Transportation Transformation
The New Urban Mobility
On November 3rd, 2018, Councillor Kelley held a conference that brought together thought leaders from government, industry, and user groups to explore the technological, policy, and infrastructure complications we must address as we jointly move into this New Urban Mobility future.
The Panelists
Our welcome speaker provided an overview of the current state and near future of urban and micro mobility.
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Our keynote speaker tackled questions such as: How does micro-mobility incorporate new and emerging technologies? What are the implications and mathematical impacts of vehicle occupancy, pooling, congestion, sharing, and multi-modal networks.
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Panel 1 Discussion: The potential and current impact of emerging and existing technology-based micro-mobility such as scooters, micro-electric vehicles (MEVs), e-bikes, and one-wheels.
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Panel 2 Discussion: The regional infrastructure and regulatory challenges such as data sharing, equity, land use and right of way, parking and charging, speed limits, and licensing, zoning, and permitting.
KENT LARSON
Welcome Speaker
Director, City Science
@ MIT Media Lab
Kent Larson directs the City Science group at the MIT Media Lab. His research focuses on developing urban interventions that enable more entrepreneurial, livable, high-performance districts in cities. To that end, his projects include advanced simulation and augmented reality for urban design, transformable micro-housing for millennials, mobility-on-demand systems that create alternatives to private automobiles, and Urban Living Lab deployments in Hamburg, Andorra, Taipei, and Boston.
ASSAF BIDERMAN
Keynote Speaker
Founder & CEO @ Superpedestrian
Assoc. Dir. @ MIT Senseable City Lab
Assaf Biderman is the Founder & CEO of Superpedestrian, a robotics company developing new vehicle forms with advanced sensing and control technologies to improve and scale multimodal transportation. He is also the Associate Director of the MIT SENSEable City Lab, a research group pioneering in the field of smart cities.
IVAN LI HUANG
Panel 1 Speaker
Founder & CEO
@ Bonzer
Ivan Li Huang is the Founder of Bonzer, a dock-less electric pod sharing service focused on the micro-mobility space. He has been running a pilot in Cambridge since March and is currently working on expansion. He received an MBA in MIT’s Sloan Fellows Program in Innovation and Global Leadership and has founded multiple electronics repair services across Latin America.
JOSH WESTERHOLD
Panel 1 Speaker
Senior Manager, Future Lab
@ Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance
Josh Westerhold is senior manager of the Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi Alliance Future Lab, which looks decades ahead to identify potential issues and opportunities for the industry. With extensive expertise in urban planning and business development, he studies transportation trends and crafts new business concepts to address mobility needs for the future. Josh has a Bachelor’s in finance, an MBA, and a Master’s in Urban Planning from Harvard. He’s worked in varying capacities in the startup mobility space, including executive roles at VentureScout, Startupbootcamp, and SHIFT.
SCOTT MULLEN
Panel 1 Speaker
Director of Northeast Expansion
@ Lime
Scott Mullen has spent his career pushing to enable 'car-lite' lifestyles from many angles: as a journalist covering bicycle advocacy, with Zipcar proving that Americans would share vehicles, as GM of Hubway (BlueBikes) from launch through 1 million trips, and now into the new frontier of dock-less micro-mobility. A charter board member of LivableStreets Alliance, he’s also spent time behind the mic for the TransitMatters podcast and BikeTalk radio show which broadcasts from MIT.
HANNAH SMITH
Panel 1 Speaker
Government Relations Manager
@ Bird
Hannah Smith is a Government Relations Manager for Bird. Prior to Bird she worked for the cities of Boston and New York, most recently managing multi-agency initiatives in the Mayor's Office in New York City, including Vision Zero and bike safety education programs in public schools. She works with cities along the east coast to create policy for better, safer and smarter shared streets.
ERIC BOURASSA
Panel 2 Speaker
Director of Transportation @
Metropolitan Area Planning Council
Eric Bourassa is the Director of Transportation Planning at the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC), where he oversees an interdisciplinary team of planners that conduct regional transportation studies, provide technical assistance to municipalities, and research critical transportation issues facing Greater Boston. He serves as the Vice Chair of the Boston Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO). The focus of Mr. Bourassa’s work is on the relationship between land use and transportation, and strategies to achieve smart growth with low automobile trip generation.
QI "RYAN" WANG
Panel 2 Speaker
Associate Research Director
@ Boston Area Research Initiative
Qi "Ryan" Wang is an assistant professor at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northeastern University, and the associate director of research at the Boston Area Research Initiative. His studies focus on human mobility and its inequality in U.S. cities. He holds a PhD in Civil Engineering and has researched social inequality and segregation using big data and the interplay between urban informatics and urban, infrastructure, and social resilience.
JOSEPH BARR
Panel 2 Speaker
Director, Traffic, Parking, & Transportation @ City of Cambridge
Joseph Barr is the Director of Traffic, Parking, and Transportation for the City of Cambridge, and is also on the Board of Directors for the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO). During his time in this position, he has focused on Vision Zero and creating a safe transportation system, improving customer service, and deploying enhanced technology solutions. Joe has served as New York City DOT’s first Director of Transit Development and as a planning and engineering consultant.
OLIVER BANDTE
Panel 2 Speaker
Principal Data Scientist
@ The Boston Consulting Group
Oliver Bandte is a Data Science Principal in BCG's Data Science unit, GAMMA, where he started their Customer Analytics team and ran the Solution & Services team. Oliver is the GAMMA lead for BCG's Center for Mobility Innovation and is responsible for all advanced modeling and simulation activities in mobility. He built a Boston traffic simulation to study the impact of autonomous vehicles and ride-sharing concepts on the mobility of the city. Oliver holds a PhD in Aerospace Engineering where his research focused on identifying a new approach for probabilistic multi-variate decision making, leading to a US patent in interactive evolutionary computation.
