 Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the second day of the Night Smart Cities Lab. I'm Kelly Jinn and I serve as vice president for communities and national initiatives at the Night Foundation. For those of you who joined us yesterday, welcome back, and I hope you enjoyed our discussions on the current state and future state of civic engagement, broadband and digital inclusion as well as equitable recovery in public spaces. And for those of you who are just joining us today, welcome, you're on the second and last day of our very exciting conference and discussion. I hope that also yesterday evening, some of you enjoyed learning more about the incredible work of Night Foundation grantees at the Expo Hall as well. Today's conversations will focus on local and national work in mobility, specifically you'll hear from speakers that are working at the forefront of autonomous vehicles as well as ride shares. And where I really want to highlight though today is that the through line of the work that you see through all of these conversations is how institutions and governments alike are seeking to work inclusively, equitably, and really by engaging with residents and the public. And should be no surprise to all of you listening in, these are also the core principles and values that we have here at the Night Foundation and are expressed through our work and through our investments. We focus our investments in night cities in total 26 US cities where the night brothers themselves owned and operated newspapers. Together they represent to me the fabric and diversity of America from the streets of Lexington, Kentucky to Detroit, Michigan to Miami, Florida where I am here today and where our headquarters of the foundation are located. And yet despite differences in the size, shape, makeup, economies, demographics of all of these communities, what night communities have in common is that they have one foot firmly planted in their history and the present and yet are also defining the future of cities and looking ahead. This means that City Hall should always be there, but residents and businesses shouldn't have to go to City Hall in person or during business hours for key government services. There should be a digital City Hall that's always there for them 24-7, like in the city of St. Paul where the city has worked in partnership with the Beck Center to leverage open data to deal with pandemic related housing challenges. This also means that communities by default invest in more accessible public spaces because they deeply value public spaces as assets to increase resident attachment like our work in partnership with the city of San Jose through their Guadalupe River Park Initiative. And this also means that local financial institutions and governments are increasing capital and access to capital to help entrepreneurs build businesses and to close the wealth gap in communities. Like in Macon, Georgia where Newtown Macon is advancing through local funding and revolving loan programs to support downtown small businesses. These are just a few of the examples across night communities. You'll definitely hear more later today on how we envision the future of communities and the future of smart cities nationally and globally as well. So for today's conversation, I am very excited to welcome up to the stage Andrew Hawkins who is going to host our very first panel conversation today on mobility and equity. Andrew, welcome. It is fantastic to have you. Thanks for moderating the session. Thank you so much for inviting me. It's an honor to be here. This is a great panel that we have about to about to start. So I hope that everyone's really excited for what I hope is a very vibrant and relevant discussion. My name is Andrew Hawkins. I am a senior transportation reporter at The Verge where I've been reporting on transportation issues, especially autonomous vehicles for the last six years. And I'm really excited to to get this discussion going. So I'm going to start by introducing our panel. First, I'm just going to sort of say their names. And I'm going to allow them to introduce themselves because they are sort of better equipped at describing what they do than I would be. So first off, we're going to talk to Jenny Larios Berlin. She is the co-founder and CEO of Optimus Ride. Jenny, thank you so much for being here with us. Of course, it's a pleasure to be here. So as Andrew said, I'm Jenny Larios Berlin, co-founder and COO of Optimus Ride. At Optimus Ride, we try to partner with communities to provide them with shared electric and autonomous mobility services, both for intra and intercommunity access and connections. Prior to that, I was at MIT. I was doing a double master's in urban planning and business. You know, there's really big, karyaudacious problems in the urban space. And my particular interest was in transportation. But how do we use business tools to address them? And how do we partner and build bridges? So I was really keen on that. And then and that's where I met my co-founders, actually, some from the city science initiatives, others from the computer science and artificial lab. Prior to that, I was at Zipcar, where I worked with Ride Sharing, both at universities and also helping to deploy them at an at an international scale. So happy to be with you here today to talk about mobility and equity. Fantastic. All right. Next, we've got Henry Greenwich. He is a fellow at the NYU McSilver Institute. Henry, please describe to us what you do. Thanks, Andrew. And thanks to the Knight Foundation for having me on this wonderful panel. So I'm currently the managing director at Tusks Ventures, where I focus on mobility, sustainability and broadband. But I wear a few other hats. I'm also at NYU, the McSilver Institute for Policy Poverty Research, where we focus on the connection between transportation and poverty. It is something that McSilver has just sort of started to take a look at how transportation impacts black communities, something that we felt was lacking. I am also the founder of Our Mobility Future, which is a consultancy that works with cities, tech companies and really focuses on diversity and inclusion initiatives. For me, really happy to be talking about this topic. I was first introduced to autonomous vehicles 10 years ago when I was working at US DOT, Google brought one of their self-driving cars to our facility, and it just blew my mind away really because of opportunity that we had. For me, at that time, it was more of an access issue. I was having issues catching cabs in New York City. I was having issues catching cabs when I got back to D.C. And I realized later on, but it's not just about access. It's really about opportunity. So really looking