Why we exist
I’m often asked, ‘what does the future of mobility look like?’ or ‘what inspired you to start a career in transportation?’ For many of us our transportation story begins with how we move. Maybe we grew up in a part of the world where driving was the only way to get to school. For some, the fear of missing the morning bus could cost us our job. For others, we have to rely on public transportation services because conventional vehicles can’t accommodate our wheelchairs.
Whatever our story is, technology plays a pivotal role in helping us build a future that is safer, more sustainable, and more accessible for many more communities than it ever has been.
Who we are
The Future Mobility Institute firmly believes that everyone has the right to walk, bike, roll, or ride how they chose. Economics and our demographics shouldn’t determine how we get to work, school, or limit our opportunities.
That’s why each of us at the Future Mobility Institute fully believe that the public and private sectors need to come together to support communities. Part of this work focuses on specific technologies, like automation, artificial intelligence, connectivity, electrification, mobility on demand, and other emerging tech. Other parts of this work are about changing systems, building partnerships and helping to digitally transform our system. All of this work is about building bridges beyond our organizational silos to help public agencies work with private companies to grow partnerships that advance community needs.
We know the tech sector is working hard to disrupt transportation for the better, and that the public sector is trying to keep up to update legacy systems, so at Future Mobility Institute we’re working harder to make it work for us all.
Our philosophy
The global transportation system evolved from pavement and concrete in the 20th century to digital transformation using computers, sensors, algorithms and data in the 21st century. To get to the 22nd century, it’s going to require all of us to work together to digitally transform our communities using technology and other tools to help us plan for the future of mobility. Whether self-driving cars arrive tomorrow or twenty years from now, we need to act now to prepare so we can build communities that are inclusive, design cities that are accessible, create mobility services that provide opportunity, and use technology to connect us.
What do we believe?
Tech is the future of transportation – We’ve learned to harness this new mobility future using purpose-driven innovation that is data-driven and puts people and communities. That’s why we use human-centered design and public engagement principles to put people at the heart of what we do.
Trends tell us something – From population and demographic trends, to market changes and global sustainability goals, we follow key-trends to help us understand the various scenarios in which the world is changing. This helps us create realistic plans that help us understand our goals both for the next year, while planning agile scenarios to help us plan for the next twenty.
Investing in tech pays off – Sometimes it’s hard to trust technology and new ideas. However our work shows that we invest in innovation and digital transformation, for every dollar invested in mobility tech we see a 4:1 to 6:1 return on investment. As public funds have to go further and we have to stretch budgets longer, there are real, evidence-based reasons we need to invest in future mobility.
Technology begins where human limits end - Humans can’t see through walls. Drivers get distracted. Communities are hesitant to reimagine roads without strong data. These challenges are being overcome by technology companies and innovative public agencies that use tech to help shows gaps in our systems and how using technology can lead to make better design decisions.
We need to democratize tech to make it simpler and more accessible – We fundamentally believe that the private and public sectors have an obligation to work together to think creatively and artistically about the future. We must collaborate and engage community members and public leaders to ensure we together design mobility products and services that solve real transportation challenges.
How do we do this?
This new era of innovation links the physical world to the digital, allowing us to communicate, share, store, analyze, and use information in real-time to save lives, provide faster emergency response, help mitigate impacts of extreme weather, improve resiliency, reduce emissions, enhance mobility, and distribute services equitably. Technology helps us create new ways to move, plan and connect. These digital systems are, essentially, creating a new ‘operating system’ for the future of mobility.
At the Future Mobility Institute, we overcome the challenge of planning for an unknown future in a few key ways.
1. Take action now to harness this once-in-a-generation opportunity. We cannot wait for the next generation to solve the challenges of tomorrow. We all have a stake in making transportation safer, more sustainable and more accessible for all. Technology is a force multiplier and combined with leadership, strategy, funding and partnerships we know that now is the time is now for us to evolve to plan tomorrow today.
2. Design and foster new public-private tech ecosystem and regional governance models. Solutions are no longer being built solely by the private sector; the public sector wants to partner to co-create solutions together. Public leaders must shift to more agile, nimble processes to allow us to fail and learn, and move forward together. This also requires the private sector to help design and fund our investments for our future, because even with the existing federal funding, the current infrastructure funding gap is $1.5 trillion.
3. We make it easier for the public sector to benefit from technology and innovation. By 2027, this mobility technology – including digital transformation alone - sector offers over $2 billion in economic opportunity for communities. There are nearly 20,000 cities and towns across the country, but it’s unrealistic to expect companies innovating these solutions to work in 20,000 different ways. However the Future Mobility Institute helps bridge these partnerships to help make it easier for cities, towns, tribes and rural communities to benefit from technology.
It’s going to take new and innovative ways to move us all forward. Conversations across our industries, with all kinds of stakeholders, will help us build the future we all want and deserve. The Future Mobility Institute will help us get there by helping us solve for tomorrow today.