How Captur is improving visibility between cities and micromobility operators

The micromobility industry encountered a turbulent 2023, marked by Paris' e-scooter ban, Bird's bankruptcy, and Superpedestrian's closure of US operations. Amidst what seems like a contracting market, the demand for convenient, cost-effective, and sustainable transportation remains high. Yet, we are witnessing a trend of cities decreasing the number of operators they allow on their streets as they seek to gain control over the adverse effects of unsafe parking (Fluctuo, 2024).

Brussels, an early adopter of micro mobility and a city with a high e-scooter ridership ranking in Europe, saw an influx of 20,000 e-scooters from 7 different mobility operators (Dott, Voi, Bolt, Tier, Lime, Pony, and Poppy). However, by the end of 2023, the city announced a new tender to overhaul its mobility landscape in response to public complaints about poorly parked vehicles which initiated a tender, limiting e-scooters to 8,000, shared between Dott and Bolt.

Two things are made clear about this tender:

1. With the reduction of operators, the city looks to regain control, it is in the best interest of every operator to be as transparent in their communications and fleet visibility, putting the city at ease.
2. The operators must be able to clearly demonstrate to the city how they plan to prevent poor parking behaviour and how the city will know if they are succeeding in doing so.

Where Captur enters the picture

As cities become more selective about which micromobility operators they allow to operate on their streets, they prefer those who give them visibility into precisely what is happening on the ground. Captur gives operators this superpower. 

With Captur, operators can review 100% of their rides against the city’s compliance policy with a seamless in-app integration which activates when the end-of-ride photo is being captured. Captur’s AI gives instant feedback to the rider if the parking is deemed unsafe (ie. parked in the road), improvable (parked across a pedestrian walkway) or lacks information (ie. no vehicle in the image) however when the parking is deemed compliant, whether on the first attempt or after Captur’s prompt, the ride ends instantly. 

While Captur’s AI-guided parking guidance is a major win for operators and cities alike when it comes to preventing a portion of bad parking incidents, it also bridges a massive visibility gap in understanding user behaviour and solving shortcomings in infrastructural efforts to avoid poor parking behaviour. 

With all end-of-ride images being displayed in Captur’s dashboard, operators and cities can now dig into their operations at a macro level, for example, identify hotspots for bad parking and determine whether the cause of these hotspots is infrastructural or purely human failure.

Additionally, on a micro level, Captur’s user behaviours summary allows operators to view their best and worst riders by their parking habits and reward or penalise users as they please to reinforce best practices and in doing so, create a culture of good parking.

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When speaking to Forest’s City Relations Supervisor, Dominic Conneely Hughes, about the impact of Captur on their control and visibility into Forest’s operations, he stated, “Captur’s ability to produce dashboards and analyse behaviour has given Forest good insight into macro rider behaviour patterns”. Dominic goes on to say that because parking compliance is at the top of all council’s agendas, Captur’s software has alleviated some of the concerns of city councils by “showing proof that Forest is taking action to improve rider behaviour” and has become a “key part of competitive tender bids for Forest”.

These comments echo what Hoog Co-founder, Holger Ollema had to say after they successfully launched in 7 new cities within 12 months, stating that “Captur has played a pivotal role” and that the solution had “impressed council members across the board” with post-launch feedback being “overwhelmingly positive”.

Captur’s Commitment

Captur remains dedicated to serving both micromobility operators and cities. Our commitment is to mitigate the impacts of bad parking behaviour while offering unparalleled visibility and insight into their on-the-ground operations.

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