Mobility Innovators

Natalie Rodriguez ([00:00:00]):

What we do right now is focus more on the problems that our company and our colleagues are facing every day. So what we are doing, we are a small team. We are about, at the moment, five to six colleagues, just myself, and we’re trying to tackle very daily issues, very operative issues coming from different departments within the company. And our objective is to accompany and solve this problems together with our colleagues. And just to give you an example there is it can be something so small, such as a small project that we’re running in order to solve the information lack for the passengers, where when short trains are arriving at long platforms in our metro alliance and how to make sure that they know exactly where to stand when the metro is arriving. So that’s a small problem that we’re working together with the metro colleagues. We have other issues such as how to improve and dictate, try to identify patterns of incidents in our incident reports so that the colleagues. The technicians can say, I know that this is a pattern and I’ve seen it before in other reports and I can solve this maintenance or technical problem as much as fast as possible.

MIL ([00:01:39]):

Welcome to the Mobility Innovators Podcast.

Jaspal Singh ([00:01:46]):

Hello everyone

Welcome to another episode of Mobility Innovator Podcast. I’m your host, Jaspal Singh. Mobility Innovator Podcast invites key innovator in the transportation and logistics sector to share their experience and future forecasts. In this episode, we’ll be discussing the role of innovation and technology in mobility space.

Our guest is Head of innovation of Hamburg Hochbahn. She joined Hamburg Hochbahn in July 2011 as a tariff and revenue specialist growing within the organization. She became the Head of Innovation in February 2023. Hamburg Hochbahn is the public transit operator in the city operating 150 bus route and four underground line. The city is now investing in expanding the existing underground line and replacing the existing bus fleet. Hamburg is also one of the most innovative city and exploring new form of mobility.

UITP’s next Global Public Transport Summit will be in Hamburg in 2025, so it can be a good opportunity for you to visit the beautiful city.

I’m so happy to welcome Natalie Rodriguez, Head of Innovation, Hamburg Hochbahn. Now’s time to listen and learn.

Hello Natalie. I’m so happy to have you on the podcast. I know it took some time, but glad we made it.

Natalie Rodriguez ([00:03:00]):

Yeah, thank you for having me here. I’m looking forward to our conversation.

Jaspal Singh ([00:03:04]):

Great. There are so many topics to cover as Hamburg is working on so many interesting projects.

So let’s kickstart our discussion with your personal journey in mobility space. You started your career with a consulting firm and work in a different places before joining Hamburg Hochbahn in July 2011. What motivated you to pick this as a career option and also what inspired you to keep working because now you’re working in a sector for more than a decade and now you’re ahead of innovation.

So also can you share how the day looked like in the life of a head of innovation at one of the largest transportation companies in Germany?

Natalie Rodriguez ([00:03:42]):

Yes. So I originally come from Venezuela and I started my career studying urban planning and at the time I wasn’t sure if I wanted to just keep on urban planning projects and I took a Master in Public Service Management and after this public service management master, I started in a small company consulting company working on small projects all related to transportation for the city authorities, also for regional and state authorities in different countries here in Germany. And after that I came to the Hochbahn in 2011 and it has been such an adventure we had. So I’ve been blessed to have different opportunities within the company. So it is not boring at all. I started as a revenue specialist for a subsidiary of the whole fund and then continue on a strategy position. And I was project lead for autonomous vehicles here in the last five years and now I’m the head of innovation starting this year 2023. So yeah, different areas that I’ve been had the opportunity to tackle and problems that were very fascinating from feasibility studies in the time as I was consultant and now new projects that are important for the company all around innovation.

Jaspal Singh ([00:05:22]):

That’s amazing. That’s amazing. I mean, your story is not only about somebody who is successful within the company but also a successful immigrant story. I didn’t know that you came from Venezuela and settled down in Germany and now you’re working as a head of innovation at Hamburg. That’s amazing. So how do you see the cultural thing play in your role?

Natalie Rodriguez ([00:05:41]):

I tried to, it’s very funny that you asked this question because I remember when I was in the consulting company, I always used to say to my colleagues, I’m like Switzerland, I’m very neutral because it was a French-German consulting company and sometimes there were different ways of solving problems and it was very fascinating for me to see how different teams solve different problems. And I saw myself always as Switzerland say, okay, I can pick a little bit of the best and try to bring my own sauce in this project or problem. So yeah, it’s very fascinating and I’m really happy that I’ve had the opportunity to accompany different colleagues in the private sector and now in the public sector working for the whole panel.

Jaspal Singh ([00:06:35]):

It’s always good to experience different cultures and see how things work and you can bring your own flavor, you can bring your own experience and your own perspective. Now not many people know that Hamburg is a second largest city in Germany. In fact, I was surprised because generally it’s Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich, Cologne, which get more prominent name. So I want to know, so Hamburg also has a second largest public transit system. So can you share more about Hamburg Mann now you’re working for more than 12 years in this agency and regarding ridership, did pandemic have any back on the expansion of the system or your continue to expand system irrespective of what’s ever going on with the pandemic?

 

Natalie Rodriguez ([00:07:20]):

Yeah, so Hochbahn, we run as a private company but we are 100% owned by the city of Hamburg. This makes us quite special because we have also the mentality of trying to always cover costs and always think about how can we be efficient at the same time we have this long term perspective, which projects are important for the public interest and also important for the city.

Hamburg, the whole system has about 6,300 employees and it’s important to say that around 3000 of these employees are bus drivers and about 600 are metro drivers. So more than the half of our employees, they come from operations and they are the ones that are running the systems every day, day in, day out. And it’s also very important to see what are their needs and how can we improve the systems also based on what they give us feedback on a regular basis.

Natalie Rodriguez ([00:08:35]):

We operate 115 bus lines and four metro lines in Hamburg. We are one of the biggest operators in Hamburg, but they’re also smaller bus operators and also the train company is also a big player in the city. And it’s also important to say that we are pretty healthy when it comes to our finances. We have about 80% of cost recovery ratio and this ratio is something that I would say the whole is very proud about. In the last years we also had a level of almost over 90% and now that we are investing in new projects and new programs that are important for expansion in the city, then the cost recovery ratio has suffered a bit, but it’s still a pretty good recovery ratio. So we are really proud about that and we have a lot about, I would say 384 million passengers that they drive with us year in, year out. And yeah, regarding to your question, the pandemic hit us I think pretty hard like many other public areas. I think 2020-2021 were shock years for many people all over the world. And now we’re coming close to the levels of 2019 this year. But we had the last few years where we were, let’s say, I would say that for instance 2022 we’re about 80-83% the level of 2019.

