um so we are um into the parallel sessions we will have a panel discussion on the economic development uh with the new Mobility at this room um in parallel we have a presentation on coin 19 impact on user perceptions with share mobilities and that will be in the Pendleton's room and so if you have interest you can go through that room to listen to the um presentation on that so um I'm going to introduce the the panel the um this panel is moderator run bug and run will introduced his panelists um Ryan began working um at the at the Washington Community emotional Transportation Washington air transportation studies watts in 2002 initially focus on control demand modeling ruin has experiencing all four sets of Transportation Planning he has been involved in the development of fall long-run Transportation plans for Washington County in 2006 Ryan lead the effort for conley-wide non-motorized plan which results into in policy changes and increase the focus on Martin model investment in this area Ryan served as the chair of Michigan Transportation Planning Association and currently sit on the state of Michigan Transportation Asset Management Council run became the director for Washington area transportation studies since 2013. right um morning you hear me wonderful so I'm just going to do a quick introduction actually as I begin to speak I'll ask the panelists to go ahead and come up and sit next to me I think it'll be running short on time um but uh first let's see we're looking for all my panelists first I'll ask Sarah presbyter and yavich who's a strategy analyst from May Mobility there you are Sarah hi uh and Amy Lopez who is the director of public sector services for inrex and Adrian Witt who's the new Mobility practice lead at tool and he's actually an engineer which I didn't realize I thought I always thought he was a planner and komodoshi who's the director of Mobility at uh Spark and so just a quick Round of Applause for all panelists and also shout out to Calvin Tuttle who helped us put this all together it was uh he was very instrumental in in this entire thing uh so we're going to be talking about economic strength modernization of Mobility if you look in the agenda it's about demystifying Mobility public-private partnership Swift which Dr Blanca talked about which is wonderful Segway uh Big Data how we use that expanding access it should be a good discussion I've got some prepared questions hopefully we'll have some time for questions from the audience at the end uh but with that I'll start trying right with Sarah tell us about yourself free Ryan Sarah I spent several years and in public transit looking at the Anna their agents patient study and then smart and then down to enable ability are creates autonomous vehicles uh PGA it's I'm a public transit person who now works in AVS um uh but it's it's I love public transit um but I have the question of if autonomy sorry autonomous vehicles are inevitable how do they optimize um our results for our people and our communities and our climate so talk a lot about that great thanks Sarah Amy hi everyone my name is Amy Lopez I am the director of public sector services and smart city for inrex um prior to joining nrex I had a very convoluted career path and started out mechanical engineering and product design and moved into working for a think tank in DC on electrifying Transportation so I worked with automotive oems and utility companies and developed private public private Partnerships with cities across the country and getting them to Electrify their Municipal fleets my last project before leaving the think tank and moving over to inrix was working on the dot smart city challenge which many of you have probably heard of where I worked closely with Vulcan and they brought in 10 million dollars to match the 40 million that Columbus ultimately brought to the table so I have a lot of experience in transportation and mobility and when Hendrix brought me on they decided that I should be their person at up their smart cities so I currently work with a lot of cities across the country and using index data analytics we collect data from mobile devices GPS cars and trucks and we update that every 60 seconds make it available in real time through data analytics tools to help cities and mpos and States optimize their Road Network keep people safer mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and provide more Equitable access to transportation with that I'll hold off till our questions thank you thanks Amy comma so I'm komal Doshi director of Mobility programs at Ann Arbor spark spark is the economic development and Innovation engine for the Ann Arbor region we work with startups as well as more mature technology companies helping them grow and scale within our region before this I was at the University of Michigan so I was at a think tank program called smart which was a joint program between the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute and the Talman School of Architecture urban planning so the ccat conference has been something that I've been attending for Australia long time so I really love coming here and seeing all of these partners that I used to work with and then I continue to work with to really move the needle on connected seamless transportation systems and improved access Greg O'Brien is correct I am a civil engineer by background and I guess my role at tool design is twofold I redesigned streets with a sort of a complete Street sort of focus uh primarily thinking about how do pedestrians Transit bicyclists move around and access the the system and then the the other part of my role is as our new Mobility practice lead and that's working with public private and non-profit Partners to deliver new Mobility Services so that could be anything from how do you regulate e-scooters in the right-of-way