Bird shared vehicles now featured in Moovit transit planning app

Transit planning app Moovit is now featuring Bird's shared e-scooters and e-bikes in its app. As of Thursday, Moovit users in 65 cities across 12 countries — including Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom — will be able to locate nearby Bird vehicles in real time, gauge how long it will take to walk there and see the battery range of the vehicle.

Moovit says it plans to open the Bird integration to U.S. cities in the near future but didn't specify when.

Bird has around 20 mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) integrations, including with smaller entities like myCicero in Italy and Skipr in Belgium and France, with planned integration with Germany's Jelbi. The company recently also integrated with Google Maps, alongside competitors Spin and Lime, both of which are already featured in the Moovit app.

Bird's vehicles can be found in over 300 cities globally, and the company is always looking for ways to increase its reach. In June, the operator launched a "Smart Bikeshare" platform that allows local shared e-bike and e-moped providers and transit apps to feature their vehicles on the Bird app. As micromobility increasingly becomes an integral part of the transport ecosystem, these types of cross-platform integrations are bound to continue surfacing.

Moovit, which says it has served over 1 billion urban users in over 3,400 cities* across 112 countries, has about 300 mobility providers integrated into its app, including Tier, Voi, Beam, Helbiz, Beryl, Zwings, Revel and many more, according to the company. As part of the integration, Bird and Moovit plan to collaborate on urban mobility research in these regions to gain local perspectives on mobility trends.

"Moovit's goal is to simplify urban mobility around the world and make it more efficient, accessible and sustainable," Sharon Kaslassi, global corporate communications manager at Moovit, told TechCrunch. "Integrating private sector companies such as Bird and Lime help support that goal by encouraging riders toward car-free, multimodal trips. It also provides people returning to their pre-COVID routines with easily accessible first- and last-mile options to choose from for more hassle-free travel."

Moovit wants to be a true MaaS platform and that means offering more forms of alternative transport. Aside from micromobility integrations, Moovit On-Demand, the company's shared mobility planning feature, is integrated into the Moovit consumer app in certain regions. Last November, Moovit partnered with SMART, a dial-a-ride transport operator outside Detroit, to modernize its service and reduce wait times. Now, locals can use the Moovit app to book those on-demand transit rides.

Moovit also powers a white label app for transport agencies and cities that want to offer on-demand shared mobility. Just this year, Australian bus provider Ventura launched a new on-demand service and app to Melbourne residents, called FlexiRide, which is powered by Moovit On-Demand, and two Scottish regions, the Scottish Borders and Aberdeenshire, also launched similar services.

"Public and shared transportation is the backbone of society, and Moovit's goals are to harness the power of MaaS, driven by big data, to create a world with simpler, more intuitive ways of accessing and consuming transportation," said Kaslassi. "Moovit aims to reduce congestion, grow ridership and increase mobility efficiency by guiding people in getting around using any mode of transport (except for using private vehicles)."

Moovit can be downloaded on the App Store and Google Play.

*A previous version of this article stated that Moovit is in over 1,500 cities. That is the number of cities in EMEA region where Moovit is active. The global number of cities is over 3,400.