82: The biggest bikeshare in America - talking with Laura Fox, Lyft's General Manager for Citi Bike in New York

This week Oliver interviews Laura Fox, Lyft's General Manager for Citi Bike in New York. Laura has an incredible background with stints in Qatar, working on Mexico cities planning regulations, time at Sidewalk Labs, and as editor for one of the best books on urban planning and economics we’ve found, Order by Design by Alain Bertaud, all of which is discussed, before digging in to the nitty gritty details of Citibike in NYC.This was a great episode - Laura is an amazing thinker and you’ll get a lot out of listening to her.Specifically we dig into:- an explanation of the Citibike setup - its coverage, size (15k bikes!!), characteristics and relationship to the NYC DOT.- How and why they price as the product as affordabiy as they do.- a discussion about the docked system and the benefits/challenges of this vs the more common dockless system ie. bike valets, load balancing with large numbers locked up and how they create ’capacity valves’.- the impact of electrification on the fleet - how the early data from bikes show both 2-3x utilisation, but also longer duration and distance trip durations.- A wider discussion about micromobility and its intersection with urban form, infrastructure and other planning requirements- How they think about discussions over kerbside allocation, the challenges of of competing with car parking and the data/storytelling needed to counter this.- where Laura sees the future going with regards to MaaS, how she think about Lyft's play in that space and who has the power to be the forcing function to promote widespread adoption.- How COVID-19 has impacted their operations, and the changes in ridership demographics and usage that they’re seeing.The book that we mention is called Order without Design, and can be found on Amazon here [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08BSYX83S/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1]. Would also encourage you to check out Devon Zuegel’s great podcast with Alain and his wife Marie-Agnes about their lives as nomadic urban planners/economists here [https://devonzuegel.com/tag/order-without-design-podcast]. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit micromobility.substack.com/subscribe