Uber rolls out new features for biking, car-sharing, and more
Uber is moving way beyond just ordering a car. The company announced a slew of new partnerships this week, including ones for an actual car-sharing service, biking, and now more ways to get around cities.
At an event in Washington, D.C., Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi Wednesday morning gave an overview of the new services, which encompass both pilot programs and data projects.
On top of the new Uber Rent platform to borrow someone's car through Getaround in San Francisco later this month, Khosrowshahi announced an expansion of Uber Bike, which previously only existed in San Francisco, to D.C.
On top of that, Uber users will be able to buy tickets for public transit through the app thanks to a partnership with mobile ticketing service Masabi. MasterCard, which has invested in Masabi since 2014, hailed the Uber-Masabi partnership as a "major milestone." MasterCard already works with Masabi to bring mobile ticketing to commutes and transit trips. MasterCard envisions a trip from say, Connecticut to New York, using one in-app payment platform that covers the Uber ride, train ticket, and then subway access.
On the data front, Khosrowshahi introduced a new pilot program in D.C. to look at curb usage data. Working with SharedStreets and D.C. transportation agencies, Uber will study how different transportation modes are used and how they affect city streets and sidewalks.
And finally, there's Uber Movement, a data project that shows (anonymized) Uber usage and patterns for cities to use and understand, is expanding to 12 new cities. Those include: Amsterdam, Bangalore, Brisbane, Cairo, Hyderabad, Melbourne, Mumbai, Nairobi, New Delhi, Perth, Pittsburgh, and Toronto. The Uber Movement website launched last year.
It's getting harder to label Uber as just a ride-hailing company.
Topics Uber
Sasha is a news writer at Mashable's San Francisco office. She's an SF native who went to UC Davis and later received her master's from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She's been reporting out of her hometown over the years at Bay City News (news wire), SFGate (the San Francisco Chronicle website), and even made it out of California to write for the Chicago Tribune. She's been described as a bookworm and a gym rat.
