metrics, I landed on a single metric that I felt most represented the outcome I wanted to see: that vehicles were being ridden in all areas of the city.

What should be prescribed, and validated by the city, is that on a daily basis a certain % of rides start in each of the Wards of the city.

This could vary by city depending on how the Wards are made up, but in DC a good metric would be at least 1% of each day’s rides are happening in each of the 8 wards.

What I like about this approach is that it offers great flexibility to the companies to get there. Some companies could have their own Low Income program that they have successfully activated in all neighborhoods, some could focus on placement of vehicles, some could focus on reservation capabilities (even overnight), some could focus on events, and some could focus on partnerships.

Additionally, as part of the Regulating Micromobility proposal, I outline that cities shouldn’t be restricting companies from charging different prices depending on where the vehicles are, or where the rider will eventually end up. Companies have the ability to change the per minute or per mile price of a ride depending on where a vehicle is located in the city, and they should be encouraged to do so. Currently DC restricts this, but I believe that if you mandate that a certain % of rides happen within all the wards, then you can use pricing as a carrot for low income communities to ride more. Similarly, operators should be able to charge more for vehicles that are in heavily tourist areas. Generally I think micromobility works better (i.e. more rides) if the pricing can be done dynamically to encourage people to ride in situations where there isn’t as much demand.

There is a fairly clear relationship between the wards of a city and income level, but the con to this approach is the situation where there is a low income person needing a vehicle in a higher income ward. The higher income ward will meets its minimum requirement of rides per day (>1% in my proposal for DC), so therefore a company wouldn’t lower the price down to incentivize rides. While this is a flaw of the system, there are 3 considerations here:

1. If the higher income ward is centrally located and potentially closer to the destination, the low income person will a) have a reduced need for transit generally, b) have more options for their trip (buses, metro, more bike/scooter options), c) a cheaper trip if fares are calculated off distance
2. Most companies will still need a Low Income program in order to meet the minimums in the wards (even if they use dynamic pricing and the rates are much lower in certain wards), so this person could be eligible for the program (programs can’t discriminate by address of the applicant). As part of the regulations criteria, I’m not opposed to a city mandating the presence of a low income program of the company’s choosing (in addition to the % ride minimum), but just opposed to a city prescribing what the program should look like or evaluating companies based on it
3. If the person needs to travel outside of their ward to another ward, especially a lower income ward, then the company could have a pricing incentive in place to bring the vehicle to a ward where they need more rides. An example of this would be the vehicle has normal pricing (say $0.29/minute), but if you ended your ride in a ward that badly needed vehicles, then that ride could be 90% off. Ultimately it will be incumbent on the companies to bring vehicles back to that Ward to meet the next day’s requirement, so it makes financial sense to incentivize riders to do this rebalance for them.

Simplified example of a “Discount Heat Map” using ovals

This also guards against the scenario where a company makes pricing very low in the morning to encourage a morning commuter, but then in the afternoon they are in a higher income ward and the prices are normal. The incentive to get the vehicles back to the low income ward can keep the price low for both ways.

Summary

Equity in micromobility is too important to be left to subjective measures. Cities need to be requiring equity compliance in a way that impacts a company’s bottom line if the company can’t figure it out. Of all the ways to enforce equitable ridership, measuring ride starts based on location is the most honest one. It is not perfect, but it puts the pressure on the companies to deliver results in their own innovative ways. It gets people the rides they need, and more importantly, it ensures people see vehicles being ridden in every area of the city every day. As micromobility becomes accepted in the culture, its growth can accelerate quickly due to its low price point.

If you’re interested in reading the full Regulating Micromobility Framework, click here.

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