Jekyll2023-10-06T16:18:15+00:00https://fullpath.io/feed.xmlFull PathSite dedicated to transit and transportation technology, with focus on community transit, demand-response transportation, human services transportation, and mobility as healthcare.Kevin ChambersTransit As Social Infrastructure2019-03-20T00:00:00+00:002019-03-20T00:00:00+00:00https://fullpath.io/blog/2019/03/transit-as-social-infrastructure<p>This post is inspired by a wonderful <a href="https://99pi.org">99 Percent Invisible</a> <a href="https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/palaces-for-the-people/">podcast episode</a> where Roman Mars interviews sociologist <a href="https://www.ericklinenberg.com">Eric Klinenberg</a>. I love the term “social infrastructure” coined by Eric and his exploration of libraries as crucial and adaptive elements of the social fabric.</p>
<p>I strongly believe that the transit sector should also consider itself social infrastructure, along with the more obvious libraries and parks. Through its wildly disproportionate use in urban spaces, the single occupancy personally owned car has done tremendous harm to the social fabric, and transit can and should play a major role on repairing the damage. Just a few examples of how that can work off the top of my head:</p>
<ul>
<li>Transit centers should be invested in so that they can also serve as “palaces for the people”, places where people can safely and comfortably share space with all the other people in the community getting where they need to go. The trend towards <a href="http://www.sdforward.com/mobility-planning/mobilityhubs">mobility hubs</a>—where multiple travel modes are clustered, often alongside retail like grocery stores and food carts—fits in perfectly with this vision. To bring things around full circle, let’s put libraries on the short list of ideal amenities to have at or near mobility hubs.</li>
<li>Buses, the most efficient and effective social infrastructure on wheels in most cases, should be given deference most any time there is congestion or conflict with other modes, be it through signal priority, dedicated bus lanes, or other clever tools. In one stroke that’s valuing both the efficient over the inefficient and the pro-social over the unsocial.</li>
<li>The lowly bus stop can take a cue from the <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=roadside+temple&tbm=isch">roadside temple</a> and find opportunities for the community to embellish them with public art. Here in Portland, TriMet has done some nice work to make <a href="https://trimet.org/publicart/busshelters.htm#shelters">bus shelters</a> more than just utilitarian.</li>
<li>Portland has also taken pains to make transit the <a href="https://trimet.org/timbers/">best</a> <a href="http://news.trimet.org/2017/10/rip-city-hoops-are-back-catching-trimet-for-trail-blazer-games/">way</a> to get to the home games of our two major league sports teams. It’s fun to see the family and community camaraderie aboard a packed light rail car before or after a game.</li>
</ul>
<p>When transit fulfills its role as social infrastructure well, the resulting goodwill shows up in ways big and small. In Portland we have the tradition of greeting our bus operators as we board and thanking them as we get off, often yelling it from the back door. It’s a small token of appreciation that shows how the riders value the service and the people who make it work every day.</p>
<p>It’s through narrowly focused infrastructure engineering that we’ve lost or undervalued transportation as a vital part of maintaining the social fabric. It’ll be through widening the lens of what needs to be considered in design that we can begin to reverse the damage done, and Eric Klinenberg’s <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Palaces-People-Infrastructure-Inequality-Polarization/dp/1524761168">work</a> highlights the value of doing so.</p>
<p>Most of us can’t make it to a library very often, but for many of us transit is where we can most easily mix and mingle, see and be seen, meet strangers and find familiar faces. To the extent that we who work in transit can acknowledge and embrace our services and places as critical social infrastructure, we stand to gain greater community support to help solve the big social and environmental problems facing us all.</p>Kevin ChambersTransit is about more than just access and mobility.Platform Rants2019-01-02T00:00:00+00:002019-01-02T00:00:00+00:00https://fullpath.io/blog/2019/01/maas-technology<p>In my <a href="/blog/2018/09/maas-primer">previous post</a>, I laid out what mobility as a service (MaaS) is, what it relies on to succeed, its meteoric pace of growth, and some of its effects on community transit. Having that foundation can help transit agencies be more informed, but it doesn’t answer the question of how to respond in terms of making concrete choices around technology investments. What are the strategic choices an agency can make now that will have meaningful impact on its ability to participate in or even set the course of MaaS systems in its community? What does it look like to embrace the principles of MaaS in the day-to-day?</p>
<p>To answer these questions, first some terminology: key to this topic is the <em>technology platform</em>, which is simply something that allows other things to be built upon it by other independent actors. For example, Facebook has a platform that allows the multiplayer game Farmville, which is developed by another company, to run on top its social network platform. If a platform is sufficiently scalable in its design and popular enough among users, then you have a <em>technology ecosystem</em>: a platform plus a collection of third party technology systems built on that platform, which play nicely with one another, and which together accrue value greater than the sum of their parts. Think of the role that the Apple app store has played in elevating the iPhone from a mere phone to a wildly transformative mobile device.</p>
<h2 id="the-rant">The Rant</h2>
<p>While the concepts of the platform and the ecosystem are hardly new, they had not captured the popular imagination until relatively recently. A few years back, Steve Yegge, a programmer working at Google and former Amazon employee, wrote an <a href="https://plus.google.com/+RipRowan/posts/eVeouesvaVX">extended rant in blog post form</a> about Google’s systematic inability to grasp the key elements of creating technology platforms. Intended for fellow Googlers only, he inadvertently made his post public and in so doing made a splash in the programming world for reasons beyond an entertaining writing style and a penchant for poking fun at Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. He was among the first to capture essential points about what makes up platform-friendly software designs, and he described the specifics how one business — Amazon<sup id="fnref:1" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote" rel="footnote">1</a></sup> — managed to reorient itself internally to support those designs.</p>