Jaspal Singh ([00:10:15]):

That’s amazing. I love your opening line saying it’s owned by government but run as a private, which is important because then you can bring the best of both. You can bring some of the policy structure, key objective to serve society from the public sector, but at the same time bring efficiency, operational efficiency and cost recovery ratio 80%. I think a lot of agencies will be quite jealous to hear that because it’s quite remarkable to achieve 80% and even when you mention 90% cost recovery. But that’s important because when you have that kind of financial sustainability, you can invest back, you can invest in the expansion and you can invest in the innovation and it’s very important to keep investing in the system because things are changing. And we will discuss during our conversation about a lot of new project which Oshman is doing in Hamburg and trying to expand.

Jaspal Singh ([00:11:05]):

Now you are heading the innovation department at Hamburg Homan, and I know like you mentioned, you are busy, you are not feeling bored because every day is a new challenge. So what are the main project in your unit and tell us a little more about the unit of innovation at Hamburg Hochbahn. How did the idea came? Because a lot of cities and a lot of authorities try to create a unit of innovation but it never work out. Sometime it works, sometime it doesn’t work. What is the secret sauce in Hamburg that why the innovation unit is working?

 

Natalie Rodriguez ([00:11:42]):

We are working on the sauce, we hope to make it really spicy in the next years. So adding our own flavor if we can keep it in this metaphor. But what we do right now is focus more on the problems that our company and our colleagues are facing every day. So what we are doing, we’re a small team, we’re about at the moment, 5 to 6 colleagues because myself and we’re trying to tackle very daily issues, very operative issues coming from different departments within the company. And our objective is to accompany and solve this problems together with our colleagues. And just to give you an example there, it can be something so small such as a small project that we’re running in order to solve the information, lack for the passengers where when short trains are arriving at long platforms in our metro alliance and how to make sure that they know exactly where to stand when the metro is arriving.

Natalie Rodriguez ([00:12:58]):

So that’s a small problem that we’re working together with metro colleagues. We have other issues such as how to improve and that try to identify patterns of incidents in our incident reports so that the colleagues, the technicians can say okay, I know that this is a pattern and I’ve seen it before in other reports and I can solve this maintenance or technical problem as much as fast as possible. Identification of patterns in incident reports is also a small project that we’re going to start with our boss colleagues. We also have some projects where we’re working together with University of Hamburg where we give this challenge to the students in university and they try to solve it and then we put the two hands together, we put the colleagues in contact are in connection with the university and try to accompany them when this challenge is being developed and tried out by the students.

Natalie Rodriguez ([00:14:09]):

So that’s something that we do. And so another small example could be also how to have a better detection of crowd management in critical stops for another subsidiary company that they say, well we know that there are big events throughout the year and we would like to know how are the flows, how many people are going to be here, how people, and based on the data that we have from previous years, what can we do to improve our work as guards being there just to make sure that everything’s running correctly. So those are some of the projects that we’re working on and what our main, I would say areas of working is just to set up new and new trend management just to see what are the new impulses that are coming from outside and how we do we communicate and who are the main stakeholders of this trends of this information and to prepare different products so that the colleagues can use it. And the second area of field of work is just working specifically on different issues that are being presented or that we know are there from other departments within the company.

Jaspal Singh ([00:15:32]):

Amazing, amazing. All the projects you mentioned are quite exciting because I mean a lot of city face this problem like you have a shorter, like I know in New York and in New Jersey I saw this, your platform is shorter and your trains are long and then you have to inform to the passenger and sometime the passenger who are new to the system, they don’t know that you need to move in the front to get out, otherwise you’ll be stuck. And similarly there’ll be problem of longer station in the shorter train. So these are interesting project and I would say from customer point of view, quite important. So it may look small like I would say you are humble to say that these are small projects but I know it’s very challenging to solve these problem for the customer, for internal staff. So it’s very interesting to say that how your focus is to solve the problem of the internal as well external customer, both your employees as well as the riders and innovation need to play that role of understanding what are the challenges and how to solve it rather than solve something and then try to find a problem.

Jaspal Singh ([00:16:34]):

Exactly. Most of the time I’ve seen the department which fail is they come out with something new and then they don’t know what problem they’re solving. But I love your approach that you are understanding the problem first and engaging with the university, engaging with the student. And I would say that’s kind of a secret sauce focusing on the problem and then solving it.

Natalie Rodriguez ([00:16:55]):

Exactly. And I think it’s not evident just to say this that you have to focus on the problem, see what exactly how big is and just take time to understand what the problem is. Is it really a problem or something that maybe just an activity to solve and not even a problem. So we took a lot of time I have to say just to have this focus to say we have to have this in our core of activity. And of course all things that are developing outside all external trends and all external activities are also important to have it online. But you have to see what are the problems now and what could be the problems in the future. So it’s like you have to be a little bit ambient in order to stay on earth and solve the things that you need on the short term first.

Jaspal Singh ([00:17:58]):

Yeah, I agree. Stay top on the things. So you need to understand how the things, what will be the future problem and then only you can be proactive and try to solve it. Now city of Hamburg has a very ambitious plan, like you mentioned, you already have touched the 2019 level, 83-85% of ridership, but there is a plan to increase the public, the share of public transport by 2030. So I was reading that there is an ambitious project called Hamburg Takt, which to increase the market share from 22% in 2017 to 30% by 2030. Which is amazing because a lot of cities are actually trying to just reach to the same level of pre pandemic. But Hamburg has this ambitious plan to not only recover but also grow the ridership in next 5-10 years. And as you mentioned now Hamburg is investing a lot of in money in the capital project to expand the system and I am pretty sure the technology will also play a critical role.

Jaspal Singh ([00:18:55]):

It is not just the infrastructure but also the technology. So I want to understand now first with the Hamburg underground projects. So Hamburg has, like you mentioned, four underground line, it’s one of the biggest in Germany and it’s now constructing a new underground metro line U5, which is amazing. Not many city has this opportunity to create new line, it’s a very ambitious project. But what make me more exciting about this project is that it’s a fully automated GOA4 line, which is a rare, it’s not many cities have attempted it. It’ll be sad to know that in North America we don’t have even a single city with automated line. I mean they have infrastructure but they never implemented it. So it’ll be a big game changer and I’m pretty sure probably will bring some people from North America to visit Hamburg to showcase. So we’d love to know more about this GoA4 line and what’s the role of technology here and how as a head of innovation department you’re involved in this project.

