RFID Cards now available for SMILIES users who do not have access to a credit card, smartphone, or bank account
A community-based approach (Fort Smith, Arkansas)
The vision of this research-centered pilot project is to improve accessibility to jobs for residents of affordable housing communities in small and mid-sized cities in rural areas by leveraging the explosive growth of shared micromobility (SMM) services. This supports the broader goal of creating thriving local economies by linking workers to jobs and consumers to businesses, resulting in fiscal benefits for local, state, and federal governments.
The long-term goal of this project is to improve the accessibility of affordable housing by developing policy and strategy toolkits to guide decisions regarding community-involved SMM implementation made by elected officials, city staff members, and community leaders in small and mid-sized cities. Our overall objective is to design and evaluate a community-centered SMM system as a pilot project that aims to improve the accessibility of affordable housing. Our central hypothesis is that an SMM system rooted in citizen participation will lead to a citizen-centric citizen-led model of SMM operation that will provide greater accessibility and mobility benefits to targeted users.