E23 - Emerging Technologies will impact the Future of Public Transportation | Paul Comfort
Transit will become more individualized Mobility will become more individualized micro Transit autonomous vehicles will be tuned to you and your needs it really is the way it has to go right I mean they're never going to replace you know the subway Etc but I think that's the next phase of our of our Evolution as an industry we already see it it's just taking it to the next level so individualized Transit um the guys from transtab used to say it's Pace personalized autonomous um something to say something connected electric and so I I generally agree with that I think that was a great acronym so that's one two I think we're going to take to the air now you know people can call these Alexis Lanes you know people are always upset about when you add in a pay Lane on a Beltway around a city and you're like well you know that's the Lexus Lanes it's only for the rich people but you know what I get all that but it does take Vehicles off of the lanes that I'm in because I'm not going to pay 30 bucks to ride that green line lane but I am going to stay in here and if you can take some cars off and make my life easier I don't mind so the air lanes are the same way right we're not all going to afford that but I predict by 2030. for 49 you'll be able to get a vehicle uh and that depends on where inflation goes but let's say in 2022 dollars I was saying 99 let's stick with my 99 for 99 you'll be able to call the VTOL the electric unmanned vehicle to your front yard in my house I want to see it right out that window and I'm going to get in that vehicle and it's going to take me to downtown Washington DC which you know to fly is probably only 20 minutes from where I live and drop me at the roof of the D.O.T building for a meeting with then secretary Jasper Singh or whoever it is and I'll be able to go in there for my meeting and then get picked up and brought back here so I don't have to go to all traffic that's I think vertical takeoff and Landing vehicles I think are going to happen it'll be reality [Music] welcome to the mobility innovators podcast hello everyone welcome to another episode of Mobility innovators podcast I'm your host jaspal Singh Mobility innovator podcast invite key innovator in the transportation and Logistics sector to share their experience and future forecast in this episode we'll be discussing the future of public transportation and Key Mobility Trend in North America region is a Transit evangelist and has been his career in government and public transportation he's currently working as a senior vice president and chief customer officer at modexo he work as a country administrator for two Suburban County in Maryland later he worked as a CEO of mpmi lab he's an author of four books including the future of public transportation and his recent book The Conversation of equity and inclusion in public transportation also he is a popular host of Transit and plug podcast and Transit and plug TV on YouTube I'm so happy to welcome my good friend Paul Comfort senior vice president and chief customer officer at bodexo now it's time to listen and learn hello Paul it's great to have you on the show and looking forward to learning from your experience thanks Jasper great to be great to be with you on your podcast and uh I've really enjoyed getting to know you over the last few months same here I mean it's I'm following you what you're doing your podcast your interviews and your knowledge what you're spreading all over the world so today what I want to do I want to spend time with you to get more more about you because there are a lot of hidden secret and about your new book which is you published recently about equity and inclusion and then your thought on innovation in public transport sector man you got so much of knowledge uh collected from all over the world so I would love to have more knowledge from you about what's happening in public transport sector and what we can do but to start with I know you are very vocal about everything in your profile your LinkedIn profile is so rich you are so active on LinkedIn but is there anything hidden or secret which still people don't know about you and I would love to know more like some part of Paul Comfort which people are not aware about sure I can try um I am like you said I kind of live my life out loud uh that's just the way I'm I am as a person and so it actually fits the job I have which is to be you know a Persona in the industry um I mean I was thinking about that question because you told me you're going to ask me ahead of time and I thought here's a couple things that maybe people don't know number one uh is that I had a radio show part-time called Comfort corner on wctr am 1530 in Chestertown Maryland for 16 years uh and it it was kind of like if people who have been around for a while may remember a guy named Paul Harvey news and comment and it was kind of like a news and comment show but more local news so for a while I even did it live uh in the window of Callahan's gas and Appliance in downtown Centerville and I would interview you know local celebrities the county commissioner or you know somebody from the military who would just come back from overseas and those kind of things and I did it uh part-time just because I love radio um so that so that kind of what that Jasper actually that's what led me to doing the podcast when they asked me here uh at this job would you like to do a podcast I'm like yeah I mean that's kind of like the new talk radio oh yeah that's that's something I think uh a lot of folks uh know that I'm in music um uh so that's been one of my passions in life um and I had a band when I was younger um and we toured and made a record when I was in college the band was called sons of thunder and we had a full band you know with backup singers and you know light crew and sound crew and all that stuff but to be honest with you Jasper uh when we were that was like when we were in college you know and then my rhythm guitar player Zeke uh Ezekiel he got married and we you know we were like are we really gonna do this or not because real life is coming and you know what we decided we weren't really going to do it that you know we weren't going to try to go full time we weren't that good I mean we were you know in our own minds we were good and uh it ties in with something I posted on LinkedIn this last weekend which is uh I'm reading uh Bono's autobiography the guy you know the lead singer from U2 okay talked about when he was 18 his father said to him you know you need to get a job and he's like job a job is what you do five or six days a week eight hours a day to make money to do what you really want to do on the weekends and he said I knew I didn't want to I want to stay as far away from that as possible but he said I was smart enough even at my age to realize that if I'm going to do something fun and be able to get somebody to pay me for it I've got to be really good at it and he said I wasn't good at anything and he was smart enough to realize that and I think we were too with our band you know we realized you know we're not that great there's so many great musicians out there but we did have fun and I've had fun with my whole life I play some in church and and uh play for shows both my boys are musicians pretty good actually guitar and drum I'm actually going to be playing with them at uh cult classic Brewery uh they have an open mic night coming up soon here before Christmas I think I'll do a show with them so um having some fun with that uh one or two other things that I thought maybe people will be interested in and that is interesting for my background right out of college I had a bunch of great interviews for fun jobs uh I had spent a lot of my youth real active in politics and government and the Speaker of the House of Representatives here in in Maryland the Speaker of the House of delegates clay Mitchell uh had been kind of a mentor of mine his son and I are pretty good friends and he got me an interview to be a speechwriter for the governor at the time who was a guy named William Donald Shafer and so I went in and got the interview and was offered the position but I turned it down jaspel and it's one of those lessons in life you know such an idiot when you're a kid uh you know uh I was thinking I remember telling them you know I don't want to be behind the you know the speeches I want to be out front you know doing it giving things and being involved and and uh what an idiot I was you know think about where my life could be now if I started out at 22 as a speechwriter for at the time a very popular Governor but young people you know we and I think that's a lesson that I try to tell my kids I have six kids um with my wife who I've been married to 35 years now this month um but uh you know you don't always start right where you want to end up you know you got to get your foot in the door and then get really good and then you can maneuver yourself to where you want to go and I guess that's the last kind of thing from my life is um I've been involved in politics since I was young I was I wanted to make a difference that's Jasper is my mantra for my life I want to make a difference and impact as many people for good as I can and I felt like I could do that in government my dad was a minister I never really felt called if you want to use that word to go into you know full-time what they call Ministry you know in a pastor in a church or anything like that but I felt like I could do it in government and um and so I've run for office three times huh something for my background you know I won for Central Committee but lost for uh County Commission uh and then I ran again in um in 2002 I ran for office uh State's Attorney and I lost for that at um and then I ran a 2014 for County Commissioner and one for that as a top vote getter but the the moral of the story and I wrote a chapter in my book Full Throttle about this yeah is that every time I've run for office win or lose something great has come out of it yeah I mean great even better than the office I mean when I was when I was 22 of 21 when I ran for County Commissioner I met a guy a guy who was running for another office and he was head of the Department of Aging his name was Irving Pender and he really liked me and said you know you're a great young man we have a brand new position coming open transportation coordinator and 35 years ago that's how I got into Transportation was running for office putting myself out there and uh and and running a decent campaign even though as a kid you know I remember staying at the Bay Bridge waving to people if you sign waving here in Maryland you know I don't know if they do that other places but um and then when I ran for State's Attorney I lost to a guy that became our congressman and now as a judge and became friends of his I ran again at someone else but he beat him in the primary and so but even though I lost that race with 43 percent of the vote again I met these guys who were all running for County Commissioner and they appointed me as County Administrator and then the last time I ran for County Commissioner one I was friends with a guy who was running for governor at the time Larry Hogan and then he won I won we both won that time and he's like Paul you know you've got background in transportation you're an attorney and you've run government agencies you're just who we need to run the MTA and so that's how I got kind of the penultimate job of my career running you know one of the top 12 transit systems in America and Baltimore so a couple lessons from all that is you don't start you know where you're going to end you got to be willing to take a job a little bit you know lower on the on the poll so to speak to uh work your way up and then good things could come out of bad things actually better than you thought if you run it with dignity and you're not an idiot and a jerk you know what you're doing and and you don't burn your Bridges I've learned never to burn my bridges even yeah you know when I've been let go I'm you know I try to leave with dignity I got let go of one job I remember telling the Washington Post uh you know well you know that's I'm a big boy it's not the cookie crumbles it's an appointed job I'll move on to the next thing and you know good things come out of that you don't burn anybody on your way out the door that doesn't suit you so anyway there's a couple uh stories from my earlier career and lessons I learned from them a lot of them I would say thank you for sharing this I mean I never knew this uh past background and I love some of the listen I just want to summarize one lesson you mentioned that you need to know what you're a good act and if you're not good at you need to be ready to leave it don't try to spend your whole life if you know if you're not good at something second is take action in life don't just just think about it if you want to do something even if you don't get the you know maximum out of it you will get something out of it so take action and do something go out and meet people like you mentioned you ran for position you didn't get some of these positions but you met some of the best friend and that give you you know pushing your career in another way so thank you for creating good great lesson from your life thank you yeah it's um that's a very good point you make it we can make it later too but I always uh I've spoken at College graduations High School graduations as commencement speaker and the main lesson I try to do there is what you just said where your interests and your abilities intersect yeah your interests what you're interested in and then what you're good at not what your mom says you're good at like because your mom thinks you're good at everything right and that's why it's great to have a great mom right but it's it's what other people acknowledge that you're good at where they intersect that is where you should focus your attention that could be your destiny uh if but you got to take action dude I wake up every day full of energy I don't know what it is it's like I've got a tornado inside of me and I want to accomplish things today and so you know I do all the things that you're supposed to right you make your list of what you need to accomplish the next day when you end today uh and I'm constantly Jasper one other thing I wanted to mention since we're in this kind of you know ethereal background thing is I think it's important to take time to be quiet and to meditate and to calm your spirit uh and you know we have so much media and stuff you know in our minds and I've got actually a chair right in my bedroom right uh that I sit in every day and calm myself and be quiet and listen to the inner voice calmness in you and I'm telling you um I get some of the best ideas there if you can have a creative idea that can be successful uh that can be worth so much more than eight hours of the grind one idea can be you know I was reading the other day how that um um the Edison you know used to fall asleep with a steel ball in his hand when it hit the floor it bounce and wake him up and the idea that was in his head right then was what he would do because he was tapping into a subconscious which is which is great no thanks for sharing that I I fully agree with you meditation is very important you know having your calm space there is this famous investor called Naval Ravi Khan then he say when you do meditation the state of your meditation state of your life so if you are calm if you are peaceful it means your life is calm and peaceful if you can't sit quiet for two minutes it means your life is you know need some some work and you need to improve it so thanks for sharing I mean these are like amazing lessons you have shared thank you Paul yeah I really appreciate it can I say one more thing please please please it's just you know I'm an inductive thinker so all this stuff comes to me as we're talking I'm I'm making I'm pulling it together into a theme hopefully uh I've got some people I know that have a running dialogue in their head I think uh and um you can be in a conversation with them and it it I was I was out actually with someone like this just last week and uh it was me and him and another good buddy and um he wouldn't shut up you know he ran his mouth for over an hour and um and he had a dialogue in his head that we could not I I couldn't so my point is you need to be self-aware yeah uh if you want to be a leader um you know you've got these leaders who you know are you know General Patton out there you know but I think the the best and the wisest leaders take time to listen take time to interact with other people are really interested in what other people have to say because they're smart enough to realize that they don't know everything and they don't dominate every interaction I know I'm dominating our conversation now but so you're the guest you okay that's true right so uh I'm on the other side of the mic today um but anyway my point is that's another thing just be self-aware that you know if you have this dialogue of all the stuff you need to say maybe say it in bites uh and let the other person have an opportunity to have some input and stay focused on what's going on in the interaction between you not all these 10 stories that you wanted to get out on the table anyway I don't know what what good that'll be to anybody but it may apply to one or two people listening they're like oh yeah I mean we've all had those moments when somebody speaks into our life and it helps us when I was this kid that I was telling you about 22 I had my first job as transportation coordinator for the county I remember Bob salute the County Administrator talked to me after I made a presentation to the County Commissioners on something and he said Paul did you ever notice you give a little like a nervous laugh sometimes right before you answer a question like no I didn't really notice that he said well you do and you need to you need to cool it uh it makes it appear that you are uh winging it that you don't have a real solid answer that you're nervous and the Commissioners are you know budgeting money based on what you tell them and so you need to get rid of that little nervous laugh you've got and just say the answer I've I relish opportunities for people to to um critique me if they're interested in what's good for me you know if somebody's just trying to be destructive and and critical of you that's not good but if it's a critique intended to make you better I think we all need to be open to those don't you yeah yeah no I I think and that's a problem in today's world people are jump to give uh you know negative feedback but if you ask those people okay tell me it's one thing to improve and they have no no point to tell you which is sad because I feel if you want to give any feedback you should give a feedback so that the other person can improve not to destroy or not to you know be critical and and that's the world is becoming so thanks I mean I fully agree with you that's not the life now you mentioned you had such a long career in transit sector you started at the age of 22. I don't want to guess your age now but I know you are in multi-decade like the
three yeah I'm over 50. let's just say that it will always remain you know I'm young at heart though I feel like I'm like 35 so by heart you are 35 the way you are learning and talking now you work as a country administrator for two Suburban County in Maryland and like you mentioned you work as a CEO of MTA Maryland which is one of the top 15 transit system in the in the US so it's not an easy job but now you're on the other side of the job now you're working as a chief customer officer with the bodexo and the transit leader across the world now you've seen both the world you've seen many generations over the period time so I'm very curious to learn that how you think the transit industry has changed over the period of time especially in U.S because a lot of time we don't realize we think our you know the things are like that but I think you have seen industry spending out over the period you've seen on the development of I.T and infrastructure and new technology how you think things have changed over the period of time yeah well I would say in a couple areas uh one is technology like you mentioned um a lot of Transit agencies have been stuck in the 80s and 90s I would say and the technology they're using and I think the period of the pandemic where we had to do more things remotely uh made a lot of Transit agencies realize hey you know we need to get off paper I remember visiting a Canadian transit system not too long ago and they were still having a a utility worker walk the yard three or four times a day to identify where all the vehicles were in the yard writing it on a sheet of paper and then sticking it up on the wall and dispatch so dispatch could tell the driver where the vehicle was three hours ago and you know there's plenty of Technology now available at one of our companies want this actually sells