<p>Should you have the time, I encourage you jump over to read the rant through to the end before continuing on. It’s a fun read, and the occasional dives into obscure Amazon and Google technologies don’t last long.</p>
<h2 id="design-implications-of-platforms">Design Implications of Platforms</h2>
<p>Yegge says that Amazon’s transition started with an edict Jeff Bezos issued sometime around 2002. Its key elements:</p>
<ul>
<li>All systems had to be designed using <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service-oriented_architecture">service-oriented architecture</a> principles, a design approach that allows a software system to be readily used by another independent system, resulting in the first system being a “service” for the second.</li>
<li>The systems’ services must be made available through well documented application programming interfaces (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_programming_interface">APIs</a>) using internet-based networking. No “back doors”, such as exchanging information through a shared database, were allowed. To use the functionality or data of a system, it had to be through the documented “front door” APIs.</li>
<li>The APIs needed to be designed to be accessible not just within Amazon, but from the public internet. Any arbitrary system should be able to use a system as a building block for its own purposes.</li>
<li>To eliminate any doubt about the seriousness of the matter, anyone at Amazon who didn’t design their systems in accordance with the mandate would be fired.</li>
</ul>
<p>The effect was a dramatic shift toward creating systems that took maximum advantage of the internet in order to bring a new level of accessibility to Amazon’s technology infrastructure.<sup id="fnref:2" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:2" class="footnote" rel="footnote">2</a></sup> Yegge goes on at length about platform accessibility, calling it “The. Most. Important. Thing.” in software. To go beyond interfaces designed for people (e.g., web pages, desktop software, mobile apps) and create public, documented system-to-system APIs has the effect of increasing the potential uses of software by orders of magnitude. It says to the rest of the tech world, “I’m available to be part of the solution to your problem.” A highly accessible system can be plugged in and become a component in a larger mesh of systems, where each part extends and amplifies the power of the others.</p>
<p>Contrast Amazon’s now fully developed platform mindset with the isolated systems that still today characterize most community transit software. Their low platform accessibility means that they can’t readily take advantage of other systems, and they can’t be used as components in external systems, such as MaaS platforms. They sit alone, along with the agencies that use them, isolating their customers as well.</p>
<h2 id="business-model-implications">Business Model Implications</h2>
<p>Yegge’s rant was written in 2011, and the lessons it sought to teach have been well learned across the technology sector. Platform- and ecosystem-focused business models have spread through substantial portions of the world economy like a brush fire. They now dominate the world of startups, to the point where it’s a near requirement for venture capital funding. Platform thinking is now part of the DNA of every single new mobility startup, and legacy players like Ford are racing to adopt them as well. The industry consensus has fallen in line with Yegge’s opinion that “a platform-less product will always be replaced by an equivalent platform-ized product.”<sup id="fnref:3" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:3" class="footnote" rel="footnote">3</a></sup></p>
<h2 id="a-model-response-from-transit">A Model Response From Transit</h2>
<p>Some of the larger and more forward thinking transit providers have recognized the sea change and taken action. One prime example is Portland Oregon’s <a href="www.trimet.org">TriMet</a>. While most of their platform accessibility is behind the scenes, you can get a hint at the results they’ve achieved by seeing <a href="https://developer.trimet.org/">the site</a> they dedicate to providing software developers with everything they need to build applications upon TriMet’s APIs. The APIs provide instant access to such things as bus and light rail schedules, real-time vehicle locations, and service alerts. For the general public there’s a <a href="https://trimet.org/apps/">gallery</a> of the dozens of applications using TriMet’s open data.</p>
<p>Recently TriMet worked with a team of vendors to develop its next generation electronic fare payment system, <a href="https://myhopcard.com">Hop</a>. Hop was designed with open APIs throughout, allowing for such innovations as <a href="http://howweroll.trimet.org/2018/04/16/new-virtual-hop-card-for-android-devices/">smartphone-based virtual cards</a>. The system has the core functionality required to serve as the mobility wallet for a MaaS platform<sup id="fnref:4" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:4" class="footnote" rel="footnote">4</a></sup>, meaning that it could take the place of a credit card and serve as the unifying payment method for TNCs, e-scooters, and their ilk in the region. This could offer the end user more streamlined management of the proliferating modes and put TriMet in the position of being key technology infrastructure for the very disruption swirling around it. Other agencies, such as LA Metro with their upgrade to their <a href="https://www.taptogo.net/articles/en_US/Website_content/about-tap">TAP system</a>, are following suit.<sup id="fnref:5" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:5" class="footnote" rel="footnote">5</a></sup></p>
<h2 id="directions-for-community-transit">Directions for Community Transit</h2>
<p>As Yegge defines platforms, much of the community transit sector still falls squarely in the platform-less product category. We can’t be hard on ourselves for not matching Amazon, Uber or any of other behemoths at the platform game. After all, the rant was directed at <em>Google</em> of all places for its inability to grasp what it needed to do to keep pace. Google has upped its game since 2011, but the point is that institutional change is hard, even when many in the industry recognize the trends and see the need for innovation. Business models and organizational cultures don’t change overnight.</p>
<p>In order to maintain its relevance over the long haul, community transit will need to move aggressively to adapt in several key areas. A key measure of success will be the implementation of scalable and replicable technology that matches Jeff Bezos’s edict, but more important for the present is identifying the steps that will allow for such an outcome to be within reach of a broad swath of the sector. Here are three areas of focus:</p>
<h3 id="at-agencies">At Agencies</h3>
