Just how substantial is it? Insurance accounts for 21% of the average Uber or Lyft fare, according to Gridwise’s analysis, compared with 14.9% for the platform fee. Driver base pay is 53.3%, with bonuses and other driver pay making up the balance. Put another way, more than one out of every five dollars that a rider spends is put towards insurance before the driver or platform gets its cut.

The good news is that coverage costs are finally starting to trend downwards. From Q1 2025 to Q1 2026, average insurance expense per ride fell 5.1% on Uber rides and 5.5% at Lyft. The two companies now move in near lockstep, suggesting this is less about platform-specific changes and more about broader dynamics in the insurance market.

Delivering A Lighter Load

Delivery workers face the same basic insurance squeeze, but on a smaller scale. An Uber Eats job carries a lower insurance expense than a passenger trip, unsurprising given that distances are generally shorter and don’t involve the risk of another human sitting in the vehicle. These expenses are actually falling faster: the average Uber Eats insurance costs dropped 8.3% from Q1 2025 to Q1 2026 and have been trending downward since 2024.

But delivery isn’t simply ridehail without the awkward small talk; its insurance geography is almost inverted. The West is still the most expensive region for rideshare coverage, while it sits in the middle of the pack for delivery insurance. Meanwhile, the Southwest and South see the highest delivery expenses for deliveries, but not for ridehailing.

Most regions also enjoyed meaningful delivery-insurance relief over the past year. Expenses fell 14.1% in the Southwest, 11.5% in the South, 9.9% in the West and 8% in the Midwest. The East Coast was the exception to the rule, with costs rising 3%.

That split matters for anyone trying to understand courier take-home pay. A modest insurance charge can still consume a meaningful piece of a relatively low-value delivery order, but we lack the data to see exactly how an average delivery order breaks down costs-wise. So while we can see that insurance expenses are shrinking; we can’t yet say how much of that relief reached couriers rather than platforms, merchants or customers.

West Coast, Best Cost Improvement

The most dramatic shift came out west, where rideshare insurance expenses plunged 20.6% year over year. There’s a fairly obvious suspect: California’s SB 371, which took effect January 1. The law reduced mandatory uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage from $1 million to $60,000 per person and $300,000 per incident, while leaving liability insurance minimums at the $1M threshold.

That’s a significant haircut, and the timing lines up neatly with the sharp drop between Q4 ‘25 and Q1 ‘26. While the data isn’t granular enough to see things on a state-by-state basis, California makes up such a large part of the “west” market that it would be hard to find another likely culprit.

Elsewhere, the story runs in several directions at once: rideshare insurance expense fell 6.3% in the South, but rose 15.8% in the Southwest, 7% on the East Coast and 3.5% in the Midwest. Insurance may be priced as one line on an app-generated receipt, but underneath it sits a very local mix of regulation, claims, trip types, driver pools and carrier appetite.

Those differences can even show up within a single city, not just across broad regions. In Chicago’s 20 lowest-income ZIP codes, insurance expense per gig was 37.6% higher than across the rest of the metro area, despite relatively similar trip distances. Insurance also consumed 18.3% of the customer price in those neighborhoods, compared with 12.5% elsewhere: suggesting that geography and neighborhood-level risk pricing can matter as much as mileage.

Pass the Savings (To Whom, Exactly?)

Here’s where the rubber meets the income statement. California’s law says savings from lower insurance expenditures should be passed on to workers and consumers: “it is the intent of the Legislature that this act ensures that financial savings realized as a result of any reductions in insurance expenditures for transportation network companies will be strategically reinvested to enhance the economic stability and welfare of drivers and riders.”

But so far, the early results don’t exactly scream “trickle-down.” While western insurance expense fell 20.6%, customer prices rose 3.4% and platform fees jumped 29.1%. Driver base pay increased just 1.2% — the smallest gain of any region. Some of the savings may have supported promotions, risk reserves, other operating costs or selective price cuts that disappear inside a regional average. Uber has also said it expects hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. Mobility insurance-line savings in 2026 and that some will be recycled into lower ride pricing. But based on this initial snapshot, drivers have not been the obvious first stop for the windfall.

One caveat: Gridwise is analyzing the insurance expenses labeled by platforms within gig-level transaction economics. That is a valuable view of how a fare is carved up, but it isn’t the same as an audited, trip-by-trip account of what an insurer ultimately paid or what risk truly costs. Still, when a charge consumes one-fifth of the rider’s fare, and can move by double digits after a policy change, it deserves a bit of scrutiny.

The larger takeaway is that insurance isn’t a rounding error in the ever-growing industry of gig mobility; it’s one of the sector’s biggest economic levers. Ridehail carries the heavier burden, delivery follows a different regional logic and regulatory changes can bring costs down quickly. The remaining question is the one drivers and riders will care about most: when that lever shifts, who gets lifted?

Read The Full Report

HOT INDUSTRY NEWS & GOSSIP

Deliverance: Delivery and foodhall heavyweight Wonder just raised a fresh $650M in funding, with investors drawn to its vision of drone-powered deliveries saturating the fast growing suburbs of Texas. Over at Ottomate, I chatted with PJ Poykayil, Wonder’s Head of Customer Delivery Operations, about what it’ll take to actually make those logistics work at scale. And for folks out there wondering how Marc Lore keeps raising these big bucks, the $9B pre-money round offers investors serious down-side protection in the planned IPO.

Tesla troubles: Tesla released its Q2 earnings, with revenue coming in at a record $28.24 billion, but profitability falling wildly as the company ramps up spending. And while the company is launching new robotaxi markets — hello Orlando and Tampa — paid mileage growth seems to have flatlined. Meanwhile, the NHTSA is looking for internal corporate documents that may acknowledge that Tesla’s semi-autonomous systems would be safer with radar and rideshare drivers keep falling asleep at the wheel while using FSD.

Turkish two step: Elsewhere in AV land, Türkiye is emerging as a real hot-spot. Tripy is looking to deploy China’s Maxus Mifa 7 electric vehicle platform, equipped with CalmCar’s L4 autonomy, to the streets of Ankara. Meanwhile, Marti has partnered with Tensor (makers of sleek but very speculative AV hardware….) to launch robotaxis across the country.

Cams grilled: Camera-based road safety enforcement continues to take off across North America, with Toronto’s TTC turning on a Gatekeeper Systems deployment to protect streetcar riders. Meanwhile, Chicago’s system is hauling in better than projected revenue, with Amazon, FedEx and UPS appearing to be the worst infractors. But road surveillance systems of all kinds could be in political peril if Flock Safety can’t get its act together: its problematic software just resulted in police stopping another auto journalist, but the company insists its product is working exactly as it should, even as other Flock employees seem to be abusing its ability to spy on adults and children alike. Concurrently, the FHWA has removed speed cameras (and bike lanes) from its list of proven road safety measures.

Other cam stars: Former LA Mayor Eric Garcetti is joining Metropolis as an advisor, as the computer vision startup expands from parking into urban infrastructure, mobility, and other real-world systems. From what I’ve heard, expect to see some more interesting use cases pop up at airports!

Detour ahead: Despite its reputation for pro-transit urbanism, Europe continues to advance highway expansion projects that would be pretty much unthinkable in the more urbane parts of the United States. England’s National Highways just commissioned Europe’s largest-ever TBM to construct the Lower Thames Crossing, a new 2.6 mile, £11B ($14.7B) highway tunnel in the eastern exurbs of London. This joins projects like Berlin’s new in-city extension of the A100 that are arguably slightly more pleasantly designed than your average American freeway, but will still most certainly induce more driving.

Dead mall (sub)urbanism: The Dallas Mavericks just selected their developer, cementing plans to move the baseball team out of downtown and onto the site of the defunct Valley View Mall in North Dallas, building not just a new arena but a whole new entertainment district. Without even getting into the ridiculousness of the public financing of stadia (here’s a great blog if you’re into that sort of thing) the move will further drain the life out of Dallas’ central business district — one of the few walkable and transit-accessible parts of the region. While Dallas does seem to have some mild plans to improve sidewalks near the new stadium, the surrounding land use is inherently difficult to retrofit for urbanism. It’s ironic, but perhaps not unexpected, to see this sort of stadium-centered new urbanism move from being a tool meant to reinvigorate downtowns (see Columbus’ Arena District for a city-led model, LA Live for a sports team-led model, or even the development of the Mavs’ current home) to another tool for pushing out auto-oriented sprawl (also well exemplified by the Braves’ recent move to “The Battery.”)

Le covoiturage convergence: France’s Karos just finished consolidation of the country’s daily carpooling services, buying up the division of BlaBlarCar that’s focused on short-distance commutes. BlaBlaCar will focus its coverage on long-distance carpooling, making it a one-stop shop for travelers looking to criss-cross countries by bus, train or shared car.

Join my team! Calling all self-starters: MobilityVC seeks a Ventures & Advisory Associate.

A few good links: Milwaukee transit flirts with death spiral as 25% service cuts loom. Talk about power hungry — Valar Atomics eyes $1B round. FRA study identifies Penn Station capacity upgrades, includes limited through-running. Interview with Uber Chief Product Officer Sachin Kansal. Hyundai buys remainder of Boston Dynamics from Softbank. Bingo E2 launch party set for 7/28 in Nairobi. Tyred raises £2.5M for ebike subscriptions and mobile repairs in UK. Ship crews offered huge bonuses to transit Hormuz as attacks flare. Saddled by low salaries and high costs, Miami is now the country’s second least affordable metro area. DC fast charger availability improves. NYC cabs now available on Curb and Lyft; Curb Flow goes live in North Carolina. Atlanta considers dynamic curb management. You love to see it: NYC Mayor Mamdani promises small-business regulatory and permit reform. Archer and Anduril partner on military eVTOL. Amazon Now adds fresh offerings in Brazil. More evidence that even high-end housing construction helps renters across all income levels. Aurora debuts second-gen driverless truck. Avride delivery bots stuck in the rain as Jersey City hit by deluge. Wheely fights NYC rule requiring detailed customer trip pattern disclosures. Veo goes live in Salt Lake City. Voi quarterly revenue climbs 47% YoY to €68.8M.

See you next week!

- Jonah Bliss & The Curbivore Crew

Last night I attended the launch party for Chip, a new vehicle made by the excellent hardware minds of Ilan Penn and Jameson Detweiler. As you can see in the launch video, they’ve checked just about every box an urbanist could want out of a vehicle: it’s cute and communicative, energy efficient, features remote driving and most importantly it’s small and affordable (retailing for about $15k.)

While the marketing leans into beachy use cases — throw on your surf board or bike and head to the boardwalk! — these neighborhood electric vehicles really should be perfect for anyone who just does in-city driving: it’s street legal on any road with a 35 mph or less speed limit. If you’re not hopping on the highway to grab coffee, pickup groceries or meet up with friends, why exactly do you need to get into a huge SUV?

The “NEV” category has existed for almost 30 years, and anyone that’s spent some time on a golf course community has likely seen folks puttering around in their GEMs on the neighboring streets. But lately there’s been a renewed interest in the segment; just last week, Stellantis announced its stylish Fiat Topolino will finally be heading stateside, while others like Infinite Machine are pushing souped up electric mopeds.

Getting Americans out of their oversized and overpriced cars isn’t going to be easy, but making the alternatives unique and stylish will certainly help convince consumers that there’s merit to going small. The more we can do to help enforce road safety rules — remember when we actually went after people that texted while driving or blew through stop lights? — the more we can get other road users comfortable in these vehicles as well. A big part of the reason that quadricycles are so much popular in Europe isn’t just that the cities are “old” but that they still actually enforce traffic laws…

HOT INDUSTRY NEWS & GOSSIP

Yeehaw! We’re excited to announce that the next edition of our Urban Autonomy Summit is headed to Austin on October 14th. Texas has emerged as a hot-spot for AV logistics, so we’re looking forward to deep conversations on everything from robo-trucking to drone deliveries. Reach out if you’d like to speak or sponsor.

Speaking of robotaxis… MOIA took its autonomous shuttle service live in Hamburg. Germany has been pretty slow on AV uptake, so this is a win not just for VW, but for other ecosystem players like MobilityVC-backed Motor AI. Coco’s autonomous delivery bots expanded to D.C.’s Logan Circle neighborhood; some competitors are just across the river in Arlington. Tesla claims to be building a wheelchair-accessible robotaxi. And Uber’s getting into the regulatory capture game, as it lobbies D.C.’s city government to require that any AV operators maintain a hybrid fleet also composed of human drivers.

Goal! With the World Cup wrapping up, we should give three cheers to all the transit agencies that impressively handled the visitors flocking to stadiums and the locals headed to fan zones. In LA, it’s served as a nice test run of sorts for the ‘28 Olympics, with Metro and other local agencies coming out looking well prepared. LA Metro saw ridership jump 9% YoY in June, and that’s not even counting riders on its special stadium-serving busses.

Uber Eats Delivery Hero: After a long courtship, Uber has officially unveiled its $14.8 billion offer for Delivery Hero; if approved, the deal will effectively double Uber’s global footprint. Uber Eats is also beefing up its offerings at home, having just signed new partnerships with GameStop and Foot Locker. Competitor DoorDash just launched an integration with Shopify, aimed at letting local retailers offer easy delivery.

Squeezed: Everee has a new report out looking at gig worker pay. While drivers are worried about EVs eating into their earnings, their more immediate concerns are around high gas prices. 69% of drivers say rising fuel costs have significantly or moderately reduced their earnings in the past three months, while over a quarter spend 25% or more of their weekly paycheck on gas.

Keep Austin weird(ly bad at building transit!) Austin Transit Partnership, the beleaguered semi-public agency trying to build light rail in Austin, just can’t get out of its own way. It just signed a contract to pay a whopping $16.8 million per light rail vehicle, more than double what Cleveland is paying (and even that one seemed expensive!) I caught up with Jack Craver, who runs the Austin Politics Newsletter, who notes:

“It’s been heartbreaking to watch such a promising transit plan get eaten up by cost disease. It’s hard to know to what extent the problem is due to factors outside of ATP’s control, but it’s very hard to be optimistic about Austin’s transportation future when it takes this much money to build such a puny piece of infrastructure.”

