 Good evening everyone. I'm Cara McCarty curatorial director Cooper Hewitt and one of three curators of The exhibition the road ahead reimagining mobility Which most of you know is on the third floor through the end of March? If you haven't seen it, I welcome you back to the museum and please tell your friends colleagues Strangers about the exhibition to come and see it because It's really it's been it's up for a shorter time than most of our exhibitions But it's had a lot of attention and as you all know, I think that's why you're here tonight it is such a hot topic and We are thrilled to be able to be a player in this and help to hopefully Move the discourse forward or help to create more discourse by bringing together a constellation of projects research That covered different aspects of the of the future of mobility I Would like to take a moment to thank our exhibition sponsors The road ahead is made possible through the generosity of the erring crantz fund Barbara and Morton Mandel design gallery endowment fund the Lillioch and Klaus foundation and the August Heckscher exhibition fund and Before we start with tonight's program. I just want to say this was another really energizing day at Cooper Hewitt Thanks to one of our panelists who is here Mike Milley from design group design BMW design BMW group design work. Sorry Came for the panel, but he also spent the afternoon with high school and college students really introducing them to ways designers think about Projects and of course and this was the focus was on mobility They started with a tour of the exhibition and then came down to our design studio and to a standing room only space I understand where my cat is sort of hide in a corner But the students were coming up with new ideas for interiors for autonomous vehicles Streetscapes when we don't have so many cars on the streets, and I understand The results were really quite impressive and imaginative. So I'm one of the many design prep programs here at the museum and Tonight we are delighted to have a wealth of expertise with us for inspiring leaders in transportation design and safety who will help us explore how future mobility will necessitate designing new roads new rules of the road Probably new roads to Ben ebble is chairman of the Michelang challenge design program and currently serves as user experience design director at the Michelang customer experience lab in Greenville, South Carolina Ben's many contributions at Michelang include work on the twill Non-numatic tire wheel solution the a chorus flexible wheel and the design of multiple global tire lines In addition, he developed the Michelang challenge design program, which is the premier global mobility design competition boasting over 14,000 entries from 134 countries Wow is right Jacqueline killing Gillan is president emeritus at advocates for highway and auto safety Under her leadership Advocates has become one of the nation's premier highway and auto safety safety organizations influencing federal state and local transportation safety policies and laws Jacqueline has worked in senior policy positions for the United States Senate the US Department of Transportation As well as three state transportation agencies New Jersey California and Ohio She is an expert on numerous transportation policy issues Including autonomous vehicles and self-driving technology motor vehicle and motor carrier safety Occupant protection teen distracted and impaired driving as well as bicycle and pedestrian safety Mike Milley is a director foresight and strategy at BMW group design works He leads a cross-disciplinary team that brings the future of lot to life at the intersection of research Strategy Mike has been an enthusiastic Catalyst for design for over 20 years answering the question. What's next for some of the most innovative global brands? Prior to joining design works He was the founding global director of Samsung's lifestyle research lab a forward-looking Think tank that used human centered human focus foresight to envision product opportunities across Samsung's markets And like has had been a great friend of Cooper Hewitt Henry Greenwich Unfortunately is unable to join us tonight. He was attending South by Southwest and his plane Got stuck so he's very sorry. He could not attend tonight's on discussion This esteemed group will be in conversation with Joan Claybrook. I had the great pleasure of meeting Joan in January of 2017 at the Detroit auto show when we were embarking on research for this exhibition and she Impressed me to know and at that moment. She was standing on this very long stage With a lot of men Including the director. I mean that the the governor of Michigan two senators a senator from Ohio and several car manufacturers and she was the only woman and really held her own So I made a beeline for her afterwards and said we must have you at Cooper Hewitt Joan is the former president of public citizen and a consumer advocate attorney Specialized in vehicle safety and efficiency and more recently has been deeply involved in setting policies for autonomous vehicles She was appointed by President Jimmy Carter to lead the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in the US Department of Transportation Where she issued standards requiring airbags and the first federal fuel economy standards She also initiated the new car assessment program Crash testing vehicles to provide consumers with safety performance and information By vehicle make and model that has been emulated in Europe Asia and South America At public citizen she oversaw litigation attorneys who argued more than 60 cases before the US Supreme Court doctors monitoring the FDA Forcing recalls and labeling of dangerous pharmaceuticals Oversight of federal energy and related environmental policies an act of ethics Lobbying and campaign reform legislation as well as numerous vehicle safety laws After what I suspect will be a spirited discussion We will leave 15 minutes for Q&A for all of you to ask your questions Please join me in welcoming our panelists. Thank you Sorry, good evening. It's really a pleasure to be here I was told to treat this as a part of my body so that everyone could hear and it would get properly recorded And the first thing I did was to forget So this is a very instrumental moment in time in terms of mobility and transportation personal transportation the United States has been car-oriented forever and Everyone loves to drive their cars are almost everyone loves to drive their cars and Now we have these new technologies and designs that are Driving huge changes in mobility With major impacts in our communities our existing infrastructure Public acceptance government regulation cost and industry capacity The advent of the driverless car technology is already forcing major business consumer and government changes So my first question to this panel and anyone can jump in and decide they want to Answer it and then we'll go around is understanding the transportation designs impact safety the performance of the vehicle the environment Commerce visual appearance as well as community compatibility How do we assure that design choices for future