<p>For transportation agencies, there should be in-house understanding about technology platforms and the value they have for transit. A measure of success could be that at least one person in the organization be comfortable in their understanding of what an API is, the role of data standards to making transit’s services visible to the mobile device-carrying public, and generally how platform accessibility and service-oriented software architectures are transforming our economy. This sort of knowledge may be considered an integral part of mobility management<sup id="fnref:6" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:6" class="footnote" rel="footnote">6</a></sup>, so if an agency has staff with the title of mobility manager, this work can fall to them, so long as their expertise filters up to leadership and can be reflected in the agency’s strategic plans. The objective here isn’t necessarily to have all the resources to execute on a major technology upgrade, but rather to be platform-literate and ready to respond when a viable opportunity arises.</p>
<h3 id="at-the-state-and-regional-levels">At the State and Regional Levels</h3>
<p>For state, provincial, and regional oversight bodies<sup id="fnref:7" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:7" class="footnote" rel="footnote">7</a></sup>, the demands are greater. In the past, when transit operations were more freestanding, straightforward, and predictable, it was workable for such bodies to primarily perform funding and auditing roles. Now, in the face of the platform-ization of everything, more is needed to keep community transit viable in the long term. Most community transit agencies simply do not have the resources to successfully procure and implement the new wave of technology needed to keep pace. To be successful they will need the active support of larger entities that are positioned to address common needs and find opportunities for economies of scale. While the transit agencies will certainly need to be literate and prepared as described above, umbrella entities will need to supply more specialized technical expertise. Areas of action may include general education on technology, needs assessments, and support throughout the procurement and implementation life cycles. In addition, they should maintain a sufficiently detailed understanding of all the agencies they support so they can identify opportunities for shared solutions, coordination, and, where appropriate, direct project management of their implementation.<sup id="fnref:8" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:8" class="footnote" rel="footnote">8</a></sup></p>
<p>Building out the capacity to support community transit in this manner will be a new direction for many oversight bodies, one that may fall outside their traditional core competencies. This does not change their fiduciary duty to support the success of transit under their responsibility. Outside expertise can help where capacities need to be built out.</p>
<h3 id="technology-vendors">Technology Vendors</h3>
<p>Finally, rapid evolution is needed within the technology marketplace serving community transit, where the insular software designs and business models of the late 20th century continue to dominate. Before the rise of the smartphone, one vendor could feasibly provide nearly every aspect of an agency’s operations with limited need to interoperate with any other vendor’s system. It was arguably preferable, in fact, as there were fewer compelling reasons to integrate systems and fewer technical tools to make such integrations successful. Now however, a vendor that fails to support the advancement of its customers’ platform accessibility is a clear detriment to the long term relevance of the agencies that rely on it.</p>
<p>The last few years have given rise to a new generation of technology vendors within the transit sector that not only build API-centric software as described above but also have business models and collaboration skills to open their applications for integration with other vendors, even direct competitors. At this point there may even be enough to form a nascent open transit platform software association.<sup id="fnref:9" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:9" class="footnote" rel="footnote">9</a></sup> Interestingly, some of these companies are using their fluency in building platforms to explore building their own direct service networks in ways that are reminiscent of TNCs but limited to a particular niche, such as medical transportation or volunteer driver programs. At this early stage it’s hard to say how these emerging, privately operated micro-platforms will affect the sector.</p>
<h2 id="conclusion">Conclusion</h2>
<p>With no Jeff Bezos to issue edicts, let alone fire those who fail to follow them, community transit will not be responding to these historic shifts with a top-down solution. A well crafted rant might make a dent, but the paradigm for adapting to change will be the main one it has used since its inception: a small army of highly dedicated private citizens, professionals, and policymakers who take leadership and action to serve the needs of their communities. The success of that response will largely depend on the perceived urgency of the problem.</p>
<p>Waiting for things to blow over or settle down is unlikely to be in community transit’s best interest. While the business models of the large players driving MaaS are not yet sustainable, they have enough traction and funding to continue transforming the industry for years to come. These are the years where MaaS concepts will continue to be cemented in the public consciousness, and new, more viable business models will evolve on the foundations being built today. The impact of delayed response will mean on an ever-widening breach between private mobility’s penetration into the sector and community transit’s ability to maintain its value.</p>
<div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes">
<ol>
<li id="fn:1" role="doc-endnote">
<p>When referring to Amazon, it’s mostly the Amazon Web Services (AWS) division that Yegge is talking about. AWS is what provides cloud hosting services to an astonishing share of the rest of the internet. Initially a way for Amazon to earn some money from its spare server resources outside of black Friday, it has grown by leaps and bounds. AWS is far and away <a href="https://www.geekwire.com/2018/state-cloud-amazon-web-services-bigger-four-major-competitors-combined/">the largest cloud hosting provider</a> and <a href="https://www.zdnet.com/article/all-of-amazons-2017-operating-income-comes-from-aws/">the reason Amazon as a whole is profitable</a>. <a href="#fnref:1" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:2" role="doc-endnote">
<p>We in transit have our own meanings for accessibility, so hereafter I’ll clarify it as <em>platform accessibility</em>. <a href="#fnref:2" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:3" role="doc-endnote">