through to permitting and you know implementing Bike Share programs all over the country and just really wanted to say a thank you for the invitation to be on this panel um I think there are massive opportunities for connected and automated vehicles to to really change our transportation Paradigm but there's going to have to be a lot of work and collaboration with people that are smarter than me particularly in this room um around you know how do those how do those opportunities materialize and we'll talk a little bit about this but how do we make sure that we don't lock people out of those opportunities as well so very excited and thank you hey thanks to all our panelists um Sarah I'm going to start with you I am somewhat envious that you have a great experience with both large uh public transportation providers but also um your experience with May Mobility I think that that's fantastic gives you somewhat of a unique perspective you've seen things work you've seen things fail on both sides public and private but when it comes to the success of uh sort of startups and private sector Mobility companies what are some of the things we should be looking for as signs of success that might lead us to begin to provide Public Funding and subsidy to sort of enhance our Mobility Network great question thanks uh the public sector absolutely needs investment in Innovation there's a lot of things that it does well but the world is changing fast and it needs to be able to come along with the rest of the world um so I think particularly for automated Vehicles electric vehicles you know um it was interesting to see the development of proterra kind of EV buses and starting very small a few pilots and and now they're you know selling to Transit agencies all over the country um it took a long time and you start with seed money and small experiments prove out the technology and keep building it um and I think we're hopeful at my Mobility to to take a similar path of small projects learnings um thank you to the federal government for for funding investor for funding Innovation and experimentation but as you develop it needs to to serve real public needs and and make a real difference for it to deserve public subsidy and so to that point uh who gets to decide that look what role should the public sector have in sort of defining the the social good or the needs of a service is it something that should be completely out of their hands and and left the private sector how do we bridge that Gap who gets to decide and once we start invest investing those public dollars what accountability should be had I'm truly a technocrat so I love this this magical deciding body to make all of the good decisions but we don't live in that world we live in a a complex World um so I think the public sector absolutely has a has a huge role um when I was thinking about this um I think it's very helpful for the private sector to have great love and respect for what the public sector is trying to do um there's a lot of smart people in private and public but a lot of times what the public is is a public sector is dealing with are they are working on Equity it's not just return on investment and what does an investor in your share folder need it's um Joseph lives over here and needs to get over here and he he doesn't want to or can't afford a car you know that's not something that the market is solving well for a lot of people um Uber has created a lot of Mobility you cannot commute or at least the average person cannot commute using an Uber there is a role for for buses there's a role for for on-demand Mobility solutions that are publicly funded so the more that the private sector can understand and respect the broader issues the more they're able to be able to create products that can help everybody um uh and I do think it's interesting seeing um you know buses used to be privately provided you used to be able to make money um operating a bus service but as the as personal automobile well automobiles um kind of took over most of the transportation system the public sector needed to step in I think the private sector is starting to step in a lot more and so we're renegotiating the roles of how public and private work together um ideally I think the public could help be a convener and kind of that Mobility as a service and helping create places where all of these different Mobility options can um be seen on a platform together and people can access several different Mobility choices um but we still have a way to go than that can talk more about Universal basic mobility and other things there's some really great experimentations happening thanks Sarah uh komal could you tell me a little bit more about spark in general Spark's role in sort of transportation and how your role fits into it how does that work in terms of modernizing the transportation system here the region and and and Beyond yeah it's uh my day is really interesting I get to see startups that are Innovative Technologies and you know batteries drones autonomous vehicles robots um skateboards apps you name it I see it all and so it's really um very interesting to help these companies that are being founded by these entrepreneurs who could be a university Professor it could be somebody who has experience in the automotive space or it could be somebody who just has a passion for mobility and really good with technology help them along to grow a company you know what is what does that take and what are the resources available so that you can actually build something de-risk it then gain investment or find contracts to really scale the technology so that is one role that spark plays it's really supporting The Innovation ground up the other role we play is the convener and really helping projects get a lift off so you know we're talking about public private