The Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC) is to receive 50 additional buses, 45 diesel and five electric, by month end.

Additionally, 20 compressed natural gas (CNG)-fuelled units will be added to the fleet under a joint arrangement with private-sector partners. These are expected by September.

Minister of Transport and Mining, Hon. Audley Shaw, made the disclosure during his contribution to the 2023/24 Sectoral Debate in the House of Representatives on Wednesday (May 9).

“We are currently engaged in a Battery Electric Bus pilot project for the testing of six electric buses, which will evaluate the performance of these electric buses and form the basis for comparison to the diesel and compressed natural gas buses,” Mr. Shaw said.

“As a matter of fact, one electric bus is already in operation. As we take steps to address the number of seats needed to transport commuters, we are expecting to procure 200 electric buses over the next two years, among other initiatives being explored,” he added.

Mr. Shaw also informed that the JUTC has digitised its processes to facilitate application for charters and subfranchise licences, pointing out that an online portal was launched by the company in February this year.

He noted that this is a major step towards making the entity’s services more accessible and the processes more user-friendly.

“Persons who are interested in applying for charters or subfranchise licence may visit the JUTC’s website at www.jutc.gov.jm and make the necessary arrangements and pay for the service online,” the Minister stated.

Meanwhile, Mr. Shaw said the current fare collection system used by the JUTC has become obsolete.

He informed that the procurement process for an upgraded Cashless Fare Collection System was significantly advanced; however, it was redirected for consideration by the Public Investment Appraisal Branch (PIAB).

“A pilot project where the system [is] operating on all the JUTC’s buses, at no cost to the people of Jamaica, is to be implemented. The outcome of this pilot will assist the process of review by the PIAB and further guide the way forward,” Mr. Shaw said.

Regarding the matter of fuel pilferage, the Minister noted that for more than two decades, the matter has been an issue for the JUTC.

“We are pursuing new methods to combat the innovative means by which thieves have been pilfering fuel. Without divulging too much, due to the sensitivity and security issues around this matter, we are working with a local company to introduce a technology-based solution that will assist us in detecting, locating, and tracking fuel theft where it occurs,” Mr. Shaw indicated.

The Transport Authority (TA) has surpassed the production target of 86,000 road licences, to record a landmark 88,000.

Minister of Transport and Mining, Hon. Audley Shaw, said these include Hackney, Rural Stage, Contract Carriage, Route Taxi, Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC) Subfranchise, Private and Public Carriers Licences.

He made the disclosure during his contribution to the 2023/24 Sectoral Debate in the House of Representatives on Tuesday (May 9).

Mr. Shaw also informed that monitoring of public transportation services in Kingston was also enhanced with the re-establishment and relocation of the TA’s Operations Department to the Half-Way Tree Transport Centre from its previous location at Maxfield Avenue.

“This strategic positioning of the enforcement arm of the Authority closer to the hub of transport activity fostered better monitoring within the Half-Way Tree area and other key corridors in the metropolis,” he stated.

The TA also retrofitted several key areas to enhance customer service delivery.

Customer-centric services are now provided in one location at 107 Maxfield Avenue, which houses the Licensing Department and Motor Vehicle Release Unit, while the Corporate Office remains at 119 Maxfield Ave.

Additionally, customers in St. Catherine are now benefiting from the commissioning of the Transport Authority’s Linstead satellite office.

“Since its establishment, there has been marked improvement in public order within the public transportation services in the bustling township of Linstead,” Mr. Shaw indicated.

The entity is also targeting other initiatives for fiscal year 2023/24, including implementation of an islandwide camera network infrastructure with other agencies to improve monitoring capabilities within the transport sector, and temporary relocation of the Transport Authority’s Lakes Pen pound facility in St. Catherine to Water Lane in Kingston.

Other initiatives include the implementation of the TA’s Digital Transformation Project.

This will focus on digitising all processes associated with licensing, operations and the legislative framework governing the Authority; the establishment of a satellite office in St. Elizabeth, and the rollout of an Electronic Ticketing System to replace written summonses.

Customers hailing a ride or looking to have some food delivered via Uber are seeing a new look.

For the first time in more than six years, Uber has given its app a broad overhaul, incorporating all of its services—including Uber Eats, grocery delivery, and e-bike rental—and letting passengers track their ride. It’s the first in a series of improvements, the company says, that aim to make the service more personalized.

“The business has really changed from one key product to now, where we have over 20 products developed,” Jen You, Uber’s head of product for rides, told Fast Company. “We’re redefining what it means, as a verb, to Uber. It can mean getting a ride or getting dinner or getting flowers or pet food delivered. It means something different to everyone.”

