Mobility Forum with Jinhua Zhao

Adam Millard-Ball mapped walking and cycling across 11,587 cities in 121 countries. The results may surprise you: density and bike networks matter far more than climate, walking delivers most of the emissions gains, and your best peer city is probably one you've never studied.

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Today’s episode is my conversations with three city leaders sitting at three different phases of AV deployment: Rachel Castignoli in Austin, Tilly Chang in San Francisco, and Stephanie Dock in Washington, D.C. We’ll walk each city in turn — the Wild West, the rulebook, and the capital.

Three cities, three phases of deployment — and the same three gaps: no data, no first-responder protocol, and no authority to fix either.

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Today's episode is my conversation with Kara Kockelman and Robin Chase. With AVs, the technology won't decide whether a city gets Heaven or Hell. The governance will.

Here's the lever cities finally have, the empty miles to watch, and the pricing fight worth having.

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As of Nov 2025, Waymo is delivering over 250,000 rides a week. In today's episode, I sit down with Drago Anguelov Head of Research at Waymo to unpack the AI behind autonomous driving: from 3D Sensing & Spatial Reasoning to AI foundation models and Social Intelligence.

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What does it take to build a world-class transportation system - and keep it world-class for 25 years? I am Jinhua Zhao, Welcome to the Mobility Forum - where the leading minds in transportation come together to shape how cities move.

Today, I sit down with Shashi Verma, Chief Technology Officer of Transport for London - the man who has personally touched every major innovation TfL has delivered over the past two decades. from Oyster Card, contactless payment to Crossrail and congestion charging.

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A common myth: “China’s Electric Vehicle industry succeeded only because of top-down governance.”

Wrong.

China succeeded:

NOT through authoritarian mandates

NOT through subsidies alone

But through ecosystem alignment—of markets, policies, and consumers

As tariffs escalate between the U.S. and China, electric vehicles (EVs) are the newest casualty.

But the real threat isn’t foreign competition—it’s domestic inaction.

While the U.S. protects its turf, China is building an electric future.

Trade wars don’t build industries. Ecosystem alignments do.

Five Reasons China Pulled Ahead and What it can Teach the U.S.

In AV for Cities 01, I wrote "AV technology has matured, yet cities are utterly unprepared". If not, how should they?

1. What is the goal?

2. Who holds the power?

3. What are the instruments?

Municipalities have more leverage than often perceived—they need to use it strategically. Cities and the AV industry can work together to enhance mobility for all.

Cities can connect the goal (planning principles), the power (regulatory mechanisms), and the tools (policy instruments). They are not passive recipients of AV innovation; they are essential architects of its future.

Are Cities Prepared for Autonomous Vehicles?

10 years ago, cities had a surge of interest in autonomous vehicles (AVs). But the technology wasn’t ready and cities grew disillusioned.

Today, we see the reverse. AV technology has matured, yet cities are utterly unprepared—and most are not discussing it at all.

In our paper, Are Cities Prepared for Autonomous Vehicles? Planning for Technological Change by U.S. Local Governments, Yonah Freemark, Annie Hudson and I surveyed 120 U.S. cities in 2019 and found that:

“A clear majority of officials disagreed that their cities were prepared for AVs, had a clear sense of who was responsible for them, or had developed plans or policies related to them.” See image in the comment below

Cities need to move beyond 'wait-and-see' and actively engage in planning for AVs.

Six years on, are cities any more prepared or do our findings still hold? I’d love to hear your thought: which cities are laying out concrete AV policies or meaningfully engaging with the AV industry?

Here is a 6:27-minute audiogram summary.

(Warning: AI-generated. For a precise account, please refer to our paper https://tinyurl.com/yrn3vwt4)