Partnerships we're at this interesting Junction where um we want public and private to work together but there needs to be somebody else in the middle that can speak both languages can help each other understand what the needs and the goals are and help them align and Spark often ends up playing that role as that neutral non-profit at the table saying okay the goals of the public sector out of this project are this the private sector can bring this how can we align this to meet something that's interesting uh so one project that we have ongoing right now um where we have the University of Michigan m city as part of it we have main Mobility as a service provider we have a real estate developer and prentice4m and we have another startup important safety all coming together with spark and medc as funders to provide on-demand autonomous shuttles within the downtown of Ann Arbor free to the public to ride and the goals here are multi-fold we want to both understand how the technology can be improved moved you know collecting data to see how it's performing in a multi-modal very dense Community what is the public perception how can we get people more comfortable being in a non-demand system uh how can we encourage a car light culture you know maybe this is having something like this on demand available to you will help you not use your power as much maybe take the transit and use this for your last mile so there are many goals of this project but we we've taken this on spark uh convene we're the project Grant administrator and we'll be doing this until the end of October of 2022 so you know all of you can take a ride come you know the vehicle actually comes right to the door so download my Mobility app and you could write it too let's create your description of spark as you can hear I I don't think can be oversated it's it's wonderful and important so Amy turning to you when I think of inrix it's It's synonymous with data big data to me can you give some examples of how your data is being used in real time and trip planning decisions but also in long-range decisions and the decisions of infrastructure so um as I said earlier we do collect data in real time and make that available we update it every 60 seconds and we have States across the country that use that data to identify hazardous conditions dangerous slowdowns and Road optimization congestion and bottlenecks and it's available to tmcs or traffic management centers in a on a real-time basis so that's being used operationally what's what's really exciting in my opinion is that the there's we're coming out with more and more planning Solutions so that data that we create every 60 seconds we archive it and that archive data is available through analytics tools that allow us to create actionable insights so mpos and cities and states can go into that data and they can mine it for information for example it's been used to plan EV infrastructure taking our vehicle data and our truck data and knowing where people are coming from and the routes that they're taking and where their destinations are is very important to putting in EV infrastructure that's used versus we think evm infrastructure should go here because the worst thing for the EV industry in EV industry is to have unused Chargers sitting open it's a it's it's bad Optics so making data-driven decisions not only on charging infrastructure but also from a signals from an intersection performance perspective so taking our data and looking at how can we reduce control delay or split failure and split failure for those of you who don't know is when you sit at a traffic light for more than one cycle and that happens a whole lot one second of delay and a traffic light equals 3.9 million barrels of oil every year one second so with our analytics cities can go in and they can shave off one second or five seconds of delay and save millions of barrels of oil and hundreds of thousands of pounds of CO2 emissions metric tons of CO2 emissions so that's also really really important when it comes to planning for infrastructure planning for Signal optimization I know by the way during covid and continuing there have been more traffic fatalities than ever before and protecting vulnerable Road users that are on bikes that are on pads people pushing children and and carriages and strollers a lot of those at intersection a lot of those fatalities happen at the intersection or mid block so using the data to Overlay crash data to Overlay demographic data because the other unfortunate statistic is that a lot of these um you know vulnerable vulnerable Road users are in low-income communities and those income those communities are disproportionately impacted by crashes by health conditions by congestion by pollution and all of that so our Solutions are going into the hands of the planners that are serving those communities to make them safer more Equitable and more sustainable I think this is a fantastic segue to the question that I have next for Adrian I'm thinking sort of touching on Equity concerns and how we deal with that both in urban areas and rural areas um uh can you can you speak to the broader issues of equity but also with some specifics related to a project that that you worked on locally a few years ago on the greater Ann Arbor region looking at people's barriers to jobs Workforce Development issues as it relates to Transportation Systems micro mobility and things like that yeah um well I think first that's that's a really big topic um and you know there are whole conferences devoted to to that topic but I think it's really important to sort of acknowledge that like the experience of the transportation system is very different depending on your uh you know your age your ability your life experience um maybe your access to opportunity um and really important is at the at the start