Mobility Innovation Team: Preparing Louisville for transportation innovations
You don’t have to try hard to find the hot new transportation innovation. It’s on your social media feed, it’s on the news, and, most glaringly, it’s on your streets. Disruptive transportation technologies are the norm, not the exception these days. And, the challenging thing about them: no one, not even the companies building them, know all the ways their product will change the way our cities work. Or, if they do, they don’t do a great job sharing, educating or working with local governments.
At Louisville Metro, our cross-functional Mobility Innovation Team (MIT) to provides a forum for local transportation agencies, both in and out of Metro, to learn about and start to prepare for the innovations we see coming and the ones that get dropped on us. Local practitioners and national experts share first-hand experience and knowledge about the newest transportation developments on topics such as Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), electric vehicles & scooters, ridesharing, Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAV), and so forth. The forum provides a physical place to learn, discuss and debate how new technologies will impact Louisville Metro’s transportation ecosystem. And, when appropriate, the MIT will take on projects to incorporate innovations into our local mobility system.
MIT Composition
The group consists of experts in the fields of:
- Air Quality
- Data Science
- Traffic Management
- Intelligent Transportation Systems
- Transportation Planning
- Transit
- Bike & Pedestrian planning
- Ridesharing
- Urban Planning
- Connected and Autonomous Vehicles
The group has members from these various internal agencies:
- Public Works
- Planning & Design
- Advanced Planning & Sustainability
- Civic Innovation & Technology
- Air Pollution Control District
And, includes members from not only Louisville Metro, but also other local agencies important for our transportation network. They hail from:
- KIPDA (our local MPO)
- Transit Authority of River City (TARC)
- University of Kentucky
- Kentucky Transportation Center
- Kentucky Transportation Cabinet
- University of Louisville
- Louisville Downtown Partnership
About our meetings and work
Inspired by Three Revolutions, the original idea was to create a small cadre of mid-level government employees to prepare us for the emerging shared, electric and automated transportation innovations through projects and strategic planning. The first several meetings focused on developing and implementing the Autonomous Vehicle Playbook. The Playbook turned out to be less of an action plan and more of a learning plan for our organization to get ready for AVs, and the MIT followed suit. Over time, the meetings focused less on projects and more on professional development. We realized quickly incorporating new technologies required us to change our culture even more than policies. So, the MIT moved away from project-based work and turned into a professional development meeting with an open invitation. The attendance varies from 15 to 25 people a month depending on the topic.
Topics include innovations that are happening to us now, like electric scooters and Intelligent Transportation Systems, and those on the horizon (at least for us) like Connected and Autonomous Vehicle management. We put a premium on local experts and fellow government officials because they provide more context to what our experience will be like with less worry about receiving a shiny product pitch. We do have a select number of vendors speak to help MIT members understand the market and what’s out there to help solve specific local challenges, but we don’t let the meetings turn into sales calls.
A selection Mobility Innovation Team Meeting Topics:
Las Vegas’ Intelligent Transportation System — Strategy and Build Out — Joanna Wadsworth, City of Las Vegas
SAFCAT — Autonomous Vehicle Safety Impact Assessment Tool — Reginald Souleyrette, University of Kentucky
Electric Scooters — Policy and Operations — James Graham, Louisville Metro
Minnesota Connected and Autonomous Vehicle Office — Keith Mensah, MnDOT
Ridesharing impact on congestion — Greg Erhardt, University of Kentucky
While professional development is the number one priority, we also work on strategic initiatives that help us move the innovation boulder forward. The first example being the Autonomous Vehicle Playbook. The MIT helped create and vet the initial drafts before they went to our local agencies to review before being published. Also, we worked with STAE as part of their innovation sandbox program to build out a platform to manage our scooter data. The MIT gave us the opportunity to share with key partners all in one place and do some design requirements gathering simultaneously. This provided the multiple benefit of helping to build a better product and introduce a new design thinking concepts to the team. We have also done more direct training on tools and techniques like with our analog hackathon and Waze WARP tools.
Here are some examples of our work:
Lessons Learned
Starting the MIT wasn’t hard, people wanted the opportunity to connect and talk about the crazy things hitting our street. The challenge is to stay consistent and relevant. We don’t hold meetings every month, if there isn’t something interesting to talk about, it doesn’t happen. We don’t burden people with even more work than they already have. We do projects, but they are limited in scope and allow people to participate as they feel comfortable. But, we do keep the drumbeat going. We hold 8 to 10 meetings a year and participants receive at least one email a month even without a meeting scheduled.
After two years of regular meetings, the MIT has proven a valuable resource for our organization. It allows us to dip our toes into ambiguous, emerging mobility topics and have real conversations about how they might work in Louisville.
Here are some tips how to create your own:
Gather diverse experts in key fields
- The power in the group is in diversity of knowledge, experience and perspectives.
Get interesting people to talk to your group
- If you haven’t learned this already, local government people generally make time for other local government people. I have had no issues getting people’s time if I schedule early enough in advance. If you see someone doing something you want to replicate, reach out. I bet they will make time to talk.
Send pre-work
- I always send a quick note about the topic and some articles in case someone wants to read more.
Don’t meet if you don’t have something to talk about
- I don’t force the meetings. If we have something to talk about or with, we meet, if not, we don’t.
Always end on time
- This is something that people choose to attend, so I never go over time. In fact, I usually end early so that people can network. Typically, about half the group will stick around to chat afterwards.
Please reach out if you have any questions ed.blayney@louisvilleky.gov or @edblayney on twitter.