Natalie Rodriguez ([00:19:54]):

Okay, well the first thing I have to say is that this line is just a few facts. It’s going to be a 24 kilometer long line. It would have 23 metro stops and is being planned and constructed by a subsidiary of the Hochbahn is, which has been created last year in order to fully focus on the planning and construction of the line. And other departments within the company are working given input, given specific information with specific level of expertise. But the hardcore and all the muscle work I would say comes from the this subsidiary company and it’s called Metro Line 5 Limited Company. And so yeah, as you mentioned, it’s going to be a grade of automation for at the moment they are planning at least trying to plan this line on a 90 minute frequency. So interval of arriving and leaving the different stops and it’s given, it’s going to be offering a new service for residential areas in the west and the east of the city.

Natalie Rodriguez ([00:21:28]):

And these two parts are going to be connected directly to the city, which was something that has been discussed and debated a long time to how to provide a better service to these specific parts of the city. And our role is specific to give, let’s say at the moment we’re going to start, we haven’t started yet, but we’re trying to create a small work team in order to make sure that all the passenger information is up to date and is the latest state of the art when it comes to deliver the final product, which means more or less to make sure that the team working on this line our inform over about the latest technology related passenger information. And this could be something that we’re going to be working from our side as a team innovation for the company, for this subsidiary company of the whole plan.

Natalie Rodriguez ([00:22:36]):

So that’s something we haven’t or we have talked about but we haven’t started yet and we have to set up our milestones and set up the task force. So basically if we get a go, it means that we have to come up with a plan in order to make sure that our colleagues are well-informed, are up to date with the latest technology for passenger information. So when it comes to building that on the stops and also on the metro line that they have what they need in order to build it for the year, let’s say I would say in a couple years in the future or many years in the future. So yeah,

Jaspal Singh ([00:23:18]):

Interesting. And I really found this model very interesting. Instead of disturbing the existing organization and the current organization create a subsidiary and then let the subsidiary kind of take the full burden of developing plan and launch the project and then the internal department can be a support system for this new organization like you mentioned as an innovation.

Natalie Rodriguez ([00:23:43]):

And just to have another information here, share is just the fact that there is also a unit of social participation that is working within the whole plan and they’re going to be or still providing all support needed in order to make sure that all the citizens and residents that are somehow involved or they have some kind of connection within the line that they get the information that they need and that they can also participate, which is also very important for the success of the construction of the line. So this is another example of how units within the company work together with the subsidiary in order to provide good services, good expertise and make sure that the project will be successful.

Jaspal Singh ([00:24:28]):

Amazing, amazing. I think a lot of time people think innovation just as a technology, but I tell people innovation can be anything. It can be process innovation, it can be structural innovation, it can be organization innovation like what Hochbahn is doing right now, creating a subsidiary and taking that, that’s quite interesting and unique. Now the other big project which Hamburg Hochman is doing is electrification. And you’re not alone. Many cities have target to electrify their fleet and many city has ambition, ambitious target like Hamburg has, you want to replace 1100 diesel buses with zero emission buses by 2030. I just want to share, a lot of people think zero emission only mean electric, but it’s not true. Zero emission can mean electric buses but fuel cell also the hybrid and the other kind of fuel which is closer to bringing the carbon emission to level nil.

Jaspal Singh ([00:25:21]):

Now Hamburg currently have 200 electric buses, which is amazing. Not many city have that large fleet, so I’m pretty sure you get a lot of good experience with those buses now. And in 2020 the city awarded 530 buses to three different manufacturers, which is very interesting because that’s what I want to have more discussion with you because you have selected Daimler buses, Solaris and MAN truck to supply these 530 buses. How agencies using and planning to use technology to integrate electric buses in operation because that’s one of the challenge agencies face when you have diesel buses as well as you bring electric buses how to integrate.

But I think the other thing which I’m asking people and getting different answer is how you manage data, what kind of data do you receive from these buses and how do you address the interoperability issue with the mixed fleet because you are bringing different buses for different manufacturer, everybody have a different data code or different standards. So how you’re trying to bring everything together.

If I can add one more point, sorry for this long question but I’m very interested in this area, but how do you manage the battery health and fire safety issue? Because in North America that’s one of the key challenge a lot of cities are facing the fire safety, how to make sure your buses can share the right data information so that he can predict these kinds of incident.

Natalie Rodriguez ([00:26:48]):

Yeah, well let’s start from the beginning. Let’s start from the beginning. I would say from personal, I would say from the colleagues from the beginning, beginning of our electrical bus program, I would say at the beginning there were just a few colleagues that started just, they started this program first as a project just saying, okay, how can we integrate one and few bus lines in our system, how to make sure that receive they are charged properly and how they should stay in our depots and so on. And it has been now over, I would say more than seven years at least. And now we have this number of buses together and the complexity grows of course with the number of buses and the number of different buses that are being run by the company. We have now today thanks to the energy and the engagement of our different company, different colleagues that are working in this specific area, different systems that are being used in order to met the requirements of the electric buses.

Natalie Rodriguez ([00:28:03]):

So we have one planning tool of the buses that takes into account the new ranges of the buses. There is the depot management system or software that tries to adapt to the different process to electric buses and how can we integrate new areas where the buses may outside the depot need to be charged. So that’s something that they are working on daily and they work out also on problems related to how they can be the different buses, how they can be recharged not only the depot but eventually in specific pitstops and how you can match the timetable with the recharge and also bring it back to the depot. And they tested the different systems, the depot management and the planning system and not least there is also a new charging management system which is also responsible for the control of charging processes in articles and in order to make sure that the depot management system has all the information, we implement telematics services to get important data of the electric buses and the state of charge of the battery, which is crucial for these kind of buses.

Natalie Rodriguez ([00:29:37]):

So when you asked the question interoperability, it was very important from the beginning to test different buses to try to see how our charging stations react to the different buses. And also our charging stations are also not all from the same supplier and we concentrate in every case on the FMS standard of the buses and that’s how we try to avoid interoperability issues within a mixed fleet. This standard has a different nimble level of data available and the focus in general from the colleagues is to evaluate and carry out forecasts related to the range of the buses and workshop issues as what are the typical failures and how can we do, what could we do about it in order to solve them.

And the last question that you mentioned, how to manage battery health, we use also here a specific diagnosis tool in the workshops and we don’t get at the moment constant data from the bus concerning this topic. So it’s at the moment that’s what I can say about that. We also, regarding the question of fire safety issues, some of our manufacturers implement or already implemented an alert when the battery has a critical status and the bus starts to honk for 30 seconds and to blink since the risk of the fire trigger by battery is highest during the charging of discharge, we decided to submit this information only during the charging process in the pool via the charging.

