Billy Riggs (00:41)
All right, welcome back to Rewiring the American Edge, where we explore, technologies policies and, the voices shaping a, the American, future of competitiveness in the increasingly automated world. I'm Billy Riggs and I'm joined by my incredible colleague, Vipul Vyas.

as well as many guests and, we were last joined by an amazing guests, Ruth Whittaker. Check it out. We do apologize for our crazy amount of delay between episodes because, we were kind of on holiday, for a little bit. and as you can see from my background, I'm no longer in a stodgy room.

I'm in a cool natural space in all places, Louisville, Kentucky. so I'm traveling to, the same kind of rust belt States, that Ruth was talking about. Right. Vip, turning it over to you.

Vipul Vyas (01:34)
Hello. I'm not in an exotic location. I'm just in the exotic part of my house, which is in the back.

Billy Riggs (01:34)
Yeah.

But but you know, like I said, it's an exotic location that our last guest said was in the was in the heart of these these workforce locations that that our country is really that are important for the workforce of our future. Kentucky, Indiana.

Vipul Vyas (01:53)
Okay.

Yep, that is true. And more so California if our leadership could get in gear, but different story, different story.

Billy Riggs (01:55)
Indiucky.

Yeah.

So, you know, pivoting off where we were last time, Vipul, we wanted to spend some time in our lane, which was talking about, we talked a lot about automation and innovation with automated vehicles and jobs last time. I think we were talking about

drilling down to urban policy, the curb cities, how will automation and innovation reshape our streets, our cities, the land in our cities, our really hyper local economies. And I think you and I thought that would be a really cool place to dive into.

And I know just to full disclosure, it's definitely an area where I've spent a lot of time thinking about how the, this place we call the curb is not just a place to park. and I can talk a little bit more about that, but, maybe you can just, share some of your thoughts about that as we dive into this topic.

Vipul Vyas (02:59)
I think I don't know how things will play out. I don't think anyone can really predict that. But I think what you can say is that we should create mechanisms by which things are allowed to play out organically and through some degree of

Billy Riggs (03:11)
Mm-hmm.

Vipul Vyas (03:14)
Self-selection of what's going to happen based on just what needs to happen. And what I mean by all that is that Solutions will self-declare themselves and We can't get in the way of things happening as long as they're sensible and they don't they're not damaging because of antiquated thinking so after COVID for example people started moving to the suburbs and to more rural areas because

They might as well you're not interacting with people and then that created a whole preference cascade of That's what what people want to do. They wanted a yard they wanted More time around the family and a mechanism by which to do that which is you know a single-family home in a traditional sense where they wanted to move to Idaho and get a lot of land With with some of those forces

Dissipating I think there's been a little bit of a reverse in that regard but with with AI and the change of the job market and the nature of jobs in general I think there's gonna be another shift in terms of what people prefer and we also have a society I'll wrap by saying that society that's wracked by loneliness anxiety depression massive amounts of screen time versus people time and So will people recognize the absence of the things?

Billy Riggs (04:01)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Vipul Vyas (04:25)
the human connection, social network, social connectivity, and will they opt for more urban-like, maybe it's not purely urban, but urban-like living, and will we see a shift in that direction? And will we get out of the way and let that happen?

Billy Riggs (04:37)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, I thought the there were kind of, you know, there was a way we could structure today's conversation based on really a way that I structured my book. And maybe we can put a link to my last book from 2022 which is called, End of the Road. And it really the point of the book was to start thinking about roads as streets.

Vipul Vyas (04:40)
Ahem.

Billy Riggs (05:03)
But, the idea of calling road streets was to start thinking about these places that are discardable and roads as being an idea of discardable. Think about them as things that have economic value. And I think that's, that's really since, you know, aligned with the way you just described things is that thinking about urban space is something where, that it, is not just a sunk cost that there's a, not just.

that every piece of urban space has intrinsic economic value to cities, but also citizens. And, that th th there's shared benefits to cities and citizens. And when you start ignoring those benefits, you devalue not only the city, but you devalue the citizens, you devalue intrinsically the value of, of the assets that citizens by-right own.

and citizens by-right, by being residents of the city by-right, have shared ownership in those streets. and so you, you can think by, by being a tax holder in those centers, you are, you have shared ownership in that public asset. And so, I like to think that you, should own the street in front of your house. it's, it's all really about taking ownership of the street.

I think automation and innovation allows you to take ownership, not only the street, but, but there's a new way of thinking about streets and curbs and public infrastructure. And so I think what I was thinking about today is we, we talk about this idea of thinking about the streets and curbs is critical infrastructure and thinking about automation and innovation as a way of reframing this, this thing as streets and curbs is critical infrastructure. And, and, you know, maybe that basic infrastructure is thinking about.

broadening the aperture of what is critical infrastructure at the local level, because you can start to think about charging, you can start to think about all these things that you can grow the lens from small to big. Then because you if you start small, you can always cascade up to bigger statewide nationwide infrastructure. You can start to think about broader land use implications. And that's where,

the next point I would make the broader land use transformations beyond that. And then third, I think that you talk about the dividend jobs and economic impacts. And so maybe, maybe we structure, we could structure things, the conversation like that, if that's sounds good to you.

Vipul Vyas (07:18)
Makes sense.

Billy Riggs (07:19)
Yeah. So, you know, maybe without further ado. Why don't I just throw out my thought about why I feel like the curb matters so much, which is, hey, this has always been passive space. At least in the US, we've always been, you know, if you look at history of the United States and our love of

love fest infatuation with the car at least since the 1950s when we paved paradise and put up a parking lot. Thank you very much for that song. You know, we, if you go watch Who Framed Roger Rabbit, there was a big conspiracy about how we ripped up all these rail lines. Yes, it was true. There was a Goodyear and Firestone conspiracy to rip up rail lines in LA.

go watch it again. But we have seen over the last decade over with the rise of with the rise of rice share, micro mobility, the curb space, street space has become much more dynamic. And as a result, the increasing, just the intrinsic value of street space based on demand for that street space; usage of that street spaces has become more economically of value. Now whether or not we're

placing that value, whether or we're monetizing that value is the question.

Vipul Vyas (08:26)
Well, from my perspective, it's, again, and I've mentioned this in the past, it's sort of a poverty of aspiration in terms of just what can we imagine, what can we envision, and the lack thereof that I at least see. mean, during the pandemic, San Francisco did a lot of imaginative things. We had parklets, both

in terms of curbside as well as just new spaces that were third spaces that were developing in parts of the urban landscape that otherwise were just ignored, probably wasted or trapped spaces, and people were activating those areas. I think that's still going on a little bit, but again, we've folded back into this mindset of, well, we can't do that. We can't do that for a whole bunch of...

Billy Riggs (08:50)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Vipul Vyas (09:09)
more bureaucratic and

Nonsensical reasons. There's really no

Coherent reason why we can't do more things and be more experimental And let more importantly let people experiment, you know There is things like oh you can't have the tiny library in front of your house You can't put a bench in front of your house. You can't do the little things and look There's got to be rules totally get that but we make it so difficult for people to Know what they are and abide by them and then constrain them

Billy Riggs (09:19)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Vipul Vyas (09:41)
And a lot of it has to do with our own inability to deal with messiness and things being a little bit untidy. In some cases, we're totally okay letting civic spaces, public spaces go to pot. In other contexts, we can't let a tiny library protrude two inches too far to the sidewalk and then we're bent out of shape. But to get back to your bigger point,

All the things that are happening now, AI job, transformation or dislocation, micro mobility, et cetera. All of that is going to create pressure to adapt, to adapt to these things. And if we don't create mechanisms by which we let people adapt, and we force them into what is what we've always known, and said make do, just figure it out, we're not going to be the city or spaces or the country.

that is prepared for the future. I every time I'll just say, wrap my little speech here up by saying, every time that I have people talk to people who come back from China, they all say they're in 2050 and we're in 2010. Like we've progressed, they've propelled forward.

Billy Riggs (10:42)
Yeah, that's really interesting. Yeah.

I think there's so much in you said, and I want to hit on a couple points and elevate them because I do think we need to be very aware in the future of automation about what we at the local level do to slow down automated systems and AI in our cities. And one of the things that I've dealt with and

is the perception of chaos in some of these automated solutions. And the question of and it's exactly what you said is that the public perception of what is beauty or what is chaotic and you know, you get you get Jane Doe or John Smith that looks out at a city street and perceives what they what they think in their own human perception as a congested street.