mobility serve our public and private needs? Who wants to jump in on that one jump in Okay Thank You Joan great question as you heard from a Little description they gave my background was in transportation planning And I have worked sort of at the federal level and on legislation in Congress and worked You know with states and I think we are at a really important point and my belief and philosophy on transportation is that it ought to be Compatible and complement each other the different modes of transportation and not compete with each other And I think that we are kind of an important point right now Where I was just you know reading the other day that these studies are coming forward now that rail I mean ride hailing services are now growing Exponentially exponentially. I know I talk a lot with my hands While we have public transit on the decline and that's not healthy for cities at all when we're trying to achieve this balance where we have cars and Bicyclists and walkers and public transit because we don't want our Central business districts and our cities urban areas clogged and congested with cars and that's the problem You know that we're facing right now when we have autonomous vehicles that are coming on and we have a huge growth in ride hailing services and we have these declines in public transit because we're not putting enough resources into public transit and bicycling and walking I just I'm going to be quiet But I just came back from a trip to Australia New Zealand and the cities there are just going gangbusters I mean Auckland, you know Christchurch Wellington Melbourne they're building subway systems They're building light rail systems and much to the chagrin of my taxicad driver In in Melbourne they're taking lanes away from cars and making them share them with bicyclists And that's what we should be doing more of in the United States and we're not And it's it's we want the car of the future. We want autonomous vehicles In order to address safety problems, but it's going to be a bumpy road till we get there And we have to make some really important decisions So I think The yes is the first thing I'll say I agree with those points You know as a designer my job is actually to ask questions and once you ask the right question The answer is usually pretty easy But you have to ask a different question I think then we've been asking five ten fifteen twenty years down the road So my if I was to say what what would be the ultimate failure of the potential for all of these technologies We're talking about it would be a lack of adoption And so I feel like as a designer and as a member of the mobility community It's our responsibility to reach out to you guys right to the people who are actually going to utilize these systems and Realize that we need to design with the end user in mind And I think oftentimes we may confuse technology with the answer right technology is a Facilitation to achieving an end goal You know I think autonomy is a wonderful thing as long as we understand what we're going to address with it And we see in our in our design challenge that different zones of the world have different beliefs and what autonomy is going to do In the US We tend to see people wanting to address the 40,000 people that die every year on the roads in Europe We tend to see providing mobility to people that don't have mobility because of a handicap or advanced age in China We see the fact that when you build a road with 20 lanes and you have multi-day Traffic jams we got an inherent problem with our currently available solutions And so autonomy is not an answer to all three of those things because it can't be the same thing in all three of those zones But I think it can be a Technology that if we ask the right questions can get us a lot closer to to solving some of those core problems one of the issues is that the auto manufacturers in the high-tech industry now are investing huge amounts of money and designing autonomous vehicles and At some point they want payback They want people to buy these vehicles and use them and buy the suppliers supplies and so on and so In a way, they're driving the decision-making Rather than looking at what we need they're looking at what they want to sell. What do you think of that? I would actually disagree with that. Okay, good as a designer working in the automotive industry We start with thinking about the system that we are delivering solutions into right So I would say maybe the first hundred years of BMW was thinking about the car as a discreet object That someone gets in and behaves either alone or with their family Now we start with what is the ecosystem of mobility that this experience exists within? How can we be responsible in how people transition between different modes of mobility? And how can we make sure that we are playing the long game in terms of creating sustainable and meaningful mobility solutions? Okay, but the fact is that at least in the United States, and I think less so in Europe I don't know as much about Asia At least not China They are pushing really hard the auto companies generally and the two and their Manufacturers and the tech companies are pushing really hard to get autonomous cars onto the road And my evidence for that is that this last two years in Congress The auto manufacturers in the high-tech industry pushed legislation that would deregulate safety for autonomous cars and so I Envy your position because I see you as someone who is really looking at it the right way But I'm not so sure that the whole industry is And you're very lucky to be in the position that you're in to be able to do that. I concur I Think Joan also The reality is that in the United States. We're playing ketchup. We have something like 836 billion dollar backlog in highway road and bridge needs We have you know another hundred billion dollar backlog in you know transit investments So, you know, we have these cars, you know the autonomous vehicles You know introduce but we don't have the infrastructure to accommodate them And so then you're going to be asking, you know taxpayers and local officials Okay, should we be send spending your gas tax revenues to upgrade our roads to accommodate the people that you know Want to drive in these autonomous vehicles driverless cars because everybody knows right now They they do have a difficult time identifying, you know, or driving in snow or rain or identifying lines or Traffic signalization if it's not perfect And so then you have to make these choices, okay If I have money am I going to use it to repair a bridge or am I going to use it to upgrade, you know Our roads so that you know an autonomous vehicle can drive down it And I think those are tough choices that people are going to face well, one of the other issues of course here and Maybe Ben you have some comment on this is that these vehicles everyone's talking about them But they don't really they're not really ready for the road Do you want to talk about that or are you are you ready to do that or? Mike would you like that? I mean I can certainly give my personal opinion Mike may have a more Company-centered stance on that, you know ready for the road is kind of been quotes, right? And I think that's one of the real questions about the maturity of autonomous Technology is I think it was Elon Musk who said that getting to ninety nine point nine percent Capability of an autonomous car is really easy Relatively speaking, but that last point zero one percent is Astoundingly challenging right so I think one of the core questions that if I can Rephrase a little bit there is you know, what does ready mean? You know, I mean does ready mean that an autonomous vehicle is ready to operate in a geofence city area? Where every other vehicle is also autonomous, you know, does it mean that? It's only used on certain roadways by certain people on certain times of the day I mean, you know ready for the road is such a big a big question that I think it for me That's one of the core issues is when do we decide that that's happened and it's a journey, right? I don't think I think there's a popular conceptualization that there's going to be a moment where we flip a switch and every Vehicle is autonomous level five right the car that I drive every day has what I call a ton of mish features That are slowly giving me a more autonomous experience But nowhere near the full so much you describe those so things like I can have my car I can designate a distance that I want to follow the vehicle in front of me And it won't get any closer to that automatically It won't get any closer than that exact so I can keep my feet off the pedals and gas While I'm driving in traffic for instance, so that creates a better experience for me as a driver Those sort of steps are what are getting us to the place as a culture where we're going to be able to Accept the experience of autonomy I think if you take a person transport them 50 years into the future and put them in a level five autonomy car They're gonna freak out right because we're used to literally being in the driver's seat Okay, I'd like to define what level five is under the industry descriptions of Autonomous cars is one through five and one is not autonomous and five is totally autonomous and that means no steering wheel no gas pedal no brake pedal the car is Programmed to drive itself and you tell it where you want to go and it makes its way and it goes there And so when you know, I might say level two is like the Tesla Right, right level two is Tesla and that may be moving into level three. Yeah, right, so it's it's It's important to understand that that the industry certainly understands that there's a Variation between here and there and I agree with you Mike I agree with you completely. I think that we ought to move into this arena with a Gradual improvements in cars so that people get used to it understand it But as you say if you put some in a car with no steering wheel I think there's also a really interesting topic around the idea that we you know have a lack of equal distribution of autonomous technology in Mobility meaning that I'm very fortunate that I get to drive a fabulous BMW every day Not everyone has that luxury in Los Angeles for instance So there is going to be an interesting moment where you know, there's going to be a transition in More autonomous cars than non autonomous cars or the partially or the average level of So that's going to be a really interesting kind of ramp up and you know We're starting to have conversation speaking of thinking on the systems level of how are we going to address that? How is an autonomous vehicle potentially going to communicate and or interact with a non autonomous vehicle? Are there ways that we'll be able to kind of retrofit? Non-autonomous vehicles so that they can participate in the conversation as it were It's a really interesting design challenge that I think that is the I think that's the key I really think the eaves to identify the key right which is that the average car on the road in America is 11.8 years old right so that means that if on March 3rd all of a sudden we snapped our fingers and all cars were only autonomous that were sold We got 11.8 years before we even get to half right you see what I'm saying So I mean I think that transitional period where we have autonomous cars coexisting with non autonomous cars Therein is is the true Meet of the discussion because that's where we're going to figure out how we want to have these technologies coexist I think that's really important and I would challenge the auto industry not just BMW But the domestic industry here too in taking the technologies that we have like my vehicle has automatic breaking And I mean that's a way to educate the public about these technologies to introduce them in the cars Even if you're not at a fully autonomous, we do have some wonderful technologies that out there that are saving lives lane departure warning automatic breaking You know the system you described where you can program what the distance is and I think is More and more people get involved in that and familiar with it, then they will be more readily Interested and open to accepting it You know you heard the introduction of Joan on airbags I mean when Joe and I worked on airbags in 1977 you can only imagine when we were going up to Congress and getting them to approve this regulation Explaining to a member of Congress that there is a safety device that oh by the way was going to come out of your steering wheel Explode and save your life, and they look at you like what have you been smoking, you know It's like and now everybody comes to what's the 70s What's your point So you know is so you're explaining to people about airbags the same thing Joan and I worked on the legislation That has made rear view cameras standard equipment. I mean anybody who has it on their car I mean who can drive or park or do anything without you know backing up without that rear view camera And yet at first people were really reluctant. Oh, no I feel more comfortable turning around and looking and now everybody's very dependent on that technology So I would challenge the auto industry, you know, don't wait until you have a fully autonomous, you know vehicle You should start introducing this technology now so that the public becomes accustomed to it Well, I think that one of the other issues that we need to address then is what are going to be the rules What are the rules of the road today? We have a lot of rules That many of you probably don't even know exists. There's some 50 or 60 Motor vehicle safety standards that auto manufacturers have to comply with for the cars that are on the highway today and so many of the things that you take for granted weren't on the cars of the 50s or the 60s and even the 70s and so The question is what kind of rules are you going to have for autonomous cars? And one of the one of the stress points on this is that the tech people who are designing these vehicles and systems Think that the government is in the dark ages And it doesn't really have the capacity to issue rules that are consonant with the New designs and ideas that are coming forward with Autonomous cars and I would have to agree with that even though I'm a great advocate of minimum government safety standards because the Department of Transportation has been completely underfunded and has very few tech people in its auto safety agency at this point and it's really essentially killing the agency by starving it to death and so For the future we have to look not only at what's the capacity of the industry But what's the capacity of the government to make this work right because as we all know when there was a government shutdown We are very dependent on the government even though we don't admit it some of the time And so I'm just wondering what you all think in terms of how do we get from here to there? How do we get bring the government forward and the industry? Not looking at this as an adversarial process, but trying to figure out how to make it work. That's a really tough Challenge I think for the future you know one thing that's happening in Los Angeles right now that I think is a really interesting model for this kind of conversation is a New type of public-private partnership, right that the the city and county of LA are reaching out to tech sort of Automotive and other industries in order to bring the best of those two worlds together, right that the sort of Larger-scale problem-solving vision setting that governments can do combined with the get-it-done agility of the private industry I think is providing this new kind of framework or pattern For coming to these kinds of you know developing these regulations and rules that you're talking about in a way that kind of I think Meets both sides Well, there are lots of stresses and strains in that because That whole concept of public-private partnerships sounds wonderful But it often ends up without ever anything ever happening that really ends up controlling where you're headed and So it has to have a an endpoint that results in decisions that are things everyone has to agree to and comply with So that's one of the problems with many of those partnerships. They don't end up there The other issue is that I think that really we need to figure out how to address and Jackie is Raised this in part is how do we decide how we're going to allocate our national resources on Future mobility that is a huge issue because if you're gonna have autonomous cars You do have to fix up the infrastructure. No question about it. I mean it needs to be fixed even without that But it needs to be particularly fixed with it So how do we go about making sure that we're allocating our resources in a good way? Between how we transport people how we get people from here to there what changes are to be made in the in cities How air pollution can be reduced? Maybe can less use of gasoline That's a really Tough tough issue for the for the future. How do you all think that we should do that? Pulling you outside of your Panel was gonna be like this Design maybe a tire or two and we could just I will say In my years in the industry both an automotive and now in more mobility focused I think I've never seen as much Consciousness around needing to involve cities Governments non private entities and I do now, you know, I mean um we Michelin hosts a Sustainable mobility summit every year up in Montreal in June called moving on and it's specifically Trying to bring together disparate partners to make some of these these things happen, right? And so it's everything from not just the BMWs of the world, but also, you know City governments, right? And you'll see now there are there are innovation Officers for particular cities now LA has one Detroit has one and so I think there's a recognition that This problem is too big for for any not just one company But one entity to succeed in and so I do see more strange bedfellows than I ever have before I don't think it's something that just from an inertia standpoint will take care of itself, right? I mean someone has to make the hard decision which says this is not a choice. This is how you're going to address it But but I think that I think the natural inclination of this issue is so vast that That it's being addressed more in that holistic way than I've ever seen before Do you think more is happening at the state level and the local level or the national I think so because I think that's where You're gonna see the impact first, right? I mean, you know one thing we've talked about geofencing and you know The European movement where certain cities are going to eliminate first, you know Carbon producing vehicles and then cars period along a sliding scale You know that has impact on local populations first and so I think those cities and municipalities are taking that on as Ownership which is that we're making these decisions. We know there's going to be impacts boy We'd rather not figure that out after we do it, right? We'd love to get in front of that and again it goes back to that question. Why are you doing that? What are you trying to solve and so specifically when you can involve members of the public in those early discussions? You got a lot better chance to get it right. I was gonna ask Jackie What role does public opinion pay in this and how does public opinion have an impact? I mean, we know that there's a lot of concern among the public About autonomous cars. There's a lot of fear and a lot of resentment in some places But how do we get them involved to help plan our future? Well, John, I have to you in the last two years I always jokingly say there have been more public opinion polls on what people think about Self-driving cars than almost presidential choices. I mean There's every month the poll comes out and I think that the industry needs to look carefully at those polls because they overwhelmingly show that the public has skepticism and fear and hesitancy about The new technology and with good reason. I mean we right now the National Transportation Safety Board is investigating six Crashes involving Self-driving technology and some of those crashes resulted in deaths the woman who was crossing the street The road in Tempe, Arizona with her bicycle was hit by an Uber even though it had a backup driver in it Just a couple weeks ago. There was another Tesla crash and I think that You know, it's easy to dismiss public opinion by saying oh the public is always hesitant They don't know but if you look at the polls, it's across ages In fact, I find one of the most interesting polls done by sad where high school students were asked to rate on a scale of one to five How safe they felt in driverless cars autonomous vehicles with five being the safest 55% said one You know, and this is our future and they even are concerned about the technology You know, and I think that that's why it's so imperative that the industry is really Tries as hard. I mean we you're not looking for perfection But you have to be close to it for safety because every time one of these crashes and there's a story on it That only feeds into the public view that this is not safe technology I mean who in this audience tonight wants to get you know bored a Boeing 737 max 8 jet You know well no one does now because of the crash and I think that you know has application to you know Some of the driverless car technology where it's being introduced prematurely. It's being put out there sold to the public