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Transit Tangents
The Podcast where we discuss all things transit. Join us as we dive into transit systems across the US, bring you interviews with experts and advocates, and engage in some fun and exciting challenges along the way.
Transit Tangents
SXSW's Vision for the Future of Mobility
We attend South by Southwest's transportation track to discover what this cutting-edge collection of thought leaders envisions as the future of mobility.
Key Takeaways:
• Electric vehicles are a critical part of the future but may not be enough
• Battery technology advancements through AI aim to improve efficiency for both EVs and flying vehicles
• American EV leadership isn't competitive when compared to China's rapid advancement
• Autonomous buses could address driver shortages but still require human attendants for passenger assistance
• Personal flying vehicles (eVTOLs) will offer 15-minute flight times across cities
• Successful rail networks require long-term planning beyond political cycles
• Transportation solutions need to be flexible, adaptable, and designed for diverse populations
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We attended Austin's South by Southwest Festival, where we wanted to learn more about the future of mobility. We discuss everything from trains to EVs and even flying cars. On this episode of Transit Tangents.
Speaker 3:Hey everybody and welcome to this episode of Transit Tangents. My name is Lewis and I'm Chris, and in the last two weeks we had the opportunity to attend part of South by Southwest's transportation track.
Speaker 2:And I want to take a second For those who maybe don't know what South by Southwest is. This is a huge conference that happens every year in Austin, texas. It's been going on since the 80s, started as a music festival and then moved on to South by Southwest Interactive, which we actually ran into one of the creators of South by Southwest Interactive. That was a very fun experience and it's just evolved into this massive gathering of people from all different professions and industries to have this big sort of thought conference on top of all the other things that are happening Right. A huge event in the city. So we're really happy that we got a chance to go.
Speaker 3:While we were there, though, we were like it would be great to put together an episode that kind of encompasses. After attending their transportation talks, what does South by Southwest see as the future of mobility?
Speaker 2:And the answer is trains, trains and trains and mass transit all around, unfortunately, we were a little bit surprised in what we found.
Speaker 3:We shouldn't have been wildly surprised and you know, the main sponsor of South by Southwest this year is Rivian, which is an electric vehicle company, and we like electric vehicles. Don't get me wrong. Rivian makes great, great trucks and whatnot. They have some cool smaller vehicles coming out soon, but I will say that the sponsor being a large electric vehicle manufacturer, showed in the programming there were several sessions that were EV focused. Some of them were really interesting, some of them were more surface level, but a lot of conversation about batteries, a lot about batteries.
Speaker 2:You had the opportunity to attend a session that was really about how AI is trying to change the game in making batteries more efficient.
Speaker 3:Yeah, a lot of it was above my pay grade in terms of the scientific language that was being used, but essentially using AI to have batteries be more efficient in terms of one additional storage capacity, but also in terms of being able to push out a lot of power all at once. Now the scientific battery one was really focused on using AI and batteries to help with electric flying vehicles. We're going to talk about flying vehicles a little bit later in this, but with a flying vehicle, you need a big boost of power fast, versus just necessarily having to have your battery life run longer. So it was an interesting session.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I see that topic, maybe not that specific session, but we're talking about better batteries If we're moving towards this electric future, which we are moving toward despite the current administration's thoughts on electric batteries, but as we move toward.
Speaker 3:What are you talking about? They got the biggest electric vehicle manufacturer in the country there. It's true. We don't need to talk about that right now. They got the biggest electric vehicle manufacturer in the country there.
Speaker 2:It's true we don't need to talk about that right now, but as the future moves forward, through this all electrification I mean I see more powerful batteries being used for mass transit options, better batteries for buses, because that's one of the restrictions that you have on electric buses is that the charging is difficult for a vehicle that's going to be on a route all day long. You know, making circular routes. So exciting, exciting future there.
Speaker 3:This was the first session we were actually able to attend and the speakers were talking about our current state of how people get around in the United States and that the system isn't multimodal, it's very much focused around.