a yard finder and I'm sure other people do too uh which will you know identify where the vehicle is right now not where it was three hours ago and it does it off a ping instead of off a person those kind of things I think um is a big change right technology yeah technology is a really big change I I agree with you and also you think in term of a Manpower in term of a mindset things have changed over the period of time or you think there is a lot of work we go out in that area well in the 70s coming out of um so public transportation was really big after World War II right when all the men came back from World War II public transportation was in its Heyday in the 1950s uh and so private companies like utility companies set up light rail systems and tram systems across major cities and even minor cities you know Greensboro North Carolina places like that may have had a trolley or a tram and they were largely run by uh these utility companies and private companies I remember the city of Baltimore had a number of Transit companies they called them at the time and then uh so and everybody was writing right but um to get to work and to you know go down and get the boss to do whatever so we had about a 20-year run and then in the 1970s um when more people got cars Automobiles and the the the Advent of a two-car home uh came into place suddenly people started riding in transit less and it it was so much so that a lot of the transit companies went bankrupt and the utility companies you know the power and light company sold these agencies and these companies to the cities or state governments jurisdictional governments where they were at so in the 1970s uh pretty much everybody that was a private sector making money for-profit company on Transit got out because they just couldn't make the money yeah and uh and so we had a 40-year run where we had a monopoly where Transit agencies in major cities Across America had a monopoly on public Mobility but that all changed into 2010s with the Advent of uber and Lyft and other private sector companies coming in saying you know what we want a piece of the action so a guy named Nat Ford who was president of the American public transportation Association at that time recognized that probably five or six years ago now and uh and suggested that we make a change and that the public transit industry he runs Jacksonville Transit now and is again still doing Cutting Edge research on autonomous vehicles I visited his test and learn facility there but he suggested we make a change in the role that Transit agencies play from the transit provider to the Mobility aggregator and that public transit agencies should aggregate uh under their umbrella so to speak um all of the Mobility Services in a city public or private sector scooters bikes um you know all the work that goes on there and I we've we've slowly made that change so your initial question was how have things changed in the over 30 years you've been involved in the industry that's one of the biggest changes for an industry uh that we have definitely changed our role I remember being at MTA and I remember Uber reached out to me and I've already told them the story I just told the head of uber Transit last week when you and I were at um commotion commotion yeah yeah I totally I told uh Dimitri vanzag off the story who's one of the head dudes there uh I said dude I don't know if you know this but you know when Uber came to me when I had the MTA it was like our way or the highway with Uber and I I couldn't I couldn't do a deal with them but it's totally changed now they have changed their approach to cities and cities have changed our approach and we've said we want to embrace uh all of the mobility options in the city and I really think that's the proper role of an agency uh to not allow the private sector to take the lead yeah uh which has a you know a profit uh mentality but because we have the motivation of helping people uh and that is to me where uh you know Stephen Covey seven habits of highly effect people begin with the end in mind what is our end our end purpose in transit is not to make a profit we are not a business our end purpose in my mind is to provide safe efficient reliable Mobility with world-class customer service so that we can provide access to all of life's opportunities to as many people as possible that is our recent day atra and it's even been more solidified through the covet pandemic when people realize that you know hey we're not only really about commuters going to the tall shiny buildings and downtowns anymore it's an important part but we can't make that the number one goal it needs to be about more than that so those are some changes I've seen thank you for sharing you you put the history of so many decades in in just five minutes which is good in fact when I was in Seattle I know I discovered that Seattle used to have a light rail system 100 Year back they used to have street car yeah and then they rip pot and now they are constructing again but a lot of people don't know about the history that the the many U.S city
used to have a good streetcar and light rail system and it went out over the period of time because these agencies were profit making couldn't make profit and then they went bankrupt and and rightly rightly mentioned you know now the role of public classes and agencies not to just run buses and run it's it's how to offer Mobility the people because people are not just looking to take a bus ride your end goal is go from point A to point B so if you can't fulfill that with public transit people will not come back and in fact I I want to follow up on this question because you share some interesting fact and you rightly mentioned that the ridership start declining in North America actually in it started in 2014 the highest number of uh the journey happened in the US was in 2014 when 10.7 billion people or Journeys won't happen but what happened after that the people start taking cards and some other mode like uber ride hailing companies start emerging and then the pandemic hit everything went to zero and now it start building up now what do you think is the biggest reason for drop in ridership is it's the customer care service is it the service it's a other option available and how do you think you know because now the biggest challenge for Transit Agency is to bring back writers and I'm pretty sure this is the discussion you must be having with all the transit leader so how they can use technology or marketing or incentive or loyalty to bring back Crider especially in U.S because our ridership is still not crossed 70 80 percent yeah so let's start with um the contacts which you set up for us which is great um there was a decline in ridership uh across the U.S and Canada and some Western uh European countries not everyone experienced that South America Africa some place in Asia was were not experiencing a decline in ridership uh where public transportation really is seen as a primary mode of Mobility here in the U.S not so much right in the U.S we are a car-centric society and a lot of that has
