Beyond profit: aligning smart transport with human (and planetary) needs

Robin Chase, Co-founder and former CEO, Zipcar

Robin: Smart transport should align the goal of moving people and goods more efficiently with the goal of private industry, which is to make money. For a lot of CEOs, improving social conditions is not at the top of their list. Without regulatory incentives, they may not step up to the task.

Gavin: What would you prioritize to bring about truly aligned progress, rather than “profit progress”?

Robin: We need to expand transport access and affordability, in an economically and environmentally sustainable way that works in dense, urbanized environments.

Gavin: How important is it that smart technology changes behavior as well as transport efficiency?

Robin: There's two paths around knowledge and innovation: a technology push and a demand pull. We see it with AI today: “Wow, there's this cool technology, let's chase it and see where it takes us.” But we lack the larger focus, which is, “What do we need?” What do humans, cities and the planet need? And how might technology help us achieve those goals?

There’s a cultural mismatch as we chase the alluring shiny technology without giving a second thought about where we actually want to go. Smart technology can help us reach goals faster and better. So, we should seriously reflect on whether we are improving access, affordability, safety, and air quality or doubling down or extending the life of systems that are just not compatible with a livable planet and thriving cities.

Gavin: Is that gap between the current reality and the future ideal widening?

Robin: A few cities are beginning to be more structured about the need for space-efficiency and more rational movement. But most are still caught in the chaos of incremental change. For instance, in the 1920s we had little idea of the negative externalities of what personal car ownership would look like. We realized early that safety was an issue, but there were corporate-benefiting policies that were put together to make private cars palatable. Later, we decided fossil fuels were a problem, and that cleaner cars would solve the problem. But that just solved one small fraction of the enormous problems associated with having lots of cars driven by individuals in cities.

So, we said, okay, let's make them autonomous and electric – as if we’d solved the pollution issue, and now we'd solve the safety issue. But it continues to not solve the larger fundamental issues of space requirements and affordability, and what it means for household incomes and cities to have one car per household. We’re loathe to let it go. But it's fundamentally incompatible with 6 billion people living in dense urban areas to have personal private cars as their primary mode of transportation.

Gavin: Is it about sharing cars, or getting people out of cars altogether?

Robin: Sometimes people will need a car. At the same time, a lot of people can’t afford to have a car, so we need to empower a routinely car-independent lifestyle, and still enable and anticipate that people will need to use individual motorized vehicles during the course of their year. But it should not be the routine default to get everywhere.

Gavin: And technology will enable that transition?

Robin: Think about how you eat in a day: sometimes I make my breakfast, sometimes I buy it at a bakery, sometimes I go to a fancy sit-down place, sometimes my ingredients are from far away, sometimes they're local. It's not a drama, or making my life miserable, to negotiate that feeling of optionality. So too in a well-designed, multimodal transportation system. I'm not fretting about the options when I wake up in the morning, it's not weighing on my mind.

Technology will make that multimodal lifestyle easy and convenient for the users and enable cities to figure out how to make this transition from our current personal car-heavy infrastructure to a multi-modal one that is more civic-minded. It’s a quick start for AI: where should I put cycle tracks? Where do I need a bus lane? Where should my new train stations be if I were to finally invest in public transportation? We can get this done in minutes with the right data being fed in, and then work with communities to tweak these data-driven choices with local knowledge.

Gavin: Is there a city that is currently heading in the right direction?

Robin: London has congestion charging – which I love – but I still feel like cars rule there, and as a pedestrian, I have to pay attention so I don't get killed. In Paris, personal cars no longer exist in large numbers in the city; instead, bicycles and pedestrians have power and space. Whereas in Amsterdam, a Parisian friend was terrified by the speed of cyclists. The largest cycling city in the world is Bogota: about 40% of trips are done by bike.

Bogota is the city I’d point to as doing best. It has made a huge investment in a first subway line, more bus rapid transit and cable cars, and additional carve-outs for bicycles and bikes. They’re investing billions of dollars in a sustainable and active transport future.

Gavin: What terrifies me in Shenzhen is the motorbikes speeding along pavements.

Robin: Motorcycles and mopeds worldwide terrify traffic planners. But that is because we have built our roads and infrastructure for much larger vehicles, and lag in regulating and building for them. Bikes are shared and right-sized, but we have yet to culturally train their users. In the 1980s in Bogota, drivers would routinely run through zebra crossings and red lights at major intersections, so the mayor used mimes, correcting and shaming them to change the culture. It worked.

Gavin: Is it about political bravery?

Robin: Definitely. Take away parking, or put in a bus or bike lane, and people get hysterical. And yet a year or so later, they prefer the newer set-up. Over the last hundred years cars have been given priority, but like male privilege and white privilege, they got more than their fair share. Car privilege will necessarily have to be reduced.

Gavin: What is the role of tech companies in this area?

Robin: Technology can play a huge role. Take data analysis. At intersections, we only count traffic deaths or collisions. But we’re now analyzing video for near-misses and therefore we can be much better and faster at pointing out problems. Similarly, tech enables us not only to see the faults in networks or communications, but to notify us of problems so we can correct them.

Gavin: AI relies on vast quantities of quality data. Do we all need to change our attitude to data use, properly used, for the greater good?

Robin: I would say yes, but it's a complex, nuanced yes. Data is invisible. You don't really know what is and isn’t captured, what gets stored and what thrown away, what’s anonymized and what isn’t. Humans are short-sighted in their desire for convenience. It’s largely “Please take all this information, so I only get what I want with one click.” But when we realize, years later, what that meant in reality, we are horrified.

Gavin: It's about measuring the true, full costs of what is being produced and sharing the true value?

Robin: Yes, and it's more acute today to get that right, because the pace of innovation is so fast that we learn something, apply it and move on. There's very little time for reflection. Early innovation requires iteration, and although bad things can happen, they’ll affect only a small number of people. But then roll it out to millions of people and it has massive impacts. It's really challenging for entrepreneurs, companies, and governments to think about the second-order effects of a particular innovation. Are there negative and positive externalities that we need to get into this equation? If we were to invent personal cars today, they would never be allowed to be the size and weight that they are in cities. You would just say, “Absolutely not – that's a crazy idea.” Some of the negatives we didn't know about, and some were not a factor when it was 2 billion people then versus 8 billion now. Everyone gets a free parking spot? That made more sense back when space was less contested.

Studies have shown that greater vehicle weight can raise the severity of traffic accidents. For example, one study found that every additional 1,000 pounds in the weight of a striking vehicle increased the fatality risk for the struck vehicle by 45%. Because of their battery packs, electric vehicles often weigh more than comparable models with combustion engines — sometimes by 1,200 to 1,600 pounds. This highlights the importance of continued innovation in lightweight materials and battery technology.

Today, we seem to have a totally unconcerned way of “progressing.” Instead, we need to bring all the costs and benefits to bear, not just dollar value, and to re-remember what a fair, humane system looks like. We have to solve for that.