Positioning bikes and micromobility as an essential part of modern, urban living aligns a real estate asset with tenants that value health, wellness, and sustainability. TDM strategies encourage multimodal trips, prioritizing transit, biking, and walking, which aligns with many local city guidelines and policies for mode shift. This is exactly what energy efficiency looks like.

With all of the turmoil in the shared micromobility industry since December, the question arises again - should bike and scooter share systems be supported by city, state, and federal subsidies in the same fashion that public transportation is? Venture capital entering the arena of public bike sharing initially was a sign that there is a viable, and growing market for active transportation in cities, and people love the service. There were major problems though, which I attempt to unpack, and make some predictions for what the year ahead looks like for bike and scooter sharing in North America.

Ultimately, we need to figure out ways to reduce car use as cities become more congested, and there is a growing need to reduce emissions and improve air quality. More space is being redesigned for people walking, biking, and rolling which can be further activated if financial incentives are enacted beyond e-bikes and are also applied to e-scooters - enabling more of these micromobility options for people to buy, rent, lease, or share.

I’m excited to have conversations with sustainability professionals that are tackling one of the top 2 largest carbon emitting sectors in the US - real estate - which includes the energy that buildings use, as 30% of all emissions, according to the EPA. The other sector in the top 2 is transportation emissions, on par at 29%. A truly sustainable built environment requires a holistic view in cutting emissions, including changing how we move.

The primary reason that building certifications exist is to directly and indirectly reduce emissions and our reliance on fossil fuels, and enable us to live healthier, more active lifestyles. I wrote a review of the various certifications and scoring systems that aim to improve both planetary health and human health, with a focus on how people get to and from buildings. It can be confusing so hopefully this helps sustainability and real estate professionals understand the different rating systems. Ultimately, more is better.

To really lure employers and employees to work from the office, placemaking is essential and so is doing whatever possible to make the commute a better experience. People want to actively commute by bicycling, running, or walking, but if a building doesn't provide secure and ample parking, lockers, showers, changing rooms, and easy access, then increasingly, that building will become outdated.

It is often said that innovation happens at the intersection of industries. And I believe that we can – and must – do more to decarbonize transportation and real estate simultaneously, instead of tackling them separately.

Running pilots are key to developing successful long-term mobility solutions that replace SOV car trips, reduce emissions, and improve a community’s vitality. Experimentation with various business models and public-private partnerships is crucial, and not every community should take the same approach.

In order to transform our communities to be more walkable, bike friendly places, it's a dual battle of incentivizing more people to ride (more frequently) and making people feel safe while doing so. The former is relatively easy to implement but can only go so far if the latter is not addressed.

In its simplest form, moving upstream to solve challenges is difficult, because it's proactive. So many issues in an organization and in our society are handled downstream, in reaction to a problem. The recent surge of banning e-scooters and e-bikes is a downstream solution; the problem with a downstream solution such as a ban is that it doesn't consider the reason that people use these newer e-mobility devices in the first place.

As much as the cutting of greenhouse gas emissions is dependent on our personal choice and the decisions that the private sector makes, a lot more than many of us realize is dependent on what our local city staff and elected officials are doing now to reform archaic policies that were codified at the dawn of the car being adopted by the average American, and well before we realized the externalities that car culture has produced.

Everything slowed down a bit in New York, and the reemergence created an opportunity to take aggressive action in striping bike lanes, closing streets to cars, and carving out more space for people, bikes, and their micromobility vehicles. These converging forces together gave root to a public that wanted their own way of getting around more easily, more freely, replacing the subway train with more enjoyable commutes.

How do we reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in transportation? The recent passing of the Inflation Reduction Act and the EV incentives to go along with it will help in theory, though that doesn't do enough to get people out of their cars, as implementing local policies and consumer trends in general can do.

I wrote a blog about my trip to Amsterdam for the Micromobility Industries conference, covering my personal experience, observations, reflections, and takeaways from the event.

“Find a cheaper gas station”, “Go out and buy an electric car.” While I fully support the transition to electric vehicles and moving our economy away from fossil fuels, car dependence is the real issue.

“Land is expensive for housing and free for parking, and you wonder why we have a problem?”