This year, Spin partnered with Bikemore to sponsor their 5th annual Cranksgiving, a national event that combines bike riding and giving back. The scavenger hunt/food drive sends teams of riders across the city to collect food items to benefit three local charities in Baltimore.
This year was an exciting one for Spin. One theme that defined 2019 for us was innovation through partnership.
We are proud of the strong relationships we have forged and the many groundbreaking accomplishments that have come as a result of working together with the communities we serve.
Micromobility as a service is maturing, and our partners — elected officials and city governments, safe streets and sustainability advocates, nonprofits and business improvement districts, universities and research institutions, labor unions, and marketing partners — have worked closely with us this year to create a model for sustainable urban mobility that works for everyone.
Here are some of the historic “firsts” for shared micromobility from 2019. We are honored to have been a part of these accomplishments. We hope 2020 leads to even stronger partnerships and more community-oriented innovation.
The First “Mobility as a Service” Pilot in the United States
The Pittsburgh Mobility Collective is a consortium of companies designed to offer complementary services to meet Pittsburgh’s transit needs.
When the City of Pittsburgh decided to bring e-scooters to its streets, it wanted to try something new: a multi-modal, collaborative transportation model that gave commuters a menu of travel options. Out of that was born the idea for the first-of-its-kind Mobility Consortium.
Responding to the City’s Request for Proposal (RFP), Spin brought together a team that includes Zipcar, Ford Mobility, Waze, the scooter parking solution Swiftmile, and Transit app.
“Spin has done more to unite the [Pittsburgh Mobility Collective] than any partner of the project; more than the City of Pittsburgh itself. With their commitment to creating a stable, collaborative relationship with governmental officials, Spin has demonstrated time again their willingness to introduce emerging mobility in a way that preserves the values of the people and city that they serve. The time, devotion, and resources that have been willingly dedicated by Spin to progress the efforts of this grand experiment have already helped to enable the enduring success of this program, said Tosh Chambers, policy analyst for the Pittsburgh Department of Mobility and Infrastructure (DOMI).
“Compared to the ‘walled garden’ approach where one mobility company attempts to vertically integrate and dominate the market share, this model accepts that we need a full diversity of mobility types integrated to provide a full suite of options for each transportation use case. The Collective also plans to invite other mobility services that can do more to cover the complete range of use cases demanded by the populace,” Chambers said.
The unprecedented collaboration operates on the assumption that people’s mobility needs are diverse. While an e-scooter might be what you need to get from your front door to the train station, you might want an e-bike or even a car to pick up groceries on your way home from work. Providing those options in the same, convenient place and giving people access to information that lets them know what options are available to them in real time can go a long way to get people out of their personal cars.
“This model hopes to jump start the formation of Mobility as a Service (MaaS) in Pittsburgh and design a regulatory standard for this new type of public-private partnership. If all succeeds, this ideal could be implemented in cities far and wide to help forge resilient and accessible car-light communities, thus creating upward mobility for residents while hugely reducing our impact on the environment,” Chambers said.
The Largest University Pilot in the U.S.
When the students of the University of Central Florida decided to bring shared e-scooters to campus, we were honored that they wanted Spin to be the provider. Little did we know that it would turn out a historic first for the shared e-scooter industry: an exclusive agreement to serve the university’s 67,000 students — the largest exclusive agreement in the U.S.
University of Central Florida Student Government tested each operator’s scooters as part of evaluating product features such as safety and geofencing capabilities.
“Our entire executive cabinet has been working diligently these past months to bring this new and exciting service to UCF. This has been one of the most popular platform points and we are proud to be partnered with a company that we know will cater to UCF students’ needs,” Kevin Olsen, UCF Student Government’s director of Community Affairs, said in a press release put out by the university.
Spin has been working closely with the university staff and student government to provide safe riding events ahead of the launch next year. These events give students a chance to practice riding e-scooters in a controlled environment.
“Campus mobility is one of the most important factors in overall student satisfaction, and this micro-mobility partnership will increase access across our growing campus,” Emmett Davy, UCF Student Government’s Transportation and Safety coordinator, said in the press release. “Above all, safety remains our top priority as we try to ensure that students get where they need to go quickly and efficiently.”
To begin with, Spin will deploy 300 e-scooters this January and will eventually install 12 hubs on UCF’s 1,400-acre campus. And, if things go smoothly, there is potential to expand the program up to 700 scooters.
First Living Lab for E-Scooters on a College Campus
In addition to partnering with Virginia Tech’s Transportation Institute (VTTI) on a safety study, Spin is servicing the University with over 200 scooters, helping students, faculty and staff travel throughout campus.
In September, Virginia Tech and Spin announced we would partner for an unprecedented micromobility safety study.
Spin provided 50 scooters to Virginia Tech’s Transportation Institute (VTTI), which has equipped them with cameras and other research equipment. Researchers have been recording and analyzing trends in rider behavior — including how they interact with other road users and existing infrastructure.
“We’re looking at how the infrastructure as it’s built and maintained today affects safety and how people ride,” Mike Mollenhauer, the director of VTTI’s Center for Technology Implementation and the principal investigator on the project, told Wired. “What leads up to a particular [crash] event, and what could we do to solve that?”
With the micromobility revolution now more than two years old, this study can help inform how companies design scooters going forward to make them safe for the rider and other street users who share the road with them.
Spin Hubs Changing the Way Tenants Commute
“If you’re developing [real estate] projects, partnerships with micromobility companies give you better flexibility to reduce the number of parking spaces that you have to put in at a building,” Magnolia Capital’s managing director Jay Friedeck told Fortune Magazine in a recent article about micromobility companies partnering with private property owners.