to do with the distances that are necessary to travel in your life if you live outside of a city um you know you you largely can't get around without a car where I live I live out in the country you know there is no transit to my house there's no mobility and so I wouldn't be able to ride if I wanted to I have to you know I'll go to um a light rail station or a metro station in DC and hop on you know Park and then hop on the Metro but so we start from a different place I think than other countries are because it's our countries never except for those golden few years right that you mentioned when everybody was riding Transit but even then it was just in the cities so I think that's uh that's important to take note of is that we we have not traditionally been uh we have not traditionally been a Transit oriented Society we've been a current oriented Society but I remember 2015 or 16 all the CEOs uh got together at a conference down in Florida and the the topic you know that everybody's hair was on fire about was you know ridership is declining what are we going to do you know the uh the politicians who fund us they are saying to us why should I give you more money next year when you're going to be serving less people and so there was a big concern and to be honest with you Tom Lambert the CEO of Houston Metro came up with a solution uh and it is just what you mentioned a minute ago is that so many cities had these Old Trolley systems and the bus systems just like in Baltimore were laid out on basically the same routes that the trolley systems were and uh and most of the routes went to the downtown central business districts yeah give an example in Baltimore where I was CEO in 2015-16 when we did an analysis 2 thirds of our routes went to the central business district where there were 140 000 jobs at the time but there was over 250 000 jobs in the outer skirts outside the city and we had never really comprehensively adjusted our routes to meet the needs of today's customers so I think Tom figured that out and Tom comes from a law enforcement background you know he's chief of police they still call him Chief but uh he's the head of uh you know the Metro System there and I don't know if you saw but they just did some amazing Financial things smart paying off debt Etc so anyway um uh I went and visited him in 2016 with eight of my staff to say what have you done because they they worked with it you know with some outside Consultants Etc and they were able to make some changes to their routes overnight and we did the same thing we followed their model we came back with 10 lessons we did something called Baltimore link after a two-year study that had done been done by my predecessor uh on the better bus Network or something like that and uh anyway we changed the routes overnight and so did a lot of other cities so in 2017 uh Seven Cities did it Vegas Vancouver and they all saw an increase in ridership at 18 it was others nights and then in 19 is when I don't know if you remember but we said ah for the first time you know in a long time Transit ridership this year including New York City is more than it was last year and then of course the pandemic hit so I think we need to um you know take a lesson from uh the commercial sector which is if they aren't buying it let's not sell it and so so for instance the commuter buses the commuter trains that are all going to downtown heavy am heavy PM Peak they are still decimated ridership is under 50 to 60 percent and most of those commuter services so what are we doing still running heavy Am Pm Peaks let's spread it out let's uh let's you know Market it as a regional rail let's incur and some people are doing this and let's encourage people to ride during the day the rail downtown to see the museums families invite families uh moms make them feel you know welcome on the vehicles at nights and weekends some people you know like up in your neck of the woods Jasper in Toronto uh my buddy Phil verster is doing that with GO train and go bus he told me that a couple years ago we're adjusting what we're doing he's also doing other cool things you know he did this even before the pandemic what what basically um put into customer experience first so like I don't know if you you probably know all this but you know they're doing things like they have a deal with a big grocery store up there where you can buy your groceries online when you're at work and when you get home they're in a refrigerated Locker at the station those kind of customer experience things that I I when I've traveled on Rocky Mountaineer you know this excursion train out of Denver recently all the way that they serve their customers and put their customers first and I'm telling you there's a dearth of customer service now post pandemic there's not enough employees in a lot of places and customer service has really suffered uh I called the recent a major store one of the biggest stores in America uh on their phone number and they just like last month and they said we're not answering the phone anymore you need to go online and go to our frequently asked questions I was like are you kidding me so um so anyway we need that we need you know I was in London a few weeks ago and I was just amazed at the level of customer service that tfl has and the rail service has where they have people actual people standing out there saying oh over here this is where you go to get to here this is where you go to you know friendly faces focused on you know you as a passenger I was like wow this is good so I think those are some things we can do obviously all the technology you know to make sure people know where their vehicle is at all times and they can you know check it out on their phone and all that kind of stuff's important doing micro Mobility you know doing electric uh all the things that that are pretty obvious I think but those are some other things I think focus on where the customers want to go today make sure we give them good customer service make sure they feel safe on board um there's been a concern in major cities across the U.S lately that you know New York especially and I talked to the general manager about this recently you know what are we doing to improve this and not just the actual safety but the perception of safe perception there right so people feel safe I remember uh in Baltimore we won the APTA Gold Award for safety in 2016 for something called our Zeus program Zone enforced something something they stood for and I remember our chief of police he was a great guy he he went out of his way to make sure that there was the perception of safety at our stations and there was uniformed uh personnel there there was vehicles with there was a lot of light so that people felt safe and could see where they were going and and uh and you know the two years I was there we had no rapes no murders no shootings I know that's like a low bar but but um but we we had one of the best uh safety records actually of among the