and You know, it's not working the way it should so I think the public opinion polls are really important and good Barometers of where we need to go any comment I think that's hard because What's hard that that question is very hard right about which is it goes to the point of when is ready ready, right? And you know, so the question is that you know, there have been accidents involving autonomous cars there are accidents involving non-on-on cars every day and so The question is when are you doing more good and I'm not sure when that inflection point is but you know The question is when does the technology? Get not perfect, but get better than the average driver And is that the point where you want to you know make it standard and in that scale Is really a public opinion scale, you know, I mean that scale is really about when do you feel safer? Putting over that as opposed to to having someone else drive the car You know, when would I feel safer riding with no one then I would riding with you, John You know and I don't know but and it goes back to that transition idea Right that there's definitely be a very long period of time in which I will be in a car that has a driver That is supported by these autonomous features, right? So I can definitely Very vividly picture a few rides that I've had in New York City this week where I would prefer to have had a robot Then the human being that was kind of driving. I don't think a robot could match With you in New York or phantasm in terms of style and verb I'll give you that but there are some safety moments where I really clutched my pearls And I'm looking forward to that long sort of thoughtful transition that we have where I can feel that that driver has some Technological support to help him or her drive more safely to give him or her more information So that they can be making the right choices making more informed choices As they're doing the death-defying Task of driving in New York City traffic John I just wanted to respond I think part of the problem is that we have the introduction of this technology But we have a government that's taken a hands-off approach to hands-free driving And so a lot of the technology is being introduced I mean if you're in a crash your airbags go out go off because there's a performance standard the government has set They must perform and you know save you at a certain mile per hour crash And you cannot sustain any injury these are the standards that cover collapsible steering wheels The rear view cameras and right now we don't have that for any of the autonomous Technology and so it's being introduced in a way it kind of reminds me you know in the FDA would never Introduce or allow a drug to be sold without doing a lot of testing and oversight same thing with FAA when new Technology is introduced on airplanes, but on autonomous vehicles There is a race amongst you know a lot of the auto traditional auto companies and the tech company to be the first one out there You know to claim it and I think that sacrifice that safety is being sacrificed because there are no government regulations Or minimum performance requirements, and it's kind of the Wild West out there where you know Some companies are responsible, but others are just trying to get the technology out there to recoup their financial investment. I think that that's a major concern and There was legislation last year in the Senate which Jackie and I worked to defeat Because it would have deregulated safety for autonomous vehicles, and we felt there was a much higher Responsibility than that by the US government and one of the things that is Quite unique to these vehicles is the whole issue of cyber security And there's tremendous fear among the public about cyber security and for good reason and That was completely ignored these vehicles have electronics They're really computers on wheels and yet there was no standard nor is there today any standard to make sure those electronics work properly and that appears to be a problem with this Boeing plane that the electronics weren't working properly So that's a huge issue whether the vehicle can actually see in the in the Arizona crash the vehicle didn't actually see this woman who was a pedestrian with her bicycle and so you have to have some kind of Requirements for what the vehicle has to be able to see as we have to when we get our driver's license take a test for what we can see and so There's a huge number of things that need to be done and it's a major major Effort that is going to be required and major funding for that. So I agree with you Jackie I think that's a I don't I just want to add one point on the funding issue and back to your question on how Do you get designed adopted? I mean, I'm a real pragmatist and you know money talks and right now most transportation is funded by excise taxes on gasoline and the federal gas tax and Unfortunately, we're never going to achieve that balance of you know cars versus Transit while 86 cents out of a dollar is going to roads and only 14 Sense of the dollar is going to transit So we kind of need to you know work on that and there are even members of Congress now They're talking about doing a multi-billion dollar infrastructure bill and there are members of Congress who feel that and some groups that Oh, we shouldn't be giving any of this money to transit which you know all of us in the room would you know be appalled? Can you imagine? New New York transit or New York subway has something like seven million rides a day Can you imagine if all those rides were in cars? I mean nobody would ever be able to get home or you know do anything and so I think as far as promoting sort of the design in Mobility we have to look at how are we approaching mobility if we're putting most of the money in roads and Bridges and you know everybody's playing catch-up, you know, don't get me wrong Everybody's trying to get the potholes fixed But I don't think we're ever going to achieve that balance unless we have a more balanced funding of the modes All right, that's a huge issue and the gas tax is also producing less income and in fact some cities are now or states are Upping the gas tax substantially because there just isn't enough money to deal with the backlog of need and also look at the future for what we have coming forward and I would like to raise an issue a sort of a tech issue for our two tech guys here because we've been talking a lot of Public policy, which is where I sort of focus my efforts and that is it's not just a choice is it between a an autonomous vehicle as we know it today a car and Mass transit, what are the other options? That you all see in the future and some of them by the way are in the exhibit here If you haven't seen you should definitely take a look at it's been it's been really inspiring for me to see all of the The new variety of options that are coming out there. It's happening in a very experimental way, which I think is really exciting also Potentially a little dangerous. We've definitely seen a massive exactly But scooters and everything in between, you know every every time One kind of driver sees a scooter they have this sort of you know get