Tectonic Shifts in Mobility: My conversation with The Hill and the District of Columbia’s Chief Technology Officer

I was invited by The Hill to its inaugural Future of Mobility conference to talk about building mobility ecosystems. 

Lindsey Parker, the District of Columbia’s Chief Technology Officer, and our moderator, The Hill editor-at-large Steve Clemons engaged in a robust exchange around how the profound changes we are experiencing in mobility are playing out more broadly across all domains of a smart city. 

New players on the mobility scene…

Over the last 110 years, the basic functions of and players in transportation have remained essentially the same. But today’s innovations—micromobility, ridesharing, automated vehicles, and more—are largely driven by new entrants. These companies have been able to access significant amounts of capital and are looking at problems and solutions from fresh perspectives, unencumbered by having to defend existing business models. This positions and enables them to be catalysts for profound change.

…Help drive the shift from Smart City 1.0 to Smart City 2.0

All of these new technologies and services entering cities demand a new way to approach governance. Lindsey detailed how the District of Columbia has to think about connecting in entirely different ways. That it has to be smarter, better, faster, nimbler, and fairer on social justice issues. DC is evolving from Smart City 1.0, where governments tried many new yet disconnected initiatives while lacking clear goals—“death by pilots,” as Lindsey put it. Smart City 2.0 demands a clear vision and strategy, and it requires collaboration among a widened set of stakeholders. The District of Columbia Smart Region Movement, for example, encompasses boards of trade, councils of governments, and university consortia that collectively tackle interoperability and other issues that cut across jurisdictions. At Deloitte, we see more and more of these types of ecosystem collaborations forming, and they are increasingly a prerequisite for effectively harnessing new mobility opportunities.

Catalyzing change

Of course, even with the building blocks in place, change won’t happen overnight. Lindsey and I seemed to squarely agree that thinking about the new economic opportunities associated with mobility, versus purely substituting for existing modes and infrastructure, is one way to engage constituencies, especially those with varying knowledge of technology. And we discussed the real need for behavioral change, as well. Altering well-formed habits and thinking more about transportation options that are fit-for-purpose are challenges we’ll have to collectively tackle as a society.

Special thanks to Steve Clemons and the Hill for gathering a really dynamic group of executives and leaders from many aspects of the mobility ecosystem to further our discussion and collaboration on bringing mobility, our governance structure and ourselves into the 21st Century. You can follow the full conversation here: The Hill Future of Mobility Summit

?