What if You Could Digitize Your Curbs in Just a Few Days?
What if You Could Digitize Your Curbs in Just a Few Days?
A chat with CurbIQ's Peter Richards
Join our partners at MOVE America in Austin, Texas next week (9/24-9/25) for their annual conference! MOVE America has lined up some amazing speakers and connects the entire mobility ecosystem, focused on tech, business models and sustainable futures. Leaders and visionaries from across the mobility value chain gather at MOVE for an unparalleled opportunity to learn, innovate, partner and do business. Use the code 'PRTREF50' to get a 50% discount. And if you're a 2025 Curbivore partner, reply to this email for complimentary tickets to MOVE.
Harry will also be hosting an event at the end of Day 1 with Ed Walker from HUB Insurance and Y-Risk. But make sure to RSVP as space is limited.
After taking this newsletter on a lovely summer break — expect some fun curbside photos from that later — I’m excited to be back to work, tracking curbside progress the world over. Let’s kick things off with an interview with Peter Richards, Co-Founder and Product Director of CurbIQ.
Jonah Bliss: Let’s start with the basics, can you give us the elevator pitch for CurbIQ?
Peter Richards: Certainly. CurbIQ digitizes curbside regulations, so that you can understand where to park, load, and stop across a street, a neighborhood, or an entire city. This information is being used in both planning and operations to drive revenue, efficiencies, safety, and sustainability, as exhibited by our work in 30+ cities across 3 continents.
How does CurbIQ fit into Arcadis’ larger family of offerings for cities and mobility planners?
Arcadis provides a range of technology solutions, from trip planning and transit operations to curbside management and more, helping cities, campuses, and mobility planners modernize their operations and improve the quality of life for their citizens. Arcadis is a trusted partner to many cities with an extensive history of all sorts of projects, ranging from design and engineering to sustainable mobility solutions. CurbIQ is used in a series of these projects, such as bike lane planning, rapid transit evaluation, parking strategies, and more to digitize, analyze, and add efficiencies to the planning process.
You’ve been on a roll recently, signing up new cities like West Hollywood, Edmonton, and Dublin; what are some particularly interesting ways these cities are making use of CurbIQ?
I'm glad you’ve noticed some of our wins! West Hollywood wants to make CurbIQ the central source of truth for all things on their curbside. This way, they can effectively communicate to all of the departments that touch the curbside, to ensure coordination and reduce confusion about their curbside inventory. Smart Dublin is looking to optimize first mile last minute freight and delivery logistics, and realized information from CurbIQ can help drivers and planners understand these locations and tap into our API to enhance their planning and operations. Edmonton switched to another Arcadis product – HotSpot – for their paid parking earlier in 2024. Within two weeks of the launch and at no additional cost, CurbIQ was powering a real-time parking availability feature in the HotSpot app, based on app and meter/kiosk transaction data. This is helping the 1 million+ residents in Edmonton reduce their travel time and distance to find available parking.
Zooming out a bit, is there a particular city that you think has done an exemplary job of digitizing and updating its curbside regulations and uses?
Apart from the ones mentioned before, I think there are a lot of cities that are really pushing the envelope when it comes to curbside technology and policies. Los Angeles has been running their Code the Curb program for years, recognizing the value of the curb before most cities, and planning accordingly. Digitizing the curb will be important for LADOT as they host major events like the FIFA World Cup and the LA 2028 Olympics, as this can help with both planning and operations across main aspects of the Games. Seattle is another great example – they have been maintaining several GIS layers of various curb information and are now consolidating this information to have a digital curb inventory (in Curb Data Specification). From there, they are adding detection devices in the loading zones, and then plan to share this information with delivery drivers, with the aim of reducing vehicle miles traveled and vehicle emissions. Spoiler alert: CurbIQ is about to announce that we’re supporting Seattle with this groundbreaking project - more to follow soon!