The changes come just weeks after the company reported its “strongest quarter ever” and will largely benefit customers who use Apple products. For instance, updates on the proximity of drivers as well as notifications when they arrive are now incorporated into the iPhone 14 Pro’s Dynamic Island and will be reflected in the live activities feed, a feature first showcased last year at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference.

(Work is underway to offer similar functionality to Android users, but there’s no specific timeline on when it will be available, says You.)

The new app design has two categories—rides and delivery—which the user can toggle between at the top of the screen.

Riders will enter their destination at the top and be presented with several options, such as adding a destination, hiring a driver as a chauffeur, reserving a future ride, and finding a scooter or electric bike, if they’d prefer an alternate means of transportation.

The rides option also shows how many drivers are in the immediate area, which can give you an at-a-glance idea of how quickly you might be able to catch a ride.

Work on the update has been underway for over a year, says You. And Wednesday’s rollout will reach tens of millions of users in more than 1,200 cities worldwide. (Some users got a sneak preview of the app in the past few days, as Uber updated a limited number of accounts to test the rollout.)

“Part of our platform strategy is to make it really easy to discover and engage across a wide variety of products, but we also want to make sure it was personalized to you and to the products you use the most,” said You.

In other words, if you typically order an Uber Green or premium vehicle like the BMW 7-Series, Audi A6, or a Tesla Model X, the app will now remember that and offer those as the default option.

The app will also be situationally aware, says You. For instance, if you get a ride to the airport, it might suggest getting a rental car at your destination or advance scheduling your ride home when you return. It might also suggest preferred Uber Eats options at your destination.

Different users will have different experiences with the app, with different Uber services highlighted, depending on their past usage. But the redesign is also meant to future-proof the app, giving Uber the ability to prominently feature any new services it offers down the road.

“It makes the app flexible to showcase different products to different users, and also as we’re introducing new products over time,” says You.

By Chris Morris FastCompany
https://www.fastcompany.com/90853878/uber-unveils-new-redesigned-app-personalized

Our transportation network is comprised of:

• Ridesharing Marketplace. Our core offering connects drivers with riders. The scale of our network enables us to predict demand and proactively incentivize drivers to be available for rides in the right place at the right time. This allows us to optimize earning opportunities for drivers and offer convenient rides for riders, creating sustainable value to both sides of our marketplace. Our ridesharing marketplace connects drivers with riders in cities across the United States and in select cities in Canada. In 2022, we launched Lyft Maps in an effort to optimize routing, improve safety, save riders and drivers time and add to our marketplace efficiency. In addition to our standard rideshare offering, riders can select a variety of other rideshare offerings which include Wait & Save, Lux, Lux Black, Lux Black XL, and have access to Lyft Pink, Lyft’s transportationfocused membership.

• Express Drive. Our car rental program for drivers, including those who want to drive using our platform but do not have access to a vehicle that meets our requirements. Through our Express Drive program, drivers can enter into rental agreements with our independently managed subsidiary, Flexdrive, and our rental car partners for vehicles that may be used to provide ridesharing services on the Lyft Platform.

• Lyft Rentals. In 2019, we launched Lyft Rentals to offer a rental car option for users who have long-distance trips. Lyft Rentals is consumer facing and is therefore different from Express Drive, which is driver facing. Lyft Rentals is supported entirely by third-party partnerships.

• Light Vehicles. We have a network of shared bikes and scooters (“Light Vehicles”) in a number of cities to address the needs of users who are looking for options that are more active and often more cost-effective and efficient for shorter trips. These modes can also help supplement the first-mile and last-mile of a multimodal trip with public transit.

• Public Transit. Available in select cities, our Transit offering integrates third-party public transit data into the Lyft App to offer users a robust view of transportation options around them and allows them to see transit routes to their destinations at no cost. Providing real-time public transit information is another step toward providing effective, equitable and sustainable transportation to our communities, and creating a more seamless and connected transportation network.

• Lyft Autonomous. Our partnership with Motional has enabled the commercial deployment of a fleet of autonomous vehicles on our platform in Las Vegas. In July 2021, we completed a multi-element transaction with Woven Planet, a subsidiary of Toyota Motor Corporation, for the divestiture of certain assets related to our self-driving vehicle division, Level 5, as well as commercial agreements for the utilization of Lyft rideshare and fleet data to accelerate the safety and commercialization of the automated-driving vehicles that Woven Planet is developing.