Good street, okay street, bad street: Lisbon is working with ETH Zurich and Bolt to allow its citizens to “trial” new street designs, before the Portuguese capital permanently reallocates road space for non-auto users. Meanwhile, Vital City is making the case that NYC should take ownership of its sidewalks (a nice idea in practice, but this is a big part of why LA’s sidewalks are such a mess.) And speaking of LA, the city just agreed to pay out $20M to the family of someone killed at a missing crosswalk. (Perhaps its time the state reins in nuclear verdicts against the public sector.)

Birds of a feather… Flock Safety’s camera network wrongly tracked an automotive journalist, resulting in a dangerous police raid. Meanwhile, the LAPD is ending its contract with the company, citing “serious concerns” about the how the camera operator handles civil liberties and privacy.

Taking off: A new BloombergNEF report looks at how important airports have become for ridehail services, which is why robotaxi cos will most certainly want access to those juicy curbs. While SFO, LAX and JFK each had nearly 10 million trips, it sure looks like the latter two have some room to jack up their PUDO fees…

A few good links: Wonder raises $650M at $9B pre-money valuation. Miami set to cut bus routes, further defer potential rail extensions. EV chargers growing fast in the South. Singapore completes Circle Line. Manna picks Tulsa as U.S. drone hub. Bipartisan housing law goes into effect. Waze adds AI-powered features, motorcycle functions. Lyft names Senthil Padmanabhan as CTO. Germany wants to hold micromobility companies liable for damages caused by users. Michigan’s MIX Summit returns on 9/17. St. Louis Metrolink to ask voters if money earmarked for light rail can be redeployed towards BRT. Lucid Motors denies bankruptcy rumors. Sheryl Sandberg and DVx invest in Self Inspection. BP shutters corporate venture arm, as it retreats from cleantech. Jacksonville’s sorta-self-driving shuttle service NAVI is on the rocks, while the transit operator’s CEO heads to a new gig in Dallas. Greylock raises $1.5B early stage fund. Women-only taxis take off in Finland. Everyone agrees spaced-based data centers are not happening. NYC’s new Public Interest Technology (PIT) Crew aims to help make tech pilots permanent. Win-win: Manhattan to lose parking spaces as city installs more trash bins. LA People Mover construction consortium sues city; why oh why did the airport award some of these same contractors its dumb roadway project. Bolt adds London-based Hiyacar’s p2p carsharing to its app. Bliq approved for AV testing in Finland.

See you next week!

- Jonah Bliss & The Curbivore Crew

Smaller players are getting on the action too. Matternet is in the process of going public, raising a $33M private placement as it heads towards open trading. The company’s stayed relatively capital efficient - having previously raised only about $80M — while notching a partnership with UPS, and became the first company with an FAA type-certified drone delivery system, initially focused on healthcare before expanding into food and retail.

At the center is founder and CEO Andreas Raptopoulos, who’s been building toward this moment since 2011, back when drones were limited to military uses or hobbyist tinkering. In the conversation below — first published on Ottomate — we unpack Matternet’s evolution from humanitarian logistics to urban delivery platform, why he rejects the hub-and-spoke model, how the economics work, and what it might take for drones to move from novelty to utility.

Jonah Bliss: Let’s start at a high level, what’s the Matternet story?

Andreas Raptopoulos: In 2010, I came across what was happening in the DIY drone space. I came into the space with a question, “has something changed in the technology landscape that would allow us to build a different kind of flying vehicle?”

As I started thinking through what was happening, I realized there was a DIY drone movement building up. People were taking sensors popularized through smartphones, computers, GPS units, and creating these tiny quadcopters that could aviate and navigate by themselves.

When I saw that, I thought: this is going to change how the world does transportation—for goods and eventually for people.

That led me to start Matternet in 2011. We were among the first companies to talk about drones as a civilian tool. Back then, drones were mostly associated with the military.

We started by asking: where could this have immediate impact? These systems weren’t permitted in the U.S. or Europe yet—but there were places in the world with no transportation infrastructure at all. So we focused on those.

We did projects in Haiti and the Dominican Republic in 2012, then Bhutan and Papua New Guinea in 2014, and later Malawi. We worked with organizations like Doctors Without Borders, the World Health Organization, and UNICEF.

The idea was leapfrogging: in places without roads, could you skip straight to aerial transport—like how cellular skipped landlines?

For the first few years, up until 2014, we focused entirely on humanitarian work. I gave a talk in 2013—“If there are no roads, there’s a drone for that”—and that really became how people understood what we were doing.

But eventually, I realized humanitarian funding wouldn’t be enough. It was clear we’d need something like $100M+ to build the full technology stack. So we pivoted to commercial use cases.

We entered Switzerland in 2015 and started working with regulators and Swiss Post to figure out how to safely operate drones over cities.

We knew that about 80% of last-mile delivery happens in urban and suburban areas. And something like 85–86% of Amazon shipments are under 2 kg.

So the question became: how do we build a system that regulators and the public trust in those environments?

In 2017, we became the first company approved to fly over cities in Switzerland. We focused first on healthcare—transporting diagnostics, lab samples, and medicines between facilities.

If you look at a system like UCSF, there are dozens of locations moving samples and materials all day. If you can reduce that to 5–10 minutes, it changes efficiency and patient outcomes significantly.

We’ve always been told BVLOS is just around the corner…

Yeah, exactly. And now it finally is here.

We partnered with UPS in 2019 and launched the first commercial drone delivery service in the U.S. A lot of people were doing pilots at the time—but this was a real operation.

Our philosophy is different from most. We don’t want to be UPS—we want to be Apple or Tesla. We want to build the machines and systems that others operate.

So with UPS, we provided the full stack: the drones, the ground infrastructure, and the software. They operated the system.

Then COVID hit, and BVLOS timelines slipped.

But in 2022, we became the first—and still the only—company with a drone delivery system type-certified by the FAA. That process took four and a half years.

About 14 months ago, we launched our first home delivery product. Up until then, we were only doing B2B healthcare. Now we’re expanding into food and retail.

Can you talk a bit about the unit economics, especially outside of healthcare?

In healthcare, we already have positive unit economics. Customers are willing to pay $20+ per delivery, depending on the market.

For food delivery, the target is different. We believe we can get costs well below $5 per delivery, while customers are willing to pay $6–$8.

To get there, a few things matter:

• You need volume—around 100 deliveries per day per location

• You can’t have people on-site operating drones

• You need low-cost, high-utilization aircraft

Think of it in terms of cost per flight hour. If an aircraft costs $20,000 and runs for 10,000 hours, that’s $2 per hour. If you can do 5–8 deliveries per hour, you’re looking at around $0.40 per delivery just for the aircraft.

Then you layer in batteries, real estate, supervision, and maintenance.

What does supervision look like?

The drones are autonomous. The operator isn’t piloting—they’re supervising.

Today, we’re at about 3 drones per operator in commercial operations, 20:1 in testing, and we’re targeting 50:1 or even 100:1. That’s a big lever for reducing costs.

What about the customer experience? Do people need a yard?

Single-family homes are easiest—front or backyard delivery using tether drop.

In apartment buildings, we usually use a designated drop location. The customer comes down to retrieve it. It’s a slight step back in convenience, but faster and cheaper. We’re also exploring locker-based systems.

It seems like part of the model is actually shifting work to the customer.

Exactly. That’s an under-appreciated piece.

Amazon tried ground robots where customers had to come outside—it didn’t work well. But in food delivery, the customer is usually present anyway.

With drones, we have an advantage because we can access private space—like yards—where ground robots can’t go.

How do you compare to competitors like Amazon, Wing, or Zipline?

Amazon isn’t really a direct competitor for us—we don’t see them in deals.

The main players we encounter are Wing and Zipline.

Our differentiation is that we don’t believe in the hub model. We don’t think you should have a separate leg from merchant to drone hub. That hurts both economics and experience. We integrate directly at the merchant.

What about regulation?

We’ve hit an inflection point in the U.S. BVLOS is effectively here—we’re already operating under it. The FAA’s Part 108 rule should formalize it soon.

There are still open questions—security protocols, traffic management—but overall, regulation is no longer the main blocker.

What does this look like by 2030?

I’d estimate 3 to 5 million drone deliveries per day in the U.S.

For consumers, that means:

• Faster delivery—maybe 5 minutes from prep

• Lower costs—around $5

• Better quality—food arrives fresh

For cities, it means fewer cars, less congestion, and lower emissions. The key is that these systems need to be almost invisible—you shouldn’t hear or notice them unless you’re using them.

Anything else we should know?

It’s just an incredibly exciting moment. This is something I’ve been working toward for over a decade. Our long-term vision is global: someone in a remote area could order a system, plug it in, connect it to the network, and instantly have access to aerial logistics.

What we’re building now—in food and retail—is what enables that future.

HOT INDUSTRY NEWS & GOSSIP

Happy birthday, America! No, not Independence Day… we just passed an equally momentous anniversary: the Federal-Aid Highway Act turned 70. Signed by Eisenhower on June 29, 1956, today the federal highway network spans 41,000+ miles and carries about a quarter of nationwide auto traffic. And it had, uhh, zero negative externalities! ;)

Robo-blitz scaling? Waymo is expanding from 11 cities to 15, as it turns on fully driver-free service in San Diego, Las Vegas, Tampa and Denver. The AV co. also began autonomous testing of its Hyundai Ioniq 5s, as it looks to augment its fleet of Jags. Tesla’s Robotaxi service is also expanding, at a rather modest pace. While many headlines are calling this a launch in Miami — conjuring up mental images of beachy high-rises and bustling activity — the actual service area is the low-rise suburbs around West Miami and Coral Terrace, which look like this. And Apptopia has taken a look at the App Store market share of the major AV players, finding that Zoox is biting into Waymo’s marketshare.

Seeing green… With the Feds having torpedoed EV subsidies, California is reviving state-level incentives, albeit in slightly different form from the old CVRP system. The state just allocated $135M in subsidies, $3.5k off new EVs and $1.75k off used ones, with the state paying half at the point of purchase, and participating automakers chipping in the other half. The deal is only good for cars with an MSRP of under $50k, unless the OEM is HQed in the Golden State. It’s nice to see the state getting a bit more creative with using its budget to negotiate with the automakers its subsidizing: we shoveled way too much money at Tesla, Toyota, and GM only to see them backstab the state in various forms. That said, I would maybe expand the program to include international OEMs with their U.S. HQs in California. The CPUC also just approved $20,300 rebates, plus $1,700 in annual charging incentives, for low and moderate income ridehail drivers.

Moto bene! Here’s your chance to buy a cute, tiny car: Stellantis is going to import its pint-sized Fiat Topolino into the U.S. Priced at $13,995, the quadricycle / NEV maxes out at 25 MPH, but what it lacks in range (and airbags) it more than makes up for in cuteness. But if this vehicle looks too darn big for you, head to Switzerland, where the itty bitty Microlino is now available via carsharing.

Bikesharing ambitions lyfted: Lyft announced the planned acquisition of Serveo’s Spanish bikeshare business. This means Lyft Urban Solutions, which runs programs like NYC’s Citi Bike and Madrid’s BiciMad, will take over operations in Barcelona, Bilbao, Valladolid, Zaragoza and more. Hopefully this will put to bed the rumor that Lyft is hoping to exit the bikeshare space, a bit of FUD that’s been used to slow down contract negotiations in markets like LA.

For my fellow cartographic freaks… The Transport Politic’s Yonah Freemark just released an excellent new suite of tools, in his never-ending quest to help visualize transit usage across this fair land. Click around and enjoy looking at modeshare by census tract, VRM by metro area, transit ridership over time, etc.

Good muckraking: LAX’s people mover is now three plus years late, and seemingly zillions over-budget. A new investigative video makes a convincing case that the problem lies with the construction consortium — Fluor, Balfourt Beatty, Flatiron West, Dragados — abusing a flawed contract resolution system, as well as a potential biased single-person project neutral. Shame!

Better transport for NYC: Two must-read reports just came out in the Big Apple. The first — Next Stop: Fast Buses, Better Service — looks to speed up bus service, both by improving local buses and launching true BRT lines. The second — Central Business District Tolling Program: Parking Study — looks at how the city’s congestion cordon has impacted street parking. There was a slight bump in parking utilization near the toll boundaries, but no real rise in “park and ride” behavior near further out stations. Parking spots look to be over-utilized when they’re free, so the city should increase metering and for the love of god finally introduce paid permit districts.

Other countries get the goods: Rennes, France — population 230,890 — plans to improve its metro system frequency to one train every sixty seconds. Meanwhile Peru just finished tunneling for Lima’s second metro line. And Tehran just inaugurated a new station on Line 7, obviously they had nothing else to deal with lately…

Shout out to two cute projects: Meet Vleyr, which is applying the gig work economy to the very NYC-centric issue of moving cars around on alternate-side parking days. And kudos to Greg Rogers on launching Mobility Mayor, a sandbox meant to test the impact of various AV policies in D.C.

A few good links: America has fewer and fewer places to relax and socialize. Southeast Asian mobility and delivery super-app Gojek founder sentenced to ten years in prison. California homicide rate hits historic lows, similar to nationwide trends. China passes new laws to protect gig workers. Cleantech funding holds steady. London freezes bus fares. Street vendors speak out against violence. Autolane launches AV delivery infrastructure. Peak Energy begins construction on sodium-ion battery factory, in Sacramento. Amazon completes millionth delivery via electric cargo bike in Belgium. Bidbus has used car dealers compete for your beater. NYC and LA prepare for flying taxis (file under: speculative.) Sarla finishes first eVTOL flight campaign.