Speaker 3:Automobility was the phrase that they used, and that's what we have in much of America today, with very few exceptions throughout, especially in Austin where we were during this event. He was like if there are windows in this room, if you looked out, you would see a very much system created for the automobile. This isn't specific to electric vehicles, but in this session there was some Vision Zero conversation, which we've talked about on the show quite a bit, and essentially, as we were sitting through this, they were hyping up electric vehicles but then also offering what some of the downsides of electric vehicles were at the same time, almost without even really realizing it. So I was scribbling away in my notebook, being like I'm going to ask these guys a tough question Do you think there's way too much emphasis is on electric vehicles in particular in this whole conversation of sustainable mobility? I mean, a lot of your examples were electric vehicles aren't resilient. Electric vehicles aren't the best way to decarbonize. As far as Vision Zero goes. I mean electric vehicles are just as dangerous as gas powered vehicles.
Speaker 2:This is Siri Malin with SPSN.
Speaker 1:Every kind of buzzword that becomes something that governments take to the barricades, basically Some kind of sanity. When it comes to the discussion about EVs, I drive an EV myself, so I am all for it. I am all for it for EV adoption. It's not about that. It's more about, like, we need to have broader discussions about what kind of society we want to shape and how that society is going to be built, rather than going for, like oh my god, electric vehicles. Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is Henrik Harplinger, director of Future Mob mobility at Volvo.
Speaker 5:And if the challenge that is an auto mobility system or auto mobility with the cars at the center, you might question is the only inhibitions that to solve sustainable mobility, is it the car industry that will supply them? Will it require that we have a problem definition that involves other types of actors as well, right, awesome, thank you.
Speaker 3:There was not much discussion about mass transit in this. I don't remember it being part of it and I don't have it in my notes here at all. And then I added my own personal anecdote here. They spent quite a bit of time talking about Vision Zero. Electric vehicles are just as bad as combustion engine vehicles. As far as Vision Zero goes and that's kind of where I'd been listening to all these little pieces I agreed with a lot of what they were talking about in terms of how to create a system where it's not just automobility but multimobility, and I phrased this question being like you've included all these examples, but how do EVs actually solve any of it? It seems like we're putting way too much emphasis just on electric vehicles versus spreading the resources around and using things that take up less space and are more efficient to move lots of people all at once, like mass transit systems.
Speaker 2:So I agree with that. So, yes, evs are not the silver bullet that's going to solve sustainability and mobility issues, but it's still a tool in the tool chest.
Speaker 3:It's a tool in the tool chest for sure.
Speaker 2:Moving on to another topic, under the EV umbrella there was a session that was discussing EVs and how they promote American leadership abroad.
Speaker 3:As well as building stronger communities. That was the genesis of this conversation. It was actually a conversation between a Rivian spokesperson who was interviewing Governor JB Pritzker from Illinois as well as Governor Henry McMaster from South Carolina. I had a lot of cringe, just like almost need to walk out of the room moments during this conversation, if I'm being honest, just like there was a lot of really out of touch moments. It was like, wow, our politicians are just so beyond. I won't get into the politics right now. There were a few things that were said that I was just like I can't believe that this is coming out of this person's mouth right now. But there was a little bit of discussion about, you know, how can electric vehicles strengthen America's leadership? And when we look at American manufacturing, can electric vehicles strengthen America's leadership? And when we look at American manufacturing of electric vehicles? And then you look at the manufacturing of electric vehicles in China, I mean I'll send you the link to this person's TikTok account who goes through and shows all the EVs that are being made in China right now.
Speaker 3:You can't buy them in the United States because we make it so that you can't buy them here. If they did sell them in the United States, every single one of our electric vehicle companies would be out of business tomorrow. We're talking electric vehicles that, starting this year, are going to come with full self-driving included in them, starting at like $10,000, which is absolutely insane in comparison. We can't even get close to it. Absolutely insane in comparison. We can't even get close to it. Obviously, like tesla has brought down the cost of evs in general in the united states, but not anywhere close to the level as in china. China is making cheaper cars, nicer cars. They have them on all levels of the spectrum. We're, especially given the current politics of what we're doing as far as trade wars with whoever you know pick a name out of the hat this day of the week we're not going to be able to build trade relationships with anyone selling our electric vehicles. I don't get it.
