MDS Use Cases

MDS reduces the amount of city staff on the payroll that are needed to create policy, enforce rules, manage hundreds of devices, audit data, and ensure safe operations in the public right of way. It saves time for providers by aligning their data services to a single standard.

Here are some city uses cases for how they use MDS. We plan to expand this list by continuing to crowd-source contributions. A shorter list is on the MDS main page.

1. Distribution Requirements - Ensure devices are distributed according to equity requirements.
2. Restricted Area Rides - Find locations where devices are operating or passing through restricted areas.
3. Top Speed Calculations - Determine the average speed of a trip and ensure it meets requirements of top speed and slow area requirements.
4. Resident Complaints - Investigate and validate complaints from residents about operations, parking, riding, speed, etc, usually reported through 311.
5. Injury Investigation - Investigate injuries and collisions with other objects and cars to determine roadway accident causes.
6. Infrastructure Planning - Determine where to place new bike/scooter lanes and drop zones based on usage and demand, start and end points, and trips taken.
7. City Council Reports - Use data to communicate the value, successes, and issues of a mobility policy and allow guidance on safe operations and approval.
8. Curb Management - Compare to other curb users and change policy to make better use and remove conflicts
9. Right of Way Management - Alerts to remove devices from public right of way where known issues occur, or create plans to fix these issues.
10. Route Usage/Demand - Determine which routes are the most popular for riders and tell area business, improve physical space, add parking, etc.
11. Road Diet Effects - Determine road usage by riders before and after implementing road diets.
12. Road Improvement Effects - Determine road usage by riders before and after implementing road changes, improvements, signal retimings, etc.
13. Car Reduction Analysis - Determine if multi modal changes to roads lead to increased ridership and combine with other data to determine car traffic reductions.
14. Road Area Impact - Showing which trips across a city touched certain roads for how work, closures, or improvements may impact this.
15. Pollution Mitigation - Using trips along a corridor in conjunction with other vehicle data (eg, Waze) to reduce emissions over time.
16. Academic Research - Allow university researchers to use the data for analysis, prediction, and modeling to adjust policy to meet goals. With data sharing agreement.
17. Public Civic Tech Projects - Encourage local volunteers to use the data for visualization, analysis, feedback, and recommendations to the city.
18. Crash Reports - Investigate crashes reported by riders, public, or operators.
19. Vandalism Incidents - Investigate vandalism reported to the city by public or operator.
20. Trip Duration - Stats on trip durations
21. Trip Distance - Stats on trip distance travelled, provided in data and validated with trip lines.
22. Hourly Utilization - Hourly fleet utilization with origin/destination locations
23. Vehicles of Specified Status - The number of vehicles of a specified status that are within a specified geography at a specific moment in time.
24. Publish No-Ride Zones - Digitally publish no ride areas for providers to use.
25. Restrict Hours of Operation - Ensure operating hours are being followed, like no riding late at night for safety in some cities.
26. Publish No-Parking Zones - Digitally publish no parking areas for providers to prohibit parking.
27. Publish Slow Speed Zones - Digitally publish slower speed areas for providers to use, reducing speeds to 5mph, 10mph, etc below the vehicle max speeds.
28. Publish Preferred Parking Zones - Digitally publish preferred parking locations areas for providers to encourage riders to use.
29. Publish Emergency Guidance - Digitally publish unplanned events beforehand or in realtime rules for providers to implement, such as emergency road closures, water main breaks, etc. to help them keep their users and contractors informed and safe.
30. Impact on Transit - Provide visibility into the relationship between micromobility and other modes, such as public transit.
31. Publish Event Areas - Digitally publish beforehand or in realtime rules for providers to implement temporary planned events, such as concerts, slow streets, festivals, etc. to help them keep their users and contractors informed and for better route planning and re-balancing efforts.
32. Street Condition Improvement - Prioritize street paving by using Street Condition Index values and popular trips for safer rides.
33. Street Lighting Improvement - Prioritize street lighting upgrades (new lights, brighter more frequent lights) by looking at popular trips and rides past sunset for safety improvements. Publish Fleet Caps Digitally publish vehicle caps per provider to allow dynamic fleet size adjustment based on policy.