Uber announces new mobility infrastructure initiative for safe streets

Uber, on behalf of PeopleForBikes, the North American Bikeshare Association and the League of American Bicyclists, has authored a letter urging the House Committee on Transportation & Infrastructure to prioritise the safety of vulnerable roadway users such as bicyclists, scooter riders and pedestrians through additional funding measures and incentive programmes.

Through its City Mobility Campaign, Uber has reinforced its support for legislation that would help ensure the expansion of improved bike infrastructure on city streets and unlock funding for bicycle-friendly policies, such as:

• New Mobility Infrastructure Legislation: this would require new mobility lanes to be added to every street once re-paved, using a formula developed by the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) for determining the bike infrastructure on a street-by-street basis, which considers traffic speed and volume
• Congestion Pricing Legislation: this aims to fund mass transit and new mobility infrastructure while helping decrease traffic by disincentivising the current dependence on personal cars to move around cities. 

Uber is also making available to the public a free data tool that will combine JUMP bike volume with a complete city street view. Uber has said that it is making this public so that cities and citizens alike can understand and advocate for the best bike infrastructure possible. The tool is said to allow for data-driven decision making to improve bike safety throughout the city, and can be used to compare weekday and weekend volume, and be filtered based on the time of day.