And lastly, thank you to London and New York for coming out to celebrate the mobility community last month!

- Jonah Bliss & The Curbivore Crew

From ridehailing, to food and prescription delivery, app-based platforms are now an everyday part of American life. Seventy-two percent of U.S. adults have used an app-based platform as a customer. More than half used one during the past three months, nearly a quarter use platforms more than five times during a typical month, and two-thirds say the services are valuable to their daily lives (up from 63% in 2023.)

While usage may still be on the rise, adoption isn’t universal. Higher-income city dwellers are far more likely to turn to mobility and delivery apps than their poorer, rural counterparts. Sixty-four percent of those making $100k or more reported usage in the past three months, as compared to just 46% for those making under $50k. And there’s very much a lingering digital divide between the old and young: while 57% of those aged 33-45 used the apps in the past quarter, only 44% of those 65 and up did so as well.

These differences become even more pronounced for super-users, the folks using app-based platforms more than five times per month. While 23% of Americans are using these services on a weekly basis, those aged 18 to 34 are three times as likely to do so as those aged 65 and up. With the federal government drastically cutting back on SNAP benefits, which up until recently had been a growing market for grocery delivery platforms, don’t be surprised if lower-income usage falls further in the years to come.

From Side Hustle to Recurring Income

While consumer adoption is slowing, the gig workforce continues to accelerate. The share of adults who have ever earned through a platform increased from 36% in 2023 to 43% today, while the currently active share rose from 23% to 28%.

For most, this is still very much “gig” work, as over two-thirds put in 15 hours or fewer per week on the platforms, and 63% also hold a traditional W-2 job. But 22% of platform workers get the majority of their income from these apps: that’s many millions of Americans.

The Haves, the Have-Nots and the Multi-Appers

In a country growing ever more polarized, support for gig work was surprisingly consistent across political lines: Democrats and Republicans alike both supported and opposed worker reclassification at near-identical rates.

Where we do see a big difference is in which states see the most app-based platform workers. Uptake is highest in the South, alongside states like California and New York. In general, these are the states with the lowest average incomes, or highest costs of living, suggesting more workers are turning to apps to make ends meet.

Interestingly, as these platforms become a part of everyday life, the income appears to be becoming less of an emergency lifeline and more of a routine supplement. In 2023, 54% of app-based platform workers reported the income was ”very helpful” for dealing with inflation; by 2026 that number fell to just 42%. And while workers are relying on these apps to make ends meet, they aren’t loyal to any one platform: 77% reported they multi-app, meaning they turn to a mix of platforms for work.

It’s an app-based world, and we’re all just living (and working) in it.

HOT INDUSTRY NEWS & GOSSIP

The honeymoon is over… Uber and Waymo’s partnership seemed contentious from the start: were they partners or competitors? The wheels started to fall off a few weeks back, when Uber’s CTO started tweeting about “scary” Waymo moments, followed by the two sides taking jabs about whose service better emphasized “equity.” Now it’s officially over, in Phoenix at least: less than three years after putting Waymo rides in the Uber app, Dara & Co no longer list the Arizona capital as an autonomous market. Uber appears to be readying a new partner for the region, while Waymo says it has reintegrated the “pilot” vehicles into its fleet.

Lime green: Micromobility stalwart Lime finally went public, raising $167M in the process. As previously discussed, most the funds will go towards paying down debts. The company is aaaalmost profitable, and saw a nice 9% jump on opening day, valuing the group at around $1.66B. It fell a tad today, sitting at a cool $25 per share.

More money: Meanwhile, Bolt has claimed its first annual net profit, claiming €920,000 ($1.05M) in net income on €2.27B (up 14% YoY) in revenue. The private Estonian company offers a mix of ridehailing, food delivery, carsharing, and micromobility services across Europe, LatAm, Africa, and Southeast Asia. And in China, AV player Momenta readied for a Hong Kong IPO, seeking to raise up to HK$5.89 billion ($751M).

Feeling bloated? The ever increasing size of cars isn’t just an issue for pedestrian safety, it’s also a simple geometry problem. When each car is a bit bigger, your average city block can fit fewer of them for parking or driving. New research shows that cars have been growing an average of 1.2 centimeters (half an inch) per year, resulting in about 100,000 fewer parking spaces in cities like London and Berlin by 2040. Given how much every driver loves an easy parking spot, most car buyers are perversely making their own problems worse. Another new piece of research draws a similar conclusion, finding that the proliferation of autonomous vehicles is eating into usable curb space. As usual, the easiest solution would be charge the market clearing price for these negative externalities…

Adjö and 再见: And just like that, the American car market got a bit more insular… the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security has denied Polestar the right to sell new vehicles, starting with model year 2027. The administration decided the Geely-owned automaker had run afoul of the Connected-Car Rule, but in typical opaque fashion has not clarified why their other subsidiaries — Volvo and Zeekr (maker of Waymo’s new Ojai) are still cleared for business.

Ride on… The Outdoorsy Group has officially rebranded as The Ride Platform. While the company got its start as a P2P marketplace for RVs, it’s since expanded into a car rental marketplace (Ride), a fleet management stack (Wheelbase), and an AV insurer (Roamly FSD). Along the way, the company just celebrated hitting $4 billion in GTV.

The geography of jobs: The BLS just released its latest payroll data, showing that 38 of America’s 50 largest metro areas have now recovered from Covid-era job losses. The fastest growing regions have been Austin (up 23.8%), Raleigh, Dallas, Nashville and Salt Lake City, while places like SF, Milwaukee, Portland, Boston and Cleveland still haven’t regained all the jobs they lost. Combine that with the fact that office construction has hit its lowest levels since 2011, and I’d say that we’re unlikely to see much new growth in public transit ridership nationwide…

It’s cool to pool! French carpooling platform BlaBlaCar is on an expansion spree, as it doubles its geographic footprint to serve 41 countries. The company plans to up its service in Europe, LatAm and Southeast Asia, while launching its initial foray into Africa. BlaBlaCar execs credit AI for letting them expand faster, speeding up software and language localization build outs. Last year, the company served 40,000 commuters per day in France and grew 47% in India to 19M passengers.

Pod shop: Aseon Labs just raised $10M, in a seed round led by Crane Venture Partners and with participation by Y Combinator and mobility heavyhitters from the likes of Uber, Turo, Nuro and Zimride. The company hopes to build and deploy robotic pods that can be placed in underutilized urban parking spots, letting AV fleets perform charging and cleaning in a more decentralized fashion. Personally, I think it would be a bit simpler to pay the clerk at the convenience store to plug in the charger and brush off the crumbs, but you gotta say the word ROBOTS!!!! to raise money these days.

The beautiful game? Streetlight has taken a look at congestion data around America’s World Cup stadia, finding that travel times crept up 7X near New York / New Jersey’s Met Life Stadium, while travelers near LA / Inglewood’s SoFi Stadium took over an hour to go five miles. Meanwhile, the APTA has the latest roundup on how transit agencies are using the games to boost ridership. It does look like there are some nice tourism spillover effects happening: the Kansas City streetcar logged record ridership (39k trips in one day), despite being nowhere near the stadium.

A few good links: Enjoy the darkness — LA property owners reject confusing street light measure. Chicago’s infamously privatized parking meters sold to new ownership group. Slowly rebounding transit ridership in SF looks to be lower-income than in the pre-Covid days. Beat the heat: different metro cars in China are set to different temperatures, so you can pick the carriage you find comfiest. CaoCao and May Mobility partner to bring robotaxis to Europe, while Waymo registers its first German entity. CA lawmakers sign deal to increase ridehail safety measures, reduce medical liens, looking to avert dueling ballot measures. Car subscription platform Autonomy nabs new CEO, while Germany’s Finn hits unicorn status. Not so green: LA’s massive warehouse fire likely caused by unpermitted solar array. Acodyne raises €2.5M for autonomous cargo drones. LA upzones transit adjacent parcels, but leaves single family homes untouched (this is why state bills like SB79 are so important!) Santa Barbara votes to keep its main shopping street closed to cars. UAE launches first regional train service (powered by diesel, of course!) Russia closes border rail crossings with Finland, Estonia, Latvia. Joby and Toyota launch air taxi manufacturing JV. CMA CGM buys FedEx Supply Chain unit. New Taipei inaugurates 9 mile MRT Sanying Line. Wonder and Zipline partner on Dallas-area drones. Nexar merges with Nauto. Uber reorganizes data labeling biz. Who owns the sidewalk? Issues with IFP’s transit abundance project. Miami-Dade nears deal for commuter line on Brightline tracks. LA adds new peak-hour bus lanes. MA proposes requirement that ridehail fleet renters only offer EVs. When the going gets tough… Bosch CEO steps down. North Carolina legislature approves bill to eliminate parking minimums statewide. NHTSA readies new standards for robotaxis, eliminating vestigial human driving components. Charging accessibility overtakes costs as biggest barrier to EV adoption for ridehail drivers. State of California pushes four days per week RTO. New Gridwise data shows delivery and ridehailing insurance costs falling, with significant regional variation.

And lastly, thank you to London and New York for coming out to celebrate the mobility community!

- Jonah Bliss & The Curbivore Crew

Earlier this month we gathered some of the industry’s top minds to discuss the implications of AVs at scale, including execs from two autonomous vehicle brands — Motional and May Mobility — with particularly close links to automakers. Throw in industry experts from Wall Street Journal and Automotive News, plus execs from the likes of Nexar, TaskUs, Voltera, Rocsys, Terawatt and more, and I think we had some particularly insightful conversations. Catch all the recordings below.

A New Vision: Improved Technology for Safer Streets & Highways

Perception technologies are continuously improving, paving a route to not just smarter vehicles, but safer streets and highways. What are the hardware, AI and policy breakthroughs driving adoption forward? This panel explores the promising improvements coming for all road users.

• Jon Miller — Chief Business Officer, Nexar

• Jordan Prickett — WW AI & Automation Partnerships, IBM

• Nick Allen — Director of Business Development, TaskUs

• Henry Greenidge — Senior Policy Advisor & Counsel, DoorDash Labs

• Kathryn Snorrason — Deputy Chief Mobility Officer, State of Michigan (Moderator)

Charged Up Infrastructure: Electrification's Capital Moment

As vehicles electrify and autonomy scales, the biggest mobility story may no longer be the cars themselves — but the infrastructure beneath them. From grid capacity and megawatt charging to robotics, depot development, and industrial policy, electrification is becoming a once-in-a-generation capital and infrastructure transformation. This panel brings together leaders across charging, energy, and public policy to discuss who will finance, build, and control the backbone of the next transportation economy — and why states like Michigan could play a defining role in shaping it.

• John McLean — Head of Market Development, Voltera

• Alessandra Carreon — Chief Climate Officer, Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy

• Erin Galiger — Director, North American Markets, Rocsys

• Lindsay VanHulle — Deputy Editor, Automotive News (Moderator)

Owned vs On-Demand: Which Way for AVs?

Will autonomous vehicles be something we own, or something we summon? While robotaxis promise lower costs and higher utilization, consumers have long valued the freedom, privacy, and convenience of personal vehicle ownership. This panel explores the competing visions for autonomy's future, examining the economics, technology, policy, and consumer behavior that will determine whether AVs become a shared mobility service, a personal product, or something in between.

• Peter Cohen — GM of AV + Rideshare, Terawatt

• Tom Tang — Chief People and Customer Operations Officer, May Mobility

• Alan Hall — Director, Communications & Marketing, Motional

• Patrick George — Detroit Bureau Chief, Wall Street Journal (Moderator)

HOT INDUSTRY NEWS & GOSSIP

NYC Happy Hour — Tonight: If you live in the Tri-State and work in mobility or delivery, you’d better join us tonight at Threes Brewing for our NYC Mobility & Delivery Tech Happy Hour. Co-hosted by the fantastic Louis Pappas of Electric Avenue, we’re bringing together the worlds of micromobility, curb management, last-mile delivery, EVs, AVs, batteries, bots, and everything in between, a half mile from Atlantic-Barclays. Register now!

Not just delivery bots… Robot.com, née Kiwibot, debuted its R-Noid semi-humanoid. With 7 degrees-of-freedom arms capable of carrying 9 lbs each, the machine is geared towards industrial, logistics, healthcare, food services, lodging, and experiential work.

Juicy! Micromobility stalwart Lime is nearing its IPO, having now priced it around a $1.5 - 1.7 billion valuation. Most of the proceeds will go down to paying down debt, while Uber is considering upping its stake. Per the S-1A, it looks like a few execs will sell ~10% of their shares as part of the offering.

New Zoox: Amazon’s AV subsidiary Zoox has unveiled a refined version of their purpose-built robotaxi. No they haven’t added back mirrors or a steering wheel, but the latest version has a tweaked interior for added rider comfort, plus changes to the exterior meant to improve communications with other drivers and pedestrians. Zoox is still awaiting an NHTSA exemption to begin commercial deployment of its non-standard vehicles.

World Cupdates: Soccer continues to be played, and fans continue to make it to and fro their stadia in one piece. Seattle saw record daily ridership of 280,000 and is adding capacity after riders reported long lines after a late night game. Lime’s local operations also hit a ridership record: 83k. San Jose’s VTA also set a ridership record of nearly 40,000. Vancouver is seeing ridership spike even on non-game days (up 5.15%.) And visitors to Atlanta have deemed their experience “probably as good as what America could have done.” NYC is also interestingly is festooned with info about game-related travel restrictions.

How does your state stack up? Brookings Institute analyzed electric vehicle readiness across the country, judging states by their consumer incentives, environmental standards, charging infrastructure, market access and gov’t procurement. California — home to over 1.25M EVs — topped the ranks, while South Dakota — EV population: 1,676 — brought up the rear.

