It’s Time To Get Rid Of Parking Tickets And Change How We Manage And Monetize The Curb

Originally published in Forbes on April 1, 2021

As a former transportation commissioner and current bike, scooter and electric-car owner, I understand the passion parking spots can evoke. What emotions in life are comparable to the euphoria of seeing a parking spot (or bike corral) open up right in front of the restaurant you have a reservation for in 2 minutes, or the store you need to pop into with a cranky child in tow?

For a hundred years, vehicles and parking have been an essential part of the architecture of our lives and our cities. I was fascinated to learn that “parking” originated from the concept of “park space” on our boulevards in Washington D.C., my hometown, in the 1870’s. The curbs we use today are probably the most overlooked and underrated aspect of this urban architecture. By default, it’s easy to assume that there is no better use for the side of the road than to store vehicles. The curb, after all, is the natural companion to the car and truck - or at least, it was, for a long period of time, post- trees, flowers, and horses.

Why revisit our use of the curb:

Cities are dynamic environments. That parking space you were thrilled to find in front of your favorite restaurant five years ago might be used by 10 Doordashers, five private vehicles picking up food, a Sysco truck dropping off supplies, a UPS truck teetering with Amazon boxes today. It may even already be converted to a bike corral.

The evolution has been slowly happening for years:

When the world has changed in the past, the architecture of our cities has adapted. Even before the pandemic, shifts were happening in the way we lived - from logistics to food delivery, the rise of e-commerce over retail shopping, shared mobility, and shifts in car and bike ownership. 

All of these changes have already had huge effects on traffic patterns and urban life, and many of them hit your world at - yes - the lowly curb. That double-parked UPS delivery truck you just had to swerve around may seem like a traffic problem, but what it really is, is a curb problem.

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Scooter Share Will Be a Boon for New York

Originally published in Streetsblog on February 26, 2021

hared e-scooters have come a long way from their arrival on the scene three years ago, and are now about to take their place on the streets of the most populous city in the country. New York City recently made e-scooters legal after years of trepidation. A proposed pilot program has shared e-scooter companies such as Spin, Lime, Lyft, Voi and Bird competing to serve The Bronx this year, and eventually all boroughs other than Manhattan.

Will e-scooters be a blessing or a curse for the city? It’s no mystery why they were long seen by some as a potential disaster for a place as densely populated as New York. Back in 2017, when Santa Monica beachgoers and commuters joyfully took to this innovative, inexpensive way to get around, it didn’t take long for things to turn sour. Riders parked in the middle of the sidewalk, blew through red lights, and ran over people’s toes. A tidal wave of backlash and annoyance followed.

This yin and yang has defined the shared mobility space for over a decade regardless of vehicle type, from Uber to dockless bikes. In the summer of 2020, the same week, a lawsuit was filed against the two largest shared e-scooter companies alleging that maintenance problems led to serious injuries, then-presidential candidate Joe Biden was making shared micro-mobility options such as e-scooters part of a clean energy plan to achieve net zero emissions by 2050.

Even with this backdrop, there’s reason to believe that e-scooters will be a boon to New York City. For one thing, the pandemic has changed the cityscape. Despite the fact that e-scooters had been illegal to use on city streets, sales skyrocketed by triple digits in the five boroughs since the pandemic began. They provide a relatively portable, emission-free, socially distanced way to get around the city. Low-cost, shared mobility options have proved to be a transportation lifeline for some essential workers who can’t afford or don’t want to own a vehicle. Shared bike programs in New York City have become an ever-more relied upon necessity as a socially distanced alternative to public transit and post-Covid-19, scooters and bikes will continue to be valuable assets in cities, extending the value of public transit lines by miles.

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America's big cities have blocked off streets to cars during the pandemic. It should stay that way.

Originally published in Business Insider on August 9, 2020 (written with Kay Cheng)

Prior to the pandemic, it was difficult for any American city dweller to imagine cars ceding their reign over our streets.

We've given over space to vehicles in crowded urban centers for decades. But our cities didn't always look this way. Take a trip through New York City in this MOMA film, cut together from archival footage from 1911. 

In nearly every frame of the old film, it is pedestrians that dominate the city, rather than vehicles. Fifth Avenue is a promenade with pedestrian space spanning the width of two car lanes. Sidewalks are wide, some with huge plant beds. "Parking" in this era did not have anything to do with cars — parking referred to the park space allocated alongside the roadway.

Madison Avenue looks like the reverse image of the traffic-jammed thoroughfare of today, with a narrow lane for vehicles and pedestrians meandering from the broad sidewalks onto the roadway, rather than being forced to the controlled crosswalks of today.

During the height of the COVID-19 lockdown, when you walked or biked through New York City, the experience was unlike any version of the city that has come before. Streets were nearly empty of cars and trucks. The air was clearer, the roar of traffic suddenly quieter. 

Now, walk through the city and you'll bump into some of the miles of streets that have been closed to vehicles as part of the city's "Open Streets" program. The city is on its way to closing 100 miles of streets to traffic, to give residents space to be outside while complying with social distancing requirements. Diners, pedestrians, bikers, skateboarders, scooters and roller skaters are slowly emerging from their confinement to reclaim what was lost to the automobile for a century.