of any anything that you do any project any process that you start is to really try to identify who are those people that are on the outsides Looking In and um some of the ways we can do that is that there are you know Community Partners that are working you know hand a glove with um with different different types of people with different needs all over uh any given community and so plugging into those resources and those networks is really important to be able to listen to folks firsthand and what they actually need not what we think they need um and you know some of the things that we have been working one of the things at a macro level we like to look at is where are households most overburdened in terms of their transportation and household costs and do those sort of match like their income levels and where those things don't match is where we can start to look at focusing our investments and that sort of is the segue to to the work we we did here in Ann Arbor which was looking at the frequent Transit Network in the in the six County region around our now in Greater Ann Arbor and looking at what Mobility options and opportunities are there to fill some of those gaps particularly outside of the urban areas in particular in particular we were focused on connecting um Workforce to job to job opportunities and a particular segment of the population that's really often overlooked is you know we always think about our low-income threshold adults being like who's below the poverty line but there is actually a significant amount of people um I think it's something like 30 percent of people in Michigan or households in Michigan are actually employed but their income doesn't meet their basic household necessities and so these are folks that are like ready to engage and and like we need to give them opportunities for social uh upward Mobility um and and so like looking at some of the barriers that those people face it's not that they don't want to engage with higher higher paid higher jobs and opportunities it's that they have some limitation that's that's stopping them from doing that that could be they're living in a single a single Auto a single vehicle household but that vehicle is needed for taking the kids to school or running errands through the day and so their job access opportunities without that car might be limited to where they can walk a bike um or it could be that Transit doesn't serve you know the out of hours shifts that that happen at certain jobs yeah it could be any number of barriers and and I think we have opportunities to put like it's our responsibility to look at like what are the tools that can go into solving the well addressing those barriers and really allowing for that upward Mobility to happen great I have to take this opportunity to uh give thanks to the Washington County Office of community and economic development who developed something called the Washington County opportunity index originally with the Kerwin Institute at Ohio State but it's since been moved to U of M who uh improved it greatly big surprise uh so it can be sort of enhanced and spread across and used Beyond just Washtenaw County if you haven't seen anything about it I definitely encourage you to go to the the website opportunitywashnaw.org thanks Adrian Amy turning back to you thinking about all the new technologies that have that have emerged all the new types of modes that have come online I mean the idea of an e-scooter a couple years ago was just completely I I had no idea what it was until they literally showed up here and it was quite exciting for a while and it was very very fun actually um but how has is the the increase in technology and new modes of transportation impacted overall demand what do you see in the data well it's it's interesting so um yeah the TNC the TNC companies um kind of stand out in my head because I do a lot of work with New York City Dot and Uber and Lyft um it can they can be it's a love-hate relationship right so we all use them um and they're a great service um but they're not exactly how they're not exactly providing the service that originally was framed as the ideal where it's ride sharing and it's multiple people in a car and people that you don't know and you're all ride sharing and everything is happy and wonderful and we're taking cars off the road um in New York it's it's kind of the opposite um it's especially Lower Manhattan and that's why congestion pricing there is kind of bubbling to the top again um you know remember and left tend to create more congestion and more problem more problems getting to the curb which goes back to that whole equity and access and and access to the curb so it creates it creates issues that have to be solved bike scooter that they they're a fantastic option no emissions and great exercise a lot of wonderful results from that but they also have to be managed so I think using the data from all of these different it's not it's not a single you know Silver Bullet that's going to fix everything like it's not going to be tnc's it's not going to be scooters it's not going to be bike pad bike paths it's going to be a mosaic of solutions that we have to do we have to get our arms around in a better way and we have to use data in a way that we know we're making better decisions and they're not all going to be perfect from the get-go but if we can iterate on on the decisions and go back and do checkups to make sure that we're using the technology in the way that it should be used and perhaps there's a new way that creates a better path forward that's how I see technology and building and I think states and cities and mpos are all getting very very good at using data while it's ubiquitous and everywhere and it's coming at them and you know through a fire hose sometimes they don't always know what to do with it I