A few good links: Lyft sets a minimum multi-sensor system standard for AV deployments. Samsara debuts new AirTag-like shipping label to combat logistics theft. Agility Robotics plans SPAC. NTSB probes fatal Tesla crash. Bay Area transit ridership slowly rebounds. Can we turn all of LA’s overly wide boulevards (which used to host streetcar tracks) into new parks? Japanese TNC Go makes stock market debut, raising $553M. Irish drone startup Manna pulls out of home country after regulators hold up permit. Turkish Competition Board approves Uber’s acquisition of Getir’s delivery arm. An architectural review of LA’s new D Line stations notes that while the underground portions dazzle, the street level-design falls short. Hundreds of ~5 year old startup unicorns (including a handful in the mobility sector) are slowly limping towards the graveyard. Uber Eats adds Kiehl’s, FedEx Office, Blick Art Materials, Academy Sports + Outdoors and Choice Pet. Kansas City to put facial recognition cameras on busses, yuck. On China’s move from phones to cars. Ninja nears bid for Delivery Hero. Slate’s affordable and adorable EV pickup truck reveals $25k price point. Fastport Honda reveals sick new website (and speaking slick, I greatly enjoyed kicking the tires on Minimal’s eQuad while in London.) Rare bipartisan bill to boost housing affordability looks DOA after Trump threatens veto.

See you at Threes Brewing!

- Jonah Bliss & The Curbivore Crew

While that played out, the stronger players clawed their way to profitability. From ridehailing to food delivery, to micromobility and beyond, there are finally impressive transportation businesses growing in both footprint and profitability. That’s why, for this season of Zag Talk’s final episode, I sat down with Florent Roulet. He’s Managing Director at Stifel’s Global Technology Group, where he puts together transactions across the mobility tech landscape, including interesting deals like Getaround’s recent merger with GoMore.

He and I talk about how the new mobility landscape has matured, why he thinks that today’s best startups have the “luxury of optionality” whereby they are fully in control of their destinies and what’s next for the sector. Wrapping things up: Greg, Athena and I also get into SpaceX’s IPO, ponder the fate of Mexico’s cheap new EV and revisit the biggest developments of the year thus far. Listen in!

HOT INDUSTRY NEWS & GOSSIP

Hello London & New York: I’ll be in London and NYC the next few weeks. I’m at MOVE London right now — holler if you are as well! Startups and investors, we’ve got a few spots left at MobilityVC’s June 19 MobilityCafe in Shoreditch. Apply to attend. And for everybody in the curb-community — policymakers, regulators, startups, media, investors, tinkerers, corporate types, etc — please join us, alongside our friends at Electric Avenue, for June 25th’s NYC Mobility & Delivery Tech Happy Hour, in Brooklyn.

Driving the narrative: Waymo launched its first national ad campaign, emphasizing its safety record as it enters ever more cities across the U.S. In an additional sign of product maturity, the company also launched a premium membership tier — Premier — offering quicker pickups, 10% discounts and flexible cancellations for $29.99/mo.

Don’t forget the other guys: Stellantis and Wayve are deepening their partnership, bringing L4 robotaxis to Uber’s network across the globe. (This was a fun announcement from the stage of MOVE London.) Meanwhile, Uber’s deal with Lucid and Nuro is getting more concrete, with those robotaxis set to hit the highways of Houston in 2027, where they’ll compete head-to-head with Waymo. And surprise, surprise: Tesla is in trouble with European regulators, as it’s evidently been misrepresenting safety data.

Bad sunbelt, bad! Smart Growth America released its 2026 regional rankings of pedestrian safety across the country. While the situation has improved a bit in the past three years, fatalities are still waaaay up since 2009: is it the smartphones or the giant cars? Our apologies to the poor peds in Memphis, TN — the country’s deadliest metro.

Tudo bem? Think the food delivery wars are tough in America? Check out the situation in Brazil, where iFood, Keeta, 99Food and Uber Eats are all jockeying for pole position. Those are parts of European, Chinese, Chinese and American conglomerates respectively, giving this battle an interesting geopolitical flair.

If you build it, they will ride: LA Metro officially opened its three new D Line stations on May 8th (see earlier reporting) and already the transit agency and riders alike are reaping the benefits. Systemwide ridership is up 9.5% YoY, with weekend ridership showing particularly strong gains.

Goal! The World Cup has finally kicked off, and it seems like… everything has been going just fine, transportation-wise? In LA, a quarter of stadium-goers seem to be using the shuttle busses, while across the country, visitors are posting heartwarming appreciation of our li’l trains to social media…

What about putting those batteries… in more cars? Following a similar move by Ford, GM announced it’s going to start working in the grid-scale energy storage space, combining its own sodium ion battery know-how with the infrastructural capabilities of Peak Energy. Back on the car side of things, GM just rolled out Energy Pass, offering unified EV charging and payments across Tesla Supercharger, IONNA, Electrify America, and soon, ChargePoint and EVgo.

Press plug: Thank you to the North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority for letting me share my thoughts about the future of ecommerce and delivery in the Garden State, for the latest edition of InTransition.

A few good links: LA Metro picks Moovit for unified mobility app. MobilityVC port co HyLight presents their hydrogen inspection blimp on the iconic Champs-Élysées in Paris!. AutoFlight brings eVTOLs to Indonesia. DoorDash-owned SevenRooms launches Channel Connect to help restaurants integrate multiple reservation platforms. TNCs sue NYC over driver retention law. XDOF launches robotic training platform. Lyft Flexdrive’s Waymo fleet ops go live in Nashville. BeepThroat — great name — investigates why Atlanta’s plan for transit on the Beltline has instead become a contract for Beep AV shuttles.

See you in London or NYC!

- Jonah Bliss & The Curbivore Crew

Thank you to everyone that joined us Tuesday for the Urban Autonomy Summit Detroit. We’ll post video recordings shortly!

Far too many bike shops treat two-wheelers like they’re high-end sporting equipment: sleek and expensive pieces of hardware that are meant to be stored in the closet when not out bounding trails. As electric bicycling takes off, brands are finding they need new pathways to get consumers to treat these machines like something that can replace a car: take it to work, use it to run errands, and feel confident that when something goes wrong, it’ll be easy to fix.

Dan Carr, Co-Founder and CEO of Wombi, has been working to fix that, as he’s scaled his company across Australia, before taking it stateside. In today’s episode of Zag Talk, I sat down with him in his Culver City bike-shop and HQ, and we get into what it takes to build the financial and operational layers to offer bikes on a subscription basis, how biking compares in the U.S. versus down under, how the bike industry has recovered these past few years, and the current fundraising environment. I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Dan since he first started kicking the tires on a U.S. launch, so it was a real delight that our team at MobilityVC could participate in his most recent funding round.

Also on the pod, Greg and I chat about Walmart’s expansion into 30-minute delivery (I inadvertently predicted that they would soon start offering food delivery, I swear we recorded this a day before that news went live) and tear into Matternet and SpaceX’s public listings, while Sela reports on the latest developments at Micromobility Europe. Listen in!

HOT INDUSTRY NEWS & GOSSIP

Taking the curb to financial capitals: I’ll be in London and NYC the next few weeks. Startups and investors, we’ve got a few spots left at MobilityVC’s June 19 MobilityCafe in Shoreditch, hot off the heels of MOVE London. Apply to attend. And for everybody in the curb-community — policymakers, regulators, startups, media, investors, tinkerers, corporate types, etc — please join us, alongside our friends at Electric Avenue, for June 25th’s NYC Mobility & Delivery Tech Happy Hour, in Brooklyn.

Own goal: The World Cup is finally kicking off today, meaning we can finally put an end to those breathless “how will the international visitors ever make it to our suburban stadiums?!” think pieces. The New York Times has the most fun take in the series, as two reporters attempt to walk to New Jersey’s Meadowlands sports complex. As the crow flies, it’s less than five miles from Manhattan. But even America’s most iconic cities quickly peter out into sidewalk-free blobs just a few miles from the CBD. (This is less true, of course, in West Coast cities, which tend to have a far less distinct boundary between “city” and “suburb.”)

I guess they didn’t graduate… In a surprising turn of events, Starship Robotics is pulling out of the college campus market, which had long been its main turf in the States. While company founders are calling it a pivot to concentrate on grocery delivery, a market that the company already claims 20% penetration in countries like Finland, the abruptness is unusual: Starship was launching on new campuses as recently as late April. Expect Robot.com (Kiwi) and Avride to pick up many of these contracts, but the real question is if they’ll be able to negotiate any better terms with the likes of Grubhub and Sodexo.

Cars por la gente: Mexico is looking to move its way up the automotive value chain, revealing the Olinia. Built and largely designed / engineered in Mexico, the six-seater can only go 62 miles, but costs just $9k. That makes Ford’s $30k pickup, which is starting to pop up around Long Beach, a tad less impressive.

Slow train: NYC has finally broken ground on Phase Two of the Second Avenue Subway project, looking to extend the two-track train from 96th Street to Harlem. The NYT has some great photos, set in the tunnels the city dug back in the 1970s, before its half-century pause on the project. And over in London, officials are looking to extend the DLR across the Thames.

We’re rebuilding the gas station from first principles… You’ve seen Rivian’s Adventure Network and Rove ReChage by Gelson’s; now Starbucks is getting into the EV charging game. Meet the first SBUX co-located with a fast-charging hub, located on a car dealership lot in Orange County. (H/T HNGRY.)

Am I the only one that doesn’t need to constantly talk to my phone? DoorDash unveiled a slew of AI-powered app improvements, including conversation-based recommendations. Think “filling dinner for a family of 4.” Gopuff just rolled out some similar capabilities.

Wider wings: Wing, Alphabet’s drone delivery subsidiary, is making good on its plans to take its partnership with Walmart to 270 locations across the country. While earlier launches have covered low-density and low-regulation environments, this next phase includes tricker locales like Philadelphia, the SF Bay Area and San Diego.

Bringing downtown back up: Gensler has surveyed downtown-goers across the globe, looking at what would make locals more likely to spend time in their CBDs. Respondents aren’t just looking for mixed-uses and cultural districts, they’re specifically hoping to see downtowns go green and light on cars.

All hail the Curbivore vote? Congratulations to two friends of the curb on advancing from the primaries to the general election. State Senator Scott Wiener will advance as he looks to take retiring Rep. Pelosi’s seat: catch our chat about housing growth and state capacity from last October. And Councilmember Nithya Raman edged out Spencer Pratt, to face off against Mayor Bass in the fall: rewatch her speech from Curbivore 2026.

A few good links: NY legislature looks to force MTA to use two-person train crews in perpetuity. Harry talks to Bliq’s CEO about deploying AVs in Europe. Vingroup enters Indian ridehail market. CargoX raises $250M for autonomous deliveries, helmed by former Talabat CEO. SPACs are so back: Factorial raises $100M as the solid-state battery startup goes public. Meanwhile, Donut Labs’ supposed solid-state battery tech looks to likely be fraudulent. UP-NS rail merger receives heightened scrutiny. Evotrex raises $30M for hybrid-electric RVs. Who will pay for the revamped NY Penn Station? Standard Bots raises $200M. That’s nothing… Bezos-helmed Prometheus raises $12 billion, at a $41 billion valuation. How to speed up the bus. Illinois ridehail workers unionize. Photos of New Yorkers struggling to park over the decades. Edmonton takes rail ops in-house, looks to rebuild state capacity. NYCDOT to improve bike connections to Brooklyn Bridge. Lime rolls out new vehicles to service World Cup host cities: anecdotally, I’ve seen lots of their new hardware around LA.

See you in London or NYC!

- Jonah Bliss & The Curbivore Crew

We’re bringing together top regulators, investors, media, startups, OEMs and AV innovators — including May Mobility, Motional, Ford, Terawatt, Voltera, Michigan DOT, Rocsys, Nexar, IBM, TaskUs, Automotive News, DoorDash Labs, City of Detroit, WSJ and many more. We’ll have three must-attend panel discussions: “A New Vision: Improved Technology for Safer Streets & Highways,” “Charged Up Infrastructure: Electrification’s Capital Moment,” and “Owned vs On-Demand: Which Way for AVs?” followed by great food, drinks and networking.

Apply to Attend Now

PARTNER | Why It Doesn’t Have to Be Humans vs. Machines

A new report makes the case for a hybrid autonomous vehicle network that gives cities time to plan, protects workers from sudden displacement, and keeps service available beyond the wealthiest zip codes.

Learn More

HOT INDUSTRY NEWS & GOSSIP

I guess today we’ll zig, not zag: Today’s Zag Talk podcast episode is temporarily delayed due to unforeseen technical issues. We’ll be publishing it shortly: please subscribe via Spotify or Apple Podcasts to ensure you get instant access.

Curb is the word… More great news write-ups continue to come out of our Curbivore 2026 conference. Over at GovTech, Skip Descant looks at how LADOT and its private sector partners are using the LA28 games to jumpstart new transportation and smart city technologies. And at Marketplace, Julia Pickar talked to our partners at Starship Technologies to learn how the rise of delivery bots is creating a whole new career pathway for engineering-minded college students.

Avride is catching up fast: Autonomous vehicle startup Avride is quickly racking up miles and metrics. Its robotaxi deployment in Texas just hit 60,000 rides and 1.3M autonomous miles, meaning they have the second biggest fleet in Texas. On the delivery bot side, they now have 500 PDDs cruising the mean streets of Austin, Dallas, Jersey City, Columbus, Tucson, Philadelphia, Salisbury and Tokyo; that’s almost 2/3s the amount that Serve Robotics reported in its Q1.

Clean Slate: Slate Auto is building a stripped-down and compact electric pickup truck, aiming for a sub $30k price. Now they’ve revealed that they won’t try to recoup some margin by spying on drivers and selling the data, something that plenty of OEMs have gotten slaps on the wrists for recently. The truck supposedly has 600 parts and components, but no fancy screens or sensors to monitor you. Meanwhile, auto retailer Carvana is considering investing in the upstart automaker, building off its push into new car sales.