Vipul Vyas (11:28)
Woo.

Billy Riggs (11:30)
You know, average Jane Doe or John Smith does not know what congestion is. But when they look out at a street, they may think they see congestion. When they see a stopped Waymo, Cruise, Zoox, Pony.ai , self-driving car, safely letting a passenger out, much safer than a human-driven vehicle, much safer than an Uber or Lyft.

They may actually think that that is slowing down traffic. Now, the question is, and some of my research actually reveals that, that that actually that vehicle may have actually allowed for a safer egress and actually a much, may have sorted that drop off in a much, more optimal location than a human driver would have, that, that slowed down traffic in a much, different way than a human driver who would have otherwise.

stopped in traffic because there was no available parking lane. And let's put a pin in that is actually a totally legal maneuver in many locations for a vehicle to stop in traffic. When there is no available curb for a safe pickup and drop off; when there is no available curb for a safe commercial passenger egress.

either way, we have to remember human perception is human perception. And most of the time humans are inherently and fundamentally flawed.

I come back to this idea of behavioral psychology and a lot of this is that human behavior overestimates positive outcomes, but also underestimate that they'll they'll be involved in a collision. So wants to assume that they're a better driver than an AI.

And wants to assume that, that they should stay in control of a vehicle. And wants to assume that, maybe that the, UPS driver can deliver their packages more efficiently than a, than a drone or a robot. And, you know, the funny part is, is that that may be a very, a very clear way to define your term poverty of aspiration in terms of why we are a worst

our worst enemy in terms of moving forward is we have a broad swath of the public that just can't get out of their own way in terms of their own perception of reality.

Vipul Vyas (13:34)
Yeah, I think that's right.

To put a finer point on it, think older people, know, people refer to the baby boomer generation, they're not really willing to give up what they've had and are not inclined to. It's not in their disposition. There's a lot of interesting articles that have come out recently that that generation, the baby boomer generation in general doesn't anticipate.

leaving much to their kids. just want to spend it. You know, go out broke. So there's not this notion of pass it to the next generation probably wired in the DNA there. I mean, that's not me saying it. That's sort of third parties. And why that's relevant is they want to lock in

Billy Riggs (14:10)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Vipul Vyas (14:15)
the physical infrastructure and built environment into what they're familiar with, what they're comfortable with, and not really accommodate a lot of change. That's one thing. And I think that you bookend that with the younger generation who is aligned bizarrely. Some parts of the younger generation are aligned with that because the changes that would come along, more autonomous vehicles, more privately built

Billy Riggs (14:16)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Vipul Vyas (14:41)
private developments, condos, may be the case, represent a way of using scarce resources or perceive scarce resources like land and space in ways they don't agree with. They want more social housing, for example. So you have this bizarre NIMBY alliance between moneyed interests of baby boomers who own property and younger generations who don't.

Billy Riggs (14:53)
Mm-hmm.

Vipul Vyas (15:03)
but are going to fight tooth and nail the development of New construction simply because it's not the construction they want and So I think that's that's the tension

Billy Riggs (15:13)
Yeah, yeah. And I think there's a there's and there's a lot there. I mean, we've seen this in the housing space. I think we're continuously this and I don't think part of me thinks it's a you know, maybe it's it's tied up in it set up in age, wealth, tax code. It's a complex. It's a very complex issue.

in California, it's, it's, it's tied up in this issue of, proposition 13, which it was this complicated tax code that allowed for, for intergenerational wealth transfer, which, so it's not a, it's not a simple, veritable policy nut to crack. but there is this, this broader thing about

how do we ensure that a lot of these, the benefits of economic development and the benefits of automation that we harness them for the next generation, because a lot of the benefits of the promise of automation really could potentially be the promise of resolving some of what we fear of

of the the next generation, our children. And I think what what has been the problem is, we've seen this, this generational decline, wealth decline, and always the American dream had been in this is, there's been a lot of literature about the wealth decline in the American dream, this idea that your children will always have it better than you had. And and that that promise that that

you will be able to your kids will be able to have it better than you is a lot of people feel that that that promise is gone. And I think there are a lot of people in America and maybe this is this is part of the broken promise that many people that are that are graduating from college, many of my students that are graduating now feel like, hey, the government, our economy has failed us. Our economy has failed me.