off my lawn you kids kind of attitude Every time I see a scooter. I think that's a person who's not in a car, right? And so the more that we give ourselves the opportunity to experiment and explore and innovate in those Nonvehicular and non transit alternatives I think that we're going to be able to create a sort of system of solutions that enable people to make the right choices For themselves and their personal needs because that amount of flexibility accessibility And sort of relevance for an individual is what's going to drive them to adopting that solution Well, you know that the new generation Don't buy cars apparently. Mm-hmm. So I'm learning in my own family they don't want to have to the responsibility they want to have to deal with the car and So Lyft and and uber and others have taken off. They feel it's much more efficient They'd rather have a car pick them up and drop them off and they don't have to worry about it and there is a lot to worry about when you're in a car and so we have that variation and Then we have these little scooters. They're all over Washington. I presume they're all over every place now All over the world and so people just stand on then they push a little button there electronically Are they electric scooter just moves ahead and there are lots of other options? so It does seem to me that this kind of experimentation is very Powerful and I think that there are going to be a lot of changes. Do you have some thoughts on that? I agree hundred percent. I think Mike earlier was talking about how you need to move to an autonomous vehicle, right? I think you know, we're all aware of mobility as a service, right? Which is where you wouldn't own a car kind of the the ultimate goal of autonomous vehicles as you call one on your phone It comes and gets you right and and we start to look at mobility as a service And I think uber and Lyft and and ride sharing that that was the first move to that, right? No longer was it that you know, you wanted to have your car for reasons that really didn't have to do a Whole lot with mobility, right? I mean, I'm still there I I'm not a very cool guy, but I think my car is pretty cool, right? So it gets me about halfway there, you know But I think that for a lot of people in the younger generation specifically They don't look at mobility as being an artifact of owning a vehicle They look at getting where they want to go as being the the ultimate goal, right? And is it is it not? For me, no, I mean, it's not it's not for all of us, right? I mean, there's the whole pleasure of driving a car that is Related to getting somewhere, you know, but it's the whole idea which is it's the journey not the destination, right? And that's a very different relationship with a way of getting around that I think a lot of people today have and and I frankly I think some of us of course not us But some others of us may feel a little sense of longing about that, you know about this relationship that's been defined by countless songs and movies and all of these things, right? I mean cars are are woven into our fabric and so to change that to where instead of being something that's a possession that represents Something bigger than just moving to just being moving Boy, that's big, right? And that takes those small steps But I think that uber and Lyft and this ride-sharing idea Frankly, I think those are the small steps that eventually get us there. And what about transit mass transit? I Think that that that is going to be where you're going to really have to involve government and municipalities because you know Especially as mobility as a service becomes more and more convenient I think it possibly could have a negative impact on mass transit, right? Are you worried about the studies that show that mass transit or public transit is declining as Ride-hailing services is increased. I mean to me that goes against everything We're trying to do like declawed the city's clean air or energy efficiency And yet, you know, we're promoting the use of single vehicle occupants, you know driving around in cars And I think that's concerning not only for mobility, but also for you know other values that we have I mean I think one thing is there's also an argument which says that as more Vehicles as a service are on the road traffic is gonna get worse not better Oh, because it's cheaper to keep driving around than it is to park in a parking space, right? So you're putting more vehicles on the road. So, you know, all that guess what all of these things We're not gonna get them right the first time, right? You get them right over time as you learn You know, it's not learned to do it's due to learn And I think that that we're gonna see consequences of this mobility revolution that we have no Concept of yet and that's what we're gonna have to see Drones, um, I mean, I think from a from a last mile delivery standpoint that would sure be nice And apparently it's happening, right? Yeah So there's not only the movement of human beings. It's the movement of packages and goods which has just Blown off the top of the earth. I mean, there's so much of that happening now people go on their computer They order something they get at the next day Who could ever have expected that, right? So you're right. There are a lot of things we can't anticipate. Would you like to comment on that? I'm excited about drones personally Regulation regulation regulation, that's what I say. We're gonna have questions at just a minute So are we or are you ready for questions? Yes, we have five minutes. Okay, we could stop and just I think we should just stop and Probably get involved in this Okay, go ahead, sir Okay, I'm Oli Hakanen architect from Finland and I'm a bit amazed that how How the vision What should be done is missing how the budget is missing I mean the reason what what should be done with mobility in the future is missing In the panel, I mean, how come there being question That mass transit is not the answer. I mean Autonomous vehicles will never be the answer without being having a role which is good for them they are not They are not to be given the Master position of our future because it's it's mathematically impossible and I think the autonomous vehicle is a good name but driverless cars is is just Punch of nonsense according to my opinion. I mean it's good for this They're supposed to be the same thing as people describing them. I mean, but why would it be car? Why would it be like our car nowadays? What is that? Why would it be like what? Why it would be the automobiles we have today? if we are Wouldn't shouldn't we be thinking about the new architecture of mobility the new system Intelligence of the mobility and in that sense We must have a rapid rapid fast mass transit and We have already autonomous vehicles vehicles which are good for Taking people for the last mile services, right? So so We should I think and that's why I'm here in New York Because this is the place where the change should Happen that we begin to Make people flow master plans Well, I agree with you and I think that that one of the problems is is that Jackie has Identified is that there is a mass underfunding of mass