The outlook is not rosy and bright for our industry. Unless there is significant expansion of federal operating dollars for public transit in the U.S. and Canada, there could be severe and potentially permanent retrenchment in service plans around the nation.
One of the largest trends over the past couple years in public transit has been implementing new strategies to increase ridership.
What I found in my public sector roles was that often private sector vendors did not understand how we operated nor how to interface effectively with us as the public agency.
The cooperative orchestrates the “optimal and cheapest combination of trips, originating from many different transportation authorities and different booking interfaces, utilizing vehicle resources from many different private transportation operators.”
Don’t you love a long and boring meeting at work? Probably not. I have spent a lot of my 30 years in business and government in such business meetings.
I recently traveled to Switzerland to see the world’s first autonomous shuttle in operation on regular fixed-route public transportation in mixed traffic and came home with three lessons.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in thirty years about getting increased funding from your board, it’s that winners get investment. People want to invest in winners because they have already shown a propensity to get results with what they have.