I got it worse than my parents. I don't know that I'm going to be able to buy a house. I don't know that I'm going to have a job that's going to pay me more. I'm not sure that I'm going to be able to retire. I think getting the AI economy right may be one of the ways where we can solve some of that issue. so, yeah, I mean, so that's, yeah.

Vipul Vyas (17:15)
Absolutely. That is the chance.

That's the chance we have. we have, everything you said is right. I think there's a sense of why should I care about this system when it doesn't really get me much or I'm not really invested in it because not much for me to be invested in. I'm not going to get a lot out of it. So there is that general sense of resentment and there's people are disgruntled.

And I think that gets all munged into one big ball of anxiety that expresses itself in all sorts of ways. And we're seeing that right now. And so I think what I'm a little bit saddened by is there's not a lot of leadership around what do we do about that and what do we do next.

Billy Riggs (18:00)
Yeah, yeah.

Vipul Vyas (18:01)
There's not

any that I haven't seen much think either though. There is the Ezra Klein abundance faction of What I would guess is the Democratic Party Which is drawing a lot of fire from the progressive left and it's drawing a lot of fire from the progressive left I think because it has a story to tell it does have a policy set a set of policy prescriptions and it does have an Introspective view of what has worked and what's not and and based on that

Self-analysis a sense of this is what we should do next. So there's there's things are actually media enough to attack But it represents a credible alternative to the progressive left and I think that's what people fear the most within The ranks of the left so it's gonna get it's gonna take a lot of shots. I'm sure

Billy Riggs (18:45)
Yeah.

Well, I mean, I think what we're talking about, the other nuts and bolts of the street in local economies, may be where you start and this idea that there is value even at the the basic level of the curb and that The curb is not just about paint and signage. It's about software. It's about sensors.

Vipul Vyas (18:46)
This is what.

Billy Riggs (19:04)
It's about pricing and algorithm rhythms. And it's about all the governance behind that. And that to paraphrase you, we shouldn't have a poverty of aspirations around that. should have a plethora of vision. If I was to maybe, you know, we should, we should, how would you say we should just kind of

Vipul Vyas (19:21)
Yeah.

Billy Riggs (19:25)
we should be adventurous And I think maybe to go to my second point, I think where we step above that is we figure out how we systematically transform land use using automated systems. And what I would ask you is if we thought about

automation and innovation and we thought about land use and job hubs and how you would think about cities and houses and warehouses and retail and all the footprints and where people live. How would you design cities differently?

Vipul Vyas (19:57)
Probably pretty different than the way it looked like the one that what they look like today ⁓ You know the as you you're familiar with that Euclidean zoning, you know is very much about efficiently

Billy Riggs (20:01)
Okay?

Vipul Vyas (20:08)
disintegrating literally, where we live, where we play, where we work, where we shop, into these tiny little locations. And that's not just how humans work. There's reason most cities overseas aren't really set up that way. They're soulless, they're uninteresting, they're monotonous, not very inspiring. And they're not really

Billy Riggs (20:17)
Mm-hmm.

Vipul Vyas (20:28)
Practical anymore You know if you and I know there's this whole return to work thing but It is ultimately more efficient just to work from home if you have a two-hour commute each way or an hour commute It's just it's an employer's vanity a reaction of not being able to know what you're doing But that's just that's just a function of poor management. I think I think these guys you know, you know

You can bring people together for obvious reasons to connect and to, you know, be creative together, but that does not have be every day. But I think that the notion of, you know, people escape cities because there were messy, polluted, untidy spaces or in places. I think the things that made them untidy and unpleasant.

are the things we have to focus on remedying. And so if we make cities places where people want to be, they'll be there. I think suburbia has lost a lot of its charm, not completely, you some people want a yard and stuff, but even in suburbia, the way that we define that is going to change. Why can't you have a convenience store in the middle of a neighborhood? Why can't you have services out of people's homes?

Billy Riggs (21:12)
Mm-hmm.

