D.C. event shares perspectives on today's (and tomorrow's) mobility challenges
With the transportation landscape evolving quickly in recent years — new mobility options and growing support for transit and bicycling — decision-makers face greater opportunity and unpredictability in how they can utilize and react to such options.
The finished wall of sessions at Transportation Camp DC 2017. Image via Greg Jordan-Detamore/Twitter
3 min to read
This story, originally published by Mobility Lab, was written by tech reporter Andrew Carpenter.
With the transportation landscape evolving quickly in recent years — new mobility options and growing support for transit and bicycling — decision-makers face greater opportunity and unpredictability in how they can utilize and react to such options.
What should the role of private enterprise be in providing transportation services? How transit-oriented development should evolve with the introduction of autonomous shuttles? And how exactly do protected bike intersections work?
Participants at TransportationCamp DC this year explored these changes, their implications, and how people can focus their efforts to improve transportation and accessibility.
Following the “unconference” model, participants guided the day’s conversations by proposing sessions, the majority focusing more on active discussion over prepared presentations. This way, attendees can explore issues from multiple points of view, building a community of thinkers and actors to tackle issues facing the transportation world.
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Questioning the future In the typical unconference model, organizers (Mobility Lab, George Mason University, and a number of host partners) don’t set a theme for the meeting, leaving participants to forge the course for the day. Ultimately, the sessions that made “The Wall” (where ideas for sessions are posted once approved by organizers) suggested a certain sense of uncertainty among many attendees, with many asking what the future holds for a variety of subjects.
Autonomous vehicles, in particular, received a lot of attention this year. The future of driverless cars, including their effects on transportation systems and cities, is open to debate, making them a significant part of many conversations throughout the day, including six sessions focused specifically on AVs’ impacts in the industry.
Overall, the diverse backgrounds of attendees informed a wide range of possible takeaways, revealing how many conversations still have not been fully shaped in these early days of the AV.
Putting heads together Many interesting exchanges happened as the 432 people who attended from wide and far on a snowy, frigid, Metro track-work-hampered Saturday encountered each other throughout the day.
Members of the MARTA Army shared their tactics for grassroots improvements for transportation in the Atlanta region, which blend tactical urbanism, innovative crowdsourcing, and traditional pressure on their transit agency. This approach struck a chord for a number of D.C.-area passenger advocates, and spurred a conversation between the groups as a hopeful model for future organizing in the Washington metropolitan area.
In the afternoon, a “New Era of Public Mobility” panel incorporated government, business, and nonprofit speakers to explore the future of public-private partnerships. Bringing these perspectives together helped to highlight the opportunities for the groups to work together on improving the reliability of mobility options and expanding the reach of transit. Other suggestions included the creation of public “mobility managers” to coordinate with private services, and the challenges to sharing data and insights across agencies.
Great point: when we see headlines about govt funding, we don't see the people behind it going to the school, hospitals, work. #transpo17pic.twitter.com/pPJpc5Y6Et
Few sessions had tidy conclusions as they might in a more formal conference. Instead, they acted as catalysts for new ideas and collaboration on the issues they covered, with most of the conclusions captured by TransportationCamp’s army of note-takers.
By embracing the dynamic nature of transportation, the unconference opened up conversations that will help advocates, businesses, and planners move more people in better ways.
Polis comprises cities and regions, as well as corporate partners, from across Europe, promoting the development and implementation of sustainable mobility. This year’s event had over a thousand attendees across various policy forums and an exhibition.
Across North America and beyond, transit agency officials are contending with a perfect storm of operational headaches and strategic challenges that hamper daily service and long-term progress.
Simply incentivizing electrification is not enough to make a meaningful impact; we must shift our focus toward prioritizing public transportation and infrastructure.
For many years, the narrative surrounding public transit improvements has been heavily weighted toward environmental gains and carbon reduction. While these are undeniably crucial long-term benefits, the immediate focus of this new funding environment is firmly on demonstrable system efficiencies and a clear return on investment.
The notion of agencies being over- or underfunded, I argued, doesn’t hold up. If an agency wants to turn up the heat — to grow beyond the status quo — it must demonstrate measurable value.
Some agencies might suggest they are funded in the public transportation space. Some complain that they are funded too little. I have never heard a public transportation executive proclaim that they are funded too much. And if no public agencies are funded too much, then, by definition, none are funded too little. To steal from Goldilocks’ thinking, they are all funded just right.
From East Asia to Europe, more than 400 exhibitors and 70 sessions tackled global mobility challenges — highlighting AI, automation, and urban transit equity in the race toward a carbon-free future.
A closer look at ridership trends, demographic shifts, and the broader impacts of service reductions reveals why maintaining, and even improving, bus service levels should be a top priority in 2025.
