The Curb World Loses A Legend

Free Curbivore admission for public sector employees

We know it’s a difficult time for our public sector friends fighting the good fight for mobility, delivery and urbanism. That’s why Curbivore is pleased to announce we’re offering free admission to public sector employees. Whether you’re currently working for government or were recently terminated, come join us in April to make new connections, celebrate public progress and advance the cause for better mobility and delivery systems. Register now and select “Public Sector.” Act fast, these limited tickets will go quickly!

It’s with a heavy heart that the Curbivore Crew mourns the loss of UCLA Professor Donald Shoup, who passed away last Thursday at age 86. Known as the “rockstar of parking,” Prof. Shoup’s seminal work — The High Cost of Free Parking — influenced so many practitioners in the field, and was a big inspiration behind Curbivore’s broader mission.

Shoup theorized that cities should properly price street parking to encourage higher shopper turnover in business districts, discourage unnecessary automotive usage and reinvest the proceeds into improving the urban realm.

It should be said that parking is never really costless; even when it appears “free” to the user, it’s just been paid for by someone else — driving up rents or draining municipal budgets. At Curbivore, I think we endorse that same framework, just applied a bit more broadly: curbs should be properly priced to encourage more uses (whether that’s pick up / drop-off, new mobility or outdoor dining,) as opposed to just car storage.

If you think about many of the successful new mobility companies that have emerged in the smartphone era, many also build off that same concept — instead of requiring someone to pre-pay the entirety of a mobility solution at once, they let you instead amortize it as needed. That’s what we did at Turo, allowing users to pay for cars by the hour instead of in their totality; you could apply the same logic to everything from Uber to DoorDash to Bird to even public transit and MaaS tools.

We were honored to have Professor Shoup join us on stage at Curbivore 2022, which you can rewatch if you want more of “Shoup Dogg’s” teachings. I’ll always remember that at the end of the show, he was astonished that the food at the conference was free (“who would want that?!”) — as he applied his same economist’s mindset and theorized that this would only encourage overeating. So as a mea culpa, let me apologize for continuously mispricing Curbivore’s celebrated street food options. 😉

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HOT INDUSTRY NEWS & GOSSIP

State capacity rules everything around me: If there’s one thing this publication consistently bemoans, it’s how the country’s diminished state capacity inhibits our ability to get good things — from both the public and private sectors — done. Now, new research shows this inability to build infrastructure goes back even further, first showing up in the 1970’s, as society became less “future oriented,” in response to increased environmental concerns and in reaction to problematic urban renewal efforts of the mid-century. This problem continues to rear its ugly head, perhaps well exemplified by how long it’s taking to build out new EV chargers. Despite President Biden’s worthy attempts to increase infrastructure spending, rising costs actually meant that in recent years we built even less than we had in the preceding decades.

Earning season: The big mobility and delivery apps are dropping their 2024 earning reports, and the overall picture is pretty rosy. DoorDash saw revenue rise 25% while gross orders jumped 21%; Uber saw both revenue and gross bookings climb 18%; Lyft revenue sprung 27%, off a gross booking climb of 15%. Buried in Uber’s earnings was an interesting spotlight on AVs, including the tricky fact that currently hardware, operating costs and fleet management alone add up to $2+/mile, more than the cost of human drivers.

Carts! LA’s long-running saga to provision safe and legal cooking carts to street vendors took a positive step forward, with officials signing off on Revolution Cart’s eye-catching Model GRL-LA24. Featuring grills, cooling, sinks and more, this cart hopefully leads to more positive outcomes than the city’s recent crackdown on MacArthur Park vendors.

Curbside management RFP: The City of Boston is looking to procure four modules, which come together to provide connected services and technology and require a high degree of interoperability and coordination: 1) Violation Management Application, 2) Permit Management Application, 3) Enforcement Technology and Self-Service Kiosks, 4) Collections, Mailed Payment Processing, and Data Entry Service.

Transit winners and losers: With 2024 fully in the books, we can see which transit agencies have done the best job recovering ridership post-Covid. While NJT and LA Metro have done well, BART and CTA have really struggled, thanks to both dwindling downtown workforces and reduced service. Among smaller agencies, San Diego has done particularly well, thanks to a rail extension to La Jolla.

The people want to tele-work! The urge to not commute is indeed strong, with HBS finding that 40% of workers would give up 5% or more of their salary to keep working from home. Older workers are less inclined… of course they’re the ones that tend to make the rules!

Getaround goes down: After nearly a decade and half of operations, America’s number two p2p carsharer — Getaround — is shuttering its U.S. operations, seemingly somewhat quickly and messily. Carsharing is a hard business, and I can tell you that at Turo we discovered firsthand that trying to make keyless operations work is just not worth the hardware headaches and costs.

The fear of fear: Trua has a new report out, looking at trust and safety on online marketplaces. More so than almost any other factor, consumers worry about fraud, identity theft, data breaches, user misrepresentation and the like.

A few good links: West Palm Beach embraces new mobility options. B-Line Urban Delivery seeks sales rep, Automotus seeks biz dev rep. China’s retaliatory tariffs will hurt Trump-voting counties most. Lima, Peru builds new airport, but forgets to complete connecting roads and transit in time. FTA proposes new rules for TNC drug and alcohol testing. Revel scores $60M in NY State funding. For you train geeks — check out this great video breakdown of the routing and station siting for the Vegas to SoCal HSR; meanwhile, Europe is gearing up for more night trains. NYC launches ebike trade-in program for couriers. CMT discusses new findings that safer driving leads to fuel efficiency gains. LA passes CHIP plan to up-zone commercial strips and existing multi-fam neighborhoods. The Shoup-ista revolution continues: Bellevue, WA seeks to charge for street parking.

Get your Curbivore tickets!

- Jonah Bliss & The Curbivore Crew