Vipul Vyas (21:34)
because they're living there, they're working there. They can set up shop. You can do that to some extent today, but not fully. But all these things I think will become and should become much more common. And we should not get in the way from that happening. We're just self-constraining. And we're preventing things from, we're preventing the world from figuring out.

what needs to happen by having a lot of barriers. Obviously you need some because you need some rules and governance, but I think the big thing that's going to happen is place is actually going to matter more, not less.

Billy Riggs (22:05)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And first off, you know, zoning is broken. mean, zoning is completely broken. The fact is that you can't pivot between office and housing really quickly. The fact is that you can't go from office to entertainment really quickly. The fact is that you have to, you have to, there's restrictions on entertainment zones that you have to, you have to create strange loopholes to bring people back to downtown and in places like San Francisco.

They're coming up with strange loopholes to basically create vibrancy downtown. It's so bizarre. It's just completely bizarre. And I think the, the, the nuts and bolts of things are, is that, you know, people, there's a really an opportunity to bring vibrancy and to bring people together and to enliven cities and automation creates a way to

a way to I think there's an operability between the vision of the 15 minute city and of a city that is softer and is more livable. But also, I think it's a real opportunity that I think it's actually a very big threat to the traditional big box. And big box retail should be very there's a lot of theories early on that in

particularly when people were thinking about autonomous vehicles and thinking about that people would want to be in these big super commutes and they would just want to be living in their cars. And first off, I as an academic, just didn't totally buy it because I just like who would want to just sit in their car all the time. And I would just like, just human nature didn't feel like it added up to me. I would just like I was like, I just doesn't sound like something I'd want to do unless I'm living in Mad Max.

And so in second, all because humans are inherently social beings. They've historically for since the Humorabi's code have have wanted to gravitate towards cities. There's there are many historical precedents towards humans going towards trade, but also convening in social spaces, even if just one time a week.

whether or not it's for places for worship, whether or not it's for trade, whether or not it's for eating and drinking. So I do think there's a really big opportunity for us to continue to create those places, but also to bring those places closer together. But I think there's the big, the big challenge is like as retail becomes particularly easier to do through robotics at the last mile. And as mid

mid tier logistics becomes more done more so by drones, by robots, it's going to become cheaper and cheaper for that to be automated. Now the question is, is that once that's done more and more by drones, by robots, etc. I think that the big boxes really have a threat that's going to be all done online. It's going to be done overnight.

There's going to be no reason to go to Walmart. There's going to be no reason to go to Meyer, etc. You know, you're going to be going to the local market. Yeah.

Vipul Vyas (24:59)
They'll probably act as

like local warehouses at most.

Billy Riggs (25:05)
Yeah, local warehouse that that may even get you know, that may get a large, you know, maybe more like the wholesale, you know, like a wholesale place that if you want to get something in bulk, so maybe the Costco Sam's Club model still works. But I think that the you know, the local market model is probably the market that I would want to bet on if I was actually wanting to invest in a in a job. So I'd be investing in like a Trader Joe's

kind of foot footprint if I was actually a venture capital is right now like the the you know, 15,000 square foot model and retail model that's more of an urban market.

Vipul Vyas (25:44)
Well,

the Walgreens and CVSs are hurting, right? The convenience stores. But I think that they're kind of stuck in the middle. They're not that different from a big box store and they're not unique and distinct enough to be really a truly local market. Like you can't get anything fresh there, right? So they're really kind of, like I said, stuck in that middle ground. And as a result,

Billy Riggs (25:47)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Vipul Vyas (26:08)
They kind of people don't feel there's a purpose though because I could just order things on Amazon or whatever and get it pretty quickly or quick enough In the rare and I mean they kind of get relegated with that rare and since I need cough syrup right now Right, but you can still go to safeway. You can still go to the grocery store So they're in a spot where it's not really sure what purpose they serve whereas

Billy Riggs (26:22)
Exactly, exactly.

Exactly.

And they also

got embedded into target and all this other stuff. So they're in a they're in a weird space. Yeah.

Vipul Vyas (26:37)
Yeah,

they try to get into healthcare and people, think the jury's still out on whether people really buy their role there. Maybe. I mean, I think that's TBD. But in the end, they're not distinct enough and they don't offer the unique thing that people need in terms of a true local market. And I think that's why they're not doing so well right now.

