A communication transmitted from Louis A. DePasquale, City Manager, relative to Awaiting Report Item Number 18-94, regarding a report on micromobility, shared mobility data access, and data management concerns

C I T Y O F C A M B R I D G E Community Development Department IRAM FAROOQ Assistant City Manager for Community Development SANDRA CLARKE Deputy Director Chief of Administration KHALIL MOGASSABI Deputy Director Chief of Planning 344 Broadway Cambridge, MA 02139 Voice: [phone removed] Fax: [phone removed] TTY: [phone removed] www.cambridgema.gov TO: Louis A. DePasquale, City Manager FROM: Iram Farooq, Assistant City Manager for Community Development Joseph Barr, Director of Traffic, Parking and Transportation SUBJECT: Awaiting Report Item #18-94 regarding a report on micromobility, shared mobility data access, and data management concerns DATE: April 3, 2019 With respect to the above-referenced Awaiting Report, we submit the following. Urban transportation and the availability of micromobility services is quickly shifting. The City is in the process of creating a Future of Mobility Implementation Blueprint to help the City prepare for and shape new mobility options in a way that meets established community goals, meets the mobility needs of all people who live in, work in, and visit Cambridge, and is well integrated with its sustainable transportation framework. The consultant’s work is expected to be completed in FY20. The Blueprint will provide clarity and specific, practical direction for strategies that support diverse transportation options and technological innovations, such as micro mobility devices, electric vehicles, and autonomous vehicles. It will also ensure that these strategies do not adversely impact, but rather complement, progress towards other city goals related to safety, equity, traffic congestion, transit and goods movement reliability, transportation network connectedness, GHG emissions, and climate resilience. The Blueprint will include transportation trend analyses, strategies and actions that will shape how new mobility is introduced in the city, a residential/neighborhood EV charging pilot design, identification of regulatory gaps, and recommended approaches to public engagement. Effective data access and management will be crucial to this process. Through active membership in the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO), the City is participating in a national conversation about the best ways to address micromobility data, both to inform planning and mitigate risks to the public. NACTO’s Guidelines for the Regulation and Management of Shared Active Transportation are also a useful resource. We are learning from other cities who have experience with shared mobility services currently operating. We are closely following Los Angeles’ development of a Mobility Data Specification, and expect Cambridge’s data management system to integrate with national best practice. It is anticipated that the City will use data for scooter and other shared mobility systems to manage vehicle caps, distribution requirements, fees, rides in restricted areas, top speed limits, resident complaints, crash/injury reporting, mobility infrastructure planning, and curb/right-of-way management.

Page 2 of 2 Multiple companies have expressed interest in working with the City to assist in managing new mobility data, some of which are seeking payment for their services. Existing commercial applications for managing scooter data include Remix (https://www.remix.com) and Populous (https://www.populus.ai), which offer a subscription service for data collection tool and enforcement/management, and Passport, which proposes to use data as a basis for collecting revenue. We have communicated with each of these companies. In January 2019, multiple city staff participated in an extensive investigation of three tools offered on the Remix platform (Public Transit, Streets, and New Mobility) and determined that these tools or something similar could be useful to effectively manage new mobility services. The Future of Mobility Implementation Blueprint consultant contract includes access to the StreetLight tool (https://www.streetlightdata.com) for analyzing travel data for a number of transportation modes. We are exploring possibilities to understand micromobility patterns using this or a similar tool. Other local resources include the MAPC Data Services Department and the Boston Area Research Initiative (BARI), which is an inter-university partnership pursuing research across industries in public policy and provides assistance to municipalities in discrete data analysis projects. City staff met with BARI in November 2018, to discuss potential collaborations related to micromobility. To date, BARI has not conducted any research related to micromobility or ridehail services, but is open to working with the City in the future, likely on a contract basis, if we can identify a usable data set. While there have been some recent successes in encouraging/requiring providers to share data through neutral third parties that are not subject to the same public disclosure requirements as government agencies data remains limited, and without a good source of data, research will remain limited in scope. It is critical that a balance be struck between transparency and privacy. The Center for Democracy and Technology notes that location information can be used to reveal first-amendment protected activities like religious and political activities, and could be used to identify individuals, which could lead to physical safety issues, profiling, and discrimination. This issue will be carefully considered as we develop strategies and protocols for collecting and analyzing mobility data.