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Coord helps cities manage their streets, starting with the curb. Coord is the only comprehensive curb management platform, empowering cities with the necessary tools to digitally inventory, allocate, price and operate the curb.
Coord’s online platform helps cities digitally inventory, allocate, price and operate the curb.
Inventory: Coord’s augmented reality app, Coord Collector, helps cities inventory their curbs so they know where the curb is, what’s on it, how it can be used, and who can use it at any given time.
Allocate and price: Coord allows cities to easily visualize and analyze their curb space so they can align their curb space allocation and pricing with city priorities and communicate changes and tradeoffs to stakeholders.
Operate: Coord’s web app, the Coord Driver app, and the Coord API allow cities to operate their curbs and change driver behavior through programs such as tech-enabled smart loading zones, ride-hail management, and demand-responsive pricing.
For fleet drivers, Coord provides the Coord API as well as the Coord Driver app. These tools allow fleet drivers and logistics managers to know at any given time and location what curb space they may legally access, for how long, and at what price. Where cities have established tech-enabled smart commercial loading zones, drivers can view the locations and availability of these zones and book and pay for space in them.
Coord enables curb managers--city staff--to create and digitally communicate curb regulations to drivers. Coord then provides cities with access to data about how drivers are using curb space so cities can evaluate and refine their programs. Examples of active curb space programs Coord can support include:
Smart commercial loading zones: To reduce illegal parking by commercial drivers, Coord enables cities to create tech-enabled loading zones the City may flexibly authorize for different users at different times of day, prices, and lengths of time. The Coord Driver app shows drivers the locations and availability of these zones and allows them to book and pay for space in them.
Ride-hailing management: To reduce congestion and safety issues in areas with high volumes of ride-hailing, Coord can help cities create, communicate and evaluate the performance of designated passenger loading zones and areas where passenger loading is not permitted.
Demand-responsive parking pricing: To reduce circling for parking, Coord can help cities periodically re-price their curbside parking to achieve target availability levels.
Coord can support other curb space operations not listed here. If you have another challenge or program you’re interested in developing, please reach out to partners@coord.com.
Smart loading zones are tech-enabled commercial curb spaces designed to reduce illegal and unsafe parking by commercial drivers by providing the incentives and information to park legally.
Cities create smart loading zones by allocating curb space to them and using Coord to digitally manage the space. Using Coord, the City can flexibly designate who may use the space, when, for how long and at what price. The Coord Driver app shows drivers the locations and availability of these zones and allows them to book and pay for space in them. The same capabilities are available to users of fleet driver apps that have integrated with the Coord API.
Demand-responsive pricing is the practice of regularly evaluating parking availability and, as needed, repricing it to achieve target occupancy levels. The goal of demand-responsive pricing is to reduce circling for parking and improve parking availability.
Coord supports cities implementing demand-responsive pricing by combining parking supply and demand data to develop pricing recommendations to achieve a City’s parking availability targets. Coord’s granular data enables cities to evaluate and re-price parking on a curb-by-curb basis without labor-intensive manual studies.
No. Coord programs are designed assuming no special technology is already in place.
Fully automated enforcement would be great; however, it is unlikely that your city has the legal authority to send parking citations by mail without some type of manual process involved. For example, some cities are required to have a parking enforcement officer physically deliver a citation to a vehicle in violation. In some cities a manual review process is required for a citation to be issued based on camera footage, even if using cameras to detect violations is allowed.
Many cities are using technology such as vehicle-mounted license plate recognition cameras, cameras in meters, and sensors to provide information to support enforcement deployment. These technologies can help to identify whether a vehicle is properly using a space and can support demand-responsive enforcement to longer-term deployment strategy, but they do not truly automate enforcement.
The Coord Inspector mobile app and the Smart Zone program as a whole enable your city to enforce proper use of Smart Zones in a way that is real and achievable today, using the technology and legal authority your city likely already has in place. Enforcement officers are able to use an iPhone or Android device to get real-time information about whether a vehicle is properly using a Smart Zone so they can take appropriate enforcement action. They also receive instant alerts about unauthorized vehicles in Smart Zones, so if they are nearby, they can respond and take enforcement action for any unauthorized vehicles.
Many municipalities are interested in gaining authority to do more fully automated enforcement, and the benefits of doing so would be significant. When municipalities get this authority, it would integrate seamlessly into a Smart Zone program. In the meanwhile, Coord’s system provides a practical enforcement approach achievable in almost any city today.