think there's a lot of new Solutions out there indirect's included but some also some other really good solutions that help agencies to ensure that they're using data to make better choices proper choices it reminds me one of the things that that we're responsible for at my agency is the travel demand model and for the first time we included essentially a mode of travel that is a car driving by itself and so that this sort of imbalance of supply and demand and where do we put that do they just drive around or do they Park it's an interesting concept so thank you Amy uh thinking more specifically about Transit uh Como I have a question for you when the pandemic hit we saw you know some places had layoffs ridership dropped Transit agencies were sort of forced to rethink how they did business and and that required Innovation to remain successful um uh and and move forward what are the things that you saw that we can sort of learn from that moving forward yeah I think it's um it was a very unfortunate period especially for Transit and um right like you said a lot of people went back to the drawing board it's like you know what's the goal of Transit what are we here to do and what can technology and data help us understand the need and create solutions that will help us meet this need because we have to get people not everybody has the luxury of working from home uh many people need to get to their jobs and many people need to get you know use public transit to get to school to the healthcare appointments to go get groceries so how do we kind of focus on that and so um many agencies were able to rethink the Paradigm rethink their kpis it's not about how many people we're moving it's about who needs it the most and are we serving them let's get back to that basic um let's try to think why is it difficult for people to get uh or they don't feel safe so what can we do to do that some people went in for microtransit Solutions uh in areas of less density uh or where they felt that you know those were better served to get people more quickly to where they needed to be some invested in digital ticketing so that you all made the buses free so that that exchange of cash which could possibly be a place of concern is not something that they had to worry about um I think thinking of the organizations that were able to think like that about the problem and address the solution and serve their customer were the ones that were able to come out stronger still having their Community very much in support um in some organizations the focus really became about maintaining their basic operations and you know what all can we cut to have just keep focus on staying afloat well that's a missed opportunity and I'm hoping that more Transit agencies can really um get back to thinking about the goal and the purpose which is how can we move provide access to everyone especially the ones that have no other means and provide that in a safe and hopefully sustainable way yeah and thinking back to something Amy said knowing there is no Silver Bullet Adrian have a question for you we have buses we have a great bus system here we might have a a scooter that gets dropped off and might sporadically show up somewhere or a local local government might Define where certain ones need to show up there might be a a uh a bike share there might be e-bikes so there's all these little things that can work together that can have some sort of utility for individuals but I know locally we have sometimes struggled to try to bring that all together we talk about Mobility as a service how how is transportation sort of a subscription can you give examples of places that have begun to link those different things together into a system that functions together yeah um yeah it's a it's a complex Dynamic that you know has a number of layers to it there's sort of this physical location like uh bringing together of service so that you can enhance reliability for folks and make sure that you know people turn up to a place knowing that they have a service if they especially if they don't have a vehicle or access to a vehicle but there's also now yeah we've we've layered in technology as well and so they're a complex there are complex relationships of how people get access um through technology so things like you know do you have a data plan do you have a smartphone can you actually get on an app um but where where those us where those things are starting to um you know exemplify into practical applications is you know there are now there are now um you know apps that are bringing together all services under one app so you used to have to like have one for the scooters and one for the transit one for everything and now you can do all your trip planning in one it doesn't mean that they've solved all the problems of like you know for full seamless access you you'd also want to be able to pay for everything in one platform but maybe they haven't solved that but at least the first part of the puzzle with the trip planning you can now look at your trip and say here are five different options and here's the most efficient one using all the different modes so that's a that's a good example of where we've where we've gotten to um there's physical Mobility hubs that I don't think that concept's really actually that new but we're sort of reframing it and rephrasing it bringing it back to life and that's really just the physical location of bringing Services together in a place that's like very easy for a user to find them so there are Transportation elements so that there might be information elements like digital kiosks Wi-Fi access to do your trip planning and there could also be um you know Place making and Commercial opportunities to create those as like neighborhood centers as well so I think that's really a nice Dynamic and then I'd say the