forward to having this conversation and talking about what kind of opportunities this presents for communities. Fantastic. Thank you. So last but not least, we've got Carlos Cruz-Casas. He is the Assistant Director for Strategic Planning at Miami Dades County of Transportation and Public Works. Carlos, welcome. Thank you, Andrew. And as you mentioned, and I often say that is somewhat of a long and ugly name. The fact that you have Assistant Director of Department of Transportation and Public Works for Miami Dade County. The way I like to phrase it is more of a mobility management agency. Yes, that's what we do. It really do justice the work that we do. We manage all traffic signals and signs, traffic engineering, highway engineering, bicycle pedestrian transit planning, transit operations and even the regulatory arm for four higher vehicles like taxes and limos. And before the state preempts us or isn't lived. So think about it, everything that moves in Miami Dade County. My role to keep it simple and get into the conversation is mostly about bringing mobility innovation to our community and that can mean a lot of things often confused with technology, but it's mostly about how we address the problems we have on hand. I'm thrilled to be here today to talk about how cities and private sector can be participant of this. One of the additional roles that I play today also is a current board member of the Open Mobility Foundation, which is we can elaborate a little bit later, but it's something that can help bring cities and private sector together as well. That's great. Well, thank you all for being here. I thought I'd start this out this discussion out by doing a bit of a vibe check, as the kids like to say. So raise your hand if you have ridden in an autonomous vehicle before. All right, so this is not a representative sample, I would say, of the vast majority of the people in this country. Autonomous vehicles are still very much limited in terms of their availability to the public. They are mostly in a research and development and a testing phase in most cities around the world, but still we are getting slowly closer to reaching a point where more people will have experience autonomous vehicles. And I want to get a sense just to start out with when you all think we're going to start to see more mass adoption, more deployment because there have been sort of predictions in the past about when we're going to start to see more autonomous vehicles on the streets. Some of those have not really come to fruition. I'm going to start with you, Jenny. When do you think that we're going to start to see more autonomous vehicles on the road than there currently are today? And I think you're muted, Jenny, so if you could please unmute yourself. So thanks, Andrew. You know, this is a question that always keeps coming up in the industry when, when, when the truth of the matter is it's in the house because the technology is being deployed in so many different ways. For example, right now, we do have a publicly accessible program at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. We have had folks come in from the ferry and then hop into it. And so that's publicly open. We have another service in DC, but still to your point, it's how is this going to sort of grow over time? And it's really based on how these will be deployed. You have certain players that are doing delivery, you know, partnering with folks like Domino's and others. And so I think folks will start to see those vehicles on their in their neighborhood streets. You have others who are looking at long haul trucking. And so there's, you know, you might be able to see some of those vehicles if you're doing road trips and things of that nature. You know, there's always these different features of autonomy in the Tesla vehicle that, you know, if folks have had those, they will talk about them. Some folks will even post them on Instagram. And and then you have folks like ourselves, right, who are focused on partnering with with communities and then deploying them for the specific needs there. And so I think if you cut it in different ways, we are starting to see some of that. But if we're talking about, you know, autonomous vehicles that can do anything and everything under the sun, you know, inclement weather, long distances, short speeds, high speeds, complex urban environments, that is going to be a ways off because what happens is you have sort of a bell curve of technology development where you have sort of the majority of issues. But it's those long tales of unpredictability that make it really hard to to have a fully robust technology that can go out in the market and sort of be a system that's in your regular vehicle. So when we talk about those, we're really still looking at 20 years, maybe, because we really want to make sure that for those vehicles that are going to do everything that they're safe. And we want to make sure that we understand what safety means, both in the industry, but also with our public policymaker partners so that so that it gets rolled out accordingly. But I do think that we are going to start to see in different ways these appear in our communities even today. So I think that's those are really great points. And I want to turn to Carlos now because I want someone from the from a city perspective, someone who has, you know, boots on the ground, essentially, if you could maybe just help us sort of get an understanding of what the problem is. So when we talk about inequity and transportation, what specifically are we talking about? Yeah, and that's very broad, right? And I think that's when we talk about inequities can be looked in different point of views, right? And I think to me is first, we need to really understand what what what the role of transportation is and what the role of public sector and private sector can provide to help people around, right? Nobody wakes up in the morning and say, I want to ride the metro rail all day, right? From downtown to Kendall. But they say, I need to go to the office. I need to go to work. I need to go and buy groceries and stuff. So the mobility and transportation is not about that. The mode is more about where you need to go and get everyone with your business, right? And I think the some of the aspects that we see in the inequities from from transportation is more about the right in the use of the public right away, right? And to me is everyone, everything that we look at problems in terms of mobility and innovation we need to start talking about the how we've been impacting. For example, I hear often that the cars are being improved and the vehicle personal use being improved over the years with have gotten faster, have gotten bigger, have