In many cities, curb space is not currently allocated and priced in ways that support cities’ mobility, safety and sustainability goals. Cities looking to align their curb space allocations with their goals may have questions like:
How many feet of commercial loading zones are in my downtown during morning peak hours?
How are loading zones and parking stalls impacted when we add a bike or bus lane?
How many curb stalls do we have in a permit zone relative to how many permits we’ve issued?
Where do I have uninterrupted stretches of curb that are three or more car lengths long that I could repurpose for another use?
How can I show residents and businesses the impacts of different curb space use options?
Once a city has an inventory of its curb data (collected by Coord Collector or ingested into Coord from existing City datasets), Coord makes it easy to answer these questions. It does so through highly customizable digital maps and analytics dashboards allowing analysis of curb assets, regulations and occupancy; this video gives a brief overview of the capabilities.
Users can select the level of granularity at which they want to visualize or analyze their curb space, ranging from statistics for an individual curb or corridor to neighborhood summaries. Coord also allows the City to test and calculate the impact of alternative scenarios, and, once approved, the City can directly update its digital map with these changes.
Yes! In either the regulations or asset view, select the “Alternatives” button from the “Current Curbs” menu. Select “Create New Alternative”.
Click into a curb you want to modify to enter the curb view. To add a new sign/curb cut/curb paint, click on add zone or add asset in the top right.
If you select add asset, you’ll select whether you want to add a point (hydrant, parking sign eyc.) or linear asset (bulbout, curb paint etc.) and then select where along the curb you want to place it.
If you select Add Zone, a pop-up will appear and you’ll be able to determine exactly what regulation you want to add to the alternative (e.g., loading, parking), how much to charge for it, and to what times of day it should apply. Click Add Zone to then go to the curb view and select where along the curb to place the start and end of the zone.
You can toggle between this hypothetical new set of curb rules you’ve created and the current rules in the dashboard, as well as compare the allocation and potential revenue of the curb space before and after the proposed changes via the default graphs.
Alternatives also allow you to understand the potential impact of changing assets (e.g., parking signs, curb paint, etc.) along the curb and publish these changes to the “live” curb data in the Coord Driver app and API once they’ve been enacted. To finalize a change, simply click the Publish option in the left-hand menu and confirm the change.
If you have other questions, or want a visual guide, this video walks through the basics of Alternative creation and publishing.
Yes. Simply click the “Export” button in the top right of Coord and choose your desired format (GeoJSON or ESRI Shapefile).
Many definitions and presets in Coord can be customized in the “Settings” tab. If you adjust settings without hitting “Save as City Default,” your selected setting will only show in your view. If you save as a new city default, then all users on your team will have these new settings.
These files are necessary to make the map:
These files are strongly recommended:
These files are nice to have:
Coord supports inventorying curb assets via (1) the Coord Collector augmented reality (AR) iPhone app, or (2) by ingesting and normalizing existing curb asset datasets that cities have. The Coord Collector app allows you to collect a wide array of curb assets (see the FAQ below for a non-exhaustive list). Anyone can learn to use Coord Collector through a 2-hour training - no special background is required.
This video walks through the basics of the Coord Collector app and what to expect during a collection.
Coord’s Collection Management web app allows you to efficiently manage multiple people collecting asset data with the Coord Collector app. This manual walks through the steps for setting up a collection in Collection Management and the capabilities of the tool.
Of course, curb users and managers need not only assets, but also regulations. Curb asset data collected or ingested by Coord passes through a comprehensive rules engine, specifically designed around the City’s municipal codes and regulations. The rules engine computes curb regulations from assets.
Currently, the Coord Collector app works on any iOS device that supports ARKit, which includes all iPhones, from iPhone SE to present, and all iPads from iPad Pro to present.
The assets included in the Coord Collector app are customizable, so depending on your team and city’s needs, other types of curb data can be collected. Right now, Coord Collector is built to ingest and catalog curb asset data including (but not limited to):
Signs, including parking signs and bus stops
Fire hydrants
Painted curb segments
Curb cuts
Construction zones
Crosswalks
Bulbouts
Bollards
Pavement/asphalt markings, such as zigzag or diagonal lines (used in some countries to denote curb usage)
Bike racks
Bike lanes
ADA curb ramps
Curb stencils
Yes. The Coord Collector iPhone app also allows you to easily collect curb space occupancy and turnover data. Collecting occupancy data digitally using Coord can dramatically reduce the level of back office data processing needed to prepare your data for analysis.
