As 2021 draws to an end, as a team, we decided to take a look back over the last 12 months at everything we accomplished as a company. In this blog post we will be sharing our top movmi moments of the year, including;
- The projects we’ve worked on
- The people we spoke to and collaborated with
- Our favourite movmi campaigns and initiatives
And much more! We think that it’s so important to take a minute to look back, to acknowledge our victories (and failures) as every moment of our past has served as a single stone laid, on the road we travel today. movmi’s purpose is to build healthier communities by co-creating innovative transportation services and by looking back on the past, it allows us to study what we have done, if we achieved what we set out to do and helps to give us meaning in our every day pursuits as a company.
Keep reading for a list of movmi’s top moments of 2021! Check out our blog page to browse all the content we created over the last 12 months.
2021 Top Moments – in 90 seconds!
1. Co-creating the first integrated transportation system in Metro Vancouver
Clean 50 Top Project Award
This year the innovative Vancouver MaaS project, the Shared Mobility Compass Card Pilot program – a collaboration between TransLink, Evo Car Share, Mobi by ShawGo and Modo Co-operative and was made possible with the support of movmi – was the recipient of a Canada Clean50 Top Project Award. The program was successful in meeting the Clean50 Top Project’s criteria for an innovative, informative, and inspirational project.
Phase 1 of the Shared Mobility Pilot provided employees of select Vancouver-based organizations with a Shared Mobility Compass Card for use any of the four transportation providers. The Shared Mobility Pilot ran between October 2019 and August 2020 with 6,000 trips completed among approximately 160 employees of 13 organizations.
The Shared Mobility Compass Card could be used to access transit, carshare and bikeshare services for work-related travel. At the end of each month the participating organizations received one consolidated invoice tallying all trips. The pilot aimed to test the customer experience and technical integration of tying multimodal journeys together with a Compass Card. At the end of the pilot, those involved completed a survey which revealed that 60% of the pilot participants had replaced their personally owned vehicle trips with one or more shared mobility offerings and 30% of participants tried a new transportation mode for the first time!
Read more about the SMCC pilot and find the full report below.
2. Building a healthier Vancouver by supporting staff and council in their shift towards electric carshare
This year, the city of Vancouver asked for movmi’s expertise in the electrification of carsharing. As part of their 2020 Climate Emergency Plan, the city added a new goal of having 50% of all vehicle kilometres travelled (VKT) in zero emissions vehicles (ZEVs.)
The team drafted a report that provided these recommendations to the city;
- Provide a parking discount on all metered parking of 95% for ZEV carshare vehicles in addition to the already existing carshare discounts . This will reduce the operating costs and provide an incentive to transition to ZEV.
- Remove the 50 ZEV limit in the City’s parking bylaw to allow more ZEVs vehicles in a carshare fleet to qualify for parking discounts.
- Create a charging infrastructure strategy that focuses on creating charging depots in all neighbourhoods where carshare operates. Starting point is integrating EasyPark parking lots and turning them into hubs.
- Support advocacy efforts of the industry by writing a letter to provincial and federal governments asking to remove rebate caps for carshare fleets.
This report was the basis for the City of Vancouver staff’s recommendation in their meeting early this month and got adopted by the Council on December 7th! 🙌🏼
Electric Carsharing Whitepaper
We are very passionate about the introduction of more electric vehicles within shared mobility fleets. The carsharing market employing electric vehicles (EVs) is growing globally as sustainable transportation is taking center stage in urban transportation strategies and will soon become the vehicle of choice in our current climate landscape. With our full support on the electrification of carsharing services, we also decided to create our Electric Carsharing Whitepaper (that you can download for free!) which identifies the distinct advantages that electric vehicles bring to carsharing for the users, communities and operators.
3. Bringing innovation and shared mobility to personal marine transportation
Seabird Technologies is working on reinventing and decarbonizing personal transportation in the marine industry. The team is developing Seabird: the first fully electric boat sharing service where they’ll use the learning from the Racebird (the boat they developed for the E1 series) to create and design a boat and the charging infrastructure. This year movmi helped the team developing a launch strategy. Part of this was to help conduct and disseminate a consumer survey in 7 markets: London, Dubai, Dubrovnik, Monaco, San Diego, Stockholm and Vancouver.