Big apple bus biz: Perhaps running a discount skin care brand doesn’t qualify you to try your hand at transit operations? Makeup maker The Ordinary found that out the hard way, as the City of New York shut down its free shuttle bus service, meant to link Domino Park and Prospect Park without forcing straphangers to schlep on the G train. Meanwhile, NYCDOT is setting up temporary bus lanes for the World Cup, while the city’s microhub pilot has taken 3,000 truck trips off the road. Transit Tech Lab announced 18 companies that will pilot their tools with local transport operators. And a terrible, fatal collision on the Queensboro Bridge, between a bike and an illegally-fast scooter — the bicycle was literally torn in half — reminds us that regulators need to do more to crack down on unlicensed micromobility vehicles.

Heck yea, H.R. 9041! Democrat Rep. Mike Thompson and Republican Rep. Vern Buchanan just introduced the America Bikes Act to fund more biking infrastructure, incentivize bicycle manufacturing in the U.S., and improve bike safety. Meanwhile, the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure approved the BUILD America 250 Act, which would reauthorize $580B in surface transportation funding.

What the Flock: Last week we got into the camera data shenanigans over at BusPatrol. Now cities are squawking at Flock, over concerns that the ALPR cameras may also be sharing their data with federal immigration enforcement. Municipalities like Dayton, OH are unsure if they can remove the cameras without changing existing contracts, so in the meantime they’re just covering the cams with black bags.

Not all transit is created equal… What good is a bus line if it only comes once per hour? New Urban Institute data compares how much transit access residents of various urban areas have, and where those regions have been building homes. Some places like South Florida or Metro Detroit have decent bus coverage, but lack frequency and high-quality rail options, leading to low ridership. Of course, factors beyond transit service — office centrality, parking abundance, road tolls, etc — can have a huge impact on how much locals use transit.

PNW problems: Portland’s ridership numbers might be headed downward, as TriMet is cutting 10% of its service in the face of structural budget deficits. Up in Seattle, the rail network is still expanding, but not as much as previously planned: faced with rising costs, Sound Transit has indefinitely delayed an extension towards Ballard. Things aren’t much better on the opposite side of the country: rail operator Brightline is fielding bankruptcy loan offers.

Run through: In happier transit news, Works in Progress looks at the transformative power of through-running, where linking different stub-ends of old commuter networks can create modern, regional rail. While this is old hat in most of Europe and Asia, the U.S. has been stubbornly slow to adopt the practice, with a few exceptions. Philly’s had it since the 80s, LA is currently building it, new plans for NY Penn may finally bring a limited version to the Big Apple and Boston has been mulling it for decades.

A few good links: Waymo’s Ojai welcomes first riders. Grubhub adds integrations with Eater, Beli, Alexa+ and Bilt. NY Mayor Mamdani looks to boost QueensWay over QueensLink for disused rail trestle. NY State okays TIFs to fund Second Ave Subway, IBX; no mention of cost reforms. D.C. Council looks to update local ridehailing regulations. London grinds to a halt as Tube strike hits second day (Londoners, I’ll be in your fair town in two weeks: let’s meet up!) Gigascale raises $250M venture fund to back climate, physical economy startups. Speedbird Aero’s drones fly over São Paulo. Harbinger Motors eyes IPO. Africa’s Spiro raises $215M for its electric motorcycles + battery swapping network. NYT kicks the tires (spins the blades?) on Joby’s eVTOL service to JFK. Serve Robotics begins laundry deliveries with NoScrubs. British Columbia ratifies Uber / Lyft’s first Canadian driver union. JSK heads to MTA — yay! Baltimore Penn Station expansion paused. HUD shows homelessness up 27% from 2013, as it transitions away from “housing first” model. Transit payment giant Cubic suffers black eye after their failure to pay AT&T bill causes BART fare outage. Houston starts Smart Loading Zones pilot, with Automotus. Uber to deploy 500 data-collection vehicles.

Don’t forget to join us in Detroit on June 9th for our next Urban Autonomy Summit.

- Jonah Bliss & The Curbivore Crew

Aspex had been pushing for Delivery Hero to sell off its different brands and regional operations: the 3PD’s sprawling empire includes Foodora, Foodpanda, Glovo, PedidosYa, Talabat, Baedal Minjok and Yemeksepeti. While DoorDash had reportedly expressed interest in Delivery Hero’s Middle Eastern operations, Uber evidently wants the whole thing. After quietly amassing shares over the past few weeks, Uber just bought out Aspex Management’s big block of stock, boosting its stake to 36.8% at a price of nearly €40 per share.

Bulking Up

Both Uber and DoorDash have been on a consolidation spree over the past few year. In February, Uber bought Turkey’s Getir for $435 million. DoorDash has had an even bigger appetite, spending billions to buy both Wolt and Deliveroo. Thanks to these acquisitions, these delivery players are now handling a massive number of transactions. In Q1, DoorDash handled $31.6 billion in orders, Uber Eats did $25.6 billion and Delivery Hero handled €12.5 billion ($14.56B). In Q1 of 2025, right before going private, Just Eat Takeaway.com’s GTV was €4.72 billion (approximately $5.1 billion at the time). Suffice to say, if Uber Eats swallows Delivery Hero, it’ll claim the “biggest delivery platform” crown, outside of China.

The Crown Jewels

Delivery Hero’s family of brands operate in 65 countries, but many of those operations, especially in Latin America and Europe, have fallen behind, treading water with just the second or third best market share. The two biggest notable exceptions are in Korea and the Gulf.

In South Korea, Baedal Minjok / Woowa Brothers is the country’s number one food delivery app. And while growth has slowed amid saturation, this is a huge, and highly profitable market. This subsidiary alone is worth around $5.8 billion.

In the Middle East, Delivery Hero owns Talabat (UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq) and HungerStation in Saudi Arabia. Delivery Hero publicly listed ~20% of Talabat recently, and we can see that it’s growing like gangbusters: GMV is up 18% YoY and revenue climbed 22%.

Regulatory Questions

With Uber looking to go all in, the biggest question remaining is whether regulators will approve the deal. Taiwanese regulators previously blocked Uber’s $950M attempted purchase of Foodpanda, citing anti-competitive concerns. Delivery Hero had previously tried to sell of the entire Foodpanda unit, but that deal fell apart as well.

In fact, regulatory concerns are the entire reason that Delivery Hero is for sale. Dutch-South African investment group Prosus held a huge stake in DH for years, but last year decided to buy out Just Eat Takeaway.com. European regulators, fearing the combined entity would hold too much pricing power, pushed Prosus to sell down its Delivery Hero shares.

Uber + Delivery Hero would have a commanding position in a number of Asian and European markets. Will regulators think that’s too big to fly, or will they see it as a fair counterbalance to DoorDash + Wolt + Deliveroo? Stay tuned…

Urban Autonomy Summit Detroit: Speakers Revealed!

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HOT INDUSTRY NEWS & GOSSIP

Logging on: More and more Americans are turning to gig work, lured in both by these apps’ popularity and perhaps increasing economic precarity. Daily active users (DAUs) across the DoorDash-Dasher, Uber-Driver, Instacart Shopper, Lyft Driver, Shipt and Gopuff Driver apps are up 19% YoY, with most users falling into the 36-45 age bracket.

Left wondering… Marc Lore, who helms delivery and food-hall upstart Wonder, previously stated he was eying a 2028 IPO. But with the capital markets evidently frothy for money-losing startups (SpaceX, every random AI co), the NYC-based company — already valued around $7 billion — is now looking to go public next year.

The death of the dealership? The classic, if not exactly beloved, model of buying a car involved haggling with your local dealers; that’s been under pressure as more automakers ape Tesla’s direct sales model. Now Carvana, best known for its glassy towers of used cars, is looking to shake things up further. It’s gobbled up a series of Stellantis dealerships, using them as hubs to fulfill online orders from out-of-town car shoppers. (H/T Automotive Ventures.)

I guess they truly are down under… Evidently things move a bit slower in Australia, with local big-box retailers suddenly appearing worried that Amazon is going to eat their lunch. Amazon currently only controls 10% of the Australian ecommerce market, allowing local retailers to charge rates that would make American revolt. Local brands like JB Hi-Fi, Harvey Norman, Bing Lee and The Good Guys are now worried about the Amazon Effect; the fact that their used to be an American electronics chain also called The Good Guys, which succumbed to Amazon two decades ago, should tell us how this story is likely to play out…

First AND last mile, in this economy?! Los Angeles is making good progress on its Mid-City Greenways project, adding bicycle infrastructure like traffic diverters, bike boxes and specialized signals to a number of leafy residential streets in the heart of the city. Attentive readers may realize that this essentially connects the city’s brand new D Line metro stations with older subway stops in Hollywood, offering commuters a pleasant way to employment and retail hubs along Beverly, Melrose and Santa Monica Boulevards. This’ll surely be a boon to Lime and Bird ridership; perhaps Metro could also sprinkle in a few bikeshare stations along the way?

Re-volt? EV infrastructure providers Voltera and Revel are merging (feel free to borrow my new brand name…) The combined company operates 1,000 charging stalls and is making a push into the hot AV depot space. EQT will be the combined entity’s majority owner, with Blackrock’s Global Infrastructure Partners maintaining a smaller position.

Amalgamated brotherhood of high-mileage Prius owners: Massachusetts officially recognized the country’s first ridehail driver union, with 70,000+ Uber and Lyft drivers across the Bay State forming the App Drivers Union. MA voters approved drivers’ right to form a union in 2024; the SEIU-affiliate can now negotiate with the TNCs over wage and benefits.

Who watches the watchmen? BusPatrol has quickly taken off across the country, offering school districts “free” cameras, attached to school buses, to enforce traffic safety laws. Ticket revenue then repays BusPatrol’s investment. Now BusPatrol is under fire for activating ALPR on those cameras, and opening the data up to broader law enforcement. In an era where the Feds have been rampantly abusing law enforcement powers, this sure does poison the well of improving traffic safety…

A few good links: Truckers warm to Tesla’s electric semi. How Medellín built its metro in the midst of a civil war. Uber’s CA. ballot initiative looks to reduce accident lawyer fees. Aboard raises $13M for electric recreational trailers, led by Ondine Capital and Llama Ventures. Bellevue, greater Seattle’s “second downtown”, looks to start charging for on-street parking. Seattle DOT seeks Senior Curbspace Planner. Vision impaired riders love robotaxis. Date correction: Join our pals at It’s Electric and Slate for a product preview in Koreatown, this Saturday. LA County and NYC launch Bi-Coastal Fleet Accord. Problematic oil projects in China reveal holes in carbon credit system. Chinese-owned Volvo receives permission to continue selling connected cars in U.S. Travel platform WeRoad raises $58M, led by Airbnb. House passes 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act. Measuring the economic and population shock caused by the Trump Admin’s assault on high-skill immigration.

Don’t forget to join us in Detroit on June 9th for our next Urban Autonomy Summit.

- Jonah Bliss & The Curbivore Crew

We’ve already tracked what a big impact these rising costs are having on everyday commuters, long-haul truckers and even transport operators. And recent Q1 earnings reports showed that ridehail and delivery companies alike are starting to see a mild impact on their margins, as they pay out tens of millions of dollars in gas rebates. But what about gig workers? Our partners at Gridwise Analytics have a new report — How Rising Fuel Prices are Impacting the Gig Mobility Industry — showing just how much these surging costs are weighing on everyday delivery and ridehail workers.

As of last month, 17.4% of ridehail workers’ pay is going straight to their gas budgets, up from 13.2% at the start of the quarter. For delivery workers, who generally travel shorter distances, that number has spiked to 15.6%. (Note: this doesn’t factor in maintenance, depreciation or any other related expenses.)

Rising expenses would be manageable if fares were climbing, but so far the apps have been shielding consumers from most inflationary pressure. Ridehail pay has ticked up to $24.07 per hour, but remains below the highs seen in 2021-2023. Delivery pay, sitting at $15.22 per hour, is up 10% from last summer, but also remains below earlier highs.

While the platforms are offering some relief to workers in the form of higher gas rebates, uptake so far seems limited: Gridwise found that only 17.4% of Uber Eats workers had used the program in its first week, while DoorDash’s $5 to $15 incentive system had reached around 40% of workers. Lyft, meanwhile, has offered some relief to workers by cutting its median platform fees by 13%.

All in all, the average ridehail worker driving 500 miles per week faces roughly $24 in additional weekly gas costs, taking a substantial bite out of their earnings: last year the average weekly gross earnings for a driver was $522 at Uber and $325 at Lyft. Add that up and some drivers are taking home 7% less thanks to higher gas prices. As the war drags on, expect to see more structural shifts: workers dropping out of this particular labor pool, deliveries shifted to bikes or bots, and consumers eventually footing more of the bill. Get more insights in the full report, published by our partners at Gridwise Analytics.

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ZAG TALK PODCAST

In the latest edition of the Zag Talk podcast, Jonah Bliss sits down with our partners at the McKinsey Center for Future Mobility, discussing their new report that contends that the coming AV revolution will not only upend car ownership, but have a deflationary effect on overall transportation spending. Jonah, Ani Kelkar and Darius Scurtu dive into the second-order effects as well, like what that could mean for congestion and land use, as well. Listen in!

HOT INDUSTRY NEWS & GOSSIP

Transit expansions across the globe: Sydney looks to expand light rail to its east side, in a $3B bid to improve access to new homes. Malaysia approves $2.5B elevated rail system for Johor Bahru. Turku, Finland okays first tramway. Saudi Arabia seeks bidders for $16.5B transport system in Mecca. And check out how much Moscow’s transit system will expand by 2050 (or should that money be spent on war reparations?)

KC, mo’ rail… Kansas City just inaugurated an expansion of its streetcar, extending it 0.7 miles to the riverfront. Most Ray LaHood-era streetcars have been boondoggles, but this one gets decent ridership. On a less decent front, the local public transport authority is looking to cut 1/4 of its bus routes due to a funding shortfall.