done more protective for the people inside the vehicle which you might say, bring the cost down of those particular vehicles will help inequity but at the same time you're creating inequities for people outside the vehicles, right? So to me, I wanna explore more on how we are leveraging the best and probably the most abundance right away that we have the public space in our cities and how we can allow for people to carry on with the mobility options that they choose in a safely manner. So if you start talking about, can I go? Can I start talking about a car can go from zero to 60 seconds in 60 miles an hour in three seconds is crash tested, you have seven airbags or it has 14 cup holders, can we talk about more? Can it cross the street of Biscayne Boulevard from one side another with zero chance of fatality? Can I ride my bicycle on a bike lane without being door or without being clipped by a truck on the corner? So to me, the inequities that we need to start exploring is not necessarily only on the provisional transportation but the space and the space that we allocate for it. And I think that's a role for public agencies. We do see ourselves as custodians on the public right of way to be able to manage the demand of public right of way in time, space and mode. And right now I see a big disparate impact between people riding on a car with people walking and biking. And I wanna explore that more on AVs because a lot of AVs is more about people using it and rightfully so with limited mobility and other aspects that we wanna explore on AV but at the same time, the people walking, people biking, the people accident transit, they also gonna see benefits. And that to me is the role that I wanna tap in as a public agency, how can you ensure that everyone in Miami-Dade County can really enjoy the public right of way, can really do whatever they wanna do in our county which is a phenomenal place to be and feel safe and not feel fear of what can happen on the streets. So I wanna bring sort of both of those two responses together and ask you Henry. Jenny's talked about how we have these limited deployments now but it's probably still going to be a long time before we see a times vehicles that can drive anywhere under any conditions. Whereas Carlos was talking about how there's a very obvious need today for improved safety in our cities. Do you think that there is an opportunity for AVs sort of in the limited abilities that they have now they're still sort of in these sort of testing phases that they can start to have a positive benefit to equity and safety on streets or is it just too soon to tell what you say? Absolutely. So I think number one through proof of concept we still need to prove to everyday people that this concept of autonomous vehicles is real. There's still a tremendous amount of skepticism. Folks don't feel safe right now by the concept of autonomous vehicles. I think back to what Jenny said what's really important here is the education when we're talking about trying to figure out when we're actually gonna see cars on the road. You can go to Brooklyn Navy Yard now and see Optimus Ride, right? Ford and Argo announced that they're launching in Miami, DC and a couple other places. And so you'll see them on the roads. There are companies doing goods delivery. But the first thing we've gotta do is say, hey, American public, when we're talking about autonomous vehicles here's what we're talking about. We're talking about Robo Taxis with Ford and Argo or we're talking about AV Shuttle with Optimus Ride. So I think that's first but my answer is very similar to what Jenny said. I think it's 20 years. I think my answer is based on a couple of things. Number one, it's the public perception and earning the public trust. I think it's also an infrastructure issue. And so I don't see Robo Taxis as our streets are currently laid out being successful. To your question about fulfilling needs today I absolutely think that autonomous vehicles can fulfill a need today. I think we've seen that especially with goods deliveries for companies that have chosen to do that. AV Trucking is hot right now. There's a lot of investment there. We're looking forward to seeing more pilots. And I think we're gonna see that sooner than later because we need to fill a labor gap there. And so there's tons of benefits right now. There is a long lead time to deployment but there's still stuff that we need to do in terms of making the case that AVs are really the direction that we need to be going. I think first we need to talk about this inequity thing and acknowledge sort of where we are with transportation and what we've done to separate people and to oppress people and why our transportation ecosystem is what it is today. Then we can talk about how autonomous vehicles can fulfill those needs and really address those needs in a way that we just haven't seen before. In Andrew, if I may, I do agree with everything that's been said. The only thing I'm probably at is autonomous vehicle technology that can be applied to vehicles of all sizes, right? So definitely I wouldn't expect to have, and again, just sit down or basically SUVs just running around and be the ultimate solution for mobility in a city as dense of Miami-Dade County or in New York and the places where I really do understand that ultimately there is a role for public transportation and mass transportation to play and that can be applied. Autonomous vehicle technology can be applied to AV. It already happens. We've been having a fully automated people moving in downtown Miami for the last 30, 40 years, right? There is autonomous like rail and it's always in all the places of the country in the nation, right? So it is important for us to think about that and focus about it is just a way to deliver a mobility solution, but ultimately the mobility solution is something that we need to build with the community and making sure that aligns with the goals and objectives that we have. Ultimately reducing the footprint is critical. Ultimately making people safe is critical and be more efficient. Like I said, we're custodian of the Poligrata way. We need to make sure that it's used to the best use possible and make sure that it's aligned with the community. So I think that's a really great point because I'm reminded of how cities have responded in recent years to the proliferation of electric scooters, shared electric scooters in cities across the country. And initially they were sort of everywhere and they were getting in the way and then cities realized that they had a lot of leverage and they basically sketched out permitting processes for scooters that they had to deploy in certain areas to address inequity issues or they weren't allowed