Billy Riggs (26:48)
Yeah.

So the other thing we had to think about when we think about urban planning and cities there, Vipul, is how people move around. And this is big when we think about land use, please, I'm the transportation engineer, transportation planner. And I think, you know, automated vehicles are one thing we talked about last time. clearly that's a bulk of my research. But if you were designing a city and the city of the future,

Where would you see automated vehicles fitting into particularly the public transportation systems? And I will be honest, you know, and I have my opinions, but I'm going to tell you, you've read the news in most every major U S city, public transportation systems are bankrupt.

How does it work in the future?

Vipul Vyas (27:38)
Yeah, I think it's a fair question. And you would know about it, know way more about it than I would, but I would say that I think autonomous vehicles really play a big role in the last mile. I think like close in we should, we may expect to see, well, let me back up and say car ownership as a price to pay for being a productive member or relevant member of society is too great. I have to own a couple ton piece of equipment.

just to be noticed or counted in the world is a little bit over the top. So that's one notion. And then if you extend that further, like I think immediate close in mobility is just walking or maybe electric bikes, things of that nature, shared tools like shared bikes, scooters, things of that nature may be more And then I think

you're going to have traditional public transportation such as light rail, etc. to take people distances, you know, across town, whatnot, in mass, cheaply, efficiently, and then you're going to have what I would consider the real benefit of autonomous vehicles is that last mile and letting people get

to their end destination more easily. But I don't think anyone's thinking about that. Or maybe even probably you guys are, I don't think anyone's... Let me just, I'll just wrap up by saying, San Francisco really resisted autonomous vehicles from what I could tell for variety of probably political interests, modestly safety interests, but more political interests for a really long time, right? And no one said, well, this is inevitable.

So let's at least maybe we'll slow roll it, but this is how we'll make it work in the fabric of what we have, the assets we have and how we take it more full advantage of them. It was just sort of blind resistance. And my expectations will just see more of that versus anything coherent. That's all I'd say.

Billy Riggs (29:18)
Well, yeah.

Our friends at the city of San Francisco were very scared of automation and I think we will. I am friends with many of them and I will say that one of the points of fear they had was they equated automated vehicles with ride share. And one of the pain points I will make is they equated automated vehicles with ride share and by doing so, they made a critical mistake.

They assumed that automated vehicle companies could just turn a key and flood the market with millions. And we don't have to say millions, hundreds of thousands of vehicles, even thousands of vehicles overnight. And that is just a false assumption. It's just, you can't flood the, they're just too expensive to produce. And so that was just a, just an unreliable assumption. And so, you know, even to this day, there's only

between 700 and 1000 vehicles driving the streets of San Francisco. And as a result, they're not causing this runaway congestion or vehicle miles traveled, vehicle kilometers traveled that officials in the city of San Francisco had long feared. And I think that was the anxiety that people feared. But I do think there was this

there is this question that city officials feels what will be the future and I like you and I didn't pay you to say this, believe that there's more opportunity for the solution than there is fear of, that there will be a problem or impediment. And the, I think the problem is, is that transit hasn't, transit for a long time, we'll say 75 to a hundred years, hasn't reinvented itself. It has suffered a poverty of aspiration.

And I'll say even more boldly that it's, say sometimes jokingly that public transit treats its, its passengers more like cattle than customers. It's like the, you know, I sometimes joke that Southwest treats its customers like cattle. And I feel like sometimes when I'm on the bus, which I do ride all the time and I'm a bus rider, but I do feel like I'm somehow like a bovine on the bus.

And I don't, I don't always feel like the bus is that clean. And I don't always feel like I always sometimes feel like I need to disinfect after riding the bus. And yeah, it's not always a pleasant or rewarding experience. And ⁓

Vipul Vyas (31:40)
And I think there's this notion

that it can't be too. That's the poverty of aspiration.

Billy Riggs (31:44)
Well, I just don't feel like I don't feel heard, rewarded as a customer, but I also don't feel served many times. And the funny part is I don't feel that I'm just putting myself into it like many people do. And I am not, I'm one voice, right? I am not, and I don't pretend that I am the only voice, but by doing so, I do something that every trans person that rides transportation does. They put themselves into it. My voice doesn't matter.

