180: Exploring public-private Shared Micromobility with Caroline Sampanaro, head of micromobility and transit policy at Lyft

Ride AI by Micromobility Industries

This week Oliver interviews Caroline Sampanaro, Head of Micromobility and Transit Policy at Lyft, about her role and opportunities for micromobility to participate in conversations about better transport systems and cities. They also talk a lot about the shared business model, and why PPP feels like the most logical endpoint for a lot of the shared use cases for micromobility. We have continually been struck by the great team that Lyft has built - check out our earlier conversations with Laura Fox, GM of Citibike in NY for reference - and we really enjoyed this conversation with Caroline. Also referenced is episode 170 with Julia Thayne DeMourdant and Gabe Klein, which you can listen to here.

Unfortunately, we lost the end of the audio for this the first time around and had to go back and rerecord the end. Our awesome editor Lynda has managed to get this sounding good, but just a heads up about it towards the end.

In this episode they discuss:

- Caroline’s background as an activist and how it led her to shared micromobility policy

- The story of Lyft’s micromobility business - how it came about and why they’ve chosen the strategy they have with PPP docked bikeshare vs freefloating.

- Getting micromobility away from identity politics

- What has electric vs. acoustic offered to the advocacy conversation?

- What is the role of companies like Lyft in micromobility advocacy vs. (for example) vehicle producers etc.

- How do we get a broad coalition of advocates that can tackle the status quo?

If you want to see the latest vehicles and be in the most cutting-edge conversations about micromobility, you should check out Micromobility Europe, our premier event happening in Amsterdam on the 8/9th of June. We’re expecting over 1000 of the top thinkers and doers in the micro space to be there and I am pumped with the amazing vehicles that are coming down the pipe that will be there. We’re expecting over 60 companies to be pitching in our Startup Awards too. It’s going to be epic. If you’re interested in joining, get your tickets at micromobility.io.

Catch us on Twitter ⁠⁠@MicromobilityCo⁠⁠. ⁠⁠Horace⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠Oliver⁠⁠ are also active on their personal accounts and would love to hear from you.

Our https://micromobility.substack.com/⁠⁠ is completely free, and you can subscribe to have it in your inbox every Tuesday and Thursday morning.

We’re also on ⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠.