If you think about the transportation world as divided between “new mobility” and “old mobility,” it often seems that despite all the innovation of the past few years, it often happens in its own silo, leaving the classic world of American transportation — car dealers — unaffected. So that’s why one particular announcement, that Connexion Mobility has launched a partnership with Uber, caught my eye. This allows car dealers to dispatch courtesy transport for customers who’ve brought their own cars in for service, tapping into Uber’s pool of gig drivers, as opposed to forcing dealerships to operate their own clunky networks of shuttles (or deal with maintaining a loaner fleet.)
I chatted with Connexion’s CEO Aaryn Nania about the launch, plus he shares his own non-traditional path to the mobility world, as well as what it’s like running a publicly listed company. Listen in!
Meet Curbivore’s 2025 Launch Partners!
Curbivore is the place where delivery, mobility and curbside leaders get together to chart a better future. We’re delighted to announce our 2025 Launch Partners — once again bringing together the top startups, corporate innovators, powerful regulators, thoughtful investors and influential media that drive our sector forward.
Our 2025 Launch Partners bring together the best from the worlds of 3PD, TNC, curb management, street digitization, electrification, parking management, gig work, smart cities and more. Awesomely alphabetized, they are: AirGarage, CurbIQ, DoorDash, GetScale, Itselectric and Uber Eats.
Want to join them? Curbivore is looking for our next round of industry defining partners. View our event prospectus here or simply email us here. We’re also accepting speaker applications and offering Super Early Bird Tickets for just $195.
HOT INDUSTRY NEWS & GOSSIP
Lyfted spirits: Lyft dropped its Q3 financial results, and the number two TNCer seems to be back into growth mode. Gross bookings grew 16% YoY to $4.1 billion, while revenue shot up a whopping 32% to $1.5B. Active riders hit 24.4 million while net loss came in at a narrow $12.2M. The stock’s shot up by about 1/3 off the renewed growth story.
Robotaxi roll out: Zoox’s futuristic robotaxis are finally live (for testing purposes) on the mean streets of San Francisco, and a public Vegas launch is in the works for early ‘25. Not to be outdone, Waymo’s gone fully public in LA, meaning no more waitlists, folks can just download the app and go.
Mapping transit’s wins: It's pretty bleak out there on the federal level, but take some solace by looking at the success transit and active transportation had locally. Places as red as Tennessee and as blue as Seattle, as big as Maricopa County and small as Mountain Village all voted for better futures.
LA transit on a tear: LA Metro’s ridership continues to rebound, having now re-surpassed one million patrons per day. Looks like all those new bus lane are paying dividends!
Climate titans: Time names its Time100 Climate Leaders with a number of familiar mobility do gooders: Hyundai’s José Muñoz, Paris’ Anne Hidalgo, Lime’s Andrew Savage, Brightline’s Wes Edens and more.
European gig worker demographics: DoorDash-owned Wolt put out some stats on its workforce: 42% of courier partners have full- or part-time jobs; 17% are self-employed outside the gig economy; 21% are students; 8% stay at home to care for family.
Wondering about Grubhub… Marc Lore’s Wonder group has snapped up Grubhub, netting Just Eat Takeaway.com about $650M for a company that was worth $7 billion just three years ago. Wonder’s an odd hodge podge of food brands now — mall food courts, Blue Apron, maybe they’ll buy FreshDirect from Getir next?
Is congestion pricing back? After killing it over the summer, NY Gov. Hochul is looking to revive congestion pricing, with the only change being that tolls are lowered from $15 to $9. My cynical take on this is that she still doesn’t actually want it to pass, she’s just hoping that Trump blocks it so she doesn’t have to take the political heat… Meanwhile, check out just how slow Midtown Manhattan travel speeds are. (h/t Glenn Mercer.)
The world’s first express light rail line? Back in LA, Metro’s broken ground on phase one of the Southeast Gateway Line, adding rail to the region’s dense and diverse towns like Cudahy and Huntington Park. For you true transit dorks, the particularly interesting factoid is that when done this would be the first truly express light rail line in the world — think RER, S-Bahn, Queens Blvd lines, Chicago Purple Line, etc — as there’d be a totally separate set of tracks connecting riders (and transfers from the A Line) to the Civic Center and Union Station with fewer stops and less circuitous routing.
Hooray party people! Thanks to everyone that came to last night’s mobility mixer, co-hosted by our friends at Umojo. What a lively evening!
A few good links: INVERS carsharing report hits 120k vehicles. Quick commerce killing off India’s mom and pop retailers. SF votes to close Great Highway to cars, hopefully they can build some transit for the west side now? VW tries for vehicle subscriptions — good luck, we’ve seen this movie before and it never ends well! Swiggy IPO pops 17% on listing. Canoo’s Walmart delivery van reportedly had no airbags. Solo Market Pulse shows high gig worker earnings in Washington State.
See you next week!
- Jonah Bliss & The Curbivore Crew
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