in other areas where there was more too much congestion, for example. So I'm wondering if you guys think that cities should take a similar approach with autonomous vehicles. Should they say to the companies that are deploying these vehicles, you wanna come into our city? That's great. You need to be a first mile, last mile solution in this specific neighborhood which lacks public transportation. You can connect people to subways, to buses. Should that be, you think, a requirement for deployments? Jenny, I'll ask you that first as our private sector representative on the stage. I mean, I think it's always about partnership and it's always about listening to the places that you're going. Kind of to Carlos' point is, how you cross Keebas Game Boulevard is probably different from how you cross Sturro Drive in Boston. And so it's, how do we first recognize that we're all in the same boat, right? Like we're all care about transportation. We all care about improving access and making things affordable and convenient for people. And so then what does that then mean for each of the locations and then partnering in those ways? One of the things that we've done on the education front working with Boston is attending robotic petting zoos, for example, where you can, essentially, this can be a traveling zoo. It can go to different places. It can go to technical high schools. It can go to elementary schools. It can go to the town square. And then you use that to educate and then say, tell us what your needs are. Because for some cities it's, you know what? I really want to know about my curb access and I want to know about my potholes and I want to know where stop signs are missing. Okay, great. So then we can partner in with the information that we're collecting to share that. For others, it's, you know, the access. And so is it access to light rail? Is it access to mass transit? Is it access to the bus systems? And it is the case, right, that generally low income communities keep getting pushed out and out. And so then it's about having a bus network that supports them. And then how do we plug into that bus network? How do we sort of understand, okay, well, this is the peak and a low peak, but how do we provide for all times? Because that's the other things that happen in our communities, which is, you know, I mean, I'm a first generation Latina. So I grew up in some low income communities myself and, you know, you'd have buses that you'd have to wait 30 minutes for, not by design. It's just that that's sort of what the system can support. But how do you use systems like ourselves where you have the cost effectiveness of public transit but the convenience of a ride share. And so then you can connect folks to those transportation hubs or the supermarket. I remember carrying a lot of grocery bags home. And those are just short trips, but they are the convenient trips because frankly, most of our lives is three to maybe five miles radius from our homes. And so then how do we think about what those needs are and then respond to those. And I think that's the most important thing when you think about permitting and regulation is how do you give enough flexibility to the local policymakers so that they have the freedom to say, this is what my community needs and this is how I wanna work with you. Henry, I'll shoot that question to you and also just sort of add that, there will be some tension that exists between the city governments and the AV companies, I think as this technology becomes more advanced and available in the future. What do you think is sort of gonna, how do you think that that's going to play out? What leverage do cities have in terms of what they're gonna be asking from the AV companies and what are the AV companies likely, how are they likely to respond, do you think to some of those requests? Yeah, I think today, not on mute, great. I think today cities had a lot more leverage than they did in the past. They've certainly learned their lessons from other technologies deploying in cities, Airbnb, Uber, I think cities have gotten smarter. I agree with Jenny, you do need partnership and I do think you need to have a mutual understanding, if you will. I think cities, you have amazingly talented people who work in cities, especially on transportation, but at the same time, many of them have not worked in the private sector and many of them have not worked at AV technology companies. And so there needs to be education there. And the AV companies need to be proactive in doing sort of these petting zoos and these road shows to ensure that the city stakeholders have the proper education here. But I am in big favor of a framework. I think you need a framework that the AV companies need to abide by. And the reason for that simply is I'm concerned about equity issues and I'm concerned that equity will be put to the wayside in favor of business decisions. And we've seen that happen time and time again. And I would also say that there's some great people who work at AV companies, but we all know that there are pressures out there, financial or otherwise, competition that often cause good decisions to be left behind in favor of a good business decision. And equity is too important right now to forego that. I've often been told that AV is the sort of biggest engineering challenge of our lifetime. I also think that inclusion is the biggest social challenge of our lifetime. And we need to address that and we need to address that now. For many communities, this is a matter of life or death. And I think that with AV technology, especially AV technology that is clean, I'm talking about electric vehicles, you can really change the quality of life in some of these communities. And but what that really means is it makes a difference in people's lives. And so from that perspective, I do think you need the government to sort of step up and play their role as the steward of the public interest and really develop a framework that works to meet the needs of autonomous vehicles and the public in which they serve. And I do think there are ways to streamline that. There are ways to accelerate progress so that you don't get hampered by the permitting process. And I think all of those things need to be discussed with a wide array of stakeholders from both the private, public and nonprofit sectors. So I'll just quickly note that if folks who are watching this panel want to learn more about the Knight Foundation's AV Public Engagement Initiative, there will be a workshop scheduled later today. So please check that out if you want to learn more. So Carlos, let me, I think Henry brought up a really great point that there is a lot of opportunity here but also a lot of risk, especially if these