AUSTIN, Texas — In little more than 18 months, scooters have become an unexpected force in urban transportation. But even in places that have welcomed this phenomenon, city planners have struggled with the influx.
Populus, a San Francisco startup, is increasingly helping cities manage scooters and other new players on their streets and sidewalks.
The company's technology platform ingests data from shared-mobility providers such as Lime and Spin and packages it so that transportation officials can use it for policy planning and daily management of parking, streets and curb space. Founded in 2018, the company already has customers in major cities such as Seattle and Washington as well as midsize ones like Arlington, Va.
"Typically, if a city is going to allow scooters or bikes, they're requiring some reporting of data," said co-founder Regina Clewlow. "The typical challenge is that most cities don't have the technical capacity to ... take in and process all that data and turn it into information."
Last week, Populus raised $3.1 million in a seed round backed by Relay Ventures, Precursor Ventures and Castor Ventures, bringing total funding to $3.85 million.
Beyond GPS information from scooters, the company collects data from car-sharing fleets, ride-hailing networks and bikes to provide real-time information on the number of trips taken, where people are going and parking availability.
In most cases, cities issue permits to scooter companies, and ask them to provide their data to Populus. A handful of companies have started sharing with Populus on their own. In Seattle, Lime is delivering car-sharing data, and in Miami, scooter-rental company Bolt is doing the same.
Before Populus, Clewlow was an executive with Moovel, the Daimler mobility division rebranded last month as Reach Now. Before that, she was a research scientist and lecturer at Stanford University, the University of California, Berkeley and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, becoming one of the first academics to study shared mobility and its impact on cities. Starting with the arrival of ride-hailing services such as Uber and Lyft at the start of the decade, she saw the emerging need for cities to take a proactive role in managing their streets and sidewalks.
Clewlow spoke at the Smart Mobility Summit at SXSW here this month, on the competitive environment in which mobility companies, delivery trucks, ride-hailing fleets and others vie for curb and parking space.
Data is helping to sort out how to manage those spaces — through pricing or allocation — as well as how many scooters or vehicles to permit.
"What we're finding is, usually cities that have access to information are more flexible, and they might be more nimble in changing their vehicle caps," Clewlow said. "Instead of setting arbitrary numbers, they can look at utilization rates and identify infrastructure needs."
In some cases, data can help justify changes when constituents complain. In Arlington, for example, city officials converted one on-street parking spot into space for nine scooters — choosing to corral them instead of leaving them scattered about — although some private car owners bemoaned the loss of parking. With the ability to assess utilization and demand, more spaces may soon be converted.
