Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1299

https://500px.com/embed.js

A few months ago I wrote a post about Uber’s new “Smart Routes” feature and ended by saying that it’s not just taxis who need to be thinking about platforms like Uber, it’s also public transit authorities.

I said that because I think that multi-modal is already the new reality in terms of how we get around cities and because the line between different modalities is becoming greyer all the time.

That’s why I was interested when I stumbled upon this NextCity article talking about how Lyft is starting – it’s still early days – to collaborate with transit authorities in order to make it easier for people to switch between public transit and its peer-to-peer ridesharing marketplace.

Why might this matter? Here’s an excerpt from the article:

“According to the company’s data, 25 percent of Lyft riders say they use the service to connect to public transit. In Boston, 33 percent of those rides start or end near a T station. And transit hubs like Chicago’s Union Station, D.C.‘s Union Station and Boston’s South Station are among the most popular destinations for its users, Lyft finds. So riders already see on-demand rides as a solution to the first mile/last mile problem. Lyft thinks it can do more.”

These last 2 sentences are interesting. Public transit can often suffer from what is known as the first mile/last mile problem . This is a problem where riders find it difficult to get to the nearest transit route from their departing point or to their ultimate destination once they exit transit.

Bikesharing can be used to solve this. But, clearly, so can ridesharing.

The other important aspect of this emerging collaboration is that ridesharing apps can offer a lot of incredibly valuable data to transit authorities. If 25% of users are indeed using it to connect to public transit, then all of a sudden cities are getting a more complete picture of point A to B travel. (Among many other things.)

But the question in my mind is now, who is going to and who should act as the overall steward in this multi-modal urban mobility network? 

There are lots of different players involved. Some are public and some are private. But they all play a role in how we are going to continue moving around our cities.

Version One Ventures – which is an early-stage venture capital fund based in Vancouver – recently published a free handbook called, A Guide to Marketplaces .

Online marketplaces are really fascinating because they are perhaps broader in scope than you might initially think. For example, Uber is a marketplace. There’s a supply-side (drivers with cars) and a demand-side (people needing rides). Uber connects these two groups together and acts as a kind of digital middle person. Uber does not own any of the cars.

This is an incredibly power business model and it can and is being applied in many different ways. Here are the top internet marketplaces (via the handbook):

I have been interested in this space for years because I have been very curious as to why we haven’t seen more innovation when it comes to online real estate marketplaces. Yes, there are platforms like Zillow.com. But Zillow has not done to real estate what Uber is doing to urban mobility.

My thinking is that it comes down to supply-side aggregation. Online marketplaces in general are hard to get started, which is why investors love them. They have defensibility. But real estate, in particular, is even harder to jumpstart compared to the incumbent models because of what I see as constraints on the supply-side.

That’s why I am so excited about what BuzzBuzzHome.com is doing on the new construction side of the business. They are aggregating supply.

If you’d like to download the guide to marketplaces in PDF, click here . It’s a great read and I’m glad that Boris and Angela took the time to assemble. Thank you :)

I had a few ideas bouncing around in my head today for things I could write about after I got home from the office and the gym. But now , I don’t feel like writing about any of them.

So instead, I’d like to share this photo that I took around 9:00pm eastern time on Friday, November 13th, 2015. It’s a picture of the CN Tower lit up as the French flag.