private companies that are operating the AVs tend to prioritize profit over things like inclusion and equity. And I'm wondering what you think will be sort of the best response that cities should have to ensure that these tech companies, that doesn't happen, that they sort of operate within sort of defined parameters that they still have flexibility to recoup their expenses and make money off of these services because they are private companies, they're sinking a lot of money into this technology, but at the same time, there are some very obvious that need to be addressed. Yes, Andrew, so many thoughts are going on right now through my head. I think this is a phenomenal conversation. There's a lot to unpack here. The first thing that I can probably tap into is, communities don't need a parade of Chinese objects and new technologies, right? We need partners to help us basically achieve our goals and mitigate the impacts that we have today, right? So to me, the first thing we have to do is, like Jenny mentioned, is instead of having a solution looking for a problem to solve, let's be working together and highlighting boys, those needs and problems that we have today, right? And not necessarily me as a public, a member of the public agency, right? As a public servant, but from the community, right? Even in cities, in Miami-Dade County is huge, even in some states, right? Even within Miami-Dade County, even within the 34 municipalities of Miami-Dade County, everyone experiences mobility differently, experiences the city differently, right? I use transit, I've been in this vehicle, but my neighbor probably used experience, mobility in a different way. So first we need to really understand that. We need to provide them with a voice to be participant in this conversation and then be prepared, right? I don't have a time for when the A.V. is gonna continue to roll out as masks. Yes, we're gonna have, we already have four here for four years. We have great partnership with them. You know, now they're gonna be rolling out verbal taxi later on this year. Well, in masks, I don't know. But the one thing we wanna make sure is that we are prepared as a community that the people are educated in general and that we're able to voice our concerns and liking all the new technology coming in to the private sector so they can adapt their mobility solutions to where we are, right? And the goals that we wanna do, right? At the same time, I think we need to really understand how this is different. I don't wanna alienate A.V.s from everything else, right? If we don't have yet a basically requirement for TNCs or microtransit or micro-mobilities to address equity, what are we doing that on A.V.? And I think we need to take a step back and stay mobility as a whole. We need to divide by the goals and this is our community. We need to work together towards that. A.V. is just another way to deliver it and we're gonna get, again, a potential better partnership through it because we get a lot of more information perhaps in terms of some of the sensor abilities of it. There's things the cities are doing to address this, right? The first thing, for example, in a great partnership that we have with Ford and Jenny, you mentioned the Domino's Pizza and those pilots, think about this. If the pizza delivery guide is no longer going three flights of stairs to go to your door and give you the pizza, you need to go down to the street and pick it up. The interaction and the space and upon the polyglotterway changes. The needs of the curse-based changes, the sidewalk, furniture, potential they need to change. All these things we need to think about, nothing to do with technology, nothing to do with the A.V. itself, but if you're gonna change anything in our community, you need to be doing that way. The last thing I'm gonna mention in terms of what cities can do and I urge everyone to follow the Open Mobility Foundation which is an organization that's led by cities. And what it's doing is the stewardship of a components called mobility data specification. In short, it's the ability for cities to deliver policies through APIs. And I say that because A.V. Company, basically, they can really understand our city from an API's point of view, from a computer, computer communication, instead of trying to read a sign that says, no parking here, parking there, 10 minutes there, 15 minutes here, we can do this, right? Our role, and again, I have no purview over the technology, I have no purview whether the wheels are round or square, I don't have nothing like that. But the one thing I know it is, I do have purview over what is the use of the polyrataway and how the curb is utilized, how long they can stay there, the speed that they can traverse and whether or not they can go in one direction or the other, right? Those local traffic rules are under the purview of cities and I think we need to be a little more vocal about that and the role that cities can do. And yes, there's inequities that we need to do in terms of providing better mobility solutions throughout. I committed like Miami-Dade County regardless of the color of our skin or the accent of our voices, but then it's supplied to all mobility options. And to me, it is, yes, I think we're looking to provide a clear indication of what we're doing as a public agency, better transportation system, better inclusion and show where we are running short, where are the areas that might be a transit desert, what can never be a mobility desert, where optimists can actually come in and if you wanna come and help a community, you wanna be participant of the Miami-Dade on the rise, this is the areas that you can come in. I think there's a lot there to unpack and I'm really thrilled about, this baby steps and yes, it's gonna take years, but it's baby steps for us to better understand the interaction between moving people and regardless of the mode that they are and the people that are walking and biking and the needs that they have. And if we're able to just working together and thinking of AV, what applied today to our partnership with Via, to our partnership with Uber and Lyft, to our partnership with anyone else there, you talk about micro mobility, all of those needs to be understood about the same level and be following the same rules if you will. I wanted to just ask you guys really quick about the problem of traffic congestion. It's a major issue for pretty much every city in the country today and it is potentially getting worse as a result of the pandemic with people shifting away from public transportation into privately owned vehicles. It seems like there's the potential for a looming congestion disaster. AVs are an interesting component to this because while they