It’s great to get a digital snapshot of a city’s curbs, but how do you see that working its way to end users: citizens and businesses? And how can we better ensure that cities keep those curbs up to date – making sure a temporary red zone is logged – and that drivers actually comply with the regulations?
There are a few ways to make use of this data. I think citizens can use it via a navigation platform or within a parking payment app like HotSpot, where real time availability is already connected with payment all in one place. Even an embedded map on a city website is helpful, especially for visitors, which is what CurbIQ has provided with a few cities.
As for keeping it up to date, CurbIQ has tools to do this quickly and efficiently. West Hollywood is going to be reserving or blocking out parts of the curb for specific activities within CurbIQ. This can be done well in advance, too. For example, if there is a major construction closure or curbside changes for an event, you can set all of this up well in advance in CurbIQ. This means if you’re looking for parking or if your planners are trying to coordinate activities, you could see that a few months from now that Taylor Swift is playing in Toronto on November 21 and there will be road closures around the Rogers Centre.
Compliance is always tricky, depending on the curbside use. Price is an incentivizing tool, so can enact citation policies that speak to that. Technology can help in some aspects, depending on the size and scale.
Let’s end on a personal note… what led you to a career in urbanism, and what helps inspire you to make our cities work better?
Great question. I sort of fell into a few parking strategies and realized that I had passively absorbed a lot of parking policy knowledge by reading various books and articles, and really enjoyed developing solutions. One of the things that inspires me is I find that most of the parking work I have completed is not building new parking garages but rather finding policies and technology to better use the existing parking, which is typically oversupplied. One study I am particularly proud of involved updating two recent parking strategies that had both recommended building new parking structures that never got built due to budget/timing. The new study findings that I led did not come to the same conclusions, and found creative ways to not recommend building a multi-million dollar structure. This helps with aspects like budget, sustainability, and new mobility.
HOT INDUSTRY NEWS & GOSSIP
Upcoming events: We’ve got quite the calendar of events in store over the next few months, leading up to the return of Curbivore 2025, set for April 10th and 11th. Next Tuesday, Harry and HUB International are hosting a Rideshare & Mobility Happy Hour at MOVE Austin. Then on October 17th, we’re calling all founders, startups and investors back to LA for our Tech Week Happy Hour (be sure to send over a fundraising deck too!) And then on October 25th, I’ll be moderating a great conversation with Sweetgreen’s Tim Noonan, Zipline’s Chris Kenney, and Starship’s Chris Neider, as part of the HNGRY Summit.
Congestion is back! Not so welcome news from new StreetLight data: congestion now exceeds pre-Covid levels in almost every city nationwide. It’s worth putting on the ol’ correlation hat to think a bit about what this means on a city-specific level, especially for those that saw population drops due to the pandemic. VMT is up 14% in the NYC region, despite the city proper losing over half a million residents, as many remaining commuters shifted from the subway to personal autos. The SF Bay has seen an even more tepid transit recovery, but population loss was severe enough (as a percentage) that overall VMT is still down 12%. And in LA, transit has recovered enough (and was a smaller mode before the pandemic) that the combo of pop loss and increased WFH adds up to a whopping 17% drop in vehicle miles travelled.
Elections matter: One way to counteract that sad news above is to keep investing in mass transit options. A number of regions are looking to do exactly that in the upcoming November elections. Highlights include new BRT routes near Atlanta, a vague plan for new rail in San Diego, and sidewalks in Nashville. Sidewalks!
Slow streets mean slow busses: All that congestion ain’t exactly great for bus riders either, as transit agencies nationwide have grappled with declining bus speeds over the past decade. Hopefully more agencies turn to dedicated lanes and improved stop spacing to right this wrong.
Grocery deliveries surge: Another thing clogging our streets? The ever-increasing rise of delivery. Online grocery sales grew to a whopping $9.9 billion last month, up $600M from the year prior and two billy from the month before.