SeaBird Technologies is pitching an easy and convenient #electric #boatsharing service so you can enjoy a day on the water fishing or sunbathing. ☀️
— movmi (@shared_mobility) November 19, 2021
And we could use your input #Vancouver! Please take 5 minutes to fill out this survey: https://t.co/uIHeFtsGYd pic.twitter.com/3seKjaiWj7
We are very to be part of this highly innovative project and to be ‘diving’ into a whole new side of the shared mobility market: boat sharing! Stay tuned for more updates on Seabird throughout 2022!
If you’d like to provide your feedback for this project, make sure you fill out the 5 minute survey below.
4. Supporting innovative micromobility solutions and their entrance into the Canadian market
As part of Superpedestrian’s expansion plans to the Canadian market, back in October, movmi’s team was invited to test drive their e-scooters. Demo days are an essential part of operational planning, regardless of the municipality. movmi believes that it is critical to test the actual product that will be deployed in your community during an RFP process and before the actual launch.
We were very impressed with LINK by Superpedestrian e-scooters. The scooters were sturdy, offered us an extremely stable ride and had some design elements that we truly loved including the long footdeck, the wide handlebars and the excellent braking system. The geofencing capabilities of LINK’s scooters in combination with the instant notifications of the Vehicle Intelligent system support better rider compliance. It was clear from our demo day, why Superpedestrian spent 10 years perfecting their hardware and Vehicle Intelligence: clearly the company’s ultimate goal is to create safer journeys for all – for riders AND other path users.
Our goal for 2022, is to participate in more demo days and to report back to you, our audience, with our findings and verdict.
Check out the full Link by Superpedestrian demo day write up below.
5. Sharing a decade of learnings to build better shared mobility services that are more sustainable for our communities
movmi Academy: Shared Mobility Architecture 101 E-learning Course
This year movmi launched movmi Academy’s FIRST EVER e-learning course: Shared Mobility Architecture 101. This course passes on a decade of knowledge and experience in movmi’s pursuit of co-creating healthier communities through designing and launching shared mobility options. we explain:
- How turn a shared mobility vision into a reality
- Best practices and lessons learnt from movmi’s own practice
- Examples and other resources from across the globe and offer links to relevant case studies
During the course, Sandra (the instructor) breaks down the process of Shared Mobility Architecture that we follow at movmi to turn your shared mobility vision into a reality. Sandra will focus on the Iron Triangle of success: the users, operations and the regulatory framework and will share her learnings and experiences ‘from the trenches.’ One of our goals for 2022 is to create produce more e-learning courses to add to movmi Academy – so stayed for updates next year!
In the meantime, you can still purchase our Shared Mobility Architecture 101 course from our website below.
6. Launching the second edition of EmpowerWism Pitch 2022 to support female entrepreneurs in the industry
This year we launched our second Empower Women in Shared Mobility Pitch to encourage and showcase the top female-led companies in our industry. The winner will receive a 12 month mentoring package with movmi, a start-up booth at Autonomy Paris, return flights to Paris, access to the entire EmpowerWisM network (partners, judges and movmi) and will be invited to different opportunities to promote their company and work throughout 2022!
The application deadline closed last week on December 17th and we are delighted to announce that we received 19 applications from a vast array of very exciting and innovative companies! Check out some of the stats in our ‘2021 Top Moments’ video at the top of this page. 👆
The winner of EmpowerWISM will be announced on January 31st 2022, at an online award ceremony after our judges have had time to confer. We will be announcing the top 5 finalists in the New Year, so stay tuned for updates coming next month!
If you want to learn more about the #EmpowerWISM Pitch, the partners and prizes, click the link below.
7. Introducing the movmi team and helping to make someone’s #MobilityWish come true!
For movmi’s 7th birthday this year, we did things a little differently. Instead of birthday wishes, the movmi team made (and asked for) Mobility Wishes throughout September! We also used this opportunity to introduce the members of our growing team, to you, our audience!
We also decided that, thanks to your support throughout the last 12 months, our profitable year meant that we were able to support someone else’s #MobilityWish with a small donation. 🙌🏼 So we asked you to help us celebrate our birthday this year, by casting your vote for the organization you wished to see us to donate to the most. Overwhelmingly, you chose Mobility for Africa and they shared with us what our donation meant for their company. 👇
Stay up-to-date with our team and our initiatives throughout 2022 by following us on LinkedIn below.
