Last Mile Solutions - The idea

The goal of Last Mile Solutions is to be the connection between the start and end of a journey and the mass transit system(s) that do the bulk of the transportation. There are two flavors of this idea: self-powered and motor-powered.

Self-powered

Each night before going to bed Alex schedules a bicycle to be waiting at his door when he leaves for work. The bike is dropped off the night before by an “elf.” The bike is unlocked from its mobile bike locker by Alex’s smartphone. He then bikes to a subway station, where he can lock up the bike. At the end of the subway ride, he unlocks another bike with his phone and bikes the last bit to work and locks it up outside.

Motor-powered

Like Alex, Alicia schedules transportation to be waiting for her in the morning (a smart car). Alicia drops the smart car off at the bus, which she takes the rest of the way to work.

The magic behind this idea is the Last Mile Solution Elves that move all the bikes and vehicles around town. For bikes, the Elves move bikes from people’s houses and their other destinations to the start points of other people’s trips. The bikes are dropped off with a heavy, but mobile, bike locker, which is unlocked via wifi when a user needs it. If a bike is dropped off near where someone will need it in the next few hours, then it’ll be left there. Also, elves will need to move bikes from one mass transit stop to another as needed by commuters. The bikes are moved by loading them into trunks and driving them to their destination. The elves will know where to distribute the bikes from a combination of the day’s user requests and previous user request patterns.

The same pattern would happen for the cars. The other difference is that the cars would need to be moved by elves who use bikes to get to the cars and then put the bike on the car or use a large truck that could hold 4 smart cars.