<p>See <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1400041392"><em>The Efficiency Paradox: What Big Data Can’t Do</em></a> by Edward Tenner for a thoughtful critique and analysis of the limits of platform-ization. <a href="#fnref:3" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:4" role="doc-endnote">
<p><a href="https://trilliumtransit.com/2018/08/16/trimet-hop-interview/">Interview with Tim McHugh and Rhyan Schaub — Lessons from TriMet’s Hop Fastpass</a> <a href="#fnref:4" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:5" role="doc-endnote">
<p><a href="https://gcn.com/articles/2018/08/15/la-metro-tap-upgrade.aspx">For LA transit, one payment system to rule them all</a> <a href="#fnref:5" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:6" role="doc-endnote">
<p>See a dated but still relevant treatment of mobility management from the AARP Public Policy Institute <a href="https://assets.aarp.org/rgcenter/ppi/liv-com/roundtable_091013_mobility.pdf">here</a>. <a href="#fnref:6" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:7" role="doc-endnote">
<p>In the United States, this would include state departments of transportation, metropolitan planning organizations, and regional councils of government. <a href="#fnref:7" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:8" role="doc-endnote">
<p>Given <a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300078152/seeing-state">the long history of failed efforts</a> to consolidate public service functions, it’s important to understand that this is not a proposal for greater centralization of operational control into the hands of an umbrella entity. Rather, the objective is to strategically situate technical resources where they will be most efficient and effective in their ability to support agencies in the advancement of their missions in their respective communities. Broadly speaking, since community transit is all about successfully serving the niches, consolidation of functions should only be undertaken after thorough assessment and engagement with agencies and those they serve. <a href="#fnref:8" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:9" role="doc-endnote">
<p>Just a crazy idea. But in case any vendors reading this are interested, I’d be happy to help connect folks up. <a href="#fnref:9" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>Kevin ChambersWhat will it take to bring community transit into the platform age?A MaaS Primer for Community Transit2018-09-05T00:00:00+00:002018-09-05T00:00:00+00:00https://fullpath.io/blog/2018/09/maas-primer<p><em>This is the second installment in a planned series presenting Full Path’s perspective on community transit and technology. You can find the first one <a href="/blog/2018/08/hello-world">here</a>.</em></p>
<p>This article is intended to summarize mobility as a service (MaaS) to the reader who has a background in community transit and hasn’t yet had a chance to fully get their arms around this new jargon term and its technical implications.<sup id="fnref:1" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote" rel="footnote">1</a></sup> As with many terms coined to describe new and evolving concepts, it can be challenging to pin down what we’re talking about. To achieve a level of brevity, I’ll describe the industry consensus as I’ve seen it, tinged by my opinions on what MaaS <em>ought</em> to be from a community welfare standpoint, independent of any particular company’s business model. I’ll wrap up by bringing it back to community transit and hitting the high points of what the sector’s responses to this emerging trend can be.</p>
<h2 id="maas-defined">MaaS Defined</h2>
<p>Mobility as a Service is where a technology platform brings together a collection of transportation options under one umbrella. The platform seeks to provide a spectrum of services that is so complete and a user experience that is so smooth that it can conveniently cover virtually every personal transportation need and can effectively replace personal vehicle ownership.</p>
<p>The “as a Service” suffix comes from the tech sector. It gained prominence with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_as_a_service">software as a service</a> (SaaS, pronounced “sass”) and has since expanded to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_a_service">many more areas</a>. It reflects the broad trend where businesses reduce their in-house ownership and management of all manner of technology and instead contract with vendors on a subscription basis.</p>
<h2 id="for-the-user">For the User</h2>
<p>The primary point of interaction with a MaaS platform for the user is through a mobile device app. A comprehensive MaaS solution addresses user needs with the following key capacities:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Easy Discovery</strong>: The user can readily see from their smartphone all the relevant options for a given travel need.</li>
<li><strong>Easy Decision-Making</strong>: All the factors that affect the selection of the user’s final option, such as cost and travel time, are presented in a clear and transparent fashion.</li>
<li><strong>Easy Access</strong>: For those modes that require booking, the booking process should be as seamless as possible. For options such as fixed route transit that don’t involve booking, the system makes access easier with tools such as walking directions and real-time arrival information.</li>
<li><strong>Easy Transfers</strong>: In addition to providing the sorts of access features just described at transfer points, the platform can also respond proactively when delays or other events occur which require an updated itinerary.</li>
<li><strong>Easy Payment</strong>: Currently this can take a couple of principal forms. In one, the platform manages payment on a per-trip basis across services through a single “mobility wallet”. In the other, the user subscribes to a mobility package which has a set monthly cost and grants the subscriber a defined level of access to a suite of services. Additionally, platforms can streamline the sharing of the costs of travel with third parties in much the same way some employers currently provide bus passes or merchants validate parking. Payment being a particularly intense area of innovation, this only scratches the surface of the models under development. Regardless, the expectation underlying all forms is that the rider’s burden to deal with the minutiae of paying each service is reduced in some fashion.</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="under-the-hood">Under the Hood</h2>
<p>MaaS relies on some infrastructure above and beyond the obvious mobile device app:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Density</strong>: At present the cost of building out a MaaS platform pencils out only in urban spaces, where population density can support a wide range of mobility services and the costs of maintaining the platform itself can be spread across many users. Expect platforms to gradually expand into outer suburbs and smaller towns as the systems and approaches to implementation mature.</li>
