My current situation has me going all over New York City, for work, for family and to go home. In Brooklyn recently, I had been noticing a lot of mopeds with the Revel label on them. It’s states right on the bikes that you just need to download the app to be able to rent one. Since I had a decent experience in San Diego a few moths ago with Spin renting their scooters and bikes, I decided to give Revel a try.
Source: Revel
How it Works
Once you download the app, you upload your drivers license and fill out the information for billing. They then do a check which can take up to 15 mins on your background to make sure you won’t destroy their bikes.
Mine came back surprisingly fast, in about 2 minutes, so I was able to start pretty quickly. Honestly, I have never driven a moped before, I have ridden on the back of one and driven an ATV but never went solo on a moped.
Luckily in New York, as long as the moped cannot go over 30 mph, you do not need a motorcycle license to drive one so that was not an obstacle. The current speed limit on city streets is 25 mph so you drive it just like you would a car in terms of street rules.
There is an initial $19 charge for the license check, after that there is a $1 charge when you pick up the bike and it then costs 25 cents per minute thereafter. If you pause the ride and don’t want to lose the bike, it’s then 10 cents per minute.
I found this to be extremely convenient for the simple fact that I am often traveling between boroughs in NYC and the transportation between boroughs that do not involve Manhattan can be quite cumbersome.
In my case, I was heading from Brooklyn to the Bronx and the Revel ride helped me ride from Brooklyn to a train line in Queens that was much more convenient for me to then travel into Manhattan and then transfer to a bus to the Bronx.
Apart from the $19 one time start up fee, I rode around for about 45 minutes and ended up spending about $10 including my riding and idle time.
This is significant since it was much cheaper than catching the same ride via Uber. I then was able to transfer to the express bus, also very convenient, for $6.75. That made my grand total for the trip $16.75 which was much less than a $50 cab ride that an Uber may have charged me over the same distance. Although it did take more time as there was waiting for the bus involved, if you are not pressed for time, or if 20 extra minutes will not make a difference, it’s a fantastic and affordable option for getting places.
You are responsible for tickets for wherever you park it for up to 24 hours after you leave and the bikes cannot be taken all over New York. They are restricted to a zone that covers Queens and Brooklyn as can be see below.
Within this zone you are allowed to park on any street where it is legal to park. The app gives you guidelines and tips on how to park so as to make it convenient for the next rider as well as legal.
The Impact
This is a great example of how sharing of assets or the sharing economy as some call it, is so beneficial to the population in general. I would not rely on this service for my primary means of transportation or daily transportation. The big advantage of being able to use it though, is the convenience of being able to travel to areas where public transportation does not reach, without having to pay the cost of a more expensive cab ride.
If I were to own a moped though, I would constantly have to worry about street cleaning rules, insurance and having it gassed or charged. This service takes away all that hassle and gives me the ride without the headache.
It’s also potentially a game changer for poorer communities that are further away from public transport. I think more and more that New York is going the way of Paris, where the areas that are poorest are those that are the furthest from any form of quick public transport to the city’s commercial center.
For example, imagine you live in Rosedale, a working class neighborhood on the edge of Queens which would essentially mean you would have to take an hour and a half subway ride to reach commercial parts of Manhattan or have to wait for a commuter line to take you there which does not come as often. Services like these would be able to offer a way out by taking a moped to a subway station with more frequent service or would be able to avoid long walks to stations for those that currently are far from commuter rail stations.
Source Google Maps
I like to think of this service as a “top up” to your commute. It makes it a bit easier and a bit more fun but is not something you may use all the time.
However, the service for Revel is currently limited to areas of Brooklyn an Queens that are quickly being gentrified. It’s an example of how our own biases can feed into technology and business, which not just limit products to some people but also limit business from reaching consumers who may actually need or want their services.
What Does This Mean for Public Transport?
Extrapolating from just a convenient moped ride though, it starts to make me ask questions like, if I didn’t take the train due to this service, what does that mean for public transport and transport as a whole?
Indeed the competition from different transportation options like Uber has been contributing to subway and bus ridership dropping by 5% from 2015 to 2018. This has contributed to further gridlock on the city streets as well as yellow cab driver suicides from drivers who have seen their way of life upended.
This may be part of a wider movement in crowded cities though. The current creaking subway system is so inefficient that I can often ride my bike in the same time it takes the subway to get there. That contributed to my taking my bike to work a few times a week as opposed to taking the train or bus. I also do notice, especially on good weather days, a large and increasing number of people traveling on electric scooters, pedal bikes and mopeds rather than public transport.
The Real Game Changer
The real game changer may be when driverless cars become a reality. In this case, the cost to simply hitch a ride on a self driving car on a regular basis may become cheaper than the cost of owning a car. To get some perspective, take a look at the cost per mile of travel for the various modes of transport versus Self Autonomous Vehicles (SAV).
Source Ark Investment Management
If this were to happen, not only would it throw cab drivers out of a job but people may start to completely reevaluate why they even have a car in the first place, especially those in crowded cities. Getting an Uber, renting a moped, or renting a scooter, may be the preferred way to get around if they are extremely cheap and offer a level of convenience on par of even greater than owning one.
In addition, Ark Investment Management estimates that due to more people being able to take a car (teens, elderly, the blind, etc.) road traffic will increase by 20% with SAV.
What Will They Do?
By the time driverless cars get here we will likely have driverless trucks and that is the game changer when it comes to a vital part of our economy and our national infrastructure.
In looking up the research for this post I was surprised to learn there are about 200 thousand cab drivers in America but 3.5 million truck drivers. Almost 10 million are employed in the trucking industry as a whole including drivers. The trucking industry lobby likes to state that 1 of every 15 jobs is in the US. In some areas, 80% of a communities needs (food, clothing, building materials, etc.) are supplied by the trucking industry
If these transportation innovations succeed in displacing cab drivers and truckers, it would put a millions of people out of work. There are increasing worries about what the population of unskilled or low skilled labor in the US will be able to do in this new economy that more and more can hire robots to do their jobs.
It’s no wonder that hearing talk of this, fewer young people want to drive trucks. The median age of a truck driver is now 55 and there is a current shortage of drivers. So much so that Wal-Mart recently bumped up its offer for starting drivers to almost $90,000 a year.
Source: trucking.org
Conclusion
That being said, I agree with the sentiment that we can’t stop innovation just because it’s disruptive for some people. Truck driving is a hard job and most of the people who go into it leave or quit. The turnover rate is estimated to be 94%. There is a real opportunity with all this innovation to leave the boring, repetitive, drudgery jobs behind and give them to machines which would free people up for more critical thinking and creativity. It may start with something like mopeds being a fun alternative, but believe that the world is changing fast and mopeds may be just the beginning of a whole other revolution that will alter the way we conduct our lives.
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