have a lot of promise, they are still just another car on the road in many use cases. And the geometry is essentially still the same. You have, it's not going to solve the geometry problem that exists with when it comes to congestion. So I wanted to ask you, Jenny, what you think in terms of the future and equity, if there should be certain policies put in place in cities such as congestion pricing and how you think that that would affect the operation of AVs in certain cities if such policies were enacted? Yeah, well, I guess I'll just start with from my transportation planning days, congestion is a good thing in the sense that, it kind of sends a signal that maybe you shouldn't be driving your car. And it also slows things down, which again, from sort of as an urbanist, we believe in vision zero. We believe that cities should be going slow because you want to Carlos's point, make room for bikers, you wanna make room for walkers, you wanna make room for families, you wanna make room for children. I have a nine year old and I think about just the work that it takes me to teach him to be afraid of cars. Why do we have to do that? Because we've enabled an infrastructure that does that. Instead of as a human scale and say, no, we're gonna take ownership back of our city and we're gonna make it such that we can bike, we can walk, we can scoot and then have lower speed vehicles that are shared. Not everybody needs a driver's license. And so to your point on the congestion, I defer to my policy friends on whether we should do congestion pricing or not. But when I see congestion, I'm like, okay, I think that this is gonna force people to think, oh, there was a reason why I had been using public transit before COVID. Maybe I can try that again. And if we have solutions that make it easier to do sort of multimodal, because sometimes you tend to change your trips, right? If you're walking or you take your bus or you're walking and you take a scooter or what have you, how do we, to Carlos's point earlier, solve for that access? Because it's not about what they're doing to get there, it's about the destination for folks. And so how do we sort of think about AVs from the angle of solving that issue? How do we share? How do we electrify our fleets? How do we distribute these vehicles so that they can provide better support for our mass transit systems? Because the truth of the matter is that there's still no better system built to date that can move high volumes of people other than mass transit. And so for cities, it really is, you know, how do we leverage congestion to get people back out of their cars again and remind them of the beautiful options that they have that can also be much healthier? I love the idea that people stuck in traffic are enlightened enough to realize that they are themselves contributing to that traffic, but I wonder if it's actually the reality. There was, I remember there was some onion article many years ago that addressed that, you know, everyone's mad at everyone else in traffic, except for themselves. But I wanna, we have about 15 minutes left. So I want to get to some of the questions that we've been getting from our audience. And I thought first we could talk about the use, sort of the term equity and what that means and the idea that self-driving cars and autonomous vehicles could potentially be eliminating jobs. There are lots of people who work in the ride-sharing industry today in mass transit, driving buses, driving shuttles, driving taxis. The idea that autonomous vehicles could potentially pose a threat to that labor that exists today, the people that work in those fields. And, you know, what sort of obligation the AV companies or cities might have to ensure that people sort of aren't left in the lurch if they lose their jobs as a result of autonomous vehicles. And I thought, maybe Henry, you could talk about that first. Sure, so you mentioned the term equity and Carlos said it, this is such a broad term. And you also mentioned labor, which is related but we can go a completely separate direction. So number one, when I'm talking about equity, I'm talking about impacts to black people and other people of color. There are all sorts of inequity out there. You know, it was 51 years since we passed the ADA, right? There are all sorts of ways that you can look at pay inequity, particularly at AV companies when it comes to gender and things like that. But really when I'm talking about inequity, that's how I'm using the word. I'm talking about black people and other people of color. And that is on purpose because at NYU, McSilver, we have said that we haven't seen enough of those issues being focused on in these communities and we see a lot of mobility technology being deployed and more on the way. And so there needs to be focused on those issues. With respect to labor, this is a huge one for me. I think the AV companies bear responsibility to talk about this. This is a real thing. It's not going to go away. It is something that's going to be exacerbated by their technology. People are going to be impacted by it. And I think they owe it to everyone to sort of be proactive in these conversations. It's probably not a welcoming idea to talk to labor unions and things like that about these issues. But I think you need to address them head-on. And I think that we're so early in the technology that if we have meaningful conversations, there are some things that we can get to agreement on. And you also have to acknowledge that you're not going to agree on everything and you're not going to get buy-in from everyone. But I think ignoring the issue only makes it worse and it reduces the number of benefits that you can actually fulfill. So labor is a huge one. I think that people are interested in this topic. I think people of color who understand what's happening are interested in it. On the other hand, I do think that any time you have the introduction of new technology, you do phase out some part of the workforce. If I wrote an article maybe a year or two ago about elevator operators, I used to think that was the coolest job in the world as a kid and I'm dating myself, but we used to go to Macy's and there was a pleasant man who operated the elevator. I remember learning to drive and being nervous about flowing down for the toll booth clerk. How often do you see that? I've got easy pass now. And so you do see the disappearance of jobs because of technology, but what happens is it's over time. It's not overnight. And that is what history has sort of taught us. But I think with AV because of how unique it is, you do have to address the labor issue head on. And I do think there will be new jobs and you have to prepare the workforce for that. And so I go