Shared, electric, autonomous vehicles are a part of the future, as well as active transportation. A key component will also be shared data in making the options seamless.
Instead of a focus on autonomous cars, Gabe Kline, co-founder of CityFi, said we should think about what we want our cities to look like first, and how we want to serve the population to take back space from single-occupancy vehicles and give the space back to people.
All over the world, cities are making a comeback; they’re getting denser. In the United States we’re not building fast enough to accommodate the growth and not tying into private development. Klein mentioned that in Shanghai, a developer will not build a building without quality transit adjacent to it.
“What they’ve figured out in Asia,” Klein said, “is when you link transit to development, you can actually be profitable with your transit system.”
While transit needs to take a leading role in evolving cities, he stressed that the industry needs to change its talking points.
“Redesign around people. Have a relentless focus on the customer,” he said.
“Publicly call out the human being as the focus of our system. The car has been given too much space.”
While we’ve focused on transportation and mobility, the outcomes we focus on are more than that, he stressed. Public health and safety, economic development, environmental quality, livability and quality of life, and equity are what public transportation and mobility options can offer.
We’re at a time of a cultural shift. Klein said, “We’ve only been driving in cars by ourselves for about 75 years. We’re going back to what we used to do.”
He compared SOVs to horses and elevator attendants, which used to be everywhere. Showing a photo from Easter morning in New York City, there was one car on the street packed with people and horses. By 1913, a photo of the same street showed it full of cars. “The car may be the new horse.”
People are shifting to wanting to live in cities, walking more, biking, using multiple modes and sharing cars instead of owning. “The time where the focus was on freeways was just a temporary thing,” Klein said.
For transit professionals working at a transit system not embracing today’s changes, Klein said, “Be honest and authentic and call out what you see. Do it in a constructive way; it doesn’t have to be a negative.”
He continued, “Be consistent and bring up the things you see every day through the eyes of the customer.”