Drivers
The drivers on our platform are active members of their communities. They are parents, students, business owners, retirees and everything in between. We work hard to serve the community of drivers on our platform, empowering them to drive on their own flexible terms while providing them the opportunity to focus their time on what matters most. Key benefits to drivers on our platform include:

• Flexibility. We offer drivers the flexibility to generate income on their own schedule, so they can best prioritize what is important in their lives.

• Technology. Our predictive technology around ride volume and demand enables us to share key information with drivers about when and where to drive to maximize their earnings on a real-time basis.

• Transparent and Consistent Pay: We’ve released multiple features over the years aimed at providing transparency to drivers, including upfront pay, which enables drivers to see ride information and what they’ll earn before accepting a ride, and Weekly Pay Statement, which gives drivers a more clear and comprehensive view of earnings details.

• Insurance. We procure insurance that helps protect transportation network company (“TNC”) drivers against financial losses related to automobile accidents while on the platform.

• Community Standards. To help us uphold high community standards, we give both drivers and riders the opportunity to rate each other after a ride booked through the Lyft App.

• Support. We offer drivers access to 24/7 support and earnings tools as well as education resources and other support to meet their personal goals.

Riders
Riders are as diverse and dynamic as the communities we serve. They represent all adult age groups and backgrounds and use Lyft to commute to and from work, explore their cities, spend more time at local businesses and stay out longer knowing they can get a reliable ride home. Unless otherwise stated, riders are passengers who request rides from drivers in our ridesharing marketplace and renters of a shared bike, scooter or automobile, or have used services for car owners available in the Lyft App. We work hard to provide riders with a quality experience every time they open the Lyft App, in order to earn the right to have Lyft be their transportation network of choice. Key benefits to riders on our platform include:

• Selection and Convenience. We designed the Lyft App with a focus on simplicity, efficiency and convenience. Our proprietary technology efficiently matches riders with drivers through advanced dispatching algorithms providing faster arrival times, localized pricing and maximum availability. Additional modes, such as Light Vehicles, offer riders more options for shorter trips. The more rides that are taken on our platform, the better we are able to offer riders personalized experiences most suitable to the trip being planned.

• Availability. We strive to ensure that riders can get a ride when they want one. We leverage our proprietary dispatch platform and data to help drivers and riders connect efficiently and reduce wait times.

• Affordability. Our platform empowers riders to choose from a broad set of transportation options to easily optimize for cost, comfort and time.

• Safety. Since day one, we have worked continuously to enhance the safety of our platform and the ridesharing industry by developing innovative products, policies and processes.

Business
Lyft is evolving how businesses large and small take care of their people’s transportation needs across sectors including corporate, healthcare, auto, education and government. Our comprehensive set of solutions allows clients to design, manage and pay for ground transportation programs that contribute to productivity and satisfaction while reducing cost and streamlining operations.

Our Technology Infrastructure and Operations
We organize our product teams with a full-stack development model, integrating product management, engineering, analytics, data science and design. We focus on affordability, reliability, efficiency, optimization and cohesion when developing our software. Our offerings are mobile-first and platform agnostic. We seek to continuously improve the Lyft Platform and the Lyft App.

Our offerings are built on a scalable technology platform that enables us to manage peaks in demand.
We have a commercial agreement with Amazon Web Services (“AWS”) for cloud services to help deliver and host our platform. As a result of our partnership, we believe we are more resilient to surges in demand on our platform or product changes we may introduce.

We designed our platform with multiple layers of redundancy to guard against data loss and deliver high availability. Both incremental and full backups are performed and redundant copies of content are stored independently in separate geographic regions.

We are also investing in iterating and continuously improving our data privacy and security foundation, and continually review and implement the most relevant policies.

Our Proprietary Data-Driven Technology Platform
Our robust technology platform powers the millions of rides and connections that we facilitate every day and provides insights that drive our platform in real-time. We leverage historical data to continuously improve experiences for drivers and riders on our platform. Our platform analyzes large datasets covering the ride lifecycle, from when drivers go online and riders request rides, to when they match, which route to take and any feedback given after the rides. Utilizing machine learning capabilities to predict future behavior based on many years of historical data and use cases, we employ various levers to balance supply and demand in the marketplace, creating increased driver earnings while maintaining strong service levels for riders. We also leverage our data science and algorithms to inform our product development.

Our Intellectual Property
We believe that our intellectual property rights are valuable and important to our business. We rely on trademarks, patents, copyrights, trade secrets, license agreements, intellectual property assignment agreements, confidentiality procedures, non-disclosure agreements and employee non-disclosure and invention assignment agreements to establish and protect our proprietary rights. Though we rely in part upon these legal and contractual protections, we believe that factors such as the skills and ingenuity of our employees and the functionality and frequent enhancements to our solutions and offerings are larger contributors to our success in the marketplace.