Each curb segment (single curb on one side of the street) takes on average 3-5 minutes to survey. We recommend that two people survey each curb. This increases accuracy and minimizes the chances of mistakes. To provide an example, a recent collection of 20 curb miles (approximately 5,000 vehicle lengths worth of space!) took 3 collectors about 1.5 work days, or 4.5 total person-days, to cover each curb twice, including issue resolution.
Working with Coord gives your team unlimited access to the Coord Collector app, so your team can collect as much data as you’d like at no additional cost.
If you prefer, Coord can collect data on your behalf. Pricing depends on a few factors, including the size of the project area and the complexity of data integrations. Request a demo with us to discuss your goals and pricing.
In areas with highly demanded curbs (e.g., downtowns, nightlife areas, curbs near venues), capturing all of the assets that factor into a curb’s regulations can be difficult if not impossible with a car-based curb data collection method. Certain assets, such as curb cuts and curb paint, are commonly obstructed by vehicles.
After 2 hours of training, most people can collect about 8-10 curb miles per day (approximately 2,000 vehicle lengths worth of space) with the Coord Collector app. Vehicle-based methods can cover much more ground in a day, but vehicles may need to cover the same curb multiple times to get a complete view.
The Coord Collector app focuses on minimizing in-the-field data entry as well as removing the inaccuracy that can come from GPS-based surveying, especially in urban environments. Coord does not rely on GPS and instead uses augmented reality (AR) technology for measurement.
We’ve run a thorough head-to-head comparison of Coord to ArcGIS for curb data inventorying and translation; you can read our blog post about it here.
GPS typically has limited accuracy. The challenges can be particularly acute in urban areas, where the “urban canyon” effect can lead GPS-measured locations to be quite inaccurate. For this reason, Coord does not rely on GPS. Instead, we use augmented reality, which relies on the iPhone’s accelerometer, gyroscope, and camera, along with a human-verified “starting position” in the Coord Collector App, to determine location. This method of measurement is significantly more accurate than GPS, especially in urban environments.
Coord then standardizes sign data. This goes beyond the image and the text on the sign. It includes symbols, transcription, sign face, and importantly, linear referencing along the curb. By producing standardized sign data we make the asset information gathered from the street much more useful.
Once we have collected asset data, Coord’s rules engine translates the assets identified in the survey into the regulations on the street. Coord understands the sign text in the context of city and state codes, combines the signs with data from other sources, such as residential permit parking zones and parking meter rates and hours, and translates all of this data into viewable, analyzable regulations on a map.
The Coord Driver app is currently available to delivery and ride-hail drivers in New York City. Download the Android app from the Google Play Store and watch this short video to learn how the app works and how to use it to save you time on your next delivery!
Yes, you can select the type of vehicle you drive in the Coord Driver app settings. Adding this will then filter the loading zones you see in the app to only those that fit your requirements.
The app uses GPS to determine when you are in close proximity to a given loading zone. If someone else is parked in a spot, select “Find Closest Alternative” in the app to see your other loading options near your destination.
The Coord API is a read-only service that describes what you can and cannot do along a curb in a given city. Specifically, the API lets you pass a variety of parameters related to criteria such as vehicle type, location, time of day, and expected duration of dwell and returns the corresponding rules along the curb or curbs, depending on the endpoint used, nearby.
We use a variety of data sources. This data includes the curb asset and regulation data Coord or our partners have collected using the Coord Collector app as well as dynamic feeds of city-provided asset data, parking rate tables, and movie set, parade and construction permits where available.
You can see our up-to-date coverage list on our coverage page. We are constantly looking to expand our coverage, so please reach out at partners@coord.co if you have a specific area you’d like to request coverage for.
Coord supports 15 cities today including NYC, Seattle, San Diego, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boulder, Austin, Washington DC, Miami, Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, Atlanta, Vancouver, and Denver. To date, we have focused on the North American market, however, will are open to discuss working with cities and organizations interested in from around the world. You can see our most up to date coverage on our coverage page.
If you’re a city interested in working with Coord, reach out at partners@coord.com to discuss how we can work together.
Yes! Coord can be configured to accommodate the specific by-laws and regulations of any area.
While our focus has been the North American market, we are open to discussing localization opportunities in select markets.
We believe streets should serve people — not vehicles.
Coord was co-founded by Stephen Smyth and Jacob Baskin and the team includes urbanists and technologists. Coord closed its Series A funding round in September 2018 and is backed by Alphabet's Sidewalk Labs, Alliance Ventures, Trucks Venture Capital, Urban Us, and DB Digital Ventures.
The company was founded in July 2016.
Coord is based in New York City.
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