In Brussels, several free floating car systems has recently started. They allow to check the location of a car on a map in an app, reserve it, drive with it ,and dropp it off on-street. In order to allow a certain density of the network the area where you can take and drop the car has is about 1/3rd of Brussels region.
The companies like Drive Now, Zipcar, Scooty (for e-bike) are operating in Brussels Region and have an official and at first sight innovative legislation to operate. There is a yearly fee for the car, and parking can be done in the Brussels region on street, just like the other shared care services (Ubeeqo, Zencar, Cambio). A good year after the launch, it seems that this free parking every where in Brussels has been restricted. The red parking areas (always payment) which are some shopping streets are no longer allowed for these cars, making it a big puzzle of where you can park them. I have taken screenshots of Drive Now and Zipcar app, showing that in some areas a full load of streets are not allowed (despite being in the geo-fenced zone of the operator), or areas close to a station (gare du Nord) are also not allowed. It makes it a very difficult use case, and I don't understand the overall logic, especially for the end user. On the zipcar picture you can see that in practice there are cars parked in the streets that are not allowed. So what will this mean for the end user? The end-user will end up being fined for old rules (probably the local parking agency fearing loss of revenues for parking, but not looking at the bigger picture).
Digital transformation of a city, more than a facebook ad campaign... creates clashes of practical implemention and between innovative use cases and administrative 'logics'. To be continued.
Digital transformation of a city, more than a facebook ad campaign... creates clashes of practical implemention and between innovative use cases and administrative 'logics'. To be continued.
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