top 12 systems we were ranked as having the lowest number part one crimes on her system during the two years I was there in America uh and it was largely due to this perception and the actuality of a good response system we even had dude it was amazing they had even back then this was seven eight years ago they had like it wasn't quite artificial intelligence but in our train and subway stations they had camera systems that would be if you set your briefcase down and you sat there for too long the camera would zoom in on it and then they would see it at the operations Control Center and they would send a police officer there to find out what in the world's going on so and now they've got you know stuff's even way beyond that now oh yeah yeah now there is so much technology but I I really love your point about the safety and putting customer first and that's what we are missing right now because sometimes we think too much about technology and tools and other things and what we forgot is like what customers need they just need a safe ride going point to point A to point B quicker and faster way they don't need anything else they're just looking so you need to put customer first and you need to adopt technology just to support customer experience not not to just have a fancy tool and app because sometimes I feel we are so fascinated about this technology thing that we just want to have more and more app for everything but nobody has time to do this you know people just want to have a safe ride in the in the transition now thanks for sharing that Paul and congratulations what you did at MTA uh where you land I mean I I remember those Awards I read that that you got those award because of the system was so successful now it was a dream there yeah now one of the big thing happened with the pandemic is uh there was a there was a focus back on public transit because during the pandemic during the covet time the front line worker were using the public transit so the government said okay we need to fund the system and the the federal government in the U.S they passed this bipartisan infrastructure law giving 108 billion to support public transportation program including 91 billion in in guaranteed funding now you are speaking with many Transit leaders I'm pretty sure you are traveling every week you are speaking them how do you see these agencies that using funding to help to transform the public transport sector because this funding is not unlimited I mean this will eventually go away so how they can use this funding to be more Innovative and more creative and make public transition system better yeah I do talk to um our Executives uh around the US and the world on a regular basis every week and I'm hearing great uses of those funds some of them were using them to do pilot programs yeah they use some of the money to do what they normally wouldn't have this extra money and so they used it for instance in Las Vegas um MJ Maynard uh who heads up the RTC there used it to fund some Mobility micro Mobility pilots in transit deserts which I thought was a brilliant idea right see uh you know where the there's not enough traffic passenger traffic to justify a 40-foot bus but there are people with Mobility needs and micro Mobility doesn't always have to be more expensive than fixed route in some ways it may actually be less expensive um if you're if you're subcontracting it out or you know there's ways you can do it where it's not that expensive so she was using it for that other people used the money and some new money that's coming in now from the federal government through the infrastructure act uh to fund uh you know zero emission Vehicles we're doubling the size of the fleet and people are maybe surprised but as of a few months ago we only had a little over a thousand electric vehicles on the on the road in America electric buses uh and so there's enough money in this new act to double that size but also people are starting to look at um other alternative fuels such as hydrogen and Jasper I'm very encouraged and enthused about our approach to hydrogen my friend John russant who heads up commotion was actually just in Morocco right after our event uh headlining and event there on on hydrogen and you know they have it now I've talked to the guys there who said you know we've got Vehicles now that actually create the hydrogen on the vehicle um you know and so you know it's not the Hindenburg here we're talking about folks people are always worried when they hear hydrogen they're worried they're worried about something that happened 100 years ago with the uh a dirigible you know exploding it's not that's not what's happening uh it's very it's they have all kinds of new safety protocols Etc uh but it is up and coming so those are some of the kind of the new techniques and new technology uh and new approaches to Mobility that cities and Transit agencies have utilized some of this new funding to Pilot out and I think it's a it's a very good use of that in my opinion no great thanks for sharing that and and I agree with you hydrogen it's it's developing very fast in fact uitp is doing a couple of project in you for the demonstration of uh hydrogen and a lot of people don't know I mean I was telling people that sometimes like we also need to look what China is doing in this area and right now China is targeting all the transit agencies that their 30 Fleet should be hydrogen so really I didn't know that yeah so now after the electric now they are telling all the agencies which are procuring electric buses they are saying your Fleet should be 30 feet should be hydration so it means they are also going bullish and aggressive on hydrogen technology so it's a right opportunity for us to look at right now yeah I think we have to make sure that we have um I would call an all of the above approach is what I'm hearing I I've I talked to a half dozen CEOs in the last three months they've all told me Paul we're not going to go all-electric it's an important it's the most advanced technology but we want to look at hydrogen we want to look at CNG uh and maybe even keep clean some clean diesel in our Fleet to make sure that you know if the grid goes down if there's a hurricane or a natural disaster or you know what just happened in North Carolina this week where the grid went down for you know we don't want our vehicles to be dead after running them for one day and you know we have to just be realist about this we we cannot have uh public transit vehicles that can't be used because we put all of our eggs in one basket you know that's my opinion I'm not speaking for you know my employer or anybody else that's my personal opinion based on conversations I've had with number of leaders in our industry uh I'm all in on electric believe me I'm all in I love what they're doing but I think we right now that there's a push to diversify yeah and I think hydrogen is was one that's being proven it's still way behind on the technology side of where we're at necessarily on electric but I think I think