With cities resuming activities and social distancing measures ensconced as the new normal, the Covid-19 pandemic has challenged concepts of mobility. As such, public transportation has been transformed from an urbanization solution to a pain point for city governments. “All of a sudden, an industry that was something of a vitamin became a painkiller,” says Jonathan Calmus, CEO at CosmicGo, a multimodal transportation platform for renting bikes, electric bikes, scooters, motorcycles, and cars through shared ownership. Founded in 2018, CosmicGo entered Colombia with its scooters at the end of that year but left soon after, for reasons Mr. Calmus summarizes as “a perfect storm of government regulation combined with private interest.”
“[Micromobility] is not a business that you can just throw money at, that’s not the solution, the solution is actually thinking through the steps, figuring out how to make things efficiently, and this comes with time,” he ponders.
“That’s why I think everyone kind of grew too large for their own good at the same time, as nobody had the patience that was needed to actually solve the problem. All we did was create a new bubble.” The micromobility sector has thrown up issues yet to be solved, especially in Latin America, with companies such as Grow and Lime cutting staff and reducing or ceasing operations in Brazil and Colombia. At that time, CosmicGo also decided to step back, but the company is now back again in the country with a scooter rental service running from 6 am to 8 pm, to be launched in August.
“Micromobility, especially shared mobility, is a very valuable system,” the executive affirms. “On average, people are really only using their vehicles between 5 and 20 percent of the time, 80 percent...
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