Speaker 2:I would think this conversation, if we had this conversation 10, 15 years ago, maybe a different trajectory, maybe a different outlook, where America could have been the leaders in EV technology and exporting this technology around the world. But that is not the case. That is not the stance we've taken.
Speaker 3:We haven't put in the investment and we're not going to anytime soon, it seems. And to be fair to the governors, they both did say like China was running while we were walking on this, the government wasn't, the United States wasn't super pushing it early on. Then there was some investment. Right now, obviously we're losing some of the investment, but at the same time it's not a great scenario. But they really wanted to spend a lot of time talking about how it is strengthening communities and pointing out a bunch of like oh, this factory opened in Illinois, this factory opened in South Carolina.
Speaker 3:Both sides of them there were interested in EVs, which again is better than combustion engines as far as sustainability goes, but still quite a bit of work on some of the other areas, especially when we're talking about, just like, solving transportation in the United States. Even beyond the sustainability thing, you're not going to do it in personal vehicles, especially in cities, as more of the country is urbanizing. Several of these talks had like hey, more people are moving to cities. Like the numbers are going up like crazy. More and more people in more people are moving to cities. Like the numbers are going up like crazy, more and more people in the world are living in cities and and then, yet we kept talking about individual transport services, and it's it's going to continue as we move into the next section here.
Speaker 2:Yeah beyond electric vehicles. The future of transit also includes autonomous vehicles and buses, which is something that we're starting to see a lot of. If you're very curious about autonomous taxis, you can always check out our episode on Waymo, where we got a chance to ride a Waymo all over Austin and sort of gave the whole history of it, gave you the whole experience of what it's like inside Yep. Waymo has actually done really well in Austin. They're now integrated into the Uber app, yep, and so if you're in town and you want to call an Uber, chances are you might get away, though.
Speaker 3:Well, I think autonomous vehicles are really cool and that they do play a role. I just get nervous that they're going to play the role. So I'm not surprised to see autonomous vehicles highlighted in so many sessions, because it is what is happening right now. You know, I think we all and to their credit, a lot of the sessions that did bring them up note that like, hey, this isn't the solution. This is one piece of the puzzle. Like there always be some sort of taxis, autonomous vehicles, specifically like small autonomous vehicles, can also play the role in further out communities to feed people into your larger network.
Speaker 2:But yeah, I have this vision. I think it's an Epcot or somewhere. They show an animation of the future of mobility and it shows an individual cars and the individual cars link up with other cars in front of them and then they turn into a train and then the train goes across the country. You know, that could be the future, lewis.
Speaker 3:I would have loved to see a session on that.
Speaker 2:Um, but instead what you got was a session that talked about autonomous buses.
Speaker 3:Uh, but're downfalls. Yeah, it was interesting. So I did appreciate the conversation and I think it made a lot of sense. I didn't think that this is what the conversation was going to be about. It was the title of the talk was making public transit safer and more accessible and equitable. That was yep, and I was. I actually think the conversation around safety, or perceived safety, on public transit is a very hot topic right now. Actually, I'd love to actually have somebody on who can talk about it a lot. So if you see this or you know someone, definitely let us know to kind of talk about how cities are balancing that act.
Speaker 3:But this was in a lot of ways, about autonomous buses and like a million ways on why they're not going to work and I don't know. It kind of rubbed me the wrong way in a little bit, because in a lot of cities we are having issues with bus driver shortages. It's hard to get bus drivers trained. It is a lot of responsibility. You're driving huge vehicles and you need someone very well trained to do so, but at the same time, bus drivers deal with so much. You are not just driving a bus, you're a social worker, a security guard, I mean the laundry list is long.
Speaker 2:You're giving people directions. You're teaching them how to ride the bus. First of all, yes.
