On Building a 21st Century Transportation Network
We are transitioning to a different type of mobility system — one that values access to mobility over vehicle ownership, and is heavily integrated with technology. It’s an appropriate time to re-evaluate the role of government in providing transportation services. Spoiler alert: government still has a critical role.
What might a 21st Century Transportation Network look like?
It embraces a platform model
First and foremost, let’s be clear: The private sector should not entirely replace public transit.
Earlier this month, Code for America hosted a panel discussion about transportation at its annual Summit. Jascha Franklin-Hodge, the Chief Information Officer for the City of Boston, perfectly explained why:
“There is a fundamental difference between public transportation and companies that are doing this for profit. There are customers for whom it will never be economical for you to serve, no matter how optimized or advanced your services get. Businesses get to choose their customers; we don’t. That means that we have to make sure we are looking across the full spectrum of everyone- regardless of age, physical ability, technical ability, income- and try to work towards a high degree of equity for everybody. Ultimately, we want to put together a pool of services so that when we look across the population we are doing a good job (between public, private, subsidized) of delivering mobility to everyone in our communities.”
Yet, Jascha’s comments about providing a pool of services (across the public and private sector) highlight an evolving role of government in providing transportation services. Instead of trying to do everything, government should only do what it can do best, and focus on making a variety of services fit into the network.
This idea hints at the theory of “government as a platform”, first coined by Tim O’Reilly, Board Member at Code for America and early pioneer of the Web 2.0 movement. In this model, government provides basic infrastructure and a framework in which others can participate. A classic analogy of the platform model is the iPhone. While Apple offers limited apps on the phone, the genius lies in the App Store, where developers are able to create/sell their own applications based on Apple’s technical, content, and design criteria.
A potential application of the platform model to transit services would be strategically re-aligning budgets to focus on mass transit. For example, the public sector could invest in mass transit through taxpayer dollars and provide the backbone to the transportation network (much like an arterial road). The private sector can respond in an agile, nimble way and provide the smaller routes like local bus service and paratransit. And through policy checks and incentives, the public sector can make sure that it is an equitable system (with regard to geographic coverage, vehicle accessibility, etc.)
Earlier this week at a YPTS hosted panel, one of the biggest takeaways was that the success of flexible, on-demand services are connected to increased investment in public transportation.
Emily Castor, Transportation Policy Director at Lyft, and Ali Vahabzadeh, CEO and Founder of Chariot, both argued that their services should not replace a service like Caltrain; rather, they can provide critical connections to major transit hubs as first/last mile solutions.
In an interview with Gabe Klein, Special Ventures Partner at Fontinalis Partners and author of Start-Up City, he also hints at the platform model. He suggests that the public sector could change the economics of their organizations by getting out of the business of operating services that are not at the core of what they do (parking and policing, for example) and make it easier for private solutions to come in.
It’s User-Centric
Transportation departments need to put the needs of users before the needs of the government. Commuters don’t think or care about the various agencies that touch their experience of getting from point A to point B: they just expect it to work.
A promising example of being more user-centric comes from the City of Boston. This summer, Mayor Walsh appointed a Chief of Streets to better address commuter needs and work across the various city departments that have some connection to overseeing streets (i.e. engineering, design, management, safety, mobility, etc.). It’s a clear victory for thinking about how people use and experience streets, rather than thinking about government bureaucracy.
By focusing on a rider’s end-to-end experience, departments would prioritize creating seamless linkages across various modes of transport (or transport providers). This is happening already to certain degrees (i.e. locating bikeshare stations at regional rail stations), but there’s much room for improvement, including:
- Integrated payment across transportation modes — i.e. on Clipper Card and mobile ticketing
- Designated curb space and drop off zones for TNCs at airports
- Secure parking for people who own their own bikes
- Electric vehicle charging stations at Park and Ride Lots
- Better information around transferring between public transit providers (In the Bay Area, there are the “Big Seven” (Muni, BART, AC Transit, Caltrain, VTA, SamTrans and Golden Gate Transit), plus another 16 agencies. This strategy, among others, is excellently detailed in SPUR’s Spring 2015 publication, Seamless Transit
Crucial to building a user-centric transportation network is fostering a culture of continuous delivery. We must deliver transportation services in the same way we build digital products: a process that starts with user needs and has on-going testing, flexibility, and policy changes based in the context of user needs. Most notably, the U.K.’s Government Digital Service is a leader for government agencies placing continuous delivery and user needs at the center of their work.
It’s built on public-private partnerships
“There is tremendous opportunity for both government and the private sector to more successfully leverage each others’ strengths if we can align our financial incentives, and our core philosophies and motivations for being.” — Gabe Klein
Pop-up parks, bikeshare systems, community gardens, TNC services and beyond: advances in our built environment depend on the private and public sector working together.
Successful public-private partnerships are a classic example of the platform model at its best. The key is that cities need to start thinking about what can they do to better support these partnerships and open up possibilities for new players to get involved.
One major opportunity would be to reform procurement policies and make it easier to work with government. For example, obtaining information about work opportunities with a city is a huge barrier for potential vendors. Often there is no way to subscribe to new business opportunities in the city, or the sign up process is time-consuming and expensive. Smaller companies without dedicated staff to work on government projects simply don’t know how or have time to bid on these projects.
Another opportunity involves opening up public data to support a civic tech ecosystem. The exemplar is transit agencies releasing route information via the General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS), which defines a common format for public transportation data. For companies like Swyft, TransitScreen, RideScout, and dozens more, their business largely depends on the curation and publication of open data.
We’re already seeing recreational and parks data act as another catalyst in the marketplace — leading to the rise of companies like Trailhead Labs and HipCamp. Imagine what untapped opportunities lie in data sets and APIs involving parking garages, loading zones, etc.
Closing Thoughts
Right now, there’s a handful of leaders in the public sector championing the ideas of a 21st century transportation network. For this to successfully scale, government can’t sit back and be reactionary. Waiting to see how the private sector shakes out isn’t the right strategy — the public sector needs to see themselves as an equally (dare I say it) disruptive force in the game.
I recently interviewed Ashley Hand, the newly appointed Transportation Technology Strategist at the Los Angeles Department of Transportation. Her role reflects that new people, skills and practices are necessary to building a world-class transportation network that makes sure everyone is being served.
When I asked her about what she thinks is critical to Los Angeles’ success, she was quick to highlight both the need for new mobility options and internal changes within government.
Ashley believes that bringing in designers, developers, data scientists, and people with systems-level thinking skills are critical. Even in a progressive city like Los Angeles, where the City already has lots of data at its fingertips, it needs internal skills and analytical capacity to make sense of it and gather insights.
She also argued that the culture of the organization needs to change: in particular, more internal support for to run pilot projects that demonstrate impact in achieving citywide sustainability goals. Much work is needed in creating an environment that supports testing and user feedback, and working in an agile, iterative way. Building a “pro-pilot” culture is critical to enabling new opportunities and solutions.
Transportation departments need a shake up. They need to focus on recruiting new digitally savvy public servants, but also inspiring and building confidence among current staff to approach things differently. In the end, it’s not just new modes or services that make a transportation network truly a 21st century one. In a 21st century transportation network, the public sector is wearing some new hats.
