Cityfi Spotlight: Get to know our team
Welcome to another edition of Cityfi Spotlight: an opportunity to get to know our team, and a moment for us to talk about why we love to do what we do. Next, meet Cityfi’s newest affiliate Gabriel Scheer.
Gabriel, tell us a little bit about your background.
I’ve been fortunate to have an interestingly varied career to date! After grad school I joined Flexcar, which was eventually bought by Zipcar. At the beginning I managed a federal and state grant-funded effort to bring car-sharing to low income populations, and eventually I served as GM of the SoCal market. After that, I built my own company, a social innovation company, which I ran for six years. Among other projects there, I was asked to consider innovative business models for new urban mobility in a carbon-constrained future! Ready to learn new things after years on my own, I joined Frog Design, where I was a senior strategist and partner on their ventures team. In early 2017 I worked with both Chariot (eventually bought by Ford) and Lime before moving full-time to Lime. I spent 3 years at Lime, first as the company’s first government relations hire, and eventually as head of data policy and transit partnerships.
When you saw shared micro mobility launch, what was your initial reaction?
I was so excited about it! I had gotten really interested in bike sharing during my urban mobility project, and was a founding member of Seattle’s dock-based bike sharing scheme. That failed shortly before I met Toby & Brad, founders at Lime, and I got inordinately excited about the possibilities of new, smaller form-factor, connected vehicles.
Why did you join Lime?
We began with a big vision for mobility in cities, all with a focus on reducing single occupant private car use. Our goal was to dramatically accelerate the shift toward lower carbon alternatives, and from the beginning we had a passionate, committed team willing to throw their all behind this effort. It was a super inspiring place to be.
A lot has evolved in the world of data and micro mobility. What are some trends that you believe to be positively impacting how cities are using data?
When I first started offering data from our bikes to cities, many would acknowledge that such data would be nice to have — but that they had few tools with which to make sense of it. Over my three years at Lime I saw and helped guide a tremendous evolution: cities became far more adroit at using it, third-party aggregators such as Ride Report rose to help cities better analyze the data, and standards such as the Mobility Data Specification (MDS) became widespread. These trends have enabled better collaboration between providers and cities, and are helping inform cities even now as they rapidly deploy new infrastructure for bikes and related micromobility vehicles, and I look forward to seeing such trends continue.
What is something that could be improved upon?
Leaders in many cities, particularly in the US, are still reticent to dramatically shift the paradigm away from cars as the dominant form of mobility. That’s understandable; there are 100+ years of habits, infrastructure, and vested interests supporting the status quo. However, for humans to have any chance at slowing climate change, we must take dramatic steps to change this paradigm. And — doing so could make our cities far more economically vibrant, healthier, and far more livable!
What do you think is the future of micro mobility?
I remain bullish. While brands and vehicle types will continue to evolve and change, what’s been demonstrated in the last ~3 years with scooters — and what’s now being accelerated in some places by Covid — is that people will change, and that such change can even be desirable. I believe micromobility will be a strong component of the cities best positioned to recover from Covid.
As a Cityfi affiliate, what types of projects do you look forward to work on?
I am excited to work with organizations looking to create more vibrant, healthier, less congested, and lower carbon-intense cities!
What does transportation happiness mean to you?
I love riding my bike. E-bikes are really fun, too.
Finally, and maybe most importantly, what is your favorite cat meme?
Oh no. I have no cat memes.
Don’t worry, Gabriel, we can provide one. Welcome to Cityfi!