back to education and I'm really oversimplifying the term education. What I really mean by that is outreach and meaningful engagement so that we can prepare the next generation of folks for those next jobs. And you can start interest at the K through 12 level preparing for a world where autonomous vehicles are the norm. Yeah, Carlos, let me ask you basically the same question. I mean, you look at the demographic of folks that make up the people who are drivers today, who are rideshare drivers, delivery drivers, truck drivers. You're gonna find a lot of people who are first generation immigrants, people who English is not their, their first language, people of color. How do we make sure that these people are not left in the dust as things start moving towards autonomous technology? Yeah, I know that's definitely a topic that is in mind, right? I often consider that's the giraffe in the room, right? It is hard for us to start thinking about that without really understanding, you know, what is kind of the future of this technology and how it can help in our cities. I like to think about it not necessarily as a problem, but more as an opportunity, right? What are those things that we have in our community that we're not able to fulfill today because we don't have enough staff, right? We don't have enough people to do, right? We love to really kind of create programs for ambassadors. We love to create a program where, you know, we are a front facing element making people feel welcome into our, into our transportation systems, right? You know, we do have the need to keep that in mind to think about, you know, even in that well established system, there's always the need for human interaction. There's always the need to have people engaged. So to me, there's a lot for us to learn, you know, there's a lot also of new potentially high-paying job that can be brought into, right? You know, there's a lot of, you know, I don't know if you guys have seen the ins and outs of the AB, there's a lot of computing power in it. There's a lot of moving little parts again, you know, that needs to be served, right? And it needs to start looking into, and I'm hoping that we can continue to create programs where we can actually maintain these vehicles. And these vehicles and this technology, it is something that is expensive. And the best thing we can do is to make sure that we keep them operating as long as possible during the entire day. That means a lot of service and through it, right? So we see a lot of potential things about, you know, maintenance, you know, light maintenance, we've been thinking about cleaning crews and all that. There's a lot of potential opportunities for us to keep that because today, you know, we know if someone dropped a soda can in the car, right on your vehicle, but if there's no water press and how do you know, how do you actually keep track of that, right? So to me is, instead of thinking about the displacement and the impacts of it, let's look at the opportunities that we have ahead. What are the things that we want to do, you know, for pro liners and ambassadors and all the things that can help the community engage better with the mobility systems out there? Jenny, I want to also ask you guys, this is a question I really love about everyone on the panel to answer. So Hadi, what's your response to the question of labor, displacement and ensuring that this technology doesn't lead to sort of the vanishing of an entire class of workers? Yeah, I saw plus one everything that Carlos and Henry already said, you know, the truth of the matter is that while there are AVs on the road, all of them have safety drivers. I mean, I think that there's maybe a few of them that don't, but all of them have safety drivers. So my point here is that there is that workforce and what's been useful, you know, even myself overseeing operations is that I understand what that role does and I understand that the value that it brings in terms of understanding an environment. And there is so much value that that brings to informing how we think about developing AV technology. And as the technology evolves, there is going to be a need for remote monitoring for sure. And so then how do we create paths of learning? How do we create certification programs so that folks can have those in place and then you can really dig into workforce development programs and have that population ready to go. I mean, you know, you're gonna need computer savvy but you're also gonna need people skills. You know, how do you make somebody feel comfortable over a phone line that's in a vehicle that maybe they are having a heart palpitation and they need health. And so now you have this person who's supposed to be able to communicate to the vehicle that there's an emergency and they're supposed to keep that person calm and, you know, say, hey, I need help because there's an issue in this vehicle. To your guys's point, there are so many other types of needs that are gonna come out of this. Electricians, so technical development on electricians, what should we be doing in terms of advising those technical schools on what is gonna be needed to support on that piece? Or like mechanics, right? Think about when you had, you know, your regular rotary engine or your regular, you know, engine car, your six cylinder, those vehicles are super high tech. And so now just to even be a mechanic, you have to have computer skills. You have to take the certifications that are coming out of those OEMs just to even interact with the vehicle. So the same is true here, which is, you know, how do we create a path for learning? How do we build, to your point, Henry, have those conversations head on now of what are the employment gaps that we're gonna start to see as we build this technology so that then we can help the workforce be ready for those things. And we're excited about those conversations and the path planning and the opportunities that come from that. So we've just got a couple more minutes left and I wanna get to a couple more of these questions. So we got one here that says that for the commercially operated AVs in a city, so for your robo-taxis, your delivery vehicles, what role does asking for data sharing from those entities to cities play in evaluating sort of equity outcomes, identifying issues with the industry? Carlos, you mentioned MDS, I believe, if you can maybe just talk a little bit more about that and sort of what are some of the potentials and do you expect any pushback at all from the companies when it comes to asking for data sharing? Yeah, certainly, I would love to hear from Jenny and the private sector on this, but, you know, for commercially vehicles whether AV or not, right? I think there is a need