Spin joined the Wingate community in DC’s Ward 8 to celebrate the installation of our charging and parking solution, Spin Hubs.
Spin is leading the industry, having partnered with major companies like Brookfield Properties and Howard Hughes Corp. in Chicago, Tampa, and Washington, D.C. So far, Spin has placed some 40 hubs on properties around the country. These charging stations help reduce clutter and create an easily-identifiable location to park — and find — e-scooters.
These hubs also provide tenants in these buildings with a “very convenient, environmentally friendly way of getting around town,” Friedeck said in the article, giving the property owners who have these hubs on site an edge over other properties.
Spin aims to place about 1,000 hubs in 2020, bringing the reliable, sustainable transportation option to major properties in cities around the country.
First E-Scooter Efforts to Fund Tactical Urbanism Projects At-Scale
This year Denver played host to the first-ever design competition for parklets that incorporate e-scooter parking and charging. And in September, Spin, Team Better Block, Bike Utah, and Salt Lake City teamed up for a project called “The Spin Space” — a community-driven reimagining of an intersection in Salt Lake City to make it safer for people walking, biking, and scooting.
All parklet competitors built out their designs at the University of Colorado -Denver Inworks facility.
Spin initiated the Denver event, in partnership with Better Block Foundation, City of Denver Department of Public Works, Denver Streets Partnership, and Downtown Denver Partnership. Teams transformed Downtown Denver into a laboratory for people-oriented street design, while getting people to think about how parklets could also integrate e-scooter parking and charging as a solution to sidewalk clutter.
“Denver loves parklets because they provide opportunity to repurpose space in an exciting, engaging way. The public deserves to have more space that’s communal, aesthetically pleasing, and safer for all,” Ryan McCann, On-Street Program manager for Denver Public Works, said in an email to Spin.
The impact of the first-ever parklet competition wasn’t limited to Denver. DuRon Netsell, whose team won the Judge’s Prize for their Urban Backyard design, returned home to Kansas City to find a lot of enthusiasm for bringing parklets to his hometown.
Partly as a result of the competition, Kansas City is currently working on an ordinance that would allow parklets to be built in their streets.
The Salt Lake City project similarly had a farther reaching impact than just the intersection it transformed.
“Projects like [The Spin Space], where dollars are brought in from the private sector, can go a long way toward softening people’s hearts towards these things,” Chris Wiltsie, Bike Utah’s 1,000 Miles Program Director, told Spin. “Suddenly, you have a street that looks very different and represents the place locally.”
Spin helped convene and provided resources for the project.
“I’ve met with some of the other scooter companies and it’s kind of night and day. Spin has been willing to put resources into this,” Wiltsie said.
The project’s simplicity was key. The community was able to transform the intersection with paint, flower planters, and easily-installed wave delineators for protected bike lanes. Though temporary, it helped give the community a vision of what could be.
“At the event, people we talked to said, ‘Wow. This is really beautiful and different,’” Wiltsie said.
The success of the Salt Lake City project inspired another collaboration between Spin, Bike Utah, and the City of St. George: a temporary protected bike lane on Main Street. Wiltsie said he was impressed by how well the Salt Lake City collaboration went, so he worked with his partners to put together a proposal for the St. George protected bike lane presentation.
“We don’t have many protected bike lanes. It was good to have the opportunity for people to try this out,” he said.
Next year promises to be even more impactful as we expand our Safe, Liveable, and Just Streets initiative.
The First E-scooter Campaign to Trial Ads
Spin was proud to partner with Rovio and its advertising agency Droga5 to bring the idea of the “Rage Rider” scooter to life in a ground-breaking — and fun — co-branding way for their multi-faceted campaign.
As part of Rovio’s #BringTheAnger campaign for the 10-year anniversary of its mobile hit game, Angry Birds, the Spin team designed and built the “Rage Rider,” a voice-powered electric scooter that goes faster the louder you yell — into the microphone affixed to the handlebar. With safety as a top priority, the scooters were designed with a directional microphone to reduce any effect from ambient noise. The throttle must also first be engaged before the voice-powered component is activated.
These special-edition scooters were given out to a handful of influencers, not the general public, for content creation to help spread a message about turning anger into something positive. The content was also used to promote another phase of the “Bring the Anger” program, which included an Angry Birds in-game event in partnership with UNICEF Finland. Players were encouraged to “pop” as many pigs as they could throughout the month of November, for which Rovio donated $100,000 to a UNICEF program to help displaced children around the world receive an education. Through the partnership, Spin also branded 1,000 scooters with special Angry Birds wraps celebrating different characters from the game and deployed them at the University of California San Diego campus and in Austin. Rovio, for their part, gave the first 21,000 riders who entered a promo code $10 in ride credit. And all new riders received $5 in ride credit.
Rovio partnered with Spin for their #BringTheAnger campaign. The above scooters can be ridden at University of California — San Diego and throughout Austin.
As e-scooter companies work toward positive unit economics, advertising with like-minded brands to create unique and joyful experiences for riders serves as a viable revenue stream.
Spin’s long-time relationship with Rovio was the prerequisite for this partnership.
Andrew Allison, director of Advertising and Sponsorships at Spin, said in a blog post about this collaboration, “When they bring a project like the ‘Rage Rider’ to us, in all its complexity, they have full faith that we’ll get it done. And, from our side, we know that we’re great to partner with and can be relied upon to deliver on even the most outside-the-box ideas and bring them to life.”
The success of this campaign will hopefully set the stage for many more partnerships in 2020 and beyond.