Speaker 3:Yeah, dealing with people paying or not paying and all of these sorts of things. But a lot of the conversation was very much focused on like you're never going to have the bus driver not on the bus, and they cited some examples of like early versions of autonomous buses, like getting stuck in a situation. It's like even early EVs or autonomous vehicles in general, and and even still today they still get stuck. They get stuck, but it's that doesn't mean like they're never going to be solved. But the point that they were really trying to make and and they were clear that they were of like a university that was kind of working with a bus driver's union, so makes it makes a lot of sense they're worried about about the job side of it. But then the next points that they made were really good points. So they focused a lot on how, even if you do have an autonomous bus, you're still going to want someone on board who's more of like an attendant on the bus who, instead of having to drive and do all the things that we talked about before, can mostly focus on chatting with customers, helping someone navigate directions.
Speaker 3:If someone on the bus is having some sort of issue, like you can take the time to try to deal with these things while the bus is still going along on its own route, but then you're also there if something does go wrong. And that part made me really optimistic, because I do think that that's how buses should go in the future. You're still retaining the jobs for the drivers, but the training process can be a lot different. Instead of training someone to get their commercial driver's license, you can train them on the more social side of this. Yeah, for sure. We'll jump right back into the episode in just a second, but first, if you haven't liked this video or left a comment, please do so. It helps us out quite a bit and we also have some exciting news.
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Speaker 2:One of the directions that South by thinks that transportation is going was also under flying cars, which I was excited about, because who isn't excited about the prospect of a flying car? It's something that's been promised for 80 years now and it's never happened. And I will say, as far as technology goes, I think we are closer today to finding some type of small autonomous flying vehicles. But I was really excited to see what, you know, what was South by going to present as far as the flying cars go, and the answer to that came in the form of lift aircrafts EV, evtol, which is electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicle.
Speaker 3:And it was a really interesting talk. I'll give my thoughts on the broader element of it after. And we actually got a chance to chat with the founder for quite a bit afterwards, who, by the way, was like I recognize you guys, I've seen several, I watched your Austin Project Connect episodes and learned so much and all this stuff, so that was pretty cool.
Speaker 2:Huge shout out to them Thank you. Thank you for recognizing us.
Speaker 3:Yes, it was pretty funny, but it was a really interesting presentation. I mean, they're talking about what they were calling vertiports, essentially being takeoff and dropoff.
Speaker 2:Some people are starting to call them vertiports.
Speaker 3:Yes, exactly A few of my little qualms with it is I mean, it is an individual person getting into it and these things. We'll put up an image if you're watching, but if you're just listening, picture a drone, but much bigger.
Speaker 2:I want to say it was 18 propellers it was yeah, it was quite a few, and the whole thing weighs about 400 pounds and it kind of has like little crab legs on the bottom yep, that's how I would describe them.
Speaker 3:The battery technology was definitely the thing that they're working on the most on it right now.
Speaker 2:Right now, they can only fly for about 15 minutes at a time which doesn sound like a lot, but he did make a good point in the presentation that 15 minutes of flight time is actually a pretty far distance. You can get across almost every city in the US, maybe not Dallas. You can get across almost every city in the US in about 15 minutes if you're just flying ina straight line, right?
Speaker 3:yeah, because you need to imagine, you know, a drive that might be a 10-mile drive. If you were able to go in, a straight line might be 5 miles and you're not going to sit at stoplights or deal with any of that. There's a lot of open space.