Anything but just slowing down the damn cars… USDOT has a new plan to cut down America’s tragically high rate of traffic fatalities. No, it’s not fixing our giant roads, it’s… investing in V2X communication technology so that the highway can remind your car that it’s speeding. In happier news, NHTSA does look to finally be attempting to reign in vehicle bloat.
Carsharing ain’t easy: A few weeks after throwing in the towel on its own attempt at p2p carsharing, Uber is teaming up with Turo to directly list its tens of thousands of cars in the TNC’s app. That ought to help Turo restore growth, which has fallen to about 8% in its most recent prospectus. (Although if you look at the traditional competition — Hertz and Avis Budget — they’ve actually seen revenue decline YoY.) Bonus thought: it was fun seeing Turo adds all over Paris, even if the ad copy isn’t quite as weird as what we cooked up over a decade ago.
Hizzoner giveth and taketh: Good news for baby Big Applers, an expanded Open Streets for Schools program looks to close 71 streets to car traffic, instead turning them into kid-friendly play places. But bad news for adults over in Brooklyn, officials are looking to take the axe to Vanderbilt Ave’s popular public space in the name of more parking. The city is also working to expand its curbside charging network, although we’ve got to correct the record and say that the planned 700 plug network will certainly not be the nation’s largest.
An Olympian push: LA’s plan for its Olympics transportation network is starting to leak out. Officials are hoping to get busses moving at an Usain Bolt-like pace, thanks to an expanded network of bus lanes. Trains will also be improved by the addition of new pocket tracks and signal preemption. Can we maybe keep some of these nice things after the two weeks of fun are over?
Houston, we’ve got a problem! Houston’s new anti-transit mayor continues to make a mess in Oil City. First, he let the bikesharing system wither on the vine. Then, the region cut service on its sole BRT line from every 12 to every 20 minutes, making it no longer legally count as “rapid.” (Would you wait 20 minutes for a bus in conditions that look like this?) Now the transit operator is scrapping up the red bus lanes downtown, claiming the paint is too costly to maintain. Up in Canada’s version of Houston — Calgary — things aren’t so great either, as the city’s plan for a new light rail line unravels after a decade of planning and millions spent.
AV execs behaving badly: Faraday Future may be flirting with insolvency and has only delivered 13 cars, but that’s not stopping it from giving its execs big bonuses and raises. Meanwhile, TuSimple’s investors are up in arms as the company attempts an odd pivot to Chinese animation and videogaming. That makes the exec shakeup at Motional seem downright orderly, where Karl Iagnemma is being replaced (temporarily?) by Laura Major. And while it’s not an AV, Gogoro’s head honcho has also stepped down, as the company is racked by allegations that it improperly obtained millions in manufacturing subsidies. This one particularly stings, as its moped charging network has been a real inspiration to other low carbon mobility startups the world over.
A few good links: Meet Tyler Tech — the software provider that all local governments love to hate. CMPA and LADOT to hold a webinar on the financial success of al fresco dining. Kiwibot buys Nickelytics for a healthy $25M. Mach9 releases new geospatial data processing tool for AVs. Zoox publishes 2024 safety report. Amazon ups delivery and warehouse wages. New tech allows for widening existing tunnels without disrupting existing train traffic. DoorDash adds H Mart, Mattress Firm, Aveda. HUD updates national building code to allow for fourplex manufactured homes. Evanston, IL launches bike vouchers. NYPD is confiscating street vending carts. Nuro starts licensing AV tech. Filipinos embracing three-wheeled EVs. Yum — SoCal night market count hits fifty plus! Challenges and opportunities for gig worker compensation. NYC taxi insurer stares down insolvency. Cowboy gets investors to pony up. NYC extends ebike charging pilot. Lyft recommits to micromobility — will it be enough to save its contested LA Metro contract? Gov. Newsom renews push for housing. More cities turn to curb digitization. Londoners love low traffic neighborhoods. ChargerHelp! released annual reliability report. Parking Day is tomorrow — send in your photos of great build outs.
Until next week!
- Jonah Bliss & The Curbivore Crew