Jaspal Singh ([00:31:29]):

Amazing. I mean I can imagine you’re busy with so many other things going on with electrification and like you mentioned, when you scale up the fleet, the complexity increase, it’s not as easy when you have a small number of fleets, 10-20, you can manage it manually, but the moment you have hundreds of buses, the level of management is completely different. Like you mentioned about depo management system, charge management system, fleet management system and everything need to interact with each other. You need to constantly speak to each other like the status of charge of the battery and then it impact the routing and the planning of the buses. So it’s very important that all these systems should interact with each other

Natalie Rodriguez ([00:32:10]):

And it’s still running and we’re still working on the interfaces between the different systems and also how to continue scaling up because as you mentioned, we have a very ambitious target within Hamburg Tax, which is to be CO2 neutral until 2030. So this program of continuing and developing and acquiring new electric, we’re still there on track and we still need to continue increasing our existing fleet in order to do that in order to come closer to this objective.

Jaspal Singh ([00:32:54]):

Yeah, amazing. Good to know that how things are moving on and thanks for sharing all this detail because many cities which are started on their journey of electrification are facing this issue. I know many city, they are procuring chargers and vehicles from different manufacturers but they’re not thinking about interoperative right now. So it’s important to learn that how Hamburg is doing it. So thanks for sharing that.

Now, my next question actually can be very close to your heart because you were head of the autonomous mobility project at Hamburg. So I know it’s something, it’s like your first project, you develop it from the scratch so it must be very close to your heart. So Hamburg Hochman was one of the early adopter of testing autonomous vehicle I would say when other cities were discussing about it. But you guys take the lead and you said okay, we need to test it.

Jaspal Singh ([00:33:47]):

And you launched this project called HEAT (Hamburg Electric Autonomous Transportation). So I love the name and you did it for two years. So can you share some of your experience from the project and also you were the project lead of the first project with autonomous shuttle. Can you tell more about the kind of learning you had this project and what are the challenge you face? Because being an early adopter is also means you have lot more challenge to face. You were the one who developed the product with the manufacturer. So what were your challenges and what were you learning?

Natalie Rodriguez ([00:34:19]):

Yeah, as I said related to the question of our colleagues within the electric bus department, I have to say we also get now coming to automated buses. I have to start also by the beginning and just say that we started in 2017 just doing trend analysis and at the time autonomous driverless technology was just something that started to be published and to be spoken about. And I remember we produced two different reports, trend reports saying to our steering committee, to our managing committee, look this is something that’s going to continue growing. Let’s have a deeper look and see what can we do? And we had the full support of our steering committee to say, well let’s start a project with local colleagues, local partners and see what we can do together. And I think one of the things that was very special about the project is that we had one vehicle being tested and it ran in the city in one part of the city of Hamburg, but we were really all together in the development of the functional safety of the vehicle.

Natalie Rodriguez ([00:35:46]):

So even from our point, our side, which we were the public transport operators, we knew exactly or we learned exactly what it means to be what you need as a safety requirements engineering and what you need to prepare and which scenarios, which traffic scenarios do you need to prepare as testing scenarios before you go live with a vehicle. So it was a fantastic experience with these different type of colleagues that we had from the car manufacturers side, also from the research and development side and from the city as well just to mention a few of them. So it was a very good time working together and being open and honest about what’s the technology at that time, what’s the level and what can we do realistically on the streets of our work between 2020 and 2021. And so again, so the questions, what were the objectives? We wanted to honestly answer the question what is the state of the art related to automated technology on both small shops? What are the business cases that could be interested interesting from a public transport point of view? And yeah, what is the public acceptance basically that’s where are three north stars in this project?

Jaspal Singh ([00:37:22]):

Amazing. And like you mentioned in the beginning that you need to understand the trend which going to impact you in the future and interesting to learn. You started working in 2017 so that you can launch project in 2019 because a lot of time people make this mistake is they jump on the boat and then try to learn, but you took time to understand the thing. You understand different scenario how it’ll impact the different traffic situation in the city and then only you launch the pilot in the city to collect data and understand it. And I agree with you, the user acceptance is a major thing. It’s easy to say, okay, bring technology but see how people will accept it. And now you are doing another project, you launch the second version or I would say the version two of this autonomous mobility with a new HOLON mover and I love that vehicle.

Jaspal Singh ([00:38:14]):

I saw the picture of that vehicle, it looks so amazing. It just launched in July so it’s one month back so it’s pretty new. But I’m pretty sure like you mentioned you started working in 2017 for 2019. So what is happening in 2023? The preparatory work started long back in 2020 or2021. So you’ll be launching this new vehicle on the street in 2024. So it’ll be first Electric, Shared and Autonomous operation in the city, which is amazing because that’s what we see the future will be, it’ll be electric, it’ll be shared, it’ll be autonomous. Can you share how you are preparing for this and some key feature of the project, how this project will be different from the heat and what lesson you will try to incorporate in this new project?

Natalie Rodriguez ([00:39:02]):

Yeah, the first thing I have to say is that this project is going to be also carried out from directly from the Department of Technology, which is also some great colleagues that worked on the strategy of tech and what we need to implement in general and what are the specific projects. And under this department it’s the new cooperation with all that is going to be carried out and supervised and just having the project there we can say that the moment that one of the things that the first milestones that are going to be visible are going to be visible, we’ll start maybe the end of next year that I can say at the moment. And yeah, there’s going to be a five meter long bus for 15 people and it should be able to travel up to 60 kilometers per hour. And an addition or one of the differences compared to our previous project is that this is a shutter that is going to be booked and it would not be grout based but it would be more a flexible service that you can book over an app like a ride sharing service. And there’s quite something special and unique compared to the first project where we were route-based and just testing on making sure that all the scenarios, the traffic scenarios where fully met in this specific area of Hamburg in this new project, the area should be broader and it should have another level of availability and also it should be booked over an app in order to benefit from the service from the passenger point of view.

Jaspal Singh ([00:41:09]):

That’s amazing. So you said it’ll be 60 kilometer per hour or 16 kilometer

Natalie Rodriguez ([00:41:12]):

Up to 60, so it should be up to 60. That’s the plan still part of the plan on the moment.