in all of the above approach and putting some investment I even was happy to see some money was set aside in the new federal law to make sure that some of it could be used for hydrogen research yeah yeah no I I actually I fully agree with your approach of having all of the above because you need to have different technology and you need to be ready for all kind of emergencies like there was how you can happen in in Florida uh last couple of months back so yeah if you have all electric what will you do your buses are standing and you say we cannot chat yeah I just read an article this morning that uh Bill Gates has some company that um is uh you know turning your clean diesel into biodiesel which produces even less emissions overall than electric does it said that was an axios by the way if anybody wants to look that up okay so I did a little I read the whole article and made a note of it that you know that's something it you know so as Technologies developed there could be more than one potential solution for our going forward I think we definitely all agree that part of the role of public transportation has changed and part of our role now is what I would call Environmental stewardship it's a overarching goal we need you know public transit's always been cleaner than cars I mean even when it was a dirty belching bus a dirty diesel you still took 100 cars off the road for every bus and so uh the overall you know impact has always been better but there's so many new cool Technologies now and the battery electric is getting better and better and better where you need just a little trickle of power and you can run for you know 500 miles or whatever so it's uh it's that's getting there too yeah in fact I know one starter which is based out of uh Calgary Alberta so they are actually converting ethanol to hydrogen so they have a station which is using picking bethanol and then process it and they can produce hydrogen on the site so you don't need to even transport so so a lot of innovation happening and in fact that's what I want to talk to you now about Innovation you a lot of people know you are an author too you have already wrote four books now you are coming out with your fifth book which is amazing and your second book was about future of public transportation and and you talk about all the future technology you publish that book in right just bang on the pandemics yeah you know March of 2020 man I had on my wall behind me at the time like a concert poster you'd see on the back of a t-shirt of literally a global tour a sponsored Global tour I was going to visit four continents I think it was and do all these book signings I got to the first one in my own neighborhood which you know it was nice we had like 50 people there of our book signing and then all the rest of them got canceled but you know what Jasper I ended up being able to touch more people's lives yeah virtually over zoom and teams and all this stuff around the world you know thousands and thousands of people uh doing kind of virtual uh events around the world over the next 18 months so you know there's always a silver lining oh there is always a silver line no I remember in fact you were supposed to come at I.T trans and that I was supposed to fly and day before the flight they even got postponed because of pandemic and all and in the book you talk about a lot of future technology about autonomous vehicle shuttle hyperloop high speed train Mobility as a service now we are in like December 2022 now two years two and a half year uh after you have wrote that book how do you see these Technologies are shaping up now like if if you look back and see okay you make some prediction in that book how do you see those predictions are happening and which technology you feel is progressing and which are losing stream because Innovation doesn't mean 100 guarantee some will grow some will vanish but that's part of that's fun of innovation yeah well good so again this is just my opinions I'm speaking for myself here um but I I see that um one type of technology is really taken off and that is faring technology um ticketing fairing whatever you want to call it where we're moving away from cash and we're moving away from cash boxes I believe fare boxes and moving more toward validators and multiple types of payment options which you know can be as simple as um uh you know a multi-use card run by the agency like the Oyster card or what Shashi Verma got us going for at tfl a few years ago and now is swept across the world which is contactless payment using your credit card which is awesome because that's a multi-use system as well you just tap and go uh to you know wearables to all kinds of media which you can use I mean they've even got it now where you know obviously it can come off your phone write Apple pay Google pay and some places are even now doing it all facial recognition yeah contact they have your contacts in the system and then it comes out of your account so I think fairing has really done uh gone up let's let's use the you know thumbs up for fair thumbs up uh thumbs down for Mobility as a service I would say Mobility as a service is is where all the mobility options in the city go on one app and you plan pay for and schedule your trips all behind the scenes and we really had high hopes for it a lot of Transit agencies have uh pursued it it started in Finland by a company there that I understand just went bankrupt this last year or went out of business at least I won't say the name of it uh but I just found that out in the last month that I'm assuming it's true the person who told me had some credibility but it hasn't really taken off like I thought it would um and um it could be because of the pandemic you know where people weren't riding as much right so that's probably why it didn't take off as much I still have hope for it I think it's a cool thing I spoke a lot about it did a lot of research on it but it hasn't really taken off when you take when you look at the cities who have put it in and you look at how many people are actually using it not very many low percentage points in the places I've been now I'm sure you're going to hear from five people oh it's being used in my city a lot well maybe so but generally I'm talking about industry Trends uh down I would say is hyperloop um hyperloop had a lot of promise you know I made friends with a lot of people in hyperloop right so now you had Elon Musk and you had Sir Richard Branson heading up these two big companies and uh I think I I actually had a long conversation uh again I think a commotion with somebody who was explaining to me why that happened uh maybe it was even you I don't know but somebody was telling me you know how that basically you know the pandemic killed a lot of that stuff yeah a lot of the research a lot of the money that was behind it the private Equity Funds dried up Etc so I don't see that taking off as much but I do see thumbs up uh for high-speed trains yeah people in the U.S um you know we've seen uh and I've done a lot