<li><strong>Transit</strong>: Mass transit is uniquely suited to scale to the longer distance people-moving needs of dense urban spaces, so it sits squarely in the center of any MaaS ecosystem that hopes to broadly replace the personally owned vehicle. Bike-share, e-scooters, ride-hailing, ride-sharing, and car-sharing will be vital to supplying short-distance trips and first/last mile gaps, but they cannot replace the backbone of the system.<sup id="fnref:4" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:4" class="footnote" rel="footnote">2</a></sup> Above and beyond its raw capacity and space efficiency, as public infrastructure mass transit is accountable for and has the infrastructure to respond to community expectations with regard to equity, inclusion, and environmental impacts. It can help assure that a MaaS platform serves the entire community.</li>
<li><strong>Markets</strong>: Another way to define mobility as a service is as a <em>low-friction mobility marketplace</em>. Clichés about invisible hands aside, the matter of how to develop a functional specialized market is not trivial. Significant effort must be invested in establishing one in a way that builds in the transparency and basic sense of fairness to generate trust from everyone involved. Expect one area of controversy about how MaaS markets will work to center on publicly accountable “open” markets versus privately controlled “walled garden” approaches.</li>
<li><strong>Policy</strong>: If only because of their reliance on transit and the public right-of-way, MaaS implementations will inevitably involve public-private partnerships of one sort or another. Thoughtful public policy will be critical to assuring the success of those partnerships and the markets they seek to foster. Policymakers will play a critical role in setting the incentives that drive the MaaS marketplace’s outcomes. In addition, myriad laws and regulatory frameworks which currently favor car ownership will need to be reevaluated, from the immensity of regional <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congestion_pricing">congestion pricing</a> to the minutiea of <a href="http://www.fehrandpeers.com/curbside-management/">curb access</a>.</li>
<li><strong>Open Data</strong>: Do an <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=maas+mobility+as+a+service&tbm=isch" title="Google image search for MaaS">image search</a> for mobility as a service and you’ll be presented with one diagram after another with lots of icons that represent the variety of services available to the consumer, connected together with lots of lines. All those lines — they rely on open data. Whether it’s actual public data such as transit schedules<sup id="fnref:7" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:7" class="footnote" rel="footnote">3</a></sup>, the standardized formats<sup id="fnref:8" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:8" class="footnote" rel="footnote">4</a></sup> they’re put into, or the application programming interfaces (APIs)<sup id="fnref:5" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:5" class="footnote" rel="footnote">5</a></sup> that allow for the easy exchange of that formatted data between systems, open data is critical to allowing otherwise independent services to participate in a larger ecosystem.</li>
<li><strong>A Hub</strong>: This is the definitional ingredient that seems to get lost sometimes amid all the talk about <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_network_company">TNCs</a> and the development of new modes like electric scooters. There must be at least one entity that coordinates the transportation services in the network, brokers payment between the customer and the provider, and manages the marketplace as a whole.<sup id="fnref:9" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:9" class="footnote" rel="footnote">6</a></sup> Failing this element, mobility is not being presented as a single service, and we’re back to the consumer managing their relationship with each of their options one by one. Who operates the hub, how it generates revenue, how it protects user privacy, how it keeps the mobility marketplace fair and transparent, and how to measure its progress toward achieving community goals — all are important topics that will drive the success or failure of the system as a whole.</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="nice-to-haves">Nice-To-Haves</h2>
<p>There are a number of other things that are associated with MaaS, due either to their coexistence in the realm of transportation innovation, or because of their hotness in the technology field. These include:</p>
<ul>
<li>Microtransit<sup id="fnref:2" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:2" class="footnote" rel="footnote">7</a></sup></li>
<li>Electric vehicles</li>
<li>Autonomous vehicles</li>
<li>Blockchain<sup id="fnref:6" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:6" class="footnote" rel="footnote">8</a></sup></li>
</ul>
<p>All of these are possible contributors to the success of a MaaS ecosystem, but none of them are requirements. In other words, we don’t need to wait for any of these to further mature before getting started on building out MaaS in our communities.</p>
<h2 id="the-end-game">The End Game</h2>
<p>Advocates for mobility as a service hope that fully deploying it in a form that is cost-competitive with the personally owned automobile will result in “<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-17/-peak-car-and-the-end-of-an-industry" title="Bloomberg article about peak car">peak car</a>”. Widespread reduction in car ownership could bring myriad social and environmental benefits: congestion reduction, accelerated decarbonization of the transportation sector, fewer vehicle-related fatalities, and reuse of urban space which is currently dedicated to parking, to name just a few. With transportation now the <a href="https://rhg.com/research/preliminary-2017-us-emissions/">leading source</a> of carbon emissions in the US, MaaS presents an opportunity that can be seized now to significantly reduce the role personal mobility plays in climate change.</p>
<h2 id="following-the-money">Following the Money</h2>
<p>Large investors appear to be making strategic and long term investments based on anticipation of a major shift in how personal mobility is achieved. While there are few fully integrated MaaS platforms in operation, indeed none yet launched in the US, large investments are being made in the component services. Hardly a week goes by without a large player in the transportation field announcing a major investment, initiative or acquisition to better position itself for an expanding MaaS sector.</p>
<ul>
