Atlanta Works to Expand Equitable Access to Micromobility

The city established data-driven strategies for when they soon transition to a contract model. 

The Atlanta Department of Transportation recently reported that the city clocked more than 2.1 million shared micromobility (SMM) rides in 2023, the most annual rides since the pandemic. Ashley Finch, shared micromobility coordinator for the City of Atlanta, partly attributes this increase in ridership to the system’s efforts to extend its operational hours.  

“Once we extended the curfew from 9 p.m. to midnight in late 2022, we saw an increase of almost 400,000 trips,” says Finch. “If you really look at the difference between the numbers of total ridership in 2022, which was about 1.6 million, and then the 2.1 million in 2023, that 400,000 is a huge chunk of that difference.”

According to Finch, 14% of trips in 2023 were taken between 9 p.m. and midnight.

When the 9 p.m. curfew was in place in 2021, safety was high on the list of concerns for the city as a response to SMM fatalities happening around that time. While improving rider safety is still a major priority for the city through its Vision Zero Action Plan, a lot of community feedback in 2021 was requests for extended hours. The curfew brought to light other accessibility issues, Finch says — for third-shift workers, last-mile connections, and those who feel safer riding SMM home at night as opposed to walking. 

Currently, the system has a nighttime riding restriction for rented scooters/e-bikes from midnight to 4:00 a.m., but with a new contract on the horizon, the city is looking at some changes, including expanding operating hours and ensuring access and ridership in low-density areas.

“We’re looking to move from a permit model to a contract model when this permit ends next July,” says Finch. “In that sort of new version of the program, my hope is that it [the system] can just default to 24 hours.”

To improve access to SMM, the city designated three “equity zones” based on metrics like households with no access to a car or single-car households in addition to other demographic information. This data is used to determine what percentage of the fleet will be required to be within those zones at all times. Finch says that due to the pockets of density in Atlanta, this strategy unfortunately doesn’t always meet the need. 

“For the next iteration of the program, I’m looking at working with the operators to figure out how we can make sure that low-density areas are still getting rides,” says Finch. “Not just looking at the densest areas where those rides are guaranteed, but also talking to folks in the neighborhood, looking at different areas in these zones that maybe aren’t seeing as much device distribution just because they have that lower density, and figure out where they would be useful.”

The city is also working to create better dedicated parking areas for shared devices and wayfinding signage for users to locate the devices more easily, especially around transit. Finch says they want these devices to be a last-mile tool.

“We’re working with the private operators to make sure there are always devices near transit stations and heavily utilized bus routes,” she says. “It’s something that we’re trying to do an analysis of with our data analytics folks to see how we are doing now, and what could be better with the distribution to support some of those bus routes and heavy rail transit access.”

Atlanta is building out its bike network through its Moving Atlanta Forward Agenda, which Finch also attributes to the increase in ridership last year. With this growing network, the city is adding more protected bike infrastructure. A huge focus has been working on the east-to-west and north-to-south connectivity, says Finch, to make biking safer for all riders.

Along with distribution and improved rider safety, affordability is another crucial factor for this new contract. 

“We’re looking at guaranteeing equity pricing in certain areas because I think that’s a big issue with the dockless systems- they can be very expensive,” says Finch. “While there are access programs offered through the operators for folks already on government assistance, there are all of these folks in the middle where it’s still really expensive to take a dockless device ride. How can we craft the contract to make sure there is affordability wrapped into that more than with the current model?”

Keep an eye on Atlanta where ridership keeps growing. The city’s focus is on making sure its system is equitable in light of its future contract. There are some great lessons to learn from their work.