Watch Now: Videos from Curbivore 2024
Plus: DutchX expands, grocery competition heats up, Serve hits Nasdaq
It’s hard to believe the curbs greatest minds came together just four weeks ago… it already feels like an eternity! Relive the magic from last month’s Curbivore 2024 gathering with our video replays. Sessions include:
Building A Better Tomorrow: Creating Cities that Work for All
The Right Way to Run It: Keeping Drivers and Their Vehicles Safe and Sound
Loyalty, Loyalty, Loyalty: Crafting Environments That Empower Workers to Come Back for More
Community, Technology & Cuisine: The Changing Nature of How Food Is Created, Consumed & Delivered
Fleet of the Future: Autonomous, Electric and Rightsized
Celebrate the Streets: Recent Wins on Our Curbs, Roads, Sidewalks & Transit Systems
We’ve got even more recordings available at the Curbivore website, including insightful takes from our 2020-2023 gatherings.
HOT INDUSTRY NEWS & GOSSIP
Double Dutch: Reusable packaging innovator DeliverZero is turning to zero-emissions delivery player DutchX, as it looks to green up its logistics. Starting in NYC, DutchX’s electric bikes and quadcycles will bring reusable food containers to corporate clients around Manhattan; DutchX will also handle reverse logistics, picking up empty containers and returning them to DeliverZero’s sanitation centers. You may remember DeliverZero brought its partnership with Uber Eats to the West Coast a few weeks back at Curbivore, and is now ramping up its involvement with DoorDash as well. Concurrently, DutchX is making a big push into reverse logistics with additional partners.
Grocery wars: All the delivery heavyweights are renewing their bids to become your go-to supermarket. Amazon just announced a new $9.99 per month subscription tier, offering Prime users unlimited free grocery delivery on orders of $35+. For SNAP / EBT users, it’s just $4.99, no Prime membership required. DoorDash is also making a play for food stamp users, as it rolls out SNAP acceptance to 7,800 Walgreens nationwide, a few days after adding nearly 500 new supermarkets to its platform. Even Grubhub is finally getting into the grocery game, thanks to a new partnership with specialty market network Mercato.
RFP alert! The City of Philadelphia has a Smart Right of Way Software RFP. The Office of Innovation & Technology, in partnership with the Streets Department, wants to digitally codify and create a digital twin of RoW features and rules at a granular level.
Music to my ears: Nashville is looking to expand its anemic public transit system, to cope with the region’s continued growth. Music City’s new “Choose How You Move” plan would build new sidewalks and traffic signals, improve road safety, and increase bus service. The city is looking to pay for it with a half cent sales tax, which it claims would mostly be paid by out-of-towners to the tourist-friendly region. Currently Nashville is one of only four of the country’s biggest cities that lacks a dedicated funding source for transit; some of you may recall that the city made an even bigger push for transit back in 2017-18, but the campaign was undone by the Mayor’s affair with the head of her security detail.
Robo-IPO: Serve Robotics went public on the Nasdaq last week, listing at four bucks a pop. Take a look at the company’s IPO Pitch Deck to see what its leadership thinks the company’s biggest growth drivers will be.
Holy (g)rail: Brightline West’s semi-public, semi-private HSR between SoCal and Vegas ceremonially broke ground this week, and Brightline’s leader Wes Edens teased that he was looking at projects in Texas and the Pacific Northwest as well. But amid all the hoopla, it feels like some crucial details are being overlooked. Brightline West isn’t fully private, with the government contributing billions. And while California’s HSR is certainly a mismanaged mess, it has built about 119 miles of guideway, with more in the works.
It’s also worth noting that this line in the LA Times’ write-up is kinda bullshit: “Its proposed railway has rapidly gone from blueprints to construction, unlike California’s high-speed line between Los Angeles and the Bay Area, whose progress has been slowed to a crawl by political disputes, cost overruns and permit delays.” Brightline West was first proposed way back in 2005, when the project was called DesertXpress, and it’s promised to “break ground” countless times, under a variety of project sponsors, since then. Meanwhile, Proposition 1A, which provided the California High-Speed Rail Authority with its initial funding, didn’t pass until November 2008.
Oonee meets uff-da: On-sidewalk bike parking operator Oonee is headed to the Midwest, thanks to a new contract in the City of Minneapolis. Perhaps we can finally get those Scandinavian descendents to ride bikes as frequently as the ones left behind in the Motherland…
A few good links: The Cities First podcast chats with FTA Acting Administrator Veronica Vanterpool. Department of Consequences: USDOJ threatens to sue NYPD for continuously parking in the sidewalk. Craveworthy Brands’ crowdfunding campaign stalls out. Zipline hits one million deliveries. Getir getting out of UK, Germany, Netherlands. Chipotle posts strong Q1.
Until next week!
- Jonah Bliss & The Curbivore Crew