Many people still aren’t commuting to work in light of the pandemic, but Google Maps might give you more travel options when it is safe to return. As 9to5Google reports, app sleuth Jane Manchun Wong has discovered that Google is exploring “connections to public transit” route options that would cover the “first mile” transportation for certain trips, such as bikes, cars, motorcycles ridesharing services and even auto rickshaws. You could drive to a park-and-ride stop, hop on the bus and get directions through the entire trip.

Wong also learned that Google hopes to offer more accurate ridesharing fares by sharing route data with third-party apps like Uber. You wouldn’t have to switch apps just to know if it makes sense to hail a car.

It’s easy to see why Intel would be interested in Moovit, and not just because of existing financial backing. The startup uses a mix of AI and data analytics to monitor real-time traffic and offer transit directions to roughly 800 million people. That could be valuable for robotaxis and other driverless vehicles that need to consider live traffic to choose the fastest routes. If your Intel-powered ride avoids gridlock to reach your destination on time, you’ll know who to thank.

Riders will be able to pay for journeys using their mobile phones, building on existing contactless payment systems found in cities like New York. Cubic hopes this system will reduce costs and make paying for public transport more efficient.

In London, travelers can already purchase transport tickets using Google Pay, either through the Citymapper payment card or by using mobile payments or contactless cards. However, current systems only allow the purchasing of single fares with daily and weekly caps in place to prevent overspending. In theory, the new system should allow the purchase of season tickets as well, by setting up an Oyster travel card within the Google Pay app.

By adding a transit card to Google Pay, users can reload funds and purchase tickets from their mobile device, so they can get rid of the physical card entirely.

Cubic has not specified a full list of which cities will support the new system, but it is likely to be a broad range of locations as its past projects include transportation systems in New York, Vancouver, Sydney, San Diego, Los Angeles, San Fransisco and London.

“Working with Cubic will help us simplify the commute for Google Pay users in several major transit systems — including support for Clipper cards in the San Francisco Bay Area,” said Ambarish Kenghe, director of product management for Google Pay. “Ultimately, our goal is to make riding public transit seamless and convenient for as many people as we can.”

The researchers looked at not only emissions producing by people riding scooters, but also the environmental impact of the materials used in the manufacture of the vehicles and in the shipping and collection of them as well. The amount of electricity used to recharge the scooters was minimal, but what did use a lot of resources was the components that go into each scooter. In addition, the vehicles that picked up the scooters created significant emissions.

Another way to consider how environmentally friendly e-scooters are is to look at what other transport options people would have used instead if the scooters weren’t available. Almost half of riders said they would have walked or cycled if the scooter wasn’t available, with around one third saying they would have taken a car.

The study showed biking and walking were almost always better for the environment than taking a scooter, even if people were riding e-bikes. Although taking a car was almost always more environmentally damaging than using a scooter, taking a bus was less damaging if the route had high ridership.

Overall, it is not the scooters themselves which are causing environmental damage, but rather the infrastructure which supports them. “There are a lot of factors to consider, but e-scooters are environmentally friendly compared to some modes of transport,” says Jeremiah Johnson, one of the study’s authors. “And there are things that companies and local governments can do to further reduce their impacts. For example, allowing — or encouraging — companies to collect scooters only when they hit a battery depletion threshold would reduce a scooter’s impact, because you wouldn’t be collecting scooters that don’t need re-charging.”