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To fix our cities, we must reckon with our racist urban past

Originally published in the Washington Post on June 12, 2020

In the weeks before protests and riots spread across U.S. cities, people were imagining new possibilities for post-pandemic urban life. Streets were closed to give people more space for socially distanced activities outdoors. Office workers were told they could work from home indefinitely, erasing their commute. Car-lite streets, spacious bike lanes, pedestrian pavilions and permanent sidewalk cafes were all part of a vision for how we could radically reconfigure life in our cities to create a healthy, happier future.

Today, some of those same streets have been littered with shattered plate glass and burned garbage. We are confronting an uncomfortable reality we knew all along, had conveniently ignored for decades.

Building just, healthy and inclusive cities requires far more than protected bike lanes and alfresco dining. We cannot fulfill plans for safer, cleaner, more sustainable cities without addressing the racialized history of redlining and the modern segregation that allows inequality to thrive. We must understand our past and commit to fix it systemically. We can no longer perpetuate wrongs through inaction.

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Why The Argument Over Ownership Of Mobility Data Is Both Silly And Essential

Originally published in Forbes on July 1, 2019

Climate change on-one hand...and data sharing, security and privacy on the other, may seem like problems that exist in distant worlds from each other, but let’s take a harder look. They are both existential threats to our way of life; physical destruction of our ecosystem, or cloud-based destabilization of our political system and polarization of populations (just to start).  In the world of transportation, small, electric vehicles could be a lifeline to lower CO2 emissions in our densest urban places, but data protocols and associated misunderstandings threaten to derail the scaling of these crucial solutions that would provide people with lower cost, sustainable transportation solutions from private sector companies, into publicly run cities.

Today, the U.S. Conference of Mayors will pass a resolution “Supporting the Development and Adoption of an Open Source, Mobility-Focused Platform for Management of Cities’ Public Right-of-Way,” or The Open Mobility Foundation and the Mobility Data Specification.

How did we get here?

When Google introduced Gmail 15 years ago, on April 1st, 2004, they started a data revolution; beta-testing and quickly proving that people would gladly trade access to their most personal information in exchange for very high quality, and free services. I am not judging btw, this was a brilliant bet and has changed the workplace in innumerable ways, spawning dozens of new verticals including social media and thousands of start-up businesses with free-to-consumer, ad-based and data monetization revenue streams, from Facebook to Waze.  What was not contemplated was the Pandora’s box of geolocational data + first-party and third-party data targeting, and in-app monetization (what apps in 2004??), the resulting data privacy issues, surreptitious breaches and uses of 3rd party data including the 2016 election fiasco… that would slowly take hold over the next two decades.

In 2019, we seem to take for granted that data produced by citizens, but on a private platform, is then “owned” by the company that grants access to the citizen and provides them a service. In the simplest of terms, in a moment of extreme, and wonderful innovation, Silicon Valley assumed ownership of a powerful asset. I don’t fault them for this, particularly when you are pioneering change in soon-to-be very competitive industries, and no one is really paying attention. It’s much like finding a new island and planting a flag and claiming ownership as countries did in days past. Having recognized that, and all of the unintended consequences in the last few years, it is now time for a new approach to “data stewardship” vs. “ownership, and as the EU’s GDPR shows, the time has come and industry, local and national governments and NGOs recognize this too.

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How Slow Lanes Can Speed Up New Mobility (And Save Lives)

Originally published in Forbes on December 4, 2018

Mobility is the word on everyone’s lips these days. I was in a number of large cities in the last month and have noticed that my conversations with local business leaders keep shifting towards discussions about the quality of and need for bike and pedestrian infrastructure. 10 years ago, I wouldn’t have expected CEOs to address these topics - they were strictly the purview of smallish, urban bike advocacy groups and of progressive leaders in cities like Portland and San Francisco. But now, even the corporate world can’t ignore the serious returns on investment that these upgrades can generate - both in terms of human health and in terms of capital.

But the topic of bike and pedestrian infrastructure didn’t enter the zeitgeist by accident. This past spring, cities across the country - Atlanta included - woke up to a new reality as hundreds of shared electric scooters seemingly blinked into existence on sidewalks, medians, and empty lots. The urban mobility landscape was transformed overnight.

As someone who’s been heavily engaged in this space for over two decades, it’s gratifying to finally see both companies and cities working to set the bar higher for alternative modes of urban transportation. But the newfound excitement around electric scooters and the infrastructure to accommodate them has also engendered a fair share of tension and friction. Cities are resistant to the “chaos” that seems to be accompanying the launch of shared scooter and bike systems. Some see the scooters in particular as a new danger to pedestrians, or as another unwanted intervention in our lives by Big Tech. But the truth is that these scooters are one piece of the puzzle in putting our society on a new, more sustainable trajectory.

Climate change is real, and it’s happening. This recognition must be accompanied by a sense of urgency in getting people out of cars and onto bikes, trains, buses, and everything in between. But cities have a legitimate mandate to reduce chaos and keep citizens safe as well.

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