Speaker 2:They did present really good use cases for where this would be applicable. They look at. If you're trying to fly from JFK into Manhattan. It takes a long time on a train, takes even longer on a car. Getting from point A to point B could be easier with a smaller vehicle, and helicopters already serve that service today. This would just be something that's a little faster. They gave the example of San Francisco being able to take off from downtown San Francisco and be able to hit any of the communities around the Bay. There are a lot of opportunities there, and then, of course, other applications in Tokyo and other places. And then the cool thing about this company is that they are based in Austin and so they're looking at even flights in Austin from the airport to downtown.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I mean, while I think that the application to use them as transit is interesting, I don't necessarily. It's just you'd need a ton of them to move the amount of people. What I thought the coolest applications of these were and where I could see it working. I'm not saying it won't work, as one of their use cases is for a transit solution, but one of the really cool use cases that I was seeing was rescue applications getting to somebody who's in a remote area, who gets hurt, or if there are fires or anything like that. You can send one person in this lift aircraft out there, you can have rescue materials attached to it and you can get to people much faster than you would if you were trying to drive out there. If there's issues, if it's not drivable and you can have someone essentially a first first responder getting there well ahead, there's some sort of remote application that they could do to fly the patient back and actually leave the rescuer to then be picked up later when the next person reaches out.
Speaker 2:So I think that there are a lot of really cool rescue applications that that this could solve and another interesting thing about this is that the model for this is not necessarily like an aerial taxi where you can fit multiple people. These are single passenger vehicles for now and they're also not entirely autonomous, so they have some guided path, that's sort of geofenced, that you would follow, but because of odd FAA regulations around how vehicles are classified, this is almost like an aerial scooter, so you would go to a vertiport, you would pick it up, then you would. You would actually be the person in control, lifting this in the air, guiding it to a destination, uh, hovering over your spot where you're going to land. Press land, everything happens Right, um, so that was also a really interesting. Uh, take on these vehicles Totally.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think it's a pretty cool concept. Uh, we might do more with them in the future, so I'm curious to get more information on it to see how feasible it can be for transit and what other sorts of applications it can be used for, I'm sure.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And the real-life application of them, because they were testing them at the site. This is not something that's conceptual. They had a vehicle at South by and were giving rides in it. Yes, very, very cool, not something that's conceptual. They had a vehicle at south by and we're giving rides in it. Yes, so very, very cool.
Speaker 3:Uh, finally, though, there was one session on trains, so, uh, we're very excited to have a session on trains, considering that, you know, that feels like if you're trying to have a sustainable solution to moving lots of people in dense areas, rural areas, any areas trains are kind of the main one.
Speaker 2:We keep trying to reinvent trains and keep coming back to trains.
Speaker 3:Yes, yeah, we should just stop trying to reinvent them and just embrace them.
Speaker 2:This session was led by Bjorn Bender, who is CEO of Rail Europe. That's sort of the mobile ticketing platform for all the trains in Europe.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and the platform's kind of cool in the sense that all of the different countries in Europe, for the most part, have their own train networks with their own website that you go to and you book your train tickets on them and whatnot, and Rail Europe makes it so that you can do all of them, for the most part, all in one place all of them, for the most part, all in one place, which uh makes it a lot easier to book trains and easier to understand the difference in pricing and how to get places and all that sort of stuff. But, um, his session was, uh, america, now is your time essentially for trains, and I thought it was america, come to europe because our trains are great, that's what I?
Speaker 2:that's how I got from the session yeah, I, I, uh.
Speaker 3:I think that there during the session there was some optimism for uh for trains in America, but as during the kind of question and answer and then I actually had a chance to catch up with uh Bjorn after the session and ask him a few questions, uh, and, and he was kind of able to elaborate a little bit more, we'll cut to a clip to that in a little bit here, but, um, yeah, I mean it was an interesting take on basically why do people choose trains over driving or flying, and that in order to have an area want to build out trains, you need to essentially show them these things.
Speaker 3:So we're talking about concepts like speed being one of them. Can you make it faster to get there? Comfort is a big one, like you know, if you're, if it's going to take you five hours to drive and it will take you about five hours to take the train, but you can work the whole time when you're on the train or you can play games with your kids the whole time on the train, like the comfort element is huge. And then price like it, like if you can make the train affordable and at the right price point, those are all things that you kind of need to demonstrate to folks so that they understand that this can be a much better option to choose.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we asked some questions at the end, as you said. One of the main questions was we have this perception in the US that trains have to be profitable, and so we asked Bjorn to give us his opinion on how we sort of break that mindset. Yep.