transit and That's because there is no lobby group that is specifically Benefits other than a pretty small industry. Well, well, there are lobbying groups they just don't have the Political power that the trucking industry and the other industries have to put money into rows You know and talking about, you know, why is you know? Uber and Lyft even in New York City, you know There was just a report out a month or so ago and the your department of transportation director of poly Testsify for Congress that you know, it is discouraging to see Lyft and those services Growing exponentially and people are not taking transit. Well, you know, you can sort of see it I mean, I understand it to you know I mean do I call Lyft and have them drive me in a pretty clean car air conditioning nice Or do I get on the metro system in Washington, DC where the air conditioning may not be working You're crowded in there. You're stopping between stations and things. So I think you're right I mean we the mass transit part of the equation. I mean, we have to make that attractive And you know not to dwell too much on my recent trip to Australia, but they're building these lines They they have congestion pricing They want people to drive to the station But then in order to come to the center city to get on their light Transit or get on the subway or in the trolley car whatever and I don't think I think that's the problem Is that we can't expect new design and transit when in New York City? You're still struggling with trying to you know Take care of patching your system So the money does talk and I think that we need to put more money in those resource Into transit and mass transit light rail, you know, so that we're not competing It's not oh, I'm gonna take lift because it's so difficult to ride a subway car at rush hour And I think those are kind of the political realities that you know We're not gonna change things until we change that funding well That's a huge problem the members of Congress from the Northeast always pushing more money for Amtrak and mass transit And so on but you got the folks from Wyoming and Idaho They're not really too interested in allocating a lot of transportation money to to that so it's it's a struggle and that's where the people matter and For those of you who are speaking out today and and for the future think about what you can do to influence You know members of Congress There have been amazing changes in the last decade with the public speaking out on issues and it's having a huge effect And this is in my view one of those so let's have some more questions. Yes Little selfishly speaking here our New York metropolitan area, I'm sure that you're aware that last year The RPA put out their fourth regional plan a lot of which talked about centralizing All the transportation related issues under one umbrella and central Control Last week the here in the city the Speaker's office put out a let's go plan that talks about municipal control of the MTA first of two questions, I guess first have you had an opportunity to Take a look at the RPA's fourth regional plan. Have you also and what your thoughts are on it and and the recent Let's go plan that came out of the Speaker's office. Have you had an opportunity to I haven't because I live in Washington and not in New York, but I would say let's get some plans and and gets get operational I'm a very operational oriented person. So One plan or another plan may not be perfect, but I think that we ought to get going with them So that's sort of my overall focus was I want him to have a mic so increase die Access for more bike lanes Walking lanes parks and so forth in the city So plans are very very important for transportation because it's a very expensive to change roads to change transit hugely expensive and so Plans are good not only so that you use your money wisely but so that you gain public acceptance and agreement and Those that's the most important thing I think any head of transportation any government agency local state national can do is to get plans designed for 10 20 30 years and To get public acceptance to go and sell them get make changes if they're not On target and so on some other questions. Can we go to us? Yes, you talked a bit about economic incentives around transport Can the panel address the question of like the cost the financial cost of being lost in lost in congestion? So I had heard something at the World Bank estimates about the hour the dollar per hour in traffic This was the cost of congestion when you don't have a decent transportation. Oh, it's huge. It's huge I mean I I Was looking at information just in I think New York It's something like a hundred billion dollars a year is what it costs you and con in congestion So, you know, as I said, you know, you want the new technology and vehicles I mean, you know, Joan and I have spent our careers trying to get the technology to save lives But I was also, you know reminded that you know You have a 90% less chance of being in a fatal or injury produced or having a fatality or injury By taking public transit versus being in your car So not only do you have the energy efficiency, but you also have safety and I know the pollution control Yeah, and I know the auto industry and those that are strong proponents of autonomous vehicles say well You know, 94% of all the crashes in the United States and cars are the result of human error Well, there are ways to address that, you know, as I jokingly said to my husband last week, you know Cars are becoming computers and computers are programmed by humans So you're not completely eliminating human error and last week my computer crashed and I walked away unharmed You know, I don't know whether that'll always be the case if I'm in a car and the computer crashes You know, I think that there are issues that and a lot of things on cost of congestion too You know, you're seeing your car. You're frustrated. You miss an appointment And it's hard to quantify that and it's hard to use that in some of the arguments over funding to say well This is what it's costing us not to put money into transit. It's also really interesting to think about as Autonomous vehicles become more predominant what I'm going to be able to actually do with that time That I'm caught in traffic, right? Am I going to be able to be productive? Am I going to be able to be creative? Am I going to be able to catch up on sleep? This is where this is where I think design comes into the equation, right? How can we sort of think about what experiences people want to have in these autonomous vehicles that they're not currently able to have? How can we sort of envision those be intentional about them in such a way that we're able to get back some of that time potentially? Yeah, and you know on autonomous vehicles, I don't want to sound like, you know, I'm really just critical. I don't want them Many many years ago. I did a research project on the transportation needs of the elderly and You know the most isolated Population are elderly people who live in suburban areas and when you stop driving, you know, and you don't have transit near you I mean you are stuck and so I do see a need