last one going back to our points around underserved and Equitable communities is um yeah a lot of Mobility Services offer discounted programs to access but what they all have different qualification mechanisms sometimes so um there's movement towards uh you know for example city of Portland's now got a transportation wallet that um basically all of those Services have one qualification platform so you can you can now have access to all of those different Services through one qualification process rather than having to go through four or five um so that's that's you know where we are right now and I think um there's there's this sort of Ideal in the future that will just have this really seamless um you know process that almost like cable you could you know just subscribe for what Mobility Services you want pay for that each month and to be honest we've got to think about what is the future funding look like um you know we can't rely on gas tax if we're going to EV right so like yeah so what is what is the future Transportation look like how do we fund it and you know it's increasingly becoming user pays and and what does that look like in in creating like Equitable Solutions where you can actually look at look at creating a package that works for your needs and maybe buy that so that's my use sort of utopian future of what I'd like to see I like the comparisons to cable and thinking about bundling and unbundling of Transportation Solutions in the future yeah that's good but but the idea of talk about the physical locations but who owns it who operates it who profits from it who benefits from it are those who do that is that the people who should be doing that it's it's it's a question that we don't know I'm agnostic on but appreciate in going back to Como's comments of having spark and someone that can begin to bring those things together I think is just critical and really nice and we're fortunate to have that here um Amy thinking about uh the changing landscape of American Mobility moving forward I know there are some things that you wish you could say but you can't but thinking what are some what are some new data sets what what sort of the the the future of data and how they can uh affect the transportation planning and infrastructure process moving forward sure sure so I think that we're seeing some of this already with um I think safety equity and sustainability are the big key factors it's in the bipartisan infrastructure law there's billions and billions of dollars that are supporting those three tenants so I think you're going to you're going to see not only from Hendrix but from a whole lot of companies finally focusing where following the money and the money is there so finally focusing on these big issues so um and they're all very interconnected so I think what we're going to see and what we need to see will be more data around vulnerable Road users and safety and overlaying census information demographic information speeds and land use and urban planning it's it's all super complicated and these data sets all exist in different places but I think what we're going to start to see is the ability to bring all these data sets together in a way that's meaningful because you can't always just throw them together and and figure it out there has to be context and you have to contextualize it so that it's it relates and that's where I see in our industry in the data analytics Transportation industry is moving more towards multimodal moving more towards focusing on people on bikes and people walking and more on underserved communities so I I personally think it's super exciting and I look forward to a time when I can tell you more information check back in within Ricks in a couple months so thanks was so uh Como I think the transportation Market in itself has been sort of disrupted in many ways in many ways it's been a good thing but and going back to your role as a convener convener with spark how can public agencies local governments Regional governments state governments public transportation providers best support startups and private companies entering the market how can we best get out of the way but still sort of retain our role um to Serious Point earlier in making sure that we're thinking of the public good as well yeah and I think I call a lot of what Sarah said I think the role of the public sector is really to create the right Frameworks the right policies that can support Innovation um but that align with the kpis and the goals that we want to meet around sustainability around Equity around improved access once they have created those Frameworks the the public private sector can come in and plug in their solution where they can make the most impact uh you know everyone here knows that the private companies obviously you know they are looking at a return on investment so for them it is about um that oftentimes it could be about the dense Market you know you know where there's density when you get views more which demographic kind of uses their technology more there are many other driving factors and even if they want Equity to be a big piece of it it's really hard um they're answerable to their investors so then the role of the public sector becomes really clear it is again going back to how can we create the right Frameworks to encourage these Technologies to play well in the space they can and then where all they can't play how can either the public sector fill that Gap themselves or incentivize these private companies um to go that extra mile and provide service scenario even if they're underperforming there so the performance metrics is not what's driving uh their decision making um you know de-risking technology is uh you know especially with my startups and working in the mobility space if they're selling to public sector uh it's a really hard thing