8. Sharing our ‘Love Letter to Nature’ showcasing the benefits of biodiversity within our cities to help build healthier communities and transportation systems
We were delighted to take part in the Love Letter to Nature campaign organised by C40 Cities this year. The company asked residents, artists, influencers, entrepreneurs, architects, designers, youth activists, business and city leaders to create a love letter to nature in their cities around the world created and shared them across their social channels. This was movmi’s love letter…
For our #LoveLetterToNature, a campaign organized by @c40cities, our CEO Sandra Phillips takes a walk through Stanley Park and explores all the ways in which the rainforest has become a thriving and resilient eco-system. #Afuturewithnature #StanleyPark #Sustainability pic.twitter.com/rb4cXabNgT
— movmi (@shared_mobility) July 13, 2021
The objective of the campaign was to encourage support for more nature and green spaces in cities by educating and inspiring our communities about the benefits of nature for people and biodiversity everywhere – something movmi fully supports.
If you’d like to learn more about how we can take lessons learned from the natural environment (in this case, Vancouver’s Stanley Park) to build a better transportation eco-system, check out our blog post and video below.
9. Speaking at IMPACT Festival and sharing our thoughts on innovative transportation solutions
As Europe’s first community-based platform, IMPACT’s goal is to accelerate the sustainable transformation by bringing all relevant players together. The focus is on connecting innovators such as green start-ups with corporates and investors.
The 2-day festival in September 2021 this year brought together pioneers, thought leaders, start-ups, large companies and investors to discuss and develop sustainable business models. Throughout the festival, there were exhibitions on sustainable technologies and innovations, sustainable business models, green start-ups present sustainable products and services. There were also on-site workshops led by experts to promote the sustainable transformation of your company and to get to know best practice examples.
The main stage held lectures and panel discussions with visionaries, innovation leaders and start-ups on fundamental questions about responsibility and sustainable management as well as best practice examples. One of these leaders was movmi’s very own Sandra Phillips, who addressed the audience with a keynote on ‘How to re-organize mobility infrastructure.’
Check out our movmi’s highlights from the festival below.
10. Taking part in an innovative and unconventional symposium to share our knowledge and experience with our international shared mobility counterparts
Shared Mobility Rocks is an unconventional symposium about shared mobility for planners, operators and research institutions. This year, the third and special Covid-19 edition of the international symposium on shared mobility, was held was held over March 3rd and 4th for a 24h marathon edition! The event was organised by eHUBS project partners Taxistop and Autodelen.net, and Sandra Phillips was one of the guest speakers!
During 24 hours Autodelen.net and Taxistop locked themselves up in a Belgian studio. From there they virtually travelled across the globe to speak with mobility experts. They achieved this by working together with their partners from different continents.
Check out the Shared Mobility Rocks 3rd edition recordings below.
11. Speaking out about the benefits of innovative transportation solutions on shared mobility podcasts
Have you ever considered the hidden privilege in your ability to choose how you commute? Whether that be owning a private car, or something as simple as the distance between where you live and public transport or micro-mobility. movmi’s Venkatesh Gopal joined Bytesize for a conversation about; Why is mobility as a service important? Is the ideal of a 15 minute city still possible? and, importantly, How do we make mobility more equitable?
How can cities enable shared electric mobility services? Are 15 minute cities a reality? Why behaviour shift is essential to make shared transit system in cities a success? All this and more was discussed in Mission Shunya’s podcast this year where Venkatesh joined Girish Shivakumar for an in-depth conversation.
12. Encouraging the introduction of more zero-emission electric vehicles to build healthier and more sustainable communities
This year, Sandra’s article ‘Electric cars can’t be the only zero-emission vehicles on the road’ was featured on Corporate Knights. The article discussed in detail why we need a range of e-vehicles, including e-scooters, if cities are to have any hope of meeting climate targets.
Municipalities need to continue to develop and re-allocate lanes and other transportation infrastructure to safely accommodate the full range of ZEV vehicles available – recognizing that users will gravitate to where they feel safest. Cities and transit authorities can also benefit from the data that can be generated automatically by e-scooter fleet users, which can be used to identify both transit service gaps and potential pinch points where there’s a high risk of conflict between different transportation modes.
We’d like to say a big thank you to you for making our year so special.
Check out some of our latest blog posts here:
- Multimodal Transportation in India: Interview with Monalisha Thakur from Tummoc
- Financial Fridays: The Benefits of Electrifying Car Rental and Carshare Fleets
- Electric Micromobility in Africa: Interview with Céleste Vogel from eWAKA
- How to Integrate Micromobility with our Public Transportation: Cheat Sheet
- EmpowerWISM 2023 Award Ceremony