Jaspal Singh ([00:41:22]):

That’s amazing because that’s where a lot of autonomous project are stuck because they run at five or 10 kilometer per hour. I mean you can walk faster. So bringing to that level,

Natalie Rodriguez ([00:41:34]):

We just to have give you an idea, in the previous project in the heat project we had the maximum speed that we were able to achieve where it was 25 kilometers per hour. And every time you increase the speed, you increase the level of risk you have to make sure that in less time you have to be able to break, your sensors have to be dead on, you cannot miss a small object which eventually could be a cat or a dog or what do you know? So yeah, the aspect of speed is crucial when it comes to new projects for the autonomous world.

Jaspal Singh ([00:42:15]):

Now you are an autonomous mobility expert I would say. And you’re seeing this area like you mentioned from 2017 when things were not even very trendy recently in San Francisco the city of San Francisco allowed crews and remote to run 24X7 paid autonomous driverless car operation services and it’s going both side, it’s going positive and negative. I see some of the news which are positive, some of the news which are negative. What do you think about this season of launching a complete autonomous robotaxis fleet in the city and where do you see things will go from here?

Natalie Rodriguez ([00:42:55]):

Well I’m also following with popcorn, the events and the developments in the states and I have to say that it was very exciting just to see what was going to happen on the August 10th, whether or not the big companies are going to get an extra permit or not. So yeah, they got it but it was also pretty, it was highly debated within the commission. I think it was three to one voted against three for the expansion of their permit. And I think here at least what has been happening is that from a public side and what we read, what I read from here from Hamburg is that one reads that certain incidents are systematically appearing over and over again. It’s just not an isolated incident, but you see a pattern, you see that all the traffic scenarios that we come back to, our traffic scenarios related to ambulance appearances or police cars or fired trucks are not really well solved.

Natalie Rodriguez ([00:44:19]):

And I think until you have a plan in order to solve these crucial situations which will appear over and over again, you should not be allowed to expand because you’re going to scale your problem. So I think I’m definitely open and I am for further testing and furthering continuing of making this technology available and that we can use it. But I say you have to do it safely and you have to do it with a certain milestones that have to be shown to the city authorities in order to continue the common permits. And I think, I don’t know the details, but I think it is going to be risk, it could be risky, let’s just put it in conditional. It could be risky if they don’t do something about it. And I think from the city point of view, they should find ways in order to make sure that they both private companies developing these technologies and the city authorities that they work together because they’re going to create otherwise eventually always unconditional more problems for the traffic situation today than provide solutions.

Jaspal Singh ([00:45:43]):

I love your point about scaling, scaling up the problem so it’s not scaling up the solution, but if you don’t address all the issue properly, it’ll actually scale up the problem and it can be more risky. And I fully agree with you, the patent recognition is very important. You need to understand what happened in the past and how you need to solve it. If you don’t do it, it’ll create more problem and it need to be done safely. I think sometime you need to hit a trial but sometime you need to stop and you need to go back to the drawing board and understand, okay, how to make it much more safer and launch it. That’s also what happening with micro mobility or scoter. We are seeing, they emerge in us but they flourish in Europe and that’s what I tell a lot of people that innovation happen in Europe, US but actually it flourish in Europe because Europe has more structural framework or model to implement those innovation.

Jaspal Singh ([00:46:39]):

We see a lot of cities launch it was very popular but suddenly we see how the problem they were creating in the city recently Paris decided to ban it. On the other hand, London has extended it pilot for next year. They want to understand much more, they want to understand more about what’s going on with the system. Hamburg also conducted this pilot with the e-mobility or e-scooter I would say in 2022 and published some result about their study. It was very interesting. I went through that report. It was good to see what did you learn from that pilot. So can you share some interesting finding from that pilot and also as a head of innovation because you rightly mentioned anything you are launching in public has to be safe for everybody. So what do you think how City should deal with micro? Should they be pro, should they be against or should they have some regulation? I know it’s not an easy question, but you must be getting this question from everywhere.

Natalie Rodriguez ([00:47:42]):

At least we’re asking ourselves the question within the team because this project started also in our unit and also direct from colleagues that are working within the unit. So when we started our first e-scooter project, we asked also as well as for HEAT set up specific goals. And one of the goals was to understand, yeah, we wanted to actually increase the attractiveness of public transport. We wanted to say, well we want to make sure that we provide additional services so that people will say it is easier for me to use a metro line or a bus line and still continue to provide alternative solutions to the private use of cars. And in this project we also wanted to measure what could be the impact. So if we provide specific areas with scooters working and collaborate with these e scooter companies, what are the results?

Natalie Rodriguez ([00:48:43]):

What does anything change? Does everything stay the same? So what kind of metrics do we have to set up in order to analyze the impacts of new scoter solutions at a specific stops? So those were basically the questions that we set up as calls or objectives. And we had the pilot for about two years and we had two locations that were 150 e-scooters were set up and they had also a specific parking zone within in the near the metro stations and they were also digitalized in the app of the e-scooter provider. So you can only park there. So it was marked physically and also in the app. So you wouldn’t as a user be allowed to park outside this area. And so this project was part of a bigger program solutions plus that was an e funding program where we had some on financing from the program and other cities being part of this project, it was important or main objective was to test e-mobility solutions in order to come closer to this objective big mission of zero emission urban mobility.

Natalie Rodriguez ([00:50:19]):

And the program is still running until the end of this year. And now we are just finishing with our deliveries, final reports, final analysis of the data. And so what we could say from the data that we collected onsite is that in general the eco service was well received. We had about 130,000 trips in 13 months and we had analysis of the variation of the use and there were some seasonal fluctuation that means summer high use, some winter rainy days, lesser use. And yeah, just to give you an idea, the month with the fewest use was February winter and with the highest number was in August 2021 with about 14,000 trips being carried out in the month. So yeah, also we try to match our numbers of passengers on public transportation related to e-scooters. And here we saw that there was a slight deviation, so the highest demand was more or less in the afternoon evening. So we can assume that it was mostly people that wanted to go back from work or they wanted to do another activity, use mostly the e-scooters in rather than in the morning. So that’s some of the key findings. And another thing is that the users in 2021 were predominantly younger users of about less than 35 years and they used to be predominantly male and employee. So it was a single person, of course one person should use the scooter and mostly male.

 

Jaspal Singh ([00:52:35]):

Interesting. And you said you will be extending the program till next year, the pilot and you have already thought what’s your plan for next year?