of focus on it down in Florida there's a private company called brightline trains that does higher speed it's not what we would traditionally call you know like high speed like like Europe in China has in Japan where they're going 300 miles per hour but it's you know it's faster than normal and it's inner city which is what the promise was for hyperloop right um or maglev uh high-speed trains was you know you could see that like when I was in Baltimore we were doing a study after 26 million or something like that they're still studying it by the way and I've been out of there for over five years but you know a maglev train between Baltimore and Washington would be a 15-minute ride and then eventually go up to New York and maybe Boston which is probably a good Corridor to do it just like the one in California but again it's taking so long the environmental reviews and and the funding uh you know busted budgets um so I would say higher speed private trains up um the hyperloop maglev still you know it's it's all over China and Japan I don't know why we can't get it we get it here I wish we could I wish I could you know put my thumb on the scale and make it go but uh it just doesn't seem to have taken off like as much as I was hoping it would so um and in autonomous vehicles I would give them sideways some thumb two thumbs up two thumbs down and AV sideways we haven't really figured out in my opinion where to use them effectively yet and the technology hasn't really come around like we thought it was going to um you know it works well if you know if it's on a predetermined route etc etc I mean you know like I said I was just down in Florida with not forged people and riding riding on the autonomous vehicles the latest greatest technology and um still doesn't do what I wanted to do you know which is uh you know put it put a push a button on my phone and I'm not on some predetermined path and an autonomous vehicle comes to my house picks me up and then flies me like Jetsons where I want to go maybe we'll get there eventually but vitals uh we might as well just mention them I think they're on the uptake uh we just saw in New York City the announcement that one of the major airlines had you know basically said yeah we're making this happen I mean the technology is basically like an electric helicopter in some ways or um you know like those Marines vehicles uh the Marines have vehicles called Ospreys um very similar and so the technology I think is going to be there especially for package delivery and things like that like it already is but eventually within the next couple years I think we'll start seeing people as well now you know I was just in Dubai earlier this year and um the cruise people from GM are working with my buddy over there who runs the Dubai transit system and they're mapping the whole city out this year and he told me by the end of next year Paul we're going to have autonomous cars not necessarily buses but cars working in the city and it will be just what you want it won't fly but it'll you know it'll pick you up and take so you know I think it slowed down during the pandemic but that I think is coming back that's why I give it equal it's not down it's just it hasn't gone as fast as far as I wanted it to so there's my there's comfort's take on technology no it's it's such a great summary and I I fully agree with you some of those thumbs up and thumbs down and for for high speed pain I I sometimes wonder you know why we can't build what happened in China like if you see in China last 20 years they have now more than 18 000 kilometers of high-speed train Network like Shanghai is connected with Beijing so people take overnight train and go rather than taking flight uh and then I don't get real I think a lot of it is environmental reviews and all the extra layers of of things that you know some governments just come in tell everybody get out of the way we're putting this there and other governments uh you know take their time go through all their proper environmental reviews take make sure that people have input a lot of people don't like it coming through their backyard I know that was a concern of ours and building the purple line in Washington DC people were suing and the courts you know took a year or two off the so we have a lot of extra layers of review in the western world that maybe some governments don't have to uh go through to go through yeah especially in in some of these countries uh which we talk about in fact they are are studying about a high speed train between Toronto and Montreal for last 30 years 30 years you know they have been like four or five feasibility study Because by the time the new government come and say okay we want to do it they say oh the feasibility report is old and everything has changed so now what do you do you do the new feasibility report and nothing happened after that so I wish we can move a little faster and do something uh something better now you gave a lot of prediction for the mobility sector and I I was recently listening to one of your podcasts which was about public transit in 2023 for one year but I want now you to make some prediction for public transit in 2030. so how we will see public transit will change in next seven eight years and how should Transit leader be ready for this new change because most of the time we feel that people are not ready to to accept this change and they feel things will not change uh that quickly all right I've got three predictions okay all right for 2030. these are mine again
I'm speaking for myself not for anybody else um I think Transit will become more individualized Mobility will become more individualized micro Transit autonomous vehicles um will be tuned to you and your needs uh it really is the way it has to go right I mean they're never going to replace you know the subway Etc but I think that's the next phase of our of our uh Evolution as an industry we already see it it's just taking it to the next level so individualized Transit um let's see the guys from transtab used to say it's Pace personalized autonomous um something to say it's kind of connected electricity yeah yeah yeah yeah and so I I generally agree with that I think that was a great acronym uh so that's one two I think we're going to take to the air now you know people can call these Alexis Lanes you know people are always upset about when you add in a pay Lane on a Beltway around a city and you're like well you know that's the Lexus Lanes it's only for the rich people but you know what I get all that but it does take Vehicles off of the lanes that I'm in because I'm not going to pay 30 bucks to ride that green line lane but I am going to stay in here and if you can take some cars off and make my life easier I don't mind so the air lanes are the same way right we're not all going to afford that but I predict by 2030. for 49 you'll be able to get a vehicle uh and that depends on where inflation goes but let's say uh in 2022 dollars I was sayin
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