Like regular cars, buses, trams and pedestrians are not enough — today’s streets are also packed with delivery services, rideshare vehicles, and even drones. Palo Alto, California-based Lacuna Technologies was founded with the mission to help city authorities manage this congestion with modern technologies. To that end, the company builds and manages AI-enabled open-sourced digital tools that allow cities and municipalities to create, communicate, and enforce dynamic transportation policies.
Specifically, Lacuna’s software builds digital twins for cities that include all forms of mobility – from delivery to rideshare to drones to regular traffic. City planners and transportation agencies can use these models to monitor the current environment and implement new regulations, as well as run simulations to provide a clearer picture of how certain policies could address congestion, pollution, accessibility and safety. Also, the digital model paves the way for commercial operators to integrate their modern technologies into cities equitably in a way that works for everyone long-term.
To make all this possible and to get more clients, the startup has raised $33.5 million in venture funding, with Series A in July 2021 accounting for almost half of the amount ($16 million). Lacuna’s investors include Xplorer Capital Management, Playground Global, JetBlue Technology Ventures and Lauder Partners.
“Our objective is to give cities the tools they need so that they can use their authority to make sure that the users of the public right away are compliant with whatever their policy is,” Lacuna’s Chairman and CEO Hugh Martin told TechCrunch at the time of the Series A funding announcement.
In Los Angeles, for example, Lacuna built a system to help LA manage its scooter fleets back in 2019.
“Venice Beach was a mess, there were scooters all over the boardwalk and the beach and being thrown in the water,” said Martin. “So we helped LA establish a geofence 200 feet off the boardwalk. LA gave scooter operators a two month grace period, but warned them if at the end of those two months, if riders cross that geofence, the city would start lowering the total number of units each operator could have on the streets.”
To ensure observance, the city council rewrote the regulatory language for getting a scooter permit, requiring operators to be compliant with the city’s mobility data specification program, meaning operators would have to transmit and receive information digitally.
“Now, it’s night and day,” he said. “The scooters are all lined up 200 feet away from the boardwalk. And what was amazing for the city is that it was just 15 lines of code. They didn’t have to put a bunch of officers out, put signs up, write tickets.”
In addition to the City of Los Angeles, Lacuna is also working with other metro areas — including the City of Seattle and Miami-Dade County.
Takeaway
City planners and transportation agencies can use these models to monitor the current environment and implement new regulations, as well as run simulations to provide a clearer picture of how certain policies could address congestion, pollution, accessibility and safety. Also, the digital model paves the way for commercial operators to integrate their modern technologies into cities equitably in a way that works for everyone long-term.
Lacuna's clients include the city of Los Angeles, City of Seattle and Miami-Dade County, among others.
Action point
From what we understand, Lacuna's software will work for pretty much any municipality that has more than 200,000 residents — as most cities today face some problems. Whether it's pollution, congestion or some other transportation-related issue - the software could help you identify the problem and experiment with different policies to address it. And, of course, as a person behind the push to solve this problem (buy the software), you get to benefit down the road.
From what we understand, Lacuna's software will work for pretty much any municipality that has more than 200,000 residents — as most cities today face some problems. Whether it's pollution, congestion or some other transportation-related issue - the software could help you identify the problem and experiment with different policies to address it. So if your company is serving such cities, see if you can contact Lacuna to distribute their software to your municipal customers. Since this is a high-margin business, you can potentially benefit a lot.