1616: Ryan Croft
Ryan Croft is the co-founder of TransitScreen. He subscribed to FoT in April 2015.
1) What change do you want to see in the world of mobility by the end of 2016?
Of the 855 bikeshare systems globally, 54 can be found in the United States. By the end of 2016, my first order of business is to create a national bikeshare service. Having one unified membership, key card, and payment system would allow anyone traveling from city to city to seamlessly access the most sustainable, healthy mode of urban mobility. A national system would reduce the barriers to entry and simplify the process for infrequent users. Studies show added convenience is a significant factor in bikeshare use. In a 2013 survey, Capital Bikeshare found 69% of those responding said that getting around fast and easily was a “very important” part in their motivation for riding.
Second, I want to see an end of parking minimums for real estate developments in urban areas. Unfortunately, we still cling to ordinances written a half century ago when cities were built around the automobile. These mindless mandates drive up building costs, slow the speed of development, and improperly encourage car ownership in transit-rich areas. As our cities are grow increasingly urbanized, I say space is better used to house people rather than cars. Forcing developers to build parking takes away from space for other things. In particular, no parking micro-unit buildings efficiently maximize density and encourage the car-free, multimodal living millennials prefer.
At TransitScreen, we actively promote dozens of bikeshare systems in major markets across North America and Europe. In addition, our technology is an accepted transportation demand management (TDM) mitigation for building owners across North America who want to build less parking.
2) If you had to drop everything right now and build something that had the greatest impact on mobility, what would it be?
I strongly believe the self-driving car will have the greatest material impact on urban mobility in the next 10–20 years. I would drop everything and work on autonomous vehicles because I see three major benefits:
(1) the elimination of auto-related deaths (44k last year in the US alone)
(2) elimination of drunk driving-related death (11k last year in the US alone)
(3) transformation of parking spaces to public spaces (over 1 billion spaces in the US alone)
Ryan Croft Bio
Ryan Croft is the co-founder and COO of Washington, DC-based TransitScreen — a live visualization of transportation data in building lobbies in North America & Europe. TransitScreen promotes sustainable transportation options around a given location. When he is not traveling, Ryan works from TransitScreen’s San Francisco office.