Carbnb: Airbnb is muscling its way into the car rental business, as part of a larger push into ancillary services that also includes grocery delivery and airport pickups. Those latter two are in partnership with Instacart and Welcome Pickups, so I’m surprised they decided to step on Turo’s toes, instead of collaborating on that product as well.

We’re all delivery businesses now… Walmart released its Q1 earnings, showing revenue up 7.3% and profit hitting $5.33 billion. But more interesting were the levers of that growth: global eCommerce sales grew 26%, membership fee revenue grew 17.4%, ads were up 37% and store-fulfilled delivery jumped 45%.

Happy 250th, Uncle Sam! The House released the BUILD America 250 Act, the latest version of the IIJA, allocating $674 billion in core reauthorization, with $240B in authorized and direct funding for transportation services and infrastructure. $110B goes to roads / bridges, $102B goes to railroads (in what would be Amtrak’s largest investment ever,) $25B to aviation and $17B to ports.

“One entered the city like a god. One scuttles in now like a rat.” The Feds have released plans for the reconstruction of Penn Station. The $8B+ update keeps the basketball stadium above, while refreshing the exterior with a “classical look” 🙄 and raising some interior ceilings. More importantly, the plan allows for “at least limited” through-running of NJT and LIRR commuter trains, an important step towards creating a modern regional rail network.

State capacity rules everything around me, scream: Los Angeles is asking state officials for a six year extension on $100M in grant funding from 2022-23, lest the city be forced to return the funds. These would fund a number of street, sidewalk and bike lane improvements across the city, but the municipality lacks the staffing to get the projects done in time.

Ad astra, you assholes! With SpaceX’s monstrous IPO looming, aerospace investments couldn’t be hotter. More interesting is this new research paper, looking at how the commercialization of space in the 1990s changed the economic rationale for different space-based products and services (cube-sats, satellite internet, etc) but did not change the industry centers most tied to the aerospace economy. (California, Texas, Ohio, DMV, Alabama.)

Charged up for good: Our friends at Women Who Charge are looking for industry professionals to "lean in" and support the next generation of clean transit and energy leaders. If you’re based in Colorado, please take a look at this 501c3.

A few good links: Congrats to our friends at Bingo on unveiling their new micro EV purpose-built for ridehail drivers in developing economies. LIRR strike ends after compromise on pay raises. Join our pals at It’s Electric and Slate for a product preview in Koreatown, this Sat. There’s always money for war: Anduril raises $5 billion at a $61B val, with an emphasis on new manufacturing capacity. Buffalo, NY launches smart curb pilot. Venture funding is concentrating into $500M+ mega-deals. Siemens Mobility buys MERMEC. OEMs look to new verticals as car profits shrink. Archer and Joby duke it out in the skies with competing lawsuits. Fragile raises nearly $100M for hardware subscriptions (MobilityVC has had the pleasure to work with this ace team as they scale up an amazing business.) Nefarious Midwestern realtors try to block open access to listings. India’s Scapia raises $63M for travel booking and mobile payments. Whizz and DoorDash scale up subsidized e-bikes for couriers. Stellantis chooses Wayve for AV integrations. InDrive and GoCab partner to add supply in Chile and Morocco. Flytrex opens drone manufacturing facility near Dallas. Chicago’s infamous privatized parking meters are up for sale again.

Don’t forget to join us in Detroit on June 9th for our next Urban Autonomy Summit.

- Jonah Bliss & The Curbivore Crew

In today’s podcast, Jonah Bliss chats with Ani and Darius, as they get into why they think this is the moment that robotaxis truly take off. And the three of them dive into the tricky downstream effects that could come along for the ride: would cheaper mobility just mean endless congestion? Are voters and policymakers ready for these sorts of massive changes?

Also in the episode, Jonah, Greg and Athena analyze Q1’s financial reports, assess Lime’s pending IPO, discuss all the latest American transport trends headed to Europe and celebrate riding the D. Listen in!

It’s no surprise that the United States builds less public transit than peer nations. What little we do build tends to either fall into two categories: light rail or suburban expansions of existing heavy rail lines deeper (and thus cheaper) into the ‘burbs. In fact, by my calculations: since Los Angeles ended its last spurt of heavy rail building in the year 2000, the entire country has opened just six new urban, underground metro stations: two in Puerto Rico and four in New York.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with extending an L to the airport, and some of the light rail projects in Seattle, Boston, LA and SF have been high quality, but tunneling a new heavy rail line, through a dense urban core, represents a commitment to livability and multi-modal urbanism that’s all too rare in America these days.

Why Wilshire

Wilshire Boulevard has long been LA’s “linear downtown,” serving as a continuous agglomeration of density in an otherwise poly-centric region. And yet even when Los Angeles had the world’s largest electric streetcar network, Wilshire stood out for its lack of direct service: when the land was deeded to the city, at-grade rail was forbidden.

In the century-plus since, policymakers have looked to right that wrong. Transit plans from the 1920s, 50s and 60s all sketched out a Wilshire subway, but it wasn’t until the 80s that funding was secured. Starting downtown, the project got about 1/4 of the way to the beach, before political opponents, galvanized by a methane explosion, rerouted the line (now called the B) to the north. Last week’s project gets us about halfway done, while next year another four stations come online, bringing the city about 75% of the way to its vision of a “subway to the sea.”

All the while, the corridor has continued to grow and densify. Its eastern side — Koreatown and Westlake — are the densest neighborhoods in the country outside of NYC. The entire route connects multiple high-rise-heavy job centers: Downtown, Koreatown, Miracle Mile, Beverly Hills, Century City, Westwood. And the just-opened stations are anchored by a cultural district that includes not only dozens of museums and galleries, but LACMA’s acclaimed and brand new campus. (Evidently, to some less trained eyes, Pritzker-winner Peter Zumthor’s design looks like a mere blob.) Urbanism, especially in Los Angeles, comes in all sorts of delightfully unexpected shapes and forms.

New Mobility, New Mentalities

The value of this new rail isn’t just the tunnels and stations, it’s the way it makes the existing mobility network that much richer and more effective. Imagine you live in Mt. Washington, a hilly neighborhood northeast of Downtown, and work in Beverly Hills. That’s a drive that could take as long as an hour and a half during the afternoon rush, now flattened to an easy 17 minutes on the A line and 15 minutes riding the D.

Even for commuters who don’t live within an easy walk of a rail station, having a regional backbone of high-quality transit unlocks an entire world of rich new mobility solutions for the first and last mile. Ride your bike, take a Waymo or Uber, hop on a shared scooter or public bikeshare, use an electric shuttle…

When you invest in the infrastructure that makes new mobility truly work, the possibilities are endless.

HOT INDUSTRY NEWS & GOSSIP

Seeing green: Micromobility heavyweight Lime just filed for an IPO, revealing that last year it lost $59M on $887M in revenue. While it's targeting a $2 billion valuation, the company needs fresh cash to pay off hundreds of millions in debt that’s due by year’s end. Industry watchers may recall that Lime touted positive free cash flow in FY24, but it sounds like that was based on clever asset financing that’s now about to come due. Meanwhile, the company is angling to expand deeper into NYC.

A capitol idea! Amazon is expanding its e-cargo bike pilot to D.C., deploying 15 equads with the participation of both DSPs and DDOT. While the NYC deployment uses hardware from Mubea and Scoobic (see my earlier review) this one looks to be using Fastport Honda vehicles (see my other earlier review.) In non-pedaling news, Amazon Now is bringing 30 minute or better deliveries to Atlanta, DFW, Philly, Seattle, Austin, Houston, Minneapolis, Orlando, Phoenix, Denver, Oklahoma City and more.

Sounds bumpy… Caltrans is studying the concept of running high-speed buses on California’s highways. I-80, I-5, U.S. 101 and SR-99 are all being researched for buses that could theoretically go as fast as 140 miles per hour, once a zillion other concerns are satisfied.

More, more MOIA: Hopefully you saw them at Curbivore 2026 first, but now MOIA’s robotaxis have begun on-street testing in LA. The VW subsidiary also just announced a partnership with Beep to scale up to 5,000 vehicles in shared ride formats, starting around Orlando.

No Seattle freeze? As the Emerald City and ridehailing / delivery apps continue to duke it out over pay and labor standards, Seattle has released a new set of data, making the case that demand has stabilized even as worker pay has increased. (See background on Pay UP and Fare Share.)

Just keep yankin’ on levers to see what else you can break… With the war on Iran and gas prices showing no signs of abating, President Trump has proposed suspending the federal gas tax. How might we pay for any transportation improvements? Well don’t worry, the administration also wants to end all funding for multimodal transportation and rail improvements. Meanwhile, Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy has been on a seven month “road trip” to film a reality TV show, which was funded by the organizations (Boeing, Shell, Toyota, etc) that he purportedly regulates. Here’s the pitch deck, if you’d like to see how cheap a legal bribe is these days.

Beautiful buses: While transit agencies like NJT continue to take heat for their high game-day fares (now reduced to a cool $98,) LA Metro is offering rides for $1.75 (but it’s the parking that will cost you!) The agency just revealed its multi-county, high-frequency bus network for World Cup Enhanced Service. Expect something similar for the Olympics (which we discussed at Curbivore 2026.)

Driven by 2028 — Transatlantic Sustainable Mobility Forum: Hosted by the German American Chamber of Commerce, this morning forum brings together German mobility innovators and LA stakeholders to tackle a defining question: how to move millions of people, goods, and services across a sprawling city ahead of the 2028 Summer Olympics. The program includes keynotes, pitches from cutting-edge German companies and a panel on logistics and last mile for LA 2028, and features MobilityVC’s Sam Baker. Register for the May 19 event in DTLA.

A few good links: Hertz’s revenue pops 11%. LA Metro scores $150M in federal funds for Vermont BRT. Brightline teeters near insolvency. After years of solar investments, Spain now has one of Europe’s cheapest power markets (all hail the Spanish century!) Uber and Santander partner on €1 billion fleet financing initiative. NHTSA probes Avride. Grab Q1 revenue soars 24% YoY. Donkey Republic revenue climbs 9.9%. Kodiak AI stock slides after it raises $100M at a deep discount. New analysis of transit ridership show that Baltimore, Atlanta and Pittsburgh have had the worst post-pandemic recoveries. GM axes 10% of its IT department as it retools around AI skillsets. San Diego looks to limit state-mandated transit-oriented upzoning to just 16% of eligible land. Waymo recall reveals that AV fleet size now sits at 3,791. For the venture fund fundies: Yale Budget Lab proposes closing carried interest loophole. Maryland lays final piece of track for Purple Line. Rivian spinout Mind Robotics raises $400M. SF unveils new parking apps. What happens to Latrobe, PA’s airport with its only airline, Spirit, now out of business?

Don’t forget to join us in Detroit on June 9th for our next Urban Autonomy Summit.

- Jonah Bliss & The Curbivore Crew

U.S. auto sales have been more or less flat for decades, as cars last longer, while Detroit’s profitability has been buoyed by Americans’ appetite for big, tricked-out trucks. Domestic auto production, meanwhile, has fared far worse, falling continuously since the 1990s. This inflection isn’t limited to just America, automakers as varied as Nissan and Volvo are seeing sales drop, while auto production share everywhere outside of China has fallen in the past few years.

So, what does it mean once you throw the rapid rise of robotaxis into this quick burning tire fire? The past 15 years have seen a tremendous explosion in new mobility options — ridehailing, carsharing, micromobility, you name it — but not only has VMT continued to creep up in America, so too has the number of cars per household… what’s different now?

A few new variables have changed the equation. Gas prices have jumped 50%, making commuting untenable for many drivers, while those who can afford a new car have far fewer economical EV options than they did a year ago. Combine that with recent Morgan Stanley research that suggests the cost per mile to operate an autonomous taxi may soon fall below that of car ownership, and it’s quite possible that consumers will soon find AVs are the most affordable way to get to their destinations.

This of course could be catastrophic for legacy OEMs, as well as the cities that still rely on auto manufacturing as the backbone of their economies. With so much at stake, we’re convening our next Urban Autonomy Summit in Detroit, on June 9th. Join us for an afternoon of pivotal discussions as we convene AV players, automakers and regulators alike, to figure out whether the future of autonomy is owned or on-demand.

Apply to Attend Now

CURBIVORE CONFERENCE COVERAGE

A not so autonomous Olympics? Analysis and coverage from last month’s Curbivore continues to hit the wire, with Forbes’ Brad Templeton drilling down on our “Resilient Streets, Cities & Mega Events – The Road from Today Until 2028” panel (full recording here.) While he’s impressed with the kit-of-parts approach that blends together public transit, ridehailing, micromobility and repurposed parking lots, he’s disappointed that LA28 might not be a launchpad for autonomous mobility or broader congestion priced cordons.

But there is a robotic future for deliveries… Maybe it’s a case of AV give and take, as IGD Director of Retail Futures Stewart Samuel’s takeaway from Curbivore is that if the economics of grocery and restaurant delivery are ever going to make sense at scale, it’s going to require the mass adoption of autonomous systems.

And what of our cities: Does it even matter if vehicles are autonomous or human driven, if our roads aren’t repaved, our streetlights don’t work and local services languish? In the latest episode of Zag Talk, we hear from Nithya Raman, an urban planner turned councilmember who’s now running for mayor; she shared her vision for a city that works at Curbivore 2026. Listen in.

HOT INDUSTRY NEWS & GOSSIP

Uber growth: Uber released its Q1 2026 results, showing that the mobility and delivery economy is still hot. Trips were up 20% YoY, gross bookings climbed 25% and revenue jumped 14%, with the delivery business outpacing mobility across every metric. The company’s AV diversification play seems to be working, with autonomous trips up 10X YoY, while delivery expansions across Europe and APAC appear to be paying off. Meanwhile, Lyft’s gross bookings and revenue climbed 19% and 14%, respectively

Still dashing: DoorDash’s results were strong too, with total orders up 27% YoY, gross order value rising 37% and revenue jumping 33%. The company also just published its 2025 U.S. Economic Impact Report, showing how important the marketplace has become to over 600,000 merchants and 8M+ couriers.

