Brussels’ pilot to monitor free-floating services in real-time

Brussels Mobility has launched a pilot project with Parisian start-up Vianova to gather and analyze the data from free-floating scooters, bicycles, and mopeds operating in the Region. It helps to enforce the drop-off zones thanks to GPS data. It also shows that Brussels City and Ixelles are the most used areas, counting 60% of all machines.

Free-floating mobility services have been a real challenge to manage ever since they arrived on the market a few years ago. It started with machine degradations, then wrong user behavior, and finally, the major issue of parking. To counter the rising chaos, Brussels signed a new law restricting the use of free-floating mobility services to certain paths and banning their parking by creating specific drop-off zones.

Data gathering

The Brussels Region also decided to impose on free-floating mobility operators to share their vehicle’s data in real-time and the number of vehicles operating in the Region. To gather and analyze all this data, Brussels launched a six-month pilot project in conjunction with Parisian start-up Vianova. “The aim is to create a board of shared mobility services to give us better management possibilities,” declares Brussels Mobility spokesperson, Camille Thiry.

“We allow the control, regulation, and understanding of all free-floating mobility journeys. We can, for instance, observe which infrastructure is most used and if dedicated drop zones are used correctly,” adds Thibaud Febvre, co-founder and COO of Vianova.

City center and Ixelles

Every vehicle sends its GPS position every thirty seconds or every thirty meters when in use. This allows Vianova to track the usage but not the user, as data are encoded and compressed after five days. With this, the start-up can get a global view of free-floating service use in Brussels.

“We see a strong concentration of the fleet in the city center and in Ixelles with 60 % of all vehicles. The busiest days are Wednesdays and Saturdays. There are also peaks at the beginning and end of the day. 40% of journeys are made between 5 and 8 p.m. The most popular departure and arrival hubs are the Royal District, the Great Market, Flagey, the North District, the European District, and Matonge,” explains Vianova’s COO.