the investors want to touch Mobility companies a lot of times that are selling into public sectors is because the sales cycle is so large so by having the opportunity to do pilots you know small small duration uh term limited uh projects that again capture the right kpi can demonstrate that the technology works and the partnership Works can go a long way for both sides it can prove to the public sector that this Innovative way of doing things can really work for our organization and maybe this is something we can get into long-term contracts with but for the for the startups that are doing this it's a real validation of their technology and the partnership and the funding model that they are trying to pitch for so I think there's a role that supportive role that both sides can play for each other to kind of take this Mobility Revolution forward thanks Como Sarah I've known you for a while I know you to be a parent and I'm curious to get your insights or thoughts about AVS and their effect on on you your family and what you think the impact of them is going to be on your children ultimately it's a good question I think about it a lot um you know I talked about how I'm a public transit person My Confession is I own three cars um and I wonder if my children will have the same choices um I am native to Ann Arbor but I'm a very happy detroiter I live in kind of a traditional neighborhood but Detroit is a city that um sprawls and the the rest of Southeastern Michigan College kind of a similar land use pattern it's really hard to live here without a car or debt and to have that good life um but my oldest is going to be 16 and I counted it six and a half years so I have a little time but you know where I want him to go to high school I think he could probably bike or walk but I'm not sure it's that safe given the sidewalk infrastructure and the cold winter Etc but I think I'm I want to try that and to see to see if he can how how well can he live his life without having to have a personal automobile and we'll see how that goes but I think as he goes to college and chooses places to live I'm hoping that there are places that are oriented to him being able to walk bike take an automated vehicle take transit and it's not a radical lifestyle choice to live without a car I'm not sure if it'll be his lifetime my younger children or maybe their children but I I think they will live differently than I do but kind of what my choices are today I can't do it I hope they can so Amy a last formal question for you um in terms of these these new Transportation options new technology new supply of Transportation what would it take speaking a lot to what Sarah was just getting at what would it take to move the majority of Americans away from the idea of of the dream being to own a public uh their own vehicle and move to sort of a subscription or Mobility as a service and actually having that be a lot more normal and a lot more common yeah that's a that's a tough that's the 64 000 question right that's a tough question so um my my child is a little older than yours she's 27 and I think about how things have changed just in her lifetime and you know I think that this the generation of new drivers are more thoughtful in the world around them and they give more consideration to the environment and they give more consideration to underserved communities and more consideration to their own privilege which I think is key to changing our culture because it's it's a culture it's hard to and I worked for years in the EV world of trying to change hearts and Minds to get people out of an internal combustion engine and into an EB I mean 15 years ago we started that finally we have some people driving EVs and not really all that much of a critical mass so it's it's going to have to take a cultural shift and it I think it will be about the technology but it's really going to be about how much we care about everything yeah I know it's very you know kind of a soft answer but I really think it's hearts and minds and it's um the generations that are coming up that actually um really are insightful to and More in tuned to their communities that they live in and the communities of the planet versus just you know my next door neighbor just their own myopic world view that altruism has a role to play in the future of Mobility that's great um Adrian thinking back to those ownership models who owns who operates who benefits um what what are some sort of lessons learned that you've seen um with with how public and private sectors have worked together what can we sort of gain from that yeah I feel like I might be repeating some previous answers but um I think the biggest thing that's changed especially in the in the new Mobility sectors um is is different agencies and and the private sector that they're understanding what their roles are they're they're like there's a clearer definition of yeah this is what we can do in this space and this is what we should be doing in this space and and I'll give you sort of an example when bike sharing first started it's less than 10 years old um so it's very new and um at the time there was this like where does it live kind of um question and the private sector wasn't quite there uh didn't really know what it was um and hadn't really adapted to it though providing vehicles but not necessarily a service and so like uh public agencies stepped into that similar to what Sarah was talking about with um how how buses kind of change their operating model now um they're realizing that you know that the private sector is plugged into e-scooters and Bike Share and um and there are opportunities there for a better role for public agencies to be more about managing the right-of-way protecting Public Safety and um and utilizing these services for the benefits that they can provide to the