We have invested in a patent program to identify and protect a substantial portion of our strategic intellectual property in ridesharing, autonomous vehicle-related technology, micro-mobility, telecommunications, networking and other technologies relevant to our business. We hold numerous issued and pending patents in the U.S. and foreign jurisdictions and continually review our development efforts to assess the existence and patentability of new intellectual property.

We have an ongoing trademark and service mark registration program pursuant to which we seek to register our brand names and product names, taglines and logos in the United States and other countries to the extent we determine appropriate and costeffective. We also have common law rights in some trademarks. In addition, we have registered domain names for websites that we use in our business, such as www.lyft.com and other variations.

We intend to pursue additional intellectual property protection to the extent we believe it would be beneficial and cost effective. Despite our efforts to protect our intellectual property rights, they may not be respected in the future or may be invalidated, circumvented or challenged. For additional information, see the sections titled “Risk Factors—Risks Related to Regulatory and Legal Factors—Claims by others that we infringed their proprietary technology or other intellectual property rights could harm our business” and “Risk Factors—Risks Related to Regulatory and Legal Factors—Failure to protect or enforce our intellectual property rights could harm our business, financial condition and results of operations.”

Transportation represents a massive market opportunity, one that we are in the very early stages of addressing.

Our key growth strategies include our plans to:

1. Increase Rider Use Cases. We are continuously working to make Lyft the transportation network of choice across an expanding range of use cases. We offer products to simplify travel decision-making, for example with our Lyft Pink subscription plan, Lyft Pass commuter programs, first-mile and last-mile services and university ride smart programs. We also provide centralized tools and enterprise transportation solutions, such as our Concierge offering, that enable organizations to manage the transportation needs of customers, employees and other constituents.

2. Grow Active Riders. We see opportunities to continue to grow our rider base. We may make incremental investments in our brand and in growth marketing to maintain and drive increasing consumer preference for Lyft. We strive to provide a full range of price points and ride experiences such as Wait & Save, which allows riders to save money by waiting for a ride, and Priority Pickup, which provides a premium experience by allowing riders to pay for prioritized pickup. We plan to continue to grow our ridesharing marketplace by prioritizing competitive service levels and attracting and retaining more drivers and riders on our network. Additionally, we will continue to evaluate ways to expand our network coverage beyond the geographies and markets we currently serve. We also believe we are a beneficiary of demographic shifts, such as the growing percentage of the U.S. population that is accustomed to on-demand services and has digital-first preferences.

3. Grow Our Share of Consumers’ Transportation Spend. Lyft’s transportation network is designed to address a wide range of mobility needs. The Lyft network spans rideshare, car rentals, bikes, scooters, transit and vehicle services. By integrating the fragmented transportation ecosystem, we are well positioned to deliver the best holistic experience to all of our riders and to capture significantly more of our market opportunity.

4. Deliver Increasing Value to Drivers. We strive to provide drivers that use Lyft with the best possible experience, including access to a variety of economic opportunities. For example, through our Express Drive program, drivers can get access to rental cars they can use for ridesharing. We also provide drivers with a suite of resources, including access to our on-demand, 24/7 support through our Driver app, to ensure drivers have the resources they need before taking the road. By making the driver experience better and better, we can retain and attract more drivers to Lyft’s network.

5 Invest in our Marketplace Technology. Our investments in our proprietary technology allow us to deliver a convenient and high-quality experience to drivers and riders. Our mapping technology, now known as Lyft Maps, optimizes routing, in-app navigation, and user matching to improve the rider and driver experience and our marketplace efficiency. Additional investments in our payments and data science capabilities have been central to making our network more efficient and
seamless to use.

6. Thoughtfully Pursue M&A and Strategic Partnerships. We have from time to time made strategic acquisitions, including our acquisitions of Bikeshare Holdings LLC (“Motivate”), the largest bike sharing platform in the United States at the time, Flexdrive, LLC (“Flexdrive”), one of our longstanding Express Drive partners, and PBSC, a global leader in bikeshare that supplies stations and bikes to markets internationally. We will continue to selectively consider acquisitions that contribute to the growth of our current business, help us expand into adjacent markets or add new capabilities to our network. In addition, we continue to expand our commercial partnerships. We believe drivers and riders will continue to benefit from a broad partner ecosystem that builds on our existing loyalty and reward programs. We have also built strong relationships with transportation suppliers, state and local government.