Mobility Innovators Podcast

Digital technologies are currently remodeling the public transport ecosystem. Blockchain is emerging as new technology to facilitate seamless urban mobility through delivering future-oriented Mobility as a Service (MaaS) solutions. Other new emerging technologies like Web3 and Metaverse have the potential to offer door-to-door journey experiences to users. Iomob is building the Internet of Mobility and has the vision to empower enterprise organizations to offer seamlessly interoperable, global mobility roaming to their users. The company also launched the first NFTs collection with Brightline train operator in Miami and the first-ever transportation layer in metaverse in partnership with Next Earth and Vueling Airlines.

Boyd Cohen is the CEO and Co-founder of Iomob, a decentralized Internet of Mobility network. Since obtaining his Ph.D. in strategy and entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado in 2001, he spent the past two decades focused on accelerating the path to a low-carbon sustainable economy. This included publishing 3 books, multiple peer-reviewed articles, and starting a handful of ventures in the smart cities and sustainability arena.

Innovation is playing an important role in improving the customer experience for public transportation users. Transit agencies should create a strong innovation culture within their organization to define what innovation means to them, generate new ideas by involving front-line staff, learn best practices from other agencies, and conduct pilots to test new ideas. On-demand buses, Mobility as a Service (MaaS), and blockchain are all new emerging opportunities for transit agencies. There are also new challenges such as cybersecurity. DART (Dallas Area Rapid Transit) has implemented many innovative projects, such as passenger fare restructuring, on-demand mobility, integration with first and last-mile connectivity, and the establishment of a mobility sandbox.

Tina Mörch-Pierre is the Sr. Director, Innovation and Technology Services at First Transit. Her experience and depth of knowledge span over twenty-five years in varying industries including transportation, healthcare, technology, and finance. Previously, she was working as AVP – Innovation at DART (Dallas Area Rapid Transit). Tina has spent the last decade leading various transit initiatives including fare collection programs, launching mobile applications, strategizing, and deploying MaaS programs as well as exploring innovative approaches to solving transportation needs. She shared her experience on various key topics and her personal journey.

Technology will be crucial in improving public transportation networks in emerging markets. Deep tech can assist in rationalizing a large volume of data in order to build inference. However, many emerging markets lack data because it is fragmented and non-standardized. The public transit agencies in emerging markets should follow open data and open-source principles. This will help the entrepreneurs to build various applications.

Devin shared his personal experience of building a bootstrap business and how he raised funding from notable investors. He shared some valuable entrepreneurial lessons and his journey from bootstrapped startup to venture-capital-backed business. He highlighted in this part that Ideas are a dime and it takes a lot of grit and determination for founders to run with an idea, turn it into a business, and then scale it.

Devin de Vries is CEO and co-founder of WhereIsMyTransport. The company is building the largest source of mobility and location data for emerging markets, producing, and maintaining public transport network information from every mode of transport. The company has collected data from various cities across Southeastern Europe, Latin America, Southeast Asia, and South Asia.

Public Transport is the backbone of cities and provides access to people for both economic and leisure activities. It plays a more essential role in emerging markets. According to the UN and other sources, around 3 billion people rely on Public Transport in the emerging markets. The people in emerging markets are reliant on public transport mainly for commuting to and from work. These markets are option-rich but information poor. People do not have access to information about the available public transport options.

WhereIsMyTransport is building the largest source of mobility and location data for emerging markets, producing, and maintaining public transport network information from every mode of transport. The company has collected data from various cities across Southeastern Europe, Latin America, Southeast Asia, and South Asia. WhereIsMyTransport is a venture-backed company that has raised $28 million in funding from notable investors.

Devin de Vries is CEO and co-founder of WhereIsMyTransport. An entrepreneur dedicated to fostering technological innovation to overcome social challenges, Devin leads a team inspired by a shared vision to bring the benefits of high-quality data and technological innovation to people living and working in emerging markets. He has built 3 ventures and all his ventures have been tech-related: in high school, university, and now with WhereIsMyTransport. Devin shared some valuable entrepreneurial lessons and his journey from bootstrapped startup to venture-capital-backed business.

The city of Madrid is committed to achieving climate neutrality by 2050 and has launched A new sustainable strategy for Madrid: Madrid 360 in September 2019. Sustainable Mobility is a key component of the strategy, focusing on the creation of low-emission zones, the construction of infrastructure, the promotion of public transportation, electromobility, and personal mobility. EMT Madrid is in charge of operating buses and a bicycle-sharing system in the city of Madrid, operating a fleet of 2,082 buses and carrying 1.6 million every weekday. The agency has always been at the forefront of introducing and testing new technologies, such as launching an open-loop payment system in 2019, a MaaS application in 2019, micro-transit services in 2020, and numerous other digitization initiatives.

