Mobility services vie for curb space

Once a forlorn and forgotten piece of infrastructure, the lowly curb has become an essential and contested swath of real estate in cities around the globe.

City planners are working with data suppliers to figure out the best way to maximize the space as they try to improve mobility.

Whether because of increases in package deliveries, rising numbers of passengers entering and exiting vehicles hailed with apps or heavier use of scooters on nearby sidewalks, more companies than ever are vying for curb space. Combined with motorists who park their vehicles in spaces along curbs, the sudden influx of users has created a predicament for city planners and transportation officials.

On one hand, they're quickly realizing that curbs are city-owned assets with significant value. On the other, how they now choose to allocate space among competing interests may reshape present-day transportation and affect the growth of future mobility services.

Their decisions might even say a lot about the cities themselves.

"Curbs are where we're seeing our interests and values play out in public space," said Emiko Atherton, director of the National Complete Streets Coalition, which advocates for safer transportation and works with cities to build transportation networks. "You think about where should scooters go, and my answer is, 'Do our curbs and streets reflect what we want to see in the world?' "

The consequences of inaction have become more clear. Delivery vans that double-park have become common — services such as FedEx and UPS Inc. view millions of dollars in parking tickets as a normal cost of doing business, according to a 2018 report from the Eno Center for Transportation, a nonprofit Washington transportation policy center.

But double-parked delivery trucks, along with ride-hailed vehicles dropping off and picking up passengers in lanes of travel, pose an impediment to smooth traffic flow and a potential safety hazard. As their numbers increase, so has traffic.

A report last week from traffic analytics company Inrix says the average American lost 97 hours to traffic congestion last year. In combating that traffic, Trevor Reed, a transportation analyst at Inrix, says transportation officials are looking to better use the infrastructure they have rather than simply building more roads.

"The real changing in thinking has been, 'How do we utilize this very valuable space right now that's typically just been used for two or three on-street parking spaces,' " he said. "That's probably 20 to 30 spots for bicycles, or a loading or unloading zone for deliveries or bus lanes. So there's a rethinking as to just what is on-street parking and where do we really need it."

At first glance, cities may seem reluctant to stray from on-street parking. Parking has been a reliable revenue generator via meter payments and parking tickets. But cities are realizing they have a poor understanding of the use potential and value of curb space.

In Cincinnati, city officials are trying to change that. The city's Mobility Lab partnered with Uber and transportation consulting firm Fehr & Peers to, among other things, develop metrics for quantifying curb productivity.

They created the Curb Productivity Index that, based on observations during trial periods, measured vehicle activity, occupancy, size and "dwell time" — the time it took for passengers or parcels to load or unload. Along with data from Uber on peak demand times along three corridors and visual counts of the number of vehicles parked on the street, the partners made recommendations on how the city could divvy up curb space to reap two to four times the amount of productivity.

Near the city's Aronoff Center, for example, the study found that productivity could be increased by shifting metered and valet parking away from the center on busy nights, as well as ensuring passenger loading zones could coexist with bus stops along the street.

While it makes sense that a study co-sponsored by Uber would recommend increasing ride-hailing pickup and drop-off options in close proximity to a major destination, another recent report echoes that finding.

The International Transport Forum, a global think tank focused on transportation policy, issued a similar conclusion last year in a paper, "The Shared-Use City: Managing the Curb."

"A pressing question for many cities is whether they should make room for ride services at the curb," the paper said. "In most cities, the answer is yes."

One big problem in assessing how cities should move forward is that they have little knowledge of their own curb space — there's little understanding of the rules along specific streets and how they might fit into a cohesive larger plan.

"We have a lot of data about traffic rules and roads for vehicles, but when it comes to the curb and access to buildings, it's a digital blind spot in this hugely valuable space," says Stephen Smyth, CEO of Coord, a curb data platform that spun out of Google's Sidewalk Labs in 2016. "That is a key that unlocks the value of that last meter. Last mile is a thing, and that last meter is really fascinating to us."

Coord has launched an app called Surveyor that enables its users to map and analyze curb features, such as parking signs, fire hydrants and loading zones. Cities, logistics companies and mobility providers can access the collective data from these users via an app to find loading zones and help minimize parking tickets and delays.

Having such information might be all the more important once autonomous taxis hit city streets. Smyth said Coord is partnering with a company intent on putting autonomous vehicles on the road that's quickly learning the importance of having curb information for pickups and drop-offs.

"If they're going to operate those services, they simply must have this kind of data or else they are lost," he said.

For now, data on curb space enables cities to get a better handle on potential pitfalls for traffic flow and better designate pickup and drop-off zones. It could also lead to more flexibility, in which curbs are designated for ride-hailing pickup and drop-off during peak times, used for delivery overnight and revert to on-street parking during regular business hours.

"Curbs are no longer static, inflexible installations," the International Transport Forum paper said. "Instead, curb use will resemble dynamic, highly flexible, self-solving puzzles. The move from a "parking city" to a "pickup and drop-off city" is only one part of a broader shift to rethink and manage streets and curbs as flexible-use and self-adjusting spaces."

If curbs are indeed a reflection on what cities value, variety and versatility might be the most important traits of all.