<li>McKinsey <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/automotive-and-assembly/our-insights/analyzing-start-up-and-investment-trends-in-the-mobility-ecosystem">reported</a> that “sharing solutions” have received more investment ($36.5B) than any other category of mobility startup from 2010 to 2017. They anticipate <a href="https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/automotive-and-assembly/our-insights/the-automotive-revolution-is-speeding-up">disruptive growth in shared mobility</a> from less than one percent market share of automotive revenue in 2016 to 20 percent in 2030.</li>
<li>Most major car manufacturers have launched some sort of car sharing service, such as <a href="https://www.car2go.com">Car2Go</a> (Daimler), <a href="https://reachnow.com">ReachNow</a> (BMW), <a href="https://www.maven.com">Maven</a> (GM), <a href="https://www.drivehui.com">Hui</a> (Toyota), and <a href="https://www.ford-carsharing.de">Ford Carsharing</a>. <a href="https://www.engadget.com/2018/07/05/vw-and-renault-electric-car-sharing-services/" title="VW and Renault plan car sharing services">Others</a> are <a href="https://www.livemint.com/Auto/tIQQue2wXPWL6TMVSEvNxM/Hyundai-partners-Revv-to-enter-car-sharing-space-in-India.html" title="Hyundai has plans for a car sharing service in India">planning</a> to do so.</li>
<li>In April of this year Uber <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/9/17213994/uber-acquires-dockless-bike-share-jump">acquired</a> <a href="https://jumpbikes.com/">Jump</a>, a major manufacturer for and now operator of bike-share systems, indicating a commitment to extending its reach beyond car-based modes.</li>
<li>Lyft, seemingly in response, moved to <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/2/17526892/lyft-buys-motivate-bike-sharing-expansion">acquire</a> <a href="https://www.motivateco.com/">Motivate</a>, a major operator of bikeshare systems, shortly thereafter.</li>
<li>E-scooter companies have collectively raised over a <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/29/electric-scooter-startup-spin-is-finalizing-a-125-million-security-token-offering-on-the-blockchain/">billion dollars</a> in venture capital, noteworthy for a mode that scarcely existed a year ago. Uber is a <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/9/17548848/uber-investment-lime-scooter-alphabet">backer</a> of <a href="https://www.li.me">Lime</a> and will be making Lime’s scooters available to rent in the Uber app.</li>
</ul>
<h2 id="how-can-community-transit-respond">How Can Community Transit Respond?</h2>
<p>Some broad categories of ways to engage with this new approach to mobility:</p>
<h3 id="advocate">Advocate</h3>
<p>We’re only talking about using technology to dramatically shift how people get around. What could possibly go wrong?</p>
<p>A lot, of course. At least in some of their <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTQLulPUowE" title="MaaS video by Deloitte">materials</a>, promoters of MaaS focus on the convenience and gee-whiz technology that cater particularly to commuters with disposable income. Those of us familiar with the lives of people with barriers to transportation know that including their needs in regional plans doesn’t just happen. It’s the result of intention by dedicated individuals and, sometimes, hard-fought battles.</p>
<p>If you are in the orbit of a large urban area, you can assume that conversations about how to implement MaaS are happening today in your area at some level of government. I encourage you to find out who’s doing that now in your city, region, county, state or province. Get on their mailing list and see to it that the interests of folks you serve are represented on their working groups. Community transportation providers and those they serve are well positioned to advocate for policies that prevent the expansion of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_divide">digital divide</a> into mobility. No technology need be purchased for this response.</p>
<h3 id="participate">Participate</h3>
<p>Many community transit services are already designed to fill a coverage gap for the general public that mass transit cannot. These are just the ones that would fit perfectly into a MaaS ecosystem, perhaps after some strategic technology upgrades. Agencies providing these services should have MaaS on their radar now and start developing plans for how they can engage with a platform, be it through publishing real-time ETAs, supporting automated booking by 3rd parties, or planning other integrations.</p>
<h3 id="expand">Expand</h3>
<p>As momentum grows for communities to reduce their reliance on personally-owned vehicles, so will the opportunities for existing players with on-the-ground expertise in running specialized operations. A fully realized MaaS ecosystem is going to have a lot of niche roles that will need to be filled. Community transit providers, ever the experts in niches, stand to gain if prepared for change.</p>
<h3 id="emulate">Emulate</h3>
<p>I propose that the tenets of mobility as a service rise to be the central organizing principles guiding technology strategies across the community transit sector. In those areas where a full-blown MaaS ecosystem is not yet viable, there are still evolving public expectations to contend with, largely driven by the rapidly changing technology landscape. Even if you’re the only show in town, easy discovery, access, transfers, and payment are universal elements of good customer service for any mobility operation.<sup id="fnref:3" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:3" class="footnote" rel="footnote">9</a></sup> Those agencies that make a strategic preference for technologies that move away from monolithic architectures and embrace open data will be far more prepared when some version of MaaS comes knocking.</p>
<h3 id="retrench">Retrench</h3>
<p>Expect there to be cases where a given service can be better and more economically provided by a for-profit venture armed with the technology resources to fully participate in a MaaS marketplace.<sup id="fnref:10" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:10" class="footnote" rel="footnote">10</a></sup> While this may lead to a some agencies shutting down entirely, I suspect that will be the minority case. For most organizations, it will be an opportunity to refocus to the next “tough nut to crack” that addresses a key community need.</p>
<p>In future articles, I’ll take deeper dives into some of the aspects of transportation and technology I’ve touched on here and how they affect community transit.</p>
<div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes">
<ol>
<li id="fn:1" role="doc-endnote">
<p>Also known as <a href="https://medium.com/reflections-by-ngp/the-road-to-transportation-as-a-service-b72c3fe780ec" title="An example article using the term TaaS">Transportation as a Service</a>. Closely related are <a href="https://www.transit.dot.gov/research-innovation/mobility-demand-mod-sandbox-program.html" title="FTA prefers the term Mobility on Demand">Mobility on Demand</a> and <a href="http://sharedusemobilitycenter.org/" title="The Shared Use Mobility Center — A leading supporter of MaaS in the United States">Shared Use Mobility</a>. As of this writing there appears to be no consensus on whether MaaS is pronounced like “mass” or “mahss”. <a href="#fnref:1" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:4" role="doc-endnote">