Natalie Rodriguez ([00:52:43]):

Exactly. So the project within this pilot program is running onto this year. So now we’re preparing the final reports and deliveries Britain and now we’re talking together with our unit or department of sales and specifically the colleagues that are planning and carry down new switch points just to in inform you about our switch points or switch points are mobility hubs. So switch points are physical areas where we try to encourage intermodal use. So we have in this specifical hub the offer of either car sharing, bike sharing, there is in the near X meters there is a metro line. So these hubs are closed to metro stops and also I mentioned car sharing batch share, and now we’re trying to find ways to implement our scoter use. So that’s a new activity that’s being analyzed and defined through our colleagues of sales and specifically the team working on the development of mobility hubs.

Natalie Rodriguez ([00:54:07]):

And we’re working together with them to provide our expertise from this first pilot. But the idea is overall to find a way to within this mobility hubs to have another service of scoters and also they’re important to have it implemented. So one of the coming back to the question, what can we do to integrate a new service and that is not so chaotic what we know from other cities that they can be good examples of this is to have a specific set of rules and just not be able to have the whole city as a parking place or otherwise have specific areas where the east porters can be parked. That’s one of the things that we have seen that it works very well. And if we had that all over the city, it would be a great thing for everyone, not only the e-scooters users, but specifically for the people not using scooters that they would say, well is everything clean and they’re not disturbing our areas of walking or pedestrian or cycling and so on because that’s basically the problem today that you find them everywhere and they can’t be in places where they shouldn’t be parked.

Jaspal Singh ([00:55:23]):

And I think it’s very important to serve the need of those who are using but also the need of those who are not using it and make sure the city is not chaotic. You have dedicated parking space for these scooter and plan and I didn’t aware about this switch point you mentioned – the mobility hub. That’s quite interesting because I don’t think many city have those kind of idea, which is like a multi-mobility hub where people can take car sharing, bike sharing now e-scooters and other facility and is closer to the public transportation infrastructure. Quite interesting.

Hamburg is doing a lot of interesting projects. I’m looking forward to visit in 2025 for UITP summit. Now City of Hamburg also launched very interesting project which is called Urban Data Platform and it was done in 2017, I would say it is one of the most comprehensive open data platform for the city, shared vehicle, road parking, charging point, construction, drone, other services. I give this example to many other cities to see how if they want to implement open data platform, how they can copy what Hamburg has done. London also have a good approach, but not many city in North America I would say, or in Asia, they have a good platform. Can you share your perspective?

 

 

 

Natalie Rodriguez ([00:56:46]):

Yeah, but just a question, just coming back to this idea because I’m just surprised that in USA there is not a number of agencies that opened have opened data. So why is that just a question going back to you?

Jaspal Singh ([00:56:59]):

Yeah, it’s a very interesting question because I asked them and I think first point is lack of awareness. They don’t even know what open data mean. Because I spoke to some agencies and I said, do you have open data platform? They are not aware what open data platform mean. I think the second challenge is they feel sharing data can be dangerous to them or harmful to them. So they feel I should not share data with other public or in the open market because the moment I share data with others it can have a negative impact on the agency. I know it’s sad because that’s where the technology come, but the policy side it’s much weaker and that’s why I’m very curious to learn how you see Hamburg as Hochbahn see open data and why it is important for transit companies to share their data. Because I shared lot of agencies think it can have negative impact on them and they don’t want to share the data because they feel the riders will go away or other private transport like ride-hailing companies and all use that data to give a negative feedback to people and then take away their passenger.

Jaspal Singh ([00:58:10]):

But as a public transit agencies, what do you think why they should do it? And probably with your viewpoint we have some city come forward and us say, okay, we want to implement now open data policy.

Natalie Rodriguez ([00:58:23]):

So I think the first question about open data is do you have to know why? What are your objectives of sharing specific data with other entities? And I think it’s important to understand which are the other entities. So how to have specific and transparent contracts and program in order to say I trust you, you trust me, we’re going to share data, you’re going to use it for this purposes. Maybe I can use some of your data for this purposes. And I think this is always the central key element in this discussion is to know you have trustful or trustworthy partners that are going to use your data, yes, but they maybe can provide an additional service and an additional improvement of one of the areas of your services and just to have specific real expectations of how they’re going to be used. And because this open data is just a big word and you have to bring it down to at least three levels of crystal clear messaging, then you can say, okay, now we’re going to present or we’re going to give a specific data or trenches of data to specific areas or we give it just to everyone, but we know why we’re doing it and not just to do it.

Natalie Rodriguez ([00:59:56]):

So I think that’s from my point of view, personal point of view, that’s the most important question to understand why you’re doing it with whom you are doing it and what are the relationship, is there a contractual agreement? And if so everyone respecting what has been agreed upon from the whole brand point of view. I can say that we have now shared timetables information and also the possibility of buying tickets over Google, Google Maps and Google navigation. And I think working together with Google has made the use of transportation for the passengers for the clients much easier because it’s not a secret that everyone uses Google maps. And now when you’re looking to find different itineraries, you can also have as an option public transport and they can give you directly our connection, which route are you going to be taking bus and or metro and or regional train and just to see how much it could cost. So this is I would say an additional benefit for the customer. And this specific cooperation has shown that you can collaborate with external private companies, but it’s very important to know what are the rules that you have been that have defined together.

Jaspal Singh ([01:01:29]):

I love your point about one is having a clear objective and second is to have a trust and finding trustworthy partner so that you can learn from each other, you can share data and you’ll be shocked to hear, but I feel Google work much better with European agencies than in US agencies. I don’t know why they have this bias. There are many agencies, they don’t even have GTFS feed right now to provide data to Google. And in fact for ticketing also I see more integration for Google Wallet in Europe than in US. So I think it’s also important point is having the trust and having clear objective and how to work together and setting the rule of the game. And that’s what I tell transit agencies, you are the boss here, you can set the rule of the game and play with that, but try to make it win-win for everybody so that everybody can get benefit out of it.

Jaspal Singh ([01:02:23]):

And ultimately the passenger should get benefit out of it. Not like the agency or the company but the passenger. Like you mentioned everybody use Google Maps. I go to any new city, I open up the map and try to find the route and the better information you provide, easier it’ll be for people to jump on public transportation and use it. So creating that kind of environment, it takes a lot of work and congratulations to you because it’s not only the agency but the city also has this open data platform and everybody’s working together because tomorrow if there is a construction happening in advance that how you need to reroute your bus operation, how you need to plan your services, you can do it in a better way.