citizenry um and and meanwhile the private sector is um you know continuously adapting and and changing their their product development as well to respond to the needs of those uh users in their cities like we've got sit-down scooters now you don't have to stand up so things like that are happening and then I think on the funding side there's also opportunity there and we're already starting to see it you know new federal bills around EV um bikes and um and vehicles and charging infrastructure that can help sort of move some of these Mobility options forward such as EV car sharing um and then I guess you know to to that end is also you know we're we're also seeing um Transit agencies and I think this is a bit of a repeat like Transit agencies because of the pandemic have really thought about well what is our role and um you know there is a ridership cliff that will probably take a little while to to rebound from people worried about sharing in closed spaces with other people and so there are these new Mobility options that allow you to get out of vehicle maybe it's on the scooter on the bike share your own like have a shared vehicle that you can use from time to time and we're working with a lot of especially small to mid-sized Transit agencies that are starting to think about how they make decisions about what's their role in the in delivering those services that doesn't mean they're going to go operate them but they're now starting to think about how does that help us with our delivery of service to to the public so I think those are some of the changes that I'm really excited about thanks Adrian so I've got one last question for all the panelists I'll start with Sarah but in 30 years do you think the majority of Americans will own or have access to their own private vehicle fantastic question I think it all depends on how expensive it is um kind of uh and can you afford personal mobility and what kind of mandates Etc how much technology do you have to have in a car My Confession is my favorite car to drive is my uh stick shift and the only feature it has is an automatic locks so I'm uh apparently I like my freedom uh so if there are continue to be inexpensive um personal automobiles I think they will still be very widely used if they're expensive then we'll see increasing sharing will your car be around in 30 years no it's dying right now Amy oh that's such a tough question um we have such a passionate love affair with the US you know in the US with Automobiles and you know we're in the heartland of of cars here and as a person who grew up you know racing muscle cars I uh I can't imagine not having my own personal car and it's we do equate it to freedom and I think we just need to flip that equation to you know there's freedom in other ways and other modes I think it's going to be a long time before we we don't have personal cars but maybe um I also have three cars it's a shame to admit that we own three vehicles um I think we're going to get away from you know one family have with three adults having three actually with four adults with three adults having four vehicles I think we will see that change um and hopefully it will become more affordable at the same time though because we do want to have access to those that need it in more rural areas that right now don't have the options and that those options will need to evolve in the next 30 Years all right Carmel well I I think I'm more hopeful I think yes probably not not uh I would say it's a car light future um that it's uh you know ownership is really light we we're we're really upped the and the on all the other modes and when we do that the the car becomes an option for occasional uh trips when we really want to experience what driving felt like and then you can take the car out I think for a spin back in my day if you know that love to drive this vehicle but yeah I am very hopeful that it's going to be a car light future with exceedingly access to many other modes that uh allow us to uh have uh maybe even more freedom than we have right now uh to get around I like driving his temporal tourism in the future that's interesting Adrian yeah I guess for me when I first heard the term autonomous vehicle oh my mind went immediately to this uh this place in the future where there's just these vehicles going around that on demand you can just call one up and get anywhere you need to go which which would lead to saying we won't have private vehicle ownership but but for all the points that these uh folks we've raised is that we're that that's not that's not how we uh that's not how we enjoy our Autos right now so yeah think about your own car and your personalized experience and there you got your music you got all your set up and it's comfortable um getting in a a new car every time my you know that's that's not something that people will adjust to quickly um so I think there's this cultural piece but there's also you know we've got to think about where the development of the technology is coming from and um you know a lot of that is is private sector that um you know quite frankly will they want to mandate my future where where I see this like yeah are they going to want to have procurement rules around you know we you gotta bid for the right to operate service in in this community um that's not the way stuff is delivered here uh at the moment and I can't see it being that way in the field just so um I would unfortunately be on the pessimistic side of that of that question well I think we've successfully eaten up all the time for audience participation um and to keep us on on schedule unless there's any pressing questions I think we'll move forward this is a great conversation and another thanks to uh all the panelists here uh Sarah Amy komal and Adrian it was a great conversation thanks everyone okay [Music]
2023-06-06