Speaker 3:So let's cut to the clip of that and we'll pick back up on the other side.
Speaker 1:I guess you're right. I mean, the circumstances are different because we are coming out of a world where state owned carriers were definitely dominating the rail market in Europe and it's still the case and state-owned means financed out of taxes, financed out of public money. And, yes, profitability is maybe the second importance when we look like that on the business. But, of course, first of all, you see that you can definitely operate rail systems profitably. There are plenty of examples out there. Second is, even more and more private operators are pushing into the market. So there is huge potential and there's also a possibility to make money.
Speaker 1:But it's a bit of the chicken egg question what needs to come first? And I'm completely convinced, when we look into the US, that there needs to be a huge push out of the politics, out of where the US investing money in terms of transportation, mobility, infrastructure, and this needs to come first. There's no possibility to get the infrastructure built by private investments. I don't see it at this stage and, yes, you need to increase it to get, let's say, the most out of the possibilities.
Speaker 3:Right right, it's going to require a big investment upfront here, but you have to have the long-term vision that this can be profitable down the road, absolutely yeah.
Speaker 3:One other thing in my conversation with Bjorn after the event that he brought up and I had asked about was in so many places in Europe that have successful rail networks. I believe Switzerland was the example that they gave during the talk or might have been during the questions. Switzerland knows, 50 years from now, what they're going to be doing to their train network. They already have it planned out what needs maintenance, when, what is getting extended, when, and because of that, their train system is immaculately on time. Everything runs smoothly, efficiently. So some thoughts he had on the us was like if we ever do want to seriously consider having a real train network in the united states, or even regional train networks, we got to stop with this whole like every four years, every new Congress. Like we start planning things and then they fall apart. And then we start planning things and then they fall apart. Like you need to create that long-term vision, get the buy-in for it and do it. And we're just generally not doing that right now.
Speaker 2:We are planning based on a political cycle and not like a population cycle.
Speaker 4:Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, big takeaways of South by for me, beyond just this train conversation. You know, we're talking about sustainability, we're talking about the future of mobility in the country and I feel like a lot of the sessions were just fairly short-sighted, or maybe not even short-sighted, but they're just siloed, they're not considering the larger applications outside of it. We had a great, very brief conversation with Gabriela Brila I think is her last name, who's with MIT, and she presented this idea of urban utopias and mobility utopias and how we can achieve those, and I got a chance to ask her a quick question about that.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so we always design for the utopia right, we have to be hopeful and want the best in order to design. But what I think is missing when we do cities a lot of times is that we is a utopia that is done by few people for a few people. Right, it's not really thinking about the broader scope and the principles that I would say that are like, at least in my work I've been finding very useful when design is about flexibility, adaptability and diversity right, like these things. If you manage to incorporate that in design I mean, design is never gonna be perfect, but if it leaves room for adaptation, it can, like, go into an interesting direction, right.
Speaker 2:That's the messaging that I was hoping to hear more of at South by and I was very to hear more of at South by and I was very surprised when things just seemed very siloed and, again, kind of short sighted in my opinion. Yeah.
Speaker 3:I guess the only thing I'll say is creating a session for an audience like this is tricky. In that regard, like all of the people who were, there are kind of their, their experts in their specific fields. To me it was more so not the sessions, but just like the choice in what to focus on. It was interesting. Overall, it was a cool experience to be able to go and do it, not necessarily the exact focuses that I would have had on this if I was organizing the transportation track.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. But overall we are really incredibly grateful for South Byte giving us the opportunity to cover the transportation track and also incredibly grateful to the presenters and speakers who we were able to chat with afterward. We had some really great connections there and overall, like you said, it was a great experience and very interesting topics.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. If you have not liked this video already, please do so. It helps us out quite a bit. You can also leave a comment, and if you want to support the show directly, you can do so via our Patreon. With all that being said, thank you all so much for watching.
Speaker 2:Enjoy the rest of your Transit, tangent Tuesday.