I'm irrelevant. But I'm basically playing a I am a persona, right? My persona is relevant. By doing so what I'm doing is I'm illustrating a point is that everyone has a persona. The point here is public transportation needs to basically listen to these personas, the personas are personalities, they're customers, they need to become more customer centric. If they listen to the customers, they would

They would actually understand that transportation has changed. People crave two things. They crave reliability and convenience. Why do we know that? Because Uber and Lyft kicked their asses. They are afraid of Uber and Lyft because Uber and Lyft kicked their asses. They lost the last mile. They got their asses kicked. We do know that

because we have studied this people that when Waymo in October of 2024 ran a pilot, they offered people the equivalent of a transit ride as a subsidy to get to public transit in San Francisco. This is to get to high capacity transit, high capacity train lines in San Francisco. They gave people the equivalent of a transit ride, $3 to get.

that 4,000 people immediately took that incentive. And you know what? They took Waymo to get to transit. So what they did, it doesn't even matter, but the idea is they, some of them were actually taking transit already about, I think it's about like 25 % of them, because I actually did a study on this, about 25 % of them immediately stopped taking transit and got on Waymo. What does that tell you?

the customer experience on that public transit is not the same customer experience as the automated vehicle. So I just think there's some lessons that public transit needs to work. And maybe that automated vehicle, no matter who controls it, can be a part of public transit. Does it matter who owns it? Does it matter who owns it? I don't know. But I think it's actually a lesson that public transit should learn.

You know, let's maybe look at where market forces settle out. Can you, could it still end up in reducing car dominance overall? Could it reduce car dominance? And if it ends up in a space where you decrease car dominance just a little bit, and that reduces, you 25 % of San Francisco and 25, know, and more

of many other cities, but 25 % of the city of San Francisco is parking. Now, what if that 25 % became housing? What if it became parks? What if it became, you know, green space that was was groundwater recharge? That that could be transformative for the future of climate and the economy. So throwing that out there, Vip, what do you think?

Vipul Vyas (34:50)
Right.

Yeah, I think that probably most transit agencies don't view their offering as a product as much as they should. And, you know, they've got the challenge of accommodating everyone because it's a public good and a public service. So that's fair. But that does not preclude them from necessarily offering something effective. And sometimes it might be, you know, private-public partnerships where the public part really is meant to serve the

the more difficult to serve population that may need completely subsidized offerings or maybe the right thing to do is just to do subsidies, you know, using private alternatives. All that should be on the table because that may be a cheaper way of proceeding. But

Billy Riggs (35:50)
but

Vipple, this bothers me though. This bothers me because if you then use that excuse that the public part, that really crappy service is for the most vulnerable, that is the worst excuse that public transit agencies give because that basically says, we're gonna do this service that is inferior and we're gonna give it to the at risk, you know, all the poor people get the bad service.

Vipul Vyas (36:14)
Well...

Billy Riggs (36:14)
Because

that that actually reeks is basically is kind of like. Well, so why don't we just actually just start giving Uber and Lyft rides to all those people and just just kill off all public transit? Yeah, why don't you just give?

Vipul Vyas (36:18)
You already have that today. That's what it is today.

Yeah, you might as well just substitute. You could use some of

that. You could say, look, we'll just subsidize certain people with vouchers or whatnot to some degree. And that still maybe end up being cheaper and better than what's being offered today. I think it's very healthy for public systems to have competition. what you, I mean, look, what were a lot of public light rail systems

100 years ago, they were private. The San municipal railroad was created from private lines. And so, they're not.

Billy Riggs (36:51)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. I mean, the radical,

the radical evaluation would blank to be to blank slate it right to basically blank slate it and say, here is a hybrid system. Here's a completely privatized system. And how do each systems, how do you system serve people best? Could you could you basically serve people best with something that was a super interesting? Everybody gets one free shared Uber Waymo.

lift a day.

Or conversely, everybody gets, you know, one last mile free Waymo, shared Waymo a day that connects to public transit and you pay for everything else. And then, yeah, I mean, maybe there's some kind of hybrid and then status quo was the other option.

