Adaptable Sustainable Public Transit
Public Transit impacts the flow, energy, commerce and heart-beat of every city.
However, in many cities, public transit is inefficient.
That inefficiency has allowed privatized and centralized ride-sharing companies to step in and increase the traffic congestion on roads while reducing usage.
This can be changed in a unique form of public-private partnership that creates a flexible, adaptable and sustainable public transit system.
What is needed to make changes?
Public transit, particularly with "hard" assets like rails or subways, operate on infrastructure-scale time-lines: decades for meaningful changes to occur at billions of dollars.
This makes the planning and building cycles long and filled with necessary due diligence.
But in today's modern cities, where traffic and business patterns are shifting, what's needed is adaptability.
So how can transit leaders achieve this in conjunction with local businesses and do so in a way that reduces risk and creates a net-positive budget?
The core thing they need three things. Vision. Urgency. Openness.
This set of articles and presentations will lay out a solution that can be adapted to your unique needs and structure, while benefitting from the innovations of other transit leaders.
It takes Vision -- a willingness to envision a world different from one ruled by private robo-taxis and ride-sharing systems on the one hand and traditional bus-lines on the other.
Urgency -- a recognition that starting something soon is urgent because of the winner-take-all nature of most privatized ride-sharing businesses, now being powered by AI.
Openness -- to a new way of doing things that may not match traditional public sector models, and a willingness to work with new technologies and operating models.
What is the core problem to address?
The primary problem is one that we see occurring here in San Francisco. But what we see in San Francisco foreshadows what could happen in other cities unless we advocate for a different approach.
In San Francisco, we have a tale of two cities.
One version of San Francisco rides Uber or Waymos are the primary mode of transportation. It's convenient, but often expensive. Long gone are the days when Uber was subsidized by VC to "hook" people onto the ride sharing model.
The second version still sticks with a bus system that is not on time, requires multiple stops and transfers to reach a solution, and can be over capacity.
In other words, some parts of the population opt-out of public transportation because of inefficiencies and inconveniences because they can; they are willing to pay significantly more than a bus ride.
The other population has to bear this cost, because they can't opt out of the system; and the system isn't able to adapt to the spiky or changing demand.
So what are the characteristics that can augment the existing infrastructure -- no rip and replace involved?
Let's work through what the primary characteristics are -- and how we can begin to bootstrap this without new investment or red-tape.
Differentiated Pricing
One of the hallmarks of public transportation is the price is the same.
Whether I take a bus ride one block down or across the city, the cost is the same.
Whether I work at a high-tech start-up or whether I work as new immigrate, the cost is the same.
On the one hand, one of the reasons is price discrimination based on demographics or identity would be scary. There are some discounts for elderly and veterans which have to go through a vetting process.
But it doesn't need to be this way, and this is the first premise of openness.
Often times, the public sector, in the same way we treat public schools as a shared good at the same cost, ends up not serving their citizens as best they can.
Let's use the example of the high tech start-up and how a public-private partnership can unlock a better experience.
Imagine an augmented service were unlocked with routes that were adapted to real traffic patterns emerged.
A steady commute of people from the north city to the center of the city has been unlocked with return to office.
The city doesn't have an efficient bus line.
But this augmented line that collects voluntarily provided pick up and stop off information, using machine learning to optimize the route for maximum coverage, charges more. It's not the standard bus, it's a public-private partnership which entails being able to pick up at the bus stations designated areas for safety, but not needing bus drivers on the city payroll.
It means a portion of the revenues generated flow back into the public transit budget, ideally to expand the service to other parts of the city in a sustainable flywheel.
And by serving the higher paying segments in the city, reduces demand for the privatized ride sharing services, improving overall traffic and reducing congestion.
In this model, the key word is adaptability: new routes can appear as the system acquires enough information from citizens; and prices are market driven, allowing people to pay for shorter routes, more comfortable vehicles, while still encouraging ride sharing in large buses or vans.
This benefits the city foremost in that they can then study how to deploy the existing legacy fleet in more effective ways to meet the needs of lower-used routes or perhaps lower-income people who can't pay for the more adaptable routes.
Meanwhile, workers that need fast, efficient, ways to get to work have options that are flexible during the busiest hours, with a system that adapt based on real demand data to the ebbs and flows of cities.
Fewer parking lots, fewer cars, fewer traffic jams. More walking, more retail, and more business opportunities.
Why doesn't this exist now?
The primary reasons this doesn't exist is the difficulty of coordination and the adaptability to real demand.
What does this mean?
First, for this to be successful, there needs to be a meaningful way to bring new vehicles and routes online to deliver a consistent quality of service. As more routes appear and hopefully a positive flywheel of more riders comes on board, the better it becomes. The vehicles must move at the right pace.
This means that the paying for vehicles, the repair, the training and onboarding of people -- of of the mechanism is a difficult project, and it's a burden that typically the city doesn't want to take on.
Here is where a special kind of public-private partnership occurs, one that distinguishes it from how the more extractive private ride service companies are.
The concept is one that has been popularized in other fields, through the decentralization via a blockchain.
Blockchains are public and auditable
The most important part of this concept is the public and auditability.
We set up a system that the public, its citizens, its representatives, can inspect and participate in.
But the other characteristic of blockchains is that it is an incentive and orchestration system.
This is a new concept and I'll break it down. It might be the most important attribute and we will need to break it down on how to launch.
Step 1: Capturing Demand
The first step is to capture demand, and is a critical part of the partnership with the transit agency and local businesses, especially the largest employers. Through the launch and leveraging public awareness campaigns through billboards at transits, outreach to businesses with fliers.
The Chariot mobile app would be free to download and users would be enabled describe their primary commute by start and end locations and approximate times.
By providing incentives (such as a discount on ride) for those that refer their co-workers, roommates, friends or family members, a profile can be built out.
The second part is the ability to ask commutes to put a one-month ride down payment in what is known as a "smart contract."
The smart contract keeps the money and uses it if the route is launched.
If the route is declined, the money is returned.
Because this is done in the "smart contract" on the blockchain, it can be audited by the transit agency to prevent "rugging" by the private entity.