<p>Here are a <a href="https://humantransit.org/2016/08/pushing-back-on-ridesourcing-and-microtransit-pr-the-video.html">couple</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/CyclingSurgeon/status/808070108895735809">illustrations</a> help demonstrate the limitations that cars — even shared or autonomous cars — have in the urban context. <a href="#fnref:4" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:7" role="doc-endnote">
<p>See for example <a href="https://transitfeeds.com">TransitFeeds</a>, repository of fixed route transit services. <a href="#fnref:7" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:8" role="doc-endnote">
<p>One of the oldest and most widely used standards that a MaaS system would rely on is the <a href="http://gtfs.org">General Transit Feed Specification</a>. It’s currently used by Google, Apple, and many others for providing transit directions. Another is the <a href="https://github.com/NABSA/gbfs">General Bikeshare Feed Specification</a>. More are needed. A good roundup of the current state of affairs can be found <a href="https://trilliumtransit.com/2017/12/31/data-formats-roundup-2017/">here</a>. <a href="#fnref:8" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:5" role="doc-endnote">
<p>It’s hard to understate the importance of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_programming_interface">APIs</a> to participation in a network of mobility services, because they’re what give your services real-time visibility to apps — your own or someone else’s. See <a href="https://trimet.org">TriMet</a> in Portland, Oregon for one example of a transit agency that has APIs it <a href="https://developer.trimet.org/ws_docs/" title="The applications programming interfaces for TriMet, the transit agency in Portland Oregon">shares</a> with app developers. <a href="#fnref:5" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:9" role="doc-endnote">
<p>By this definition, a platform must include all four levels described in the <a href="http://www.tut.fi/verne/aineisto/ICoMaaS_Proceedings_S6.pdf">MaaS topology</a> developed by Jana Sochor, et al. <a href="#fnref:9" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:2" role="doc-endnote">
<p>Like MaaS, microtransit is another loosely defined term, prone to hype. I’ll leave that to another article. While a promising tool in some scenarios to extend transit coverage, it’s not a must-have. <a href="#fnref:2" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:6" role="doc-endnote">
<p>Here is <a href="https://medium.com/iomob/mobility-as-a-service-maas-and-mobility-on-demand-mod-via-blockchain-64e36a2f6676">one</a> of many ideas out there for bringing blockchain technology to MaaS. <a href="#fnref:6" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:3" role="doc-endnote">
<p>In truth, no community transit provider is an ever an island, even in the most rural area. Rather, each is a bridge and a lifeline, so there are always opportunities to explore for coordination with the resources being linked: medical providers, social services, volunteer drivers, etc. <a href="#fnref:3" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:10" role="doc-endnote">
<p>This is not to sanction current pricing by TNCs, which is designed to gain market share and is not sustainable from either <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/uber-results/uber-narrows-loss-but-still-a-long-way-from-profitability-idUSL1N1V611I">corporate bottom line</a> or <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2016/06/27/how-much-uber-drivers-actually-make-per-hour/?utm_term=.4f106b854396">driver compensation</a> standpoints. Rather, displacement of community transit providers (that won’t be regretted later) will be the result of the development of sustainable business models and technologies that directly address the barriers preventing portions of the population from accessing transportation while considering and supporting the community functions that transportation plays in people’s lives. <a href="#fnref:10" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>Kevin ChambersA primer for mobility as a service for those in community transitIntroducing Full Path Transit Technology2018-08-01T00:00:00+00:002018-08-01T00:00:00+00:00https://fullpath.io/blog/2018/08/hello-world<h2 id="hello-world">Hello World!</h2>
<p>It is with great pleasure that I present Full Path Transit Technology, my new consultancy dedicated to serving the needs of community transit<sup id="fnref:1" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:1" class="footnote" rel="footnote">1</a></sup>. I created it with the goal of providing thinking and tools around technology that respond to the current moment the industry is in.</p>
<p>And what an interesting moment it is. Until a few years ago community transit was a sleepy and staid niche in the transportation sector, below radar even within many transit circles. Now that flexible transportation options are front and center in so many transportation and urban planning conversations, community transportation providers are confronted with a striking set of opportunities and crises.</p>
<p>On the opportunity side, technology offers a chance to transform operations by increasing efficiency and dramatically improving the customer experience. For the first time, graceful and timely communication between all the actors involved in service provision is possible in a wide range of scenarios. Few are the providers who are not ruminating on what an “app” could do to bring greater mobility and dignity to those they serve.</p>
<p>The crises stem largely from the fact that this is not change that the transit industry started or invited. Instead, it was barbarian hordes from Silicon Valley that smelled inefficiency and latent demand for greater mobility options. They came with new business models (and some repackaged old ones) fueled by billions of dollars in venture capital. The response by the industry has been slow. After a period of dismissing the new arrivals, followed by worried observation, many larger transit agencies are now in reaction mode as their ridership declines, due in large part to competition from Uber and Lyft.</p>
<p>Most community transit providers do not have even the privilege of reacting. Cash-poor, even by transit standards, they have few resources to retool. Even if they did, the current ambient level of hype makes it unclear how to proceed. Which technologies are truly relevant to a provider serving marginalized populations? Will an app really help? How can agencies engage with the sea changes surrounding them while providing service in a fair and equitable fashion? The questions are many, daunting, and increasingly urgent as the divide between public expectations and agency capacity grows.</p>
<h2 id="the-full-path-approach">The Full Path Approach</h2>