Vipul Vyas (37:36)
The government in that case has to be very careful about not having regulatory capture, having enough competition in the market and ensuring it. I mean, you don't want these natural monopolies like PG &E, you know, and that will just end up extracting more than contributing. But I do think there are ways that there's a, because San Francisco specifically is a big labor town.

it's not going to easily come up with those ideas and forget embracing them, even exploring them is going to be tough. So it probably will happen somewhere else to be blunt.

Billy Riggs (38:11)
I mean, the future of this industry is...

is the and so to a certain degree, it has to reinvent itself. And to a certain degree, it has to reinvent itself in a way that is sustainable at the same time. And I do think, you know, automation has to be a part of it. And I think all options have to be on the table. And I don't know that, you know, I think you have to go into it with an open mind.

Vipul Vyas (38:32)
Yeah. I mean, there's things that will surprise you that you just got to be willing to try and fail. Like, you know, the congestion pricing that people were against that turned out to be something that most people actually now don't want to turn the clock back on. So you just have to be willing to experiment. I don't really know. Like other transportation projects, like I think Brightline West will happen before the California high speed rail project does. They will likely get done and start serving tens of thousands of people.

Billy Riggs (38:54)
Yeah.

Vipul Vyas (38:57)
well before. ⁓

Billy Riggs (39:00)
Well, that's interesting.

I think that that gets us back to maybe the meat and potatoes of where we are, which is this gets us back to kind of jobs in the economy, which is kind of the where we started this is a spinoff of and we've kind of been hitting hard on our automation and innovation theme, which is we are a spinoff of the Autonomous Vehicles & the City Initiative. But we really would wanted to talk about jobs in the economy and

Brightline could be kind of a new way of thinking about rail and the rail economy jobs and that part of the infrastructure of California. How do you see that coming to be in California? I hadn't thought about that as a part of our discussion today.

Vipul Vyas (39:44)
I'm out of time, but I would say that my takeaway on that particular front is.

The California high-speed rail project, as an example, is not about bad ideas. It's about an inability to execute and an inability to be real. Like this was always going to be a hundred billion dollar project. Learning curves, it's a massive effort. You got to go through mountains, train. There's all sorts of reasons. It was always undersold in terms of the budget. But beyond that, there are plenty of other projects that are a hundred billion dollars that are much less well conceived.

Billy Riggs (40:00)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Vipul Vyas (40:14)
But the bigger point there is that we have demonstrated a lack of state capacity to do things, to just be competent. And that's the biggest concern there. We just cannot do things competently.

Billy Riggs (40:27)
Yeah. So, so beyond, beyond curves, this, transportation story, there's a, there's a bigger political economy story that we can, we can harness as kind of as cities monetize these small things from permits to dynamic pricing, to thinking about curves. There's a really a, a kind of a, a realization that we can kind of harness these big picture projects as well. And they don't always have to come from the public sector.

Um, and I think, uh, in many ways, I think what you're casting is a 21st century vision of.

ports, roads, grids, sovereignty, resilience, economic competitiveness, the future of not just cities, but also the state, the country, you know,

Vipul Vyas (41:11)
As you said, it goes from

the city out. I think that it's not going to happen the other direction. It's not going to happen the direction. I totally agree.

Billy Riggs (41:17)
Yeah,

Cool. So, well, I think we've had a great conversation. I think you got to run. I hear your phone blowing up. So thanks for being here, Vip. We've touched on a lot of stuff, mobility, real estate jobs, the economy. ⁓

Vipul Vyas (41:31)
This is a big topic.

This is a huge topic. I think that it's one that will...

Billy Riggs (41:35)
Yeah.

Vipul Vyas (41:37)
that you could talk about for hours. And there's enough stuff that's important enough that justifies talking about it for hours. Honest.

Billy Riggs (41:43)
Yeah. Well,

I can just summarize and say that, you know, I think we can say that automation isn't just isn't just about vehicles. It's about how cities function at every level. It's about efficiency, about inclusivity. It's about resilience. And

it's not just about the technology, it's about policy and governance. Final word, Vipul.

Vipul Vyas (42:05)
Yeah, keep talking about it. It's a final word.

Billy Riggs (42:07)
Yeah, keep talking;

keep working. Thank you so much for joining us.

Vipul Vyas (42:11)
Alright, talk later.