Natalie Rodriguez ([01:03:05]):

There’s still a lot to do. Just I have to say, I mean being a citizen of Hamburg, I have to say there’s always ways of improvement and better creation of interfaces and there are lots of new projects also from the city perspective in order to have arena areas and better infrastructure on the roads, which some city sectors need to have a renewal of let’s say new streets. And so yeah, everything having to have parallel projects on the streets at the same time, I think it’s not easy.

Jaspal Singh ([01:03:45]):

It’s not easy. And the problem happen is when you live in the city, you have a very different perspective. You ask people what they think about Singapore and London, they will say it’s one of the best. But you ask the local Singaporean or Londoner and they’ll say, ah, it’s one of the worst. So you always have that perspective because you live in the city and experience. But I feel what you said is the idea should be do more like how to stay top of the game and keep updating and doing it. And that’s the one point I want to discuss with you because like open data, open innovation is also important thing which public agencies should incorporate. You already mentioned Hamburg Hochbahn is working with the University of Hamburg involving students to work on new project, new idea. I want to understand what approach you are falling to work with startup and new founders or a new innovator and do you have any open innovation program or grand challenge and you’re planning to do something in that area?

 

Natalie Rodriguez ([01:04:44]):

Yes. Also very interesting questions specifically for us, for our colleagues working in this unit of innovation. I think first of all that ware is a very open-minded city. It’s also very international, I would say it’s a very multicultural city, at least I feel it as a fan. Venezuela with a half heart from Hamburg. And you feel this energy just coming from different cultures, different people working here in the city in different entities and different public agencies. And I think different agencies are also trying out different formats of working with external companies, also with startups, just to see what kind of new ideas can be generate just working with these companies. From our point of view, I would say we’re in the beginning just by, we are starting just the collaboration with the university through challenges. And we are also talking with different companies outside, not only with colleagues from other cities, also from the public transport sector, but also from small companies, startups.

Natalie Rodriguez ([01:06:03]):

But again, here it is always very important even if we are at the beginning because we at the beginning, we don’t have a innovation program per se, but the first question, all the questions that we’re asking ourselves is what are the objectives? How can we work together with startups in order to find ways where we both can profit from each other and we can create maybe minimal viable products or can create some prototypes then that can be on the long run, a good solution, a good possible solution for us as a public transfer operator. So to be honest, at the beginning of just formulating these questions and formulating possible ways of collaborating with startups and of course we have embryonic examples of working with startups, three week prototyping or two week prototyping, and these experiences we have already gained or had with them. The question that I’m basically mainly asking our colleagues is, okay, after working embryonic in three week format, maybe two week format, what can we do together? What makes sense for us developing what we’re doing right now in order to work with them? So that’s where we are at the moment.

Jaspal Singh ([01:07:37]):

I would say ask this question maybe another time

Natalie Rodriguez ([01:07:39]):

Exactly. We maybe have another answer.

Jaspal Singh ([01:07:42]):

I love your point about saying that, accepting that, okay, we are beginning, we are trying to explore this because a lot of agencies think it’s a big bang theory approach. Like okay, one day everything will fall in place and you will have an innovation department and open innovation policy, but that’s not how it work. You have to start somewhere and slowly, slowly build it and like what your strategy and approach is to understand. And I think the most important objective is that you need to see how both party can win from this. It’s not just the agency because the startup, they have a very small runway, very short runway, very short resources. So how they can optimize their resources at the same time, how agency can get benefit out of it. So approach of creating those MVP (Minimum Viable Product). I think that’s the right approach.

Jaspal Singh ([01:08:29]):

No, happy to see how it goes and happy to share some resources, how other cities are doing it, what you should do and what you should not do, what other city has done in the past. So happy to share resources. One other project which I want to discuss with you is the Digital Twins. It’s getting a lot of popularity now. I see a lot of agencies are accepting digital twins in London, in Hong Kong, in Japan. They have this digital twin project and I saw the city of Hamburg also launch this digital twin at the city level, which is very unique. Combining the 3D data model with other urban data so that you can see in a virtual environment everything. I’m not sure if Hochbahn is part of that. And are you planning digital twin for the underground network? Is there any future plan for that?

Natalie Rodriguez ([01:09:18]):

Okay, yeah. To answer the first question, yeah, sorry to disappoint you, but no, we’re not part as a public transit operator would not part of this project specifically, but many, at least three – four different entities within the city are part of the project and the idea is to tackle specific issues related to the use of digital twins, which is a critical thing also being set up from the city perspective. And at the moment I would say we are just at the beginning of analyzing what are the impacts of digital twins and how relevant it could be for us on the middle run I would say. So yeah, in this specific project we’re not an active member.

And to the question about digital twins with us, there are some departments working on digital twins for building modeling and also construction in the construction department. But digital twins are not a systemic solution for all departments. So it should be interesting also for us to have to keep on observing the impacts of digital twins and maybe come again in contact with the specific departments just to let them know what other operators are doing in this area.

Jaspal Singh ([01:10:51]):

Happy to share. Again, like I mentioned, there are a lot of cities which are implementing it London Underground. They launch a project on digital twin. Basically they want to replicate the whole underground line so that the maintenance work can be done better and if there is any problem in any area, they can see in a virtual environment and try to rectify exactly the same spot on same problem, similar in JR East and MTR is using it. So happy to share resources. That’s a way of this conversation is also to share what’s happening around the world. I’m happy to share.

Now this is my last question and as in head of innovation, you mentioned this point, I would say at least in time that you are looking at the future trend. You are looking at what’s going on and how these trends will going to impact you in the future. So what are the key technologies I would say you’re keeping a watch on and looking to introduce at Hochbahn in the coming year and any plan to introduce Gen AI because there is a lot of stuff going on in Gen AI, conversational AI. So are you looking to implement something at Hochbahn? I mean you said Hochbahn is kind of a multiculture city, but you have people with multilingual things. So are you looking to use some of these AI tool to make it much more inclusive?

Natalie Rodriguez ([01:12:07]):

Yeah, so related to coming back to your first question, so what are some trends that I’m specifically observing? Yeah, of course generative AI is the hottest topic since the publishing of ChatGPT I would say since a couple months ago. So everyone is trying to find out what they can do and all the possible applications. So it is a very exciting new topic that we’re observing and we’re company and at the moment we want us to give us time to fully understand the possible implications for a public transit operator as ourselves and what are real possible applications specifically within the company. So it’s the IT department. The IT department is also talking about discussing it and just to see can we eventually have a not closed environment, not an open some kind of chat PT for specific applications within different units. So that’s one of the things that we are observing.

