Vancouver falling behind on shared mobility options: report

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – It looks like Vancouver is losing points when it comes to shared mobility, that’s according to the latest rankings from transportation consultant Movmi.

Although Vancouver used to have the top spot in Canada and 5th across North America, the city is now ranked behind Montreal and 7th overall.

The appetite is certainly there, says Movmi founder and CEO Sandra Phillips, who says Vancouver needs to do a better job of developing and embracing shared mobility options.

“There has been a bit of a revolution in share mobility with a couple of other modes, and one is all of the electric scooters and bikes,” Phillips adds. “There’s none of that and there’s no policy support at all in Vancouver for this.”

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She says lack of ride-hailing services such as Uber and Lyft also didn’t help Vancouver stay in the top five. San Francisco took the top spot this year, followed by New York and Seattle.

At the end of the day, Phillips says it’s about having better connectivity.

“Let’s say you go to Gastown and it’s a beautiful day, and you want to bike there but you don’t want to be too sweaty so you take the electric bike share. And then you get there, now you’ve had a couple of drinks so now you don’t want to bike anymore and you definitely shouldn’t drive the car-share vehicle so now you do need an Uber. So essentially you want to give multiple options,” she adds.

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She says Vancouver has a good foundation in place, especially with many residents already using public transit or biking to commute, but she says having a variety of shared mobility options is key.

A pilot project between TransLink, EVO, Mobi and Modo is currently in the works, which Pillips says should help improve connectivity in the region.

 

Shared Mobility Top 20 cities:

1. San Francisco
2. New York
3. Seattle
4. Washington D.C.
5. Portland
6. Montreal
7. Vancouver (Previously #5)
8. Chicago
9. Austin
10. Los Angeles
11. Denver
12. Boston
13. Minneapolis
14. Toronto
15. Columbus
16. Charlotte
17. Dallas
18. Detroit
19. Phoenix
20. Houston