for Autonomous vehicles that would be a tremendous step forward in you know giving improving the quality of life of older Americans And disabled and disabled too. So I think there's a role. I think again without harping I think we need balance We shouldn't have these modes competing with each other that one takes away from the other And I think we have to sort of come up with that balance of walking and biking and scooters and cars and transit So that everybody, you know benefits from it One more question in the back Then thank you for addressing how some of us own cars for the pure joy of driving So my question is about the future of design for people who buy cars who love to drive and Has automobile design reached a point where it has just evolved so much that the next stage is to take out the driver Or is there anything exciting on the horizon in terms of car design or automobile design? And what is the future of that? so There's there's definitely competing theories on that I remember last year hearing a panel discussion and one of the panellists who was a car designer said that We will look back on cars that you could drive today as we do horses, right? Is which they're pure recreation and then another panellists who was an urban planner said we'll look back on cars That you can drive like we did smoking in public So so there's definitely different opinions on that Um, I I think that what you're gonna start seeing is more specialization, right? I think you're gonna start seeing generalized mobility and then you're gonna see really specific Vehicles that are used for certain things Lamborghinis that kind of yeah, exactly And I think I think we're gonna start seeing that is that the people who I think majority of people who use cars to Transport themselves are of course going to accept, you know a different opportunity but I think those of us that Don't forget. There's 300 million cars on the road right now in the US, right? They're not going away So I think you can probably pick one up cheap, you know once all the autonomous cars come out So, you know, there will be opportunities I think for for people to continue to drive and where it may happen, frankly is you were mentioning suburban us You know that that's where I live, right? I mean my my personal challenges are very different than I think a lot of the people in the audiences here are in my Experiences are very different and and I think that my my area, which is very truck heavy Maybe one of the last places where you see people giving up the ability to drive completely, you know I think they see it as a as a right and it's something that they want to keep And so I think that goes to that question of is it a federal question state question city question I think mobility becomes very Localized and and I also would like to call out the gentleman here from Finland who who asked the first question and good on you for For I think calling us out about vision, right? Because I think at the end of the day Similar to what you said and what what Joan just addressed is I mean you're the one that has to be willing to Participate in mass transit, you know and where I live I can tell you that mass transit is discriminated against, you know, it's seen as you use mass transit because you don't have a car, right? So so there is this whole public Perception built in and there is also an idea which is you know, we're not designing those systems to be a viable I guess a viable option or a viable choice, you know It's just it's not doing for the consumer what it needs to do for that person to make that particular choice And and at the end of the day that comes down to the end user to the consumer, you know When do they make that choice which is I don't need an autonomous car if you make that choice? Because what this mass transit can provide for me is is how I want to participate in in moving through the world You know one of the other issues we have an address which is very relevant to autonomous vehicles is movement of goods and Trucking and big trucks and there's a lot and also delivery trucks and there's a lot of emphasis now in the industry to start there because it's more controlled and Because for example for large trucks they go for hours of driving without You know having to do very much and that's a better environment if you would for the autonomous vehicle Rather than the inner city There's a study going on right now in Washington DC on Ford motor company wants to do a test for autonomous vehicles in Washington DC, which I think is laughable because It's so so difficult anyway one more question May I just reply because I also liked your Opinion about mobility being localized. Okay, but you have to have a mic in order to talk Okay, sorry. I didn't talk to it. Okay, but I'd like someone else to have a chance. Okay. Is that okay? Well, we'll find each other. Okay. Yeah, okay one more person One last question Wait a minute. You don't have a mic Hello Just was gonna follow up on that the point you made about trucking in the big cities The one of the projects up in the design world as well did a project on this your points about the mortal the Multimodality of these kinds of devices that we can create to potentially solve those problems So it's not trucking in the you know urban in the suburbia But it's getting the services moving the refuse and moving people in Cities and getting the you know the goods that they need and transforming You know that nobility and answering the problem of mobility in the city with that multimodality of those kinds of devices So I use that word device because I like the you mean autonomous, which you're not bad. No, I'm talking about mobility as a bigger You know answer your question. I see bigger question. Yeah Well, it is I know that some cities have and I think New York is part of that have gone to having Those kinds of services done in the off traffic hours Is another method? You don't have a mic For those that live in the city We I live up the street And if you know you know that between the hours of like nine o'clock after not after ten o'clock at night or in the morning No, no, this is in the morning. Okay, the bus lanes after ten o'clock. They're gone Okay, so then then the delivery trucks come then the car the buses come for the school the students Then you have the delivery trucks and it becomes a nightmare So I was thinking more of refuse and also of Delivery of goods to to businesses, but that's that's that's the thing when you start thinking about The different business models are coming into place like Amazon and the way that we're trying to announce Moving goods and services differently You have to look at the bigger system So solving the problem of the system of systems that not really everybody is sort of had their own system And they're solving their own problems as opposed to talking about the bigger problem. Well, I completely agree with that I think as I said, I think planning is really a crucial issue here and having some controls over how that's done Well, this has been an absolute pleasure for all of us. I hope you've had a pleasure doing this And thank you so much for allowing us to be here