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Comment by ricohageman

10 days ago

My city caps how many shared scooters and bikes each operator may put on the street, and how long a vehicle may sit unused. In 2024, an activist group did a one-off analysis on the problem (they found ~1.5x more scooters than permitted) based on an open GBFS data-feed that shows where scooters and bikes currently are. The municipality confirmed the data but called the situation "not undesirable."

The site, https://deelmobiliteitdelft.nl, logs the availability of every shared vehicle inside the city boundary. This allows me to do interesting analysis. For example, one operator has been above its vehicle limit 80% of the time. Another has a third of its fleet standing untouched for over three days.

It's the same idea as my previous project (http://parkeergaragesdelft.nl) where we do have live data but nobody keeps a record causing the public debate to run on anecdotes.

Site's in Dutch, charts should speak for themselves.

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ricohageman

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jorisw  10 days ago

Any reason you wouldn't expand this to cover other cities as well?

  • ricohageman  10 days ago

    The GBFS feeds are national, so expanding to other cities would be technically possible. But I think the value comes from knowing the local context well enough to know which numbers matter, and from following up with your local government. That said, if someone wants to dig up the permit conditions for their own city and build a similar project, I'm happy to assist.

    • jorisw  10 days ago

      Thanks.

      Did a quick check on Amsterdam: https://gbfs-validator.mobilitydata.org/visualization?url=ht...

      This also exceeds the supposed 600 max per service provider. That said I'm not sure I'd have time to maintain a derivative site.

      I agree that the follow up with the legislator is what makes this interesting. I'd even suggest making sharing that correspondence on your site a feature. Your outgoing link on the site to the regional press doesn't quite seem to cover that.