Natalie Rodriguez ([01:13:26]):

Another interesting technology or development I would say is the whole aspect of metaverse and what’s going to happen in this digital world and how many at the same time I have to say I’m really, sometimes I feel myself that I’m really not that digital and I feel that this is a parallel world and you have to understand what can be the possible impacts and how much time, how people are going to change or how their way of living is going to eventually be affected or changed through the new final introduction of metaverse. So that’s something that I’m just also keen in continuing observing and related to what we are going to specifically be doing in the open. I think AI is such a big word. If you take out AI and you say we’re talking about using smart algorithms to improve certain processes and a task and I say it will be nuts not to do something in this area just to find ways in order to treat better your data, improve your task, have a central maybe digital met person combining you for certain tasks that they’re already centralized and they can, this digital help desk can give you specific information.

Natalie Rodriguez ([01:15:07]):

So these are the things that I think we should, and we’re starting already doing that in a very small area. And I think these are the questions that we need to continue asking ourselves as where does it make sense? What can we improve from our system services? What does it mean to digitalize new processes and what do we need in order to make certain data from certain colleagues available and direct accessible. So I would say not the big AI but just small or low hanging algorithms that allow us to do a better work in the next years.

Jaspal Singh ([01:15:52]):

Yeah, I love your point about this continuous improvement rather than again, looking at something really big or AI and technology, let’s come back to the ground and see, okay, what’s problem you need to solve? How you can make the process more convenient and easier for people. What are the challenges they’re facing in day-to-day work life? Try to solve it rather than just thinking about bringing some of the big fancy tool and then try to find the use cases for that. It’s better to have use cases and try to solve these things. And I agree with you, the Metaverse, Web3, these are buzz word. I mean we don’t know how things will be in 10. It can be big, it can be small. Some cities are actually trying to play with it. Some cities are just looking at it. So we don’t know how the next 10 years. I was recently listening to somebody and he said if somebody can tell you how the next 10 years look like, he’s actually lying because nobody knows. Nobody knows what will happen in 10 years, whether we’ll have a flying cars or whether we have something else. So it’ll be curious.

Thank you so much Natalie. I mean I really enjoyed our conversation. T

hank you for your time before in this podcast we have this Rapid Fire question round. It’s a quick five questions I just ask you to know a little bit more about your personal side. So if you’re ready I’ll start with that.

Natalie Rodriguez ([01:17:11]):

Alright. Okay. I’m all set.

 

Jaspal Singh ([01:17:14]):

Great. So you’re working in transportation sector for so long, but let’s say if you’re not in transportation sector, what other profession you would’ve selected?

Natalie Rodriguez ([01:17:23]):

I think we have been a good economist. I really liked to understand and analyze, so macro factors and macro developments and I think yeah, that would be my second choice.

Jaspal Singh ([01:17:39]):

That’s amazing. And I agree with you as an innovation person, you need to have economics mindset also to see whether that’s feasible or not just driven away by the technology. Now this is second question. You live in different cities but you travel in so many cities, which is your favorite city in the world and why?

Natalie Rodriguez ([01:17:59]):

Well at the moment because it changes I would say Sydney. Yeah, I would say Sydney. My little sister is living there and I had a blasted last time we visited her and it’s just a city. It’s such a sunny city, such a great energy and yeah, I think the people living there have a really high level of enjoying and just a balance between work and life and work and just leisure and sports free time

Jaspal Singh ([01:18:35]):

And it’s hotter compared to Canada. It’s a nice city which technology innovation you are very bullish on in the next five years if you need to pick one.

Natalie Rodriguez ([01:18:48]):

I’m very curious about the development of automated technology for buses and trucks and different vehicles. I’m just, so I’m following this developing and I think, yeah, I’m very curious what’s going to happen when we’re in 2028 and where are we at a little

Jaspal Singh ([01:19:18]):

Probably we’ll look back and see where we are after 5 or 10 years. What one thing do you wish you should have learned early in life or in your career?

Natalie Rodriguez ([01:19:33]):

I mean this is a very hypothetical question, but I think I would say I wish I could have already since my childhood already grow up with different languages. So I think that would be amazing. Just what are the impacts of being bilingual-trilingual when you’re already three, four years old. I think that had always made amazed me how the brains would develop just having this many different languages from the beginning on.

Jaspal Singh ([01:20:07]):

I agree. I know some people who can speak 7-8 languages, so it’s very interesting how they manage to do it. It’s sometime hard and they know what’s the way they use something for work language, some for personal life, some for their kids and some for their school. It’s amazing. I agree. It’s very interesting. Now this is my last question. If you can change one thing in life, what would be?

Natalie Rodriguez ([01:20:32]):

Oh, that’s a very difficult question. One thing in life is my life. The life.

Jaspal Singh ([01:20:40]):

Anything in the life, in the world, in the society.

Natalie Rodriguez ([01:20:45]):

Dunno. I would say this is a question I have no answer, but I would say if it’s live, that the people, if there was an ability, I would say that everyone had the ability to remember what the earth of ancestors were. So you have already this knowledge, so you want to repeat the same mistakes.

Jaspal Singh ([01:21:09]):

Okay, so again, you’re coming back to that pattern recognition, remember what happened,

Natalie Rodriguez ([01:21:14]):

Patent recognition. Exactly. You remember your grand grandmother already did that, so you shouldn’t do it, you

Jaspal Singh ([01:21:19]):

Shouldn’t do that. And I think that’s very important. You need to know what happened in the past because otherwise you will repeat the same mistake. So it’s very important to learn from those mistake and try to capture and move forward and that’s how the human being got.

Thank you so much, Natalie. I really enjoyed our conversation. I hope you find it useful, but I learned a lot of new things from you. Like I said, it’s good to see when you mentioned that Hamburg Hochbahn is a public agency, but run as a private organization because you need to bring best of the both. There is no either side and I always feel it’s best. It’s always good to bring both and good to see from your career profile as well, how you are taking forward this innovation at the agencies and are trying to bring new idea, new concept, and learning about new trends. So thank you for sharing all these knowledge with us and thank you for your time.

Natalie Rodriguez ([01:22:11]):

Well, thank you very much and for having me. I really enjoyed our conversation. I also learned new things about other cities. Thank you for that.

Jaspal Singh ([01:22:19]):

Thank you for listening to this podcast. If you like this episode, please don’t forget to give us a five star rating as it’ll help us to spread our message. If you have any feedback or suggestion for this podcast, please feel free to reach out to us at info at mobility-innovator dot com. I look forward to see you next time. Thank you.