Ride the D! Los Angeles’ eagerly anticipated D Line opens three new stations tomorrow (May 8), inaugurating 3.9 miles of additional subway service, with another 5.2 miles set to open next year. There’ll be civic celebrations at each station, and I hope to see my fellow mobility heads there in the late afternoon.

Lucid dreaming: Back to cars for a moment, as upstart automaker Lucid Motors is having a rocky go of things. The company just retracted its earlier guidance and now has no clue how many cars it’ll build this year, amid a Q1 that saw revenue rise but losses growing even faster. At least its AV plans are still on track, with its tech partner Nuro receiving CA DMV permits to begin testing.

Cam wars: Both Lyft and Uber are making a push into vision data, looking to equip their drivers with cameras that’ll better map streets and highways for AV partner vehicles. Lyft is calling their solution FleetView, while Uber’s is an initiative of their new AV Labs project; both concepts seem to be sniffing at market leader Nexar. When asked for comment, CEO Zach Greenberger responded, “Both announcements point at the same conclusion: real-world data and real-world operations are now table stakes for autonomous deployment. That’s the thesis Nexar has been operating on since 2015. We’re at 350,000 connected cameras, more than 100 million miles a month, and 94% U.S. road coverage today. The AV programs training on real-world data right now, including NVIDIA and Waymo, aren’t waiting for that capability to come online elsewhere.”

Bound for a rebound: The FTA has released Q1 data of its own, tracking how America’s largest transit operators are continuing to recover from the pandemic. NYC, DC, LA and Seattle are doing well, while regions like SF and Atlanta continue to struggle.

Slow train: New research shows that even in some cities most mentally associated with transit — think Berlin or NYC — residents have quicker access to more destinations by car, especially out in the ‘burbs. Shout out to Paris and Zurich for holding it down for subway riders.

Around and around: European p2p carsharing players Getaround and GoMore have merged, with the combined entity offering service to five million users in 11 countries. Its fleet of 70,000 shared vehicles is about 15-20% the size of market leader Turo. Stifel served as the exclusive financial advisor for the transaction.

So much for opsec… Autonomous military ATV startup Scout AI took TechCrunch reporters to see its new hardware in action. Despite asking folks “not to name” the Central California military base, the company released accompanying media assets that clearly show it operating near Camp Roberts, by Nacimiento, CA. Durr!

Ever the optimist! AV enthusiast Grayson Brulte and Bot Auto’s Robert Brown test rode Tesla’s unsupervised Robotaxi network near Houston. Despite the route linking two Tesla service centers, the car still had a number of alarming issues: it repeatedly missed the same turn, it made an illegal U-turn and its attempts to connect to a tele-ops assistant seemed unsuccessful.

A few good links: Joby Q1 rev hits $24.3M. Jeff Bezos’ rep steps down from Slate Auto board. Marc Lore doubles down on AI-designed restaurants pitch. VA tightens ridehailing safety requirements. Would crowd-funding the purchase of a bankrupt airline even work if you got all the money you needed? Permitted backyard dining transforms LA’s vaunted food scene. Despite growing capacity, America’s electrical grid is still falling short. Toyota to build hydrogen truck fueling center in SoCal. NYCDOT seeks secure bike parking location suggestions (looks like no love for Staten Island). Uber Eats adds Ulta Beauty. Biking across Cape Town reveals apartheid’s infrastructural legacy. D.C. mulls local AV legislation. Has citizen enforcement of illegally idling vehicles in NYC gone too far? Vancouver, BC permits Serve’s delivery bots. Cities need to properly price their curbs before AVs gobble up all the “free” space. After fourteen months in power, the Trump admin has yet to release funding for a single new public transit project. India mints first aerospace unicorn. It’s Electric expands curbside charging to Philadelphia. (Great marketing pics!) Aspen, CO releases Smart Zone pilot data. Texas transit two-step: TEXRail breaking ground on Medical District expansion, while Highland Park votes to leave DART. Rising gas prices impacting delivery workers more than ridehail drivers.

See you next week!

- Jonah Bliss & The Curbivore Crew

The city is now at an inflection point, with voting in the first round of a mayoral election set for June 2nd. The three most viable candidates are Karen Bass, the incumbent mayor and a former congressperson; Nithya Raman, an urban planner turned city councilperson; and Spencer Pratt, a reality TV star who’s punched his way into the conversation thanks to high name recognition and money to burn.

In today’s episode, we hear from Councilmember Raman, who currently represents District Four, stretching from the iconic Hollywood Hills to the beautiful San Fernando Valley. In her six years in office, she’s built a progressive track record, working to improve governance, build safer streets, create housing and push towards a greener economy.

Before we get to the interview, recorded at Curbivore 2026, Jonah chats with Greg and Sela about the ITS European Congress, Helsinki’s glamorous new car-free bridge, Amazon’s supply chain push, Spirit’s bankruptcy, robotaxi pricing and more. Listen in!

Thank you to everyone that joined us in NYC for our Mobility & Delivery Tech Happy Hour. Now on to your usual industry news digest…

Oil prices just hit a four year high: $126 per barrel, which works out to about $4.30 per gallon across the U.S, $6+ in California, even more in Europe and Asia. As we’ve previously explored, this is rewiring commutes the world over.

Stateside, the pain isn’t being shared evenly. While low income commuters are taking the biggest hit in every city, the real whack to your wallet comes down to how far you have to drive. Regions like NYC, SF, Los Angeles and Chicago only see weekly VMT per capita of 175 miles or fewer; while those stuck in places like Dallas, Austin, Atlanta, Nashville, Raleigh and Detroit might be driving 250+ miles per week.

In many metro areas, a lack of viable public transit alternatives means drivers can’t simply hop on a bus or train to save a few bucks; it’s instead pushing many to finally explore electric vehicles. Hertz and Turo both reported a surge in EV bookings, with the latter’s jumping 47% YoY.

Many automakers are of course kicking themselves that they cancelled much of their EV lineups riiiiight before gas prices spiked, but a few OEMs have been more fortuitous with their timing. Volkswagen just released its ID. Polo, an electric hatchback coming in at around 25,000 euros ($29,000) while maintaining a respectable driving range.

While countries and cities with more robust transit are of course seeing ridership grow, even some transport operators are struggling. BlaBlaCar Bus, an intercity operator in Europe, is shutting down as higher diesel prices make its operations untenable.

Back in America, bus operators that switched to natural gas vehicles are now looking particularly shrewd, as LNG / CNG prices have stayed stable, but truckers — the backbone of the country’s freight economy — will be next in line to feel a hit to their pocketbooks. Perhaps the real question is, when will those higher rates translate into pricier goods at Amazon and Walmart?

HOT INDUSTRY NEWS & GOSSIP

Uber air: Uber unveiled a slew of product updates at its latest Go-Get event, as the company keeps up its push to become an everything app. Notable new features include hotel bookings (naturally in partnership with Expedia, Dara’s old employer,) in-airport navigation, voice bookings, unified search, and “Eats for the Way” — where your Uber Black driver will arrive the rider’s choice of drink or snack waiting in the back (we’re sure the drivers are going to love the extra crumbs.)

Oro for whom? Uber also announced a big new partnership with Oro Mobility, a just-launched subsidiary of Hertz. The car renter is making a belated push into the new mobility space, doing asset management, charging, maintenance, repairs and cleaning for AVs, including Lucid + Nuro vehicles in the SF Bay. Oro is also providing Uber with managed fleet operations, where it pays drivers a flat hourly wage, plus tips, to drive its vehicles on the TNC network all shift long. Pay looks to be $14-19 per hour, depending on the market, which is a bit lower than competitors like Alto or 8Fleet.

Lyft in London: After buying up FreeNow, Lyft is continuing its European push with the acquisition of Gett’s U.K. black cab service, for $55 million. Perhaps the move is to keep the customers but ditch the drivers, as the ridehailer also just began testing Baidu Apollo Go AVs in London.

AVs inch upwards: Obi continues to track the price of various autonomous and human-driven ridehailing services, finding that Lyft and Uber pricing in SF has dropped in the past quarter, while Waymo climbed slightly. But Tesla’s not-actually-autonomous Robotaxi service saw a 34% jump, as it slowly pulls away the deep subsidies that have been underwriting the business.

Dirty, but not so secret? Dallasites have discovered that Waymo’s local charging depots are actually powered by Xos’ mobile hubs. Those are in turn recharged using gas generators. While that sentence ought to win over the reddest Texan’s heart, we’ve actually seen a number of operators deploy similar setups, meant to buy time as they wait for utility upgrades to deliver enough electricity to their sites.

Viva la Cuarta Transformación! Mexico continues its impressive mobility infrastructure upgrades, with President Sheinbaum inaugurating a new rail line connecting CDMX’s tertiary airport with the city center. Further north, Monterrey began testing its new monorail line, as its expands its rail network to six lines.

Golden state, silver state, bronze wiring: Back on the metaphorical AV train… California has rolled out a number of updated regulations: the DMV has lifted a ban that kept autonomous trucks from operating on public roadways, while misbehaving robotaxis can now be ticketed and AV operators must respond to first-responders in 30 seconds or less. Meanwhile in Vegas, Zoox is testing the expansion of its operations to cover the airport, while the LVCVA is looking to dismantle the monorail and reuse the track to extend the Tesla-powered Vegas Loop (no more tunneling for The Boring Company, eh?)

Minnesota, not so nice: MnDOT is “rethinking” Interstate 94, which connects the twin cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. While many local advocates are now debating whether that should mean capping the highway with a few parks or removing it entirely in favor of an urban boulevard, others are proposing using the existing trench to host an eight mile heavy rail subway. On one hand, sounds lovely! On the other hand, the existing LRT network gets rather embarrassingly low ridership, especially when you consider it’s already anchored by the two downtowns. If you want to connect the two cores, why not use the existing tracks that are only a mile further north, and save the big bucks needed to extend rail service to denser neighborhoods on the SW side of town?

Ride the D: LA Metro will officially cut the ribbon on phase one of the D Line Extension on May 8th; see you there? While ridership projections are already strong, the agency has some clever activations in store, meant to drum up interest and awareness by the train’s new neighbors. Angelenos, head up to Wilshire Blvd for free salsa classes, local retailers, produce, coffee, art and Ethiopian food all the way through July.

A few good links: Amazon Q1 sees net sales jump 17%. U.S. and South Korea go to war over shopping giant Coupang. DoorDash-owned Wolt now one of the 10 largest grocers in Europe. Faraday Future keeps paying founder big bucks, despite setbacks. Rivian CEO gets new $400M+ pay package, after failing to hit previous “moonshot” pay goals. DoorDash and Lyft expand partnership to Canada. Delivery Hero GMV climbs 8.8% YoY. How transit agencies can recruit and retain great workers. Micro Enterprise Home Kitchens prove a hit in Riverside County. Vancouver’s SkyTrain gets delightfully wonky with explaining how they expanded old stations to allow for larger trains. Battery techer Redwood Materials cuts 10% of staff. MOIA and Beep partner on AV shuttles in Orlando. Curb management project kicks off in Madison, WI. After fourteen years, Staten Island BRT project still stuck in “under review” purgatory — two more years and it can get a driver’s permit! Fun with Claude Code: a live map of every NYC traffic camera. Funding cutbacks and equipment troubles imperil ridership growth on SoCal’s Metrolink regional rail network. California fights over Zone Zero fire regulations. Meet BemiGo, the latest oddball autonomous delivery vehicle from China. Rocsys raises $13M for autonomous charging. Jawohl! — BMW i Ventures raises new $300M fund. Rivian and Caruso strike deal to add Adventure Network charging to malls and apartments. Philly pushes ahead with loading zone and bike lane improvements despite lawsuits. Check out all the latest Chinese EVs we won’t be getting in the States. Brightline looks to restructure debt or face bankruptcy; this doesn’t bode well for its LA-Vegas train. Go behind the scenes at Avride’s delivery bot factory. Alphabet Q1 earnings re-confirms that Waymo is providing 500k+ autonomous rides per week. DoorDash launches business catering. CA extends Cap-and-Invest comments after Senate push.

See you next week; keep an eye out for how higher gas prices are impacting Uber, DoorDash and Lyft earnings!

- Jonah Bliss & The Curbivore Crew

If you missed last week’s event, dive into the best fits with our just-released sizzle reel.

We’ve also just released video recordings of all the panels, firesides and speeches from Curbivore 2026:

• Kicking off Curbivore ’26: Autonomy, Delivery & Mobility

• Resilient Streets, Cities & Mega Events – The Road from Today Until 2028

• Beyond the Storefront: Successfully Navigating the On-Demand Era

• Urban Autonomy in America: What’s Real & What’s Next

• Tasteful Technology: The Future of Delivery

• Nithya Raman Welcomes You to Los Angeles

• Meet Dot: DoorDash’s Accelerated Autonomous Local Commerce Solution

• Better Wheels, Smarter Apps & Higher Wages: The Future of Gig Work

• Forecasting the Future of Gig Work in an Autonomous World

• Keep On Rolling: Electrifying, Scaling & Automating The Vehicles of Tomorrow

Watch Now

BIG NEWS SHARED FROM CURBIVORE’S STAGE

As always, Curbivore saw huge news launched from our main stage.

Uber’s Head of Grocery & Retail Partnerships, Beryl Sanders, launched Returns: a reverse logistics service that’s gone live with partners like Best Buy, DICK’S Sporting Goods, Pet Food Express, Pacsun, and Petco.

Listen in to my conversation with her, digging deep into third party delivery’s evolution from urban niche to worldwide must-have, on the latest edition of the podcast.

