Pittsburgh experiments with a multi-modal transportation hubs

The city of Pittsburgh has announced a winning plan to tackle its transportation challenges. A self-organized mobility group, Pittsburgh Micromobility Collective with a partnership between scooter-sharing company Spin, car-sharing company Zipcar, Ford Mobility, carpooling service of Waze, Scooter parking solution Switftmile and MaaS app Transit will try to provide agile transportation service to the urban dwellers. The city has a drive-alone rate of 56%, presenting a great opportunity for shared mobility companies. 

The mobility hubs will be clustered near transit stops throughout the city. Users will find combination of bike-share stations, car-sharing vehicles, Waze carpool pickup spots and e-bikes and scooters from Spin at these spots. Transit app will handle all route planning and a single payment system, while Ford Mobility will provide data from the service usage back to the city. 

Rising used car prices affect American poor

Car ownership has long been a symbol of freedom in American culture and ownership of a vehicle is essential for a lot of working-class and poor Americans to get and keep their jobs. However, car ownership price is going up and this is certainly true for used cars. Reuters has published an interesting report on how more than 7 million Americans are already 90 or more days behind their car payments, despite sustained economic growth and historically low unemployment in the country. Delinquency rates among borrowers with the lowest credit scores has been accelerating as well. This is terrible news for people who need vehicles to work and bankers who might incur significant losses.   

Today a used vehicle cost on average $8,657, about 75% higher than in 2010. New car prices meanwhile have grown only by 25%. It’s becoming clear that car ownership costs are increasing faster than the income growth of poor Americans. In many such urban areas, cities have been working on the development of shared mobility solutions, like carsharing to elevate the struggle. Carsharing is associated with much lower costs than car ownership, however, this solution works mostly for urban and suburban dwellers.