<p>It’s in this context that Full Path jumps into the fray, taking an opinionated stance rooted in years of successes and failures putting technology into the hands of small organizations. Here is a quick take on how we think about responding to the challenges ahead.</p>
<h3 id="technology-in-its-place">Technology In Its Place</h3>
<p>We believe in <em>appropriate technology</em>. The term comes from a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appropriate_technology" title="Wikipedia definition">movement</a> in economic development circles, but I don’t mean it in the sense of a creating a new water pump design or a better mosquito net. Rather, we embrace its broader philosophical approach to creating technological tools — the focus on simplicity, decentralization, sustainability, and empowerment of the people using the technology.</p>
<p>In a society where technology is held out as panacea, it’s valuable for mission-based organizations to work with the support of philosophies that provide a vision for applying tech only where it makes sense and can be sustained over time.</p>
<p>A motto for Full Path on this front might be: “<em>Use technology, not too much, mostly open</em><sup id="fnref:2" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:2" class="footnote" rel="footnote">2</a></sup>” (with apologies to Michael Pollan).</p>
<h3 id="understand-the-systems-and-the-people">Understand the Systems and the People</h3>
<p>With technology properly humbled, we can focus on people, how they’re solving their problems, and where they need a hand. Solutions that come from a genuine curiosity and interest in understanding of how things are operating, combined with compassion for the people running them, will achieve much better results than technical fixes built on little interest in how things work and loaded with assumptions about how things should work.</p>
<h3 id="build-on-strengths">Build on Strengths</h3>
<p>If you’re worried that VC-funded goliaths are sucking up all the oxygen in the flexible transit space, you have good reason. One of the key shifts that Uber, Lyft, and similar start-ups have brought is the bundling of technology and services. Rather than think of them as tech companies providing a service, it may be more useful to think of them as service providers with particularly robust in-house technology. So robust that, by design, it may be impossible to ever catch up with them.</p>
<p>So how to respond? The roots of the solutions to keep community transportation viable lie precisely in the community-based nature of the sector. Cash-poor services have persisted not because they are profitable on the ledger, but because they play critical roles where they serve. We believe it’s possible and essential to develop technology systems that reflect that reality in their design.</p>
<p>In practice, that means working towards systems which are small and simple enough that they play well at the scale of a community provider, while also being open enough to allow for integration with other systems and services. Happily, recent trends in the larger software development world, namely <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microservices" title="Microservices definition">microservice</a> architectures and distributed authentication systems such as <a href="https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7519" title="JSON Web Tokens">JWT</a>, make this approach easier than it’s ever been.</p>
<h3 id="platform-centered-thinking">Platform-Centered Thinking</h3>
<p>If you’ve embraced small and open and you then want to scale up, the next step is think about how your components are going to integrate and exchange data with other components in some way — maybe yours, maybe ones belonging to other organizations. Just how those connections are made can lead to new possibilities for service delivery, that’s where platform-centered thinking comes in. With thoughtful design, it’s possible to build lightweight and effective systems for coordination, whether it’s between operations and finance within an organization, or between a group of organizations committed to a mesh of transportation options.</p>
<p>At the broadest scale, a platform approach makes participation in a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_as_a_Service" title="MaaS definition">mobility as a service</a> network possible. It’s in this opportunity that I think community transportation may find its greatest chance at continued relevance in the years to come. More on that soon.</p>
<h2 id="just-the-beginning">Just the Beginning</h2>
<p>This first post is just the start. Stay tuned to learn more about what we’re working on.</p>
<p>If you’re interested in exploring how we can help your organization, please <a href="/contact">contact us</a>. We’d be delighted to hear from you.</p>
<hr />
<div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes">
<ol>
<li id="fn:1" role="doc-endnote">
<p>“Community transit” is a term that merits some explanation. I’ll be using it in my work to describe a wide range of personal mobility services that lean towards the small and are provided by a public agency, non-profit, or other community group (such as a faith-based organization). Conventionally, it has been used to describe volunteer driver programs and transportation targeted to serve veterans, older adults, people with disabilities, people in rural or small communities, and folks needing medical transportation. At its broadest, it’s a definition by exclusion, meaning almost any transit that isn’t provided in a city by a full-size bus or a train. Often, community transit is designed to be flexible by going off-route on request or by having no route and being door-to-door service. Sometimes it involves using taxis or other private transportation providers working under contract. Think of it as the set of mobility options that is designed to respond with finer-grained precision when the blunter instrument of conventional “fixed-route” transit cannot viably serve the needs of a particular group of people. I use the term “community” with some misgivings. Larger-scale transit is a crucial resource to any region and I do not mean to imply that it is in any way anti-community. Rather, my intent is to identify the mobility options that are at the scale of and tailored to specific and identifiable communities rather than entire urban areas. <a href="#fnref:1" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:2" role="doc-endnote">
<p>“Open” can mean many different things when it comes to technology. Most folks have heard about open source software, but that’s only one form of openness and often not the most important one. Other key forms are open data, open data formats, and open application programming interfaces (APIs). The value and relevance of each varies with the situation. <a href="#fnref:2" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>Kevin ChambersIn which I present my new consultancy and its vision for serving the needs of community transit.