We also hosted the official partnership launch for Fastport Honda and Bird + Spin. The iconic micromobility operator will be incorporating those fetching equads into its field operations.

And of course, Curbivore also hosted the official launch for Ridepro Team, plus the U.S. launches of new delivery bots from Neubility and Robotis. Take a look at our fantastic photos from last week to see all the other cutting-edge mobility hardware on display.

Curbivore moves markets as well. We hosted a number of financial analysts, with Roth publishing its updated research on Lyft, Uber, Amazon, Alphabet and DoorDash.

HOT INDUSTRY NEWS & GOSSIP

Finally hopping off the Curbivore stage, we’ve got plenty of industry news to catch you up on…

Coco heads north: Our friends at Coco Robotics have launched their latest market, bringing 20 bots to San Jose, CA. NorCal has been a bit less delivery bot friendly than SoCal, but DoorDash also recently launched its Dot bot in Fremont. (As discussed at Curbivore last week.) Coco is also partnering up with BlindSquare, providing robust data on hazards in the pedestrian right of way to the vision impaired.

Even bigger bots: Meanwhile, indiGOtech is taking its GO Bots to Belgium, as it partners with large retailer Colruyt Group’s Collect&Go service. (Indigo purchased bot-builder Clevon last year.)

Huge fundraising hauls: Slate Auto pulled in another $650M, in a Series C led by TWG Global, in its quest to bring affordable electric pickup trucks to the masses. Mappedin raised $24.5M to better map indoor spaces. Flock Safety is reportedly raising another round, after hauling in $275M last year: there’s always money in spy cameras! Glydways closed on $170M for its closed-route autonomous shuttle system. Overall EV funding sits at $3.57 billion YTD, up a bit YoY.

Not feeling the love in Philadelphia: Uber is fighting a proposal from the City of Philadelphia to add a $1 per ride tax to ridehail trips. The funds would go towards filling gaps in school district funding; I think this one would be an easier sell if the money went towards public transit or city infrastructure. Meanwhile, as predicted, rowdy cheese steak eaters have been beating up Avride’s delivery bots.

Red state transit: Omaha, Nebraska just started laying down rails for its new streetcar system, with a route that’s unfortunately rather duplicative of its sole BRT line. The city’s lofty vision is “Imagine an Omaha where people can park their car, then take the streetcar to shops, restaurants and entertainment venues without moving their vehicle more than once.” (Emphasis mine.) Meanwhile, Atlanta just inaugurated service on its first BRT line, which unfortunately still runs in mixed traffic for much of its route. And Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) is trying to kill a voter-approved light rail project in Austin, candidly noting “Austin is the blueberry in the tomato soup, and obviously the City Council has run amok and needs to be reined in.” Yay partisanship!

A few good links: Auto Marketplace shares its top takeaways from Curbivore 2026. Atoms officially purchases Pronto. Delivery worker Sergio Gustavo Ajche joined by Mamdani and Schumer at deliverista hub ribbon-cutting; here’s how it got built quickly. Quack: Avride squashes duck in Austin… talk about fowl play. No surprise: new research shows its more dangerous to be a pedestrian in areas with low foot traffic, not high. Malfunctioning electric busses leave South Florida transit operators high and dry. Pacific Surfliner adds new commuter-friendly train service. NYC adds protected bike lanes to 72nd Street. Tesla brings its not quite autonomous robotaxi service to Dallas and Houston. Capital offense: Uber ramps up AV spending to $10 billion, while buying new stake in Delivery Hero for €270M. Flytrex launches bigger drones for larger Little Caesars pizzas. NY Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie works to kill Stop Super Speeders bill. U.S. urban growth slows as immigrants stay away. SpaceX and CA Coastal Commission settle lawsuit. Can outdoor boozing reinvigorate California’s shopping districts? How to reinvigorate mid-sized cities’ downtowns. Bonjour hi: four new REM stations open in Montreal on May 18. LA Metro launches RFP for water taxi between San Pedro and Long Beach (can we extend it up to Santa Monica / Venice?)

See you next week!

- Jonah Bliss & The Curbivore Crew

Beryl Sanders, Uber’s Head of Grocery & Retail Partnerships, has led that charge, scaling up Uber Eats into novel verticals with new merchant relationships. Jonah Bliss sat down with her, live at Curbivore 2026, to hear what’s next for the delivery and mobility giant, including its just-launched returns feature (reverse logistics: so hot right now!)

Also on the pod, Jonah, Greg and Sela dig into the latest robotaxi news, share what’s working for micromobility operators in LatAm and Europe, and chew over Upshift’s pivot to tele-ops. Listen in!

Then, the festivities continue all day Friday at 826 Mateo St.

While we always bring out amazing transportation + delivery technology and unforgettable street food, to me the highlight of the event is the public sector leaders who are pushing mobility forward. I'm especially excited to announce that this year we're joined by Councilmember Nithya Raman, who has been a visionary and champion for improved mobility, better urban planning and healthier small businesses across Los Angeles.

She joins other champions of the public realm — from LADOT, NYCDOT, CPUC and more — and will be addressing attendees right after lunch concludes.

Register Now - It's Your Last Chance

We still have just a couple of tickets left for our biggest and best event yet — a full day and a half of amazing demos, powerful networking and thoughtful discussions uniting autonomy, delivery, mobility and so much more.

See you soon!

-Jonah, Harry & The Curbivore Crew

You’ve got just one day left to save over $300 on admission — act fast!

This year’s event is our biggest and best yet. We kick things off on Thursday 4/16 with our famous Opening Reception at Bike Shed Moto Co, brought to you by Ridepro Team.

Then Friday the 17th is an entire day of market-moving announcements, interviews, panels, demos, exhibitions, and of course our celebrated and complimentary street food. The core theme for this year’s festivities is understanding how the rise of autonomy is impacting just about every other topic we hold near and dear: cities, mobility, delivery, local businesses, civic technology and the curb. (Harry and I break apart those topics, and give you a taste of the discussions to come, in this week’s podcast.)

This year the networking opportunities go late into the night, with Nexar’s AV Future After Party closing things off!

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MEET THE LATEST PARTNERS JOINING US 4-16/17

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HOT INDUSTRY NEWS & GOSSIP

Eating your own lunch? Evidently Amazon’s quick commerce solution in India is growing so popular that it’s cannibalizing the ecommerce giant’s traditional grocery delivery platform. Amazon Fresh is reportedly winding down its “same day” options in 10-15 major cities to concentrate on 10-20 minute delivery. That’ll be tough on the margins!

Chicken, Wing(s): DoorDash and Wing are expanding their aerial delivery partnership to the land of Chick-fil-A, with a new launch in the Atlanta exurb of Locust Grove. Centered around a mall (of course!), the service promises 20 minute delivery for meals that would otherwise get bogged down by highways and cul-de-sacs. We’ll be touching on autonomous delivery operations at Curbivore when Harry chats with DoorDash Labs’ Harrison Shih!

Delivery, Ace’d: Uber Eats continues to add new non-food partners to its platform, as it begins delivery services for Ace Hardware. As Ace is a co-op, the deal starts with 3,700+ of the brand’s 6k locations, but that’s likely to grow over time. Jonah chats with Beryl Sanders, Uber’s Head of Grocery & Retail Partnerships about the push from restaurants to markets to all of retail, next week at Curbivore.

Physical AI, so hot right now! Palo Alto-based Eclipse just raised $1.3 billion in new capital for backing “physical AI” startups, split between early stage and growth funds. Existing port cos include Mind Robotics, Wayve, Arc, Mystra, Foxglove and Redwood Materials.

Derailed: A new crunching of FTA data shows how ridership has recovered (or not) from the pandemic at various large transit agencies across the states. While other major agencies are at 80-90% of their 2019 ridership, and even SF’s local operator Muni is at about 75%, BART has only seen about half of its riders return. Hence, the state’s loan to Bay Area agencies, hopefully followed by voters approving new permanent funding.

Feds on bikes: Finally, we may get an answer to the age old quandary, “what is an ebike?” The Safe Standards for Personal E-Bike and E-Moto Device Specifications (Safe SPEEDS) Act would empower the CPSC to define and regulate electric micromobility device at a federal level, better cleaning up the division between electric bicycles and electric motorcycles, while possibly adding speed and age-related requirements as well.

Does “Tesla for X” still sell? Voltify, dubbed the Tesla for Rail, just raised $30 million from Aleph and Fortescue to transition diesel train systems to electricity while relying on micro-grids instead of costly system-wide electrification.

Remote driving in circles? Estonian remote driving tech co Elmo is partnering with SF carsharer Upshift, to bring teleoperated rental cars to the Bay Area. Vay is doing something similar in Nevada, but this whole space seems to be struggling to gain traction… not as sexy as AVs, perhaps?

Join our friends at CoMotion Miami: From autonomy and advanced air mobility to intelligent infrastructure and mega-events, CoMotion MIAMI is where the world’s decision-makers come together to chart what’s next at the #1 future mobility event.

Join us on April 28-29 at Miami Dade College for two action-packed days of pitches, keynotes, insightful panels, hands-on workshops, live demos, exhibitions, networking and unmissable after-hours gatherings. Register now with Curbivore-30 and save 30%.

A few good links: Learnings from Portland’s zero-emissions delivery zone. Zenobe keeps funding EV truck charging. China cracks down on drones. U.S. traffic deaths fall. DoorDash local commerce report shows inflation easing (let’s see what happens next quarter, once higher gas prices are baked in.) NYC launches Office of Curb Management. Swobbee opens new NYC location. Deliverect launches AI agents. India grapples with gig worker shortage (try paying them more?) Grubhub co-founder moves into roadside automotive services. Niantic Spatial unveils the Scaniverse. Return of rail service to Atlanta’s Beltline looking less and less likely.

Get your Curbivore tickets!

- Jonah Bliss & The Curbivore Crew

We’re just two weeks away from Curbivore 2026 — uniting the worlds of autonomy, delivery and mobility on April 16th and 17th. We kick things off with our exclusive Opening Reception (registrants: keep your eyes peeled for RSVP info) followed by a full day of programming — panels, firesides, demos, workshops, booths, networking and amazing food + drink) and a rocking after party.

Our full agenda is now live, we’ve just announced our latest amazing speakers from Sweetgreen, Lyft, RidePro, Business Insider and Wolfe Research, and we’ve got more partners joining the fun (read to the bottom for all the details.)

Join the Conversation - Register Now

HOT INDUSTRY NEWS & GOSSIP

Waymo takes off: Waymo’s AV services continues to grow in leaps and bounds, with the service now providing 500,000 paid rides per week, across 10 markets. Per TechCrunch’s crunching the data, it looks like growth has hit the “hockey stick” phase.

ALSO raises even more money, also: Just eight months after it’s last $200M raise, Rivian spin-out ALSO has raised a fresh $200 million. DoorDash is joining existing investors in this round, while DD Co-Founder Stanley Tang snags a board seat. Do note his quote, “We’re excited to invest and partner with them as we look to scale autonomous delivery.” Prior, ALSO had just been talking about delivery bikes and e-quads, not autonomy; it’s also interesting to see DoorDash continue to spread its bets around, given that it’s internally developing its Dot bot (which we’ll get to see and discuss at Curbivore!)

Seattle’s overdue rail progress: Seattle just inaugurated a giant expansion of its East Link light rail line, adding seven miles of service to a now 60 mile system, linking the city’s core with the eastern ‘burbs that host Microsoft and plenty of other tech jobs. The new rail is technically the world’s first to traverse a floating bridge (across Lake Washington;) the route used to host interstate carpool lanes.

Who’s driving that driverless vehicle? California legislators are pushing ahead with rules for remote operators of autonomous vehicles, including a requirement that they be located in the U.S. and have a California driver’s license. Slightly less sensible is a requirement that each operator can mind no more than three vehicles. Certainly we don’t want them watching thousands of vehicles each, but baking in a hard number this early seems premature. Expect to hear more about this from Pat Tsen, CPUC Deputy Executive Director – Consumer Policy, Transportation and Enforcement, at Curbivore.

What IS a restaurant? Given the rough economy, you’d think that restaurant openings in Los Angeles are falling. That’s true if you think of a restaurant as place you can sit, order from a human, and enjoy your meal. But if you include “limited service” restaurants, think delivery-oriented ghost kitchens, new restos are actually at an all time high. But when one address can technically host dozens of “restaurants,” it’s tough to say what the real number is any more…

All aboard for a nice exit: Congratulations to Vesputi, a public transit ticketing startup, that just sold their company to publicly-listed Tracsis, for up to €8.2M ($9.5M.) Our fund invested in them almost five years ago, and it’s great to see the hard-working team get a nice exit.

A few good links: New research suggests ridehailing accounts for 0.4% of all U.S. person trips, AVs could up that by orders of magnitude. Australian states suspend public transit fares in effort to win over drivers stung by high gas prices. Uber buys Blacklane in continued push into high-end travel. Feds declare war on D.C.’s streets. Take a look at some disheartening charts at how badly OBBBA is hurting America’s fiscal capacity, solely in the name of cutting taxes for the 0.1%. Bay Area commuter rail service SMART ups service to almost every 30 minutes (ugh, just get on a dang clock face,) partially funded by cutting nearby bus service. NYC goes on a pothole filling blitz.

Don’t forget to score your Curbivore tickets!

- Jonah Bliss & The Curbivore Crew

MEET THE LATEST PARTNERS JOINING US 4-16/17

Ride Pro Team is a membership-based platform redefining what it means to be a professional rideshare driver. We give drivers the tools, technology, and community to transition from on-demand workers to independent business owners.

AUTEC is a leading manufacturer of commercial sushi robots that equip food service businesses and academic institutions globally.

Common Good is a versatile public affairs strategy group providing comprehensive consulting services for both the public and private sector.

And we warmly welcome our latest media partners: CoMotion, LA Auto Show and the Florida Automated Vehicles Summit.

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