Mobility futures, data challenges and the infrastructure investment we need

I was recently asked by the Bond Buyer to share some perspective on what the changes and challenges that we’re facing in the mobility space mean for public investment in infrastructure.

For those of you who aren’t aware, the Bond Buyer is the magazine of record for the US public finance industry, which includes the government finance officials, municipal advisors, legal counsel, bankers and investors who raise and manage the funds to pay for, among many other things, the roads, bridges, lanes and paths we use everyday.

(In my previous role at Neighborly I spent a few years trying to open up the industry — and understanding of it — to community members and public servants. How does an infrastructure idea become a financial product called a bond? Find out.)

I still believe that infrastructure finance is one of the most important areas of day to day life that is largely invisible to the people it affects (that’s everyone). So I was delighted to have the opportunity to discuss the future of mobility with a group of people who will have a significant stake in shaping how it works, looks and feels.

Below is a quick summary of my article — or you can jump straight to it.

The way people get around, especially in cities, is changing more rapidly now than in several generations, with the disruptive force of ride-sharing being joined by bike shares, scooters, e-bikes and autonomous vehicles. These changes are key to fueling economic growth and making places more liveable, but they’re also putting a strain on infrastructure and local decision making.

We all know that infrastructure investment across the country is badly overdue, but how can we drive funding for projects in a way that can keep up with the pace of change instead of waiting for the next 10-year master plan?

There’s a great opportunity here to use data to understand the changing mobility landscape, prioritize areas for investment and, critically, evaluate the effectiveness of investments in much shorter timeframes. With great volumes of data, though, comes great responsibility, and the need to adapt to stricter privacy control is nowhere more urgent than in location-based data.

To take advantage of the opportunity ahead and meet those challenges head on, policymakers and investors need to embrace a more agile approach to infrastructure investment.