Juan Corro Beseler is the Chief Technology and Innovation Officer at EMT Madrid, the leading mobility surface, since then has been in charge of rolling out EMT innovative solutions like the Smart Bus Madrid and pushing the MaaS development in Madrid. Juan has developed his professional career in the field of innovation and digital transformation in both the public and private sectors. Before joining the municipal company, he held the position of vice president of Strategy and Business Development at SAYME, academic director of the Engineering Area of U-tad (University Center for Technology and Digital Art), and director of the Cabinet of the Secretary of State of Telecommunications and for the Information Society, leading the deployment of the first Digital Agenda for Spain and representing the Ministry of Industry in the National Cybersecurity Council.

Public transport sector is undergoing major transformation owing to the availability of various mobility options in the cities, as well as, changing riders' behavior. Public transit operators need to adapt to these new technology and market trends. The riders are looking for more personalized information in real-time, including any change or disruption of service. Further, there is an expectation of incentives and rewards in the event of such an inconvenience. The podcast will touch on various key issues including predicting users' behavior using smartphone data, data privacy issues, customer satisfaction and loyalty in public transport, and how to win back riders.

Roman Oberli is Chief Executive Officer of Axon Vibe, a location-based contextual platform that detects and predicts real-world human behavior. Roman leads a team of more than 100 engineers and data scientists from multiple disciplines, located at five centers around the globe – every day evolving the future of mobility. As the chief of Axon Vibe’s product vision and development process, Roman has become a thought leader in spatial analysis and a true visionary in tackling the urban challenges of congestion, pollution, and the “new normal” through behavioral change. As a serial entrepreneur by nature, Roman has extensive experience in building and scaling startup ventures.

Digital technologies are currently remodeling the public transit ecosystem. Blockchain technologies are changing the world and becoming more mainstream. The opportunity of an increasing number of decentralized applications running in peer-to-peer networks needs to be understood by the various stakeholders involved in the process. Being a new technology, it is difficult to find dedicated use cases of using blockchain technology in the mobility sector. However, there are several examples where blockchain can potentially be used for selected public transit services including decentralized MaaS, smart contracts, asset management, carbon trading, workforce management, and supply chain and logistics.

Sophia Rödiger, is the founder and CEO of bloXmove, the decentralized ledger for Power & Mobility. She is a business psychologist, author and has been shaping innovation, transformation, and marketing initiatives in the digital mobility environment for over seven years. Most recently, she led the global startup hub as well as global transformation at Daimler Mobility (now Mercedes Benz Mobility AG). As a mentor, Sophia is particularly committed to women in technology fields and supports their international networking and visibility. If Sophia is not working on the future of mobility in the universe or metaverse, she loves to spend time in the mountains.

Transit agencies around the world are faced with the challenge of digitizing their operations in a short period of time due to pandemics. The challenge is further complicated for the small and medium-sized transit agencies as they lack the expertise and resources. RTC (Reseau de Transport de la Capitale) made it through and became a champion of digital transformation, launching many technical innovations like payment apps, etc.

Christian Lebeuf is the Director of Technology of RTC, Quebec City, Canada. As head of the technology sector with the RTC, he set up and launched the bus fleet's electrification program, put it in place, and supervised the team in charge of deploying the IT systems required for the operation of Quebec's future tramway.

Technology and New mobility are reshaping urban transportation in cities. However, transit agencies should focus on solving real customer problems rather than introducing new innovations such as autonomous mobility, mobility as a service, ride- sharing, electric scooters, etc., Human-centric design is key to the quality of life in cities, putting people at the heart of urban transport planning. The cities must avoid creating digital inequalities in transportation services. All stakeholders, including academia, will play a key role to reshape the future of mobility.

Dr. Niels van Oort, assistant professor of Public Transport at Delft University of Technology and Co-director of Smart Public Transport Lab. He has been involved in public transport projects for over 15 years and has expertise in public transport planning and design, as well as dealing with customer experience, service reliability, and Big Data. He is an academic entrepreneur and believes in more practice-based learning rather than theory.

Cities around the world are investing in electric buses and planning to induct electric buses to achieve their climate goals. The city of Shenzhen, a 20-million-strong metropolis, is known as the global capital of electric buses. The first 100 electric buses were introduced in 2010, and the entire fleet was converted to electric in 2017, totaling 16,000 electric buses and 22,000 electric taxis. The electrification of public transportation in Shenzhen has yielded numerous lessons.

Joseph (Joe) Ma is Technical Advisor to CEO of Saudi Arabia Public Transport Company (SAPTCO). Earlier, he was Deputy General Manager of Shenzhen Bus Group, a company that is running 6,000 electric buses and 5,000 electric taxis. He is the brains behind Shenzhen's successful electric bus operation.