Skip to main content

Detroit pilots new data standard for dockless mobility

Several organisations are coming together in Detroit, US, to pilot a new tool to analyse mobility data for dockless bikes and scooters. The aim is to allow urban authorities which work with dockless mobility providers to share and analyse trip data, including trip origins and destinations, neighbourhood availability, travel times and usage. This should give them the chance to allocate street space to sustainable transportation, improve safety and provide more equal access to transport services. Detroit M
November 16, 2018 Read time: 2 mins
Several organisations are coming together in Detroit, US, to pilot a new tool to analyse mobility data for dockless bikes and scooters.


The aim is to allow urban authorities which work with dockless mobility providers to share and analyse trip data, including trip origins and destinations, neighbourhood availability, travel times and usage.

This should give them the chance to allocate street space to sustainable transportation, improve safety and provide more equal access to transport services.

Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) and SharedStreets made the announcement, and will be using scooter data provided by Bird and Lime.

SharedStreets will lead the work to establish what it calls “an open-source data ecosystem that allows cities and companies to work from consistent transportation datasets while rigorously protecting personal privacy”.

“In just one year, scooters have completely transformed mobility,” says Duggan. “In Detroit, we took a forward-looking view on this new option to understand how it could make it easier for Detroiters to get around. Our next step is to use data to better inform our decisions, whether it’s providing more mobility options in more neighbourhoods or making sure scooters aren’t blocking the right of way.’”

“Our cities are open to new forms of transportation, but the public sector needs the data on how the public gets around,” said Seleta Reynolds, president of NACTO.

278 Ford Motor Company, 8336 Uber and 8789 Lyft agreed last month to %$Linker: 2 Internal <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?><dictionary /> 4 36955 0 link-external share data false /categories/utc/news/ford-uber-and-lyft-to-share-data-through-sharedstreets/ false false%> through the SharedStreets platform, saying that such partnerships “give cities unparalleled access to data, allowing them to make better planning and investment decisions”.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • EU government joins forces with industry to transform road safety
    January 16, 2013
    The first V2X for Auto Safety & Mobility Conference, to be held in Frankfurt on 20-21 February, will bring together expert speakers from ITS UK, European Commission, BMW, Renault and Scania to devise a unified commercialisation and deployment strategy for vehicle and infrastructure technology to accelerate safety and mobility. Telematics Update, organisers of the conference, say that vehicle to vehicle communication will transform automotive safety, enabling deployment of effective active safety features fo
  • MaaS Market London: year one update from Whim West Midlands
    February 20, 2019
    Almost a year after it came into operation, Transport for West Midlands’ head of smart travel, Chris Lane, will update delegates at the MaaS Market Conference (London 20 and 21 March) on how the Whim West Midlands pilot scheme is working in practice. Introduced in conjunction with MaaS Global, Whim West Midlands is the UK’s first Mobility as a Service platform to go live to the general public and combines public transport (bus and tram) with on-demand taxis and bike sharing. The initial Pay-As-You-Go se
  • Truvelo presents vehicle active sign with enhanced graphics
    March 21, 2018
    Truvelo is showcasing its Trusign vehicle-activated sign for speed compliance and traffic management and the Check Point System for spot/section speed measurement and journey time data-gathering activities, at Intertraffic. Trusign can be deployed in and around industrial and residential areas to help promote compliance with posted speed limits.
  • Thermal imaging from Flir
    August 26, 2014
    At this year’s ITS World Congress Detroit, Flir Systems will be showcasing its range of thermal imaging cameras for traffic monitoring and surveillance on highways. Needing no light at all to produce an image, the company’s FC-Series, PT-Series and D-Series can be used for a wide variety of traffic applications. As Flir points out, all of its cameras can also work perfectly together with video analytics. As such, they can be used for Automatic Incident Detection (AID) on highways, on bridges and in tunne