and a requirement to understand the impacts of their business and the public right away. Ultimately, there's something happening on the public right away and how we were to impact. So to me, it's twofold, right? When we talk about mobility data specification is first a way for cities to enable a clear communication of policies and telling the rules of engagement to the private providers on how our city is built and how we want them to interact with us. But at the same time, there is some type of information that we need to start getting back in terms of how they're actually getting from one place to the another, in terms of the impacts, the amounts of time they're spending on the curb. You know, there's a lot of our hype term of curb management and we need to really get into why we need to talk about curb management and how we need to get private sector and public sector talking together about the impacts and the needs to manage that. There's also other possible ideas with data sharing that I need to explore. Now, to me, if we have an optimal drive, which is to me, as sensors and wheels, is there an opportunity for us to work together to identify information that we can gather from the street that you can help public agencies to do their work, their work better, right? In terms of keeping our streets safe and keeping our streets running efficiently and smoothly. So there's a lot there too. In fact, Jenny, I think it would be interesting to hear from the private sector, do you see any pushback? To me, it is, we are custodian of the polygrider when it's not my space, it's the public space and we need to make sure it's used effectively. Ultimately, there's no more area to grow. We're not gonna knock down buildings to actually put more space for vehicles. We need to use what we have as a fresh space. How can we work together to making that useful? And again, you read my rules of engagement through MDS. What type of information you get back to us in order to make sure that we're aligning goals? Yeah, just to quickly, because I know we're at the end of time here, but I think data sharing is super important. I think the biggest question is the what? What is it that is most useful? Because honestly, you guys, you're totally right that these are data collecting machines on wheels. They're collecting all kinds of radar, GPS data, camera data, LiDAR data, all these kinds of things. But so much of it can be noise. And so then to be swimming in a lot of noise, then distracts us from the goals, which is how do we help people enjoy their city. And so that's the conversation that we've tried to have with folks in Boston and DC and in other places, which is, okay, yes, we want to share data. What is it that you want? What is it that you need? And so sometimes it's been mostly around qualitative data in terms of what are the behaviors that we're seeing in certain environments in terms of either speed violations or in terms of how people are moving in an environment that is to say, are there better ways to improve circulation, even if it's just with lane painting, for example, or to your point, Carlos, is this curb better for pick up and drop off instead of a parking, for example? And so then the question really just becomes, okay, well, what is the data? And then for us to figure out how do we package it so that it's easy to digest. That said, I think data sharing is important. Data sharing is good and data sharing needs to be done. Henry, I want to give the final word to you. Sort of just to sum things up, it seems like what obligations do the AV companies have to the cities? We've seen tech companies come in in the past and sort of run roughshod over a lot of the rules and regulations that exist because they feel that they're offering something that's innovative and new and that these rules were written for things in the past and that they maybe don't apply to them, I'm thinking of like Uber and Lyft, for example. I could easily see a scenario in which, you know, you've got a rogue AV company that comes in and tries to deploy in a city without permission and things start to get a little bit chaotic. What obligation do you think these companies have to the cities and how do you think cities should be sure to enforce those rules? Sure, when it comes to mobility, this is of the utmost importance. So the AV companies have a tremendous amount of responsibility here, not only to deploy a safe product that is sustainable, that is affordable, that is accessible to everyone, but also not to sort of disrupt some of the other options out there. To be clear, I love autonomous vehicles, but for me, it's merely just one of the solutions that we need to be deploying in cities. The best way to move around people as far as I've seen is public transit. And so we have to make sure that AV companies don't further hurt public transit, which is really important. The other piece is the diversity and inclusion piece, which is important. We have a major issue with racism still in this country. It was built into the fabric of the housing industry and that is which the transportation industry is built on top of. We have to undo decades, well, no, hundreds of years of oppression. We have to ensure that people are included and have an opportunity here. And so the AV companies are really at the center of that when you think about it moving forward. If they are going to be the future of our cities, they have to understand that. And it can't just be about profit, not at the risk of putting more and more people at harm. And so that is sort of my final word. It's equity, but also getting down to the bottom of what we mean by equity. And it's really making sure that people can move about freely in a way that they never have before. So I think that's a great way to conclude this conversation just really exceeded my expectations. All of you were fantastic. I really appreciate everyone taking the time to come on here and talk about these very important issues. And I thank everyone for watching and for joining us and for asking really, I think really pertinent and smart questions as well. That's greatly appreciated. So I'm being told that if you enjoyed the session, please learn more about the Knight Foundations Autonomous Vehicle Workshop today at 1.30 p.m. Eastern. But right now, please stay right here in this space and that we're gonna be coming right back with you with the president of the Knight Foundation, Alberto E. Marguin. He's going to be joined by Felipe Chavez Cortez, who is the CEO of KiwiBot for a fireside chat. That sounds like it's gonna be really exciting, but Jenny, Carlos, Henry, thank you guys so much. This was really fantastic. I really appreciate all of you. Thank you. Thank you. Take care.