Mobility Innovators

Jaspal Singh [00:00:04]:

Welcome to the Mobility Innovators Podcast.

Jaspal Singh [00:00:10]:

Hello, everyone. I’m so happy to welcome all listeners from around the world to the Mobility Innovators Podcast. I’m your host, Jaspal Singh. Mobility Innovators Podcast invites key innovators in the transportation and logistics sector to share their thought about the sector, about their work, and what is the forecast for the future.

Today, I’ll be speaking with an amazing Corporate Innovator. He’s currently Head of Innovation at RATP Group, a state-owned public transport operator and maintenance company headquartered in Paris, France. The RATP Group is the world’s third largest public transport company, carrying 16 million people every day in 14 countries, and 107 subsidiaries around the world.

He has 15 years of experience in the public sector, including the Ministry of Defense and the French National Authority for Cyber Security, as well as working in the private sector with brands like Orange and Trusted Logic on the topic of cybersecurity and Digital Transformation. Prior to joining RTP, he was the Chief Technology Officer of the state within the inter-ministry digital department. After having worked with the secretary of state for digital as an advisor in charge of digital trust and state digital transformation.

I’m so happy to welcome Côme BERBAIN, Head of Innovation at RATP Group. Now it’s time to listen and learn.

Jaspal Singh [00:01:26]:

Hello Come, thank you so much for joining us on the show. I’m really looking forward to our conversation today.

Côme BERBAIN [00:01:32]:

Hi, thanks for inviting me.

Jaspal Singh [00:01:35]:

So today I’ll be spending time getting to know more about you, your work at RATP, and your thoughts on innovation in the mobility sector.

To begin with, I would like you to share some fun facts with our listeners.

And also, are there any interesting facts about your career that are not on LinkedIn?

Côme BERBAIN [00:01:53]:

Yes, there is. I dedicate a little bit of my time to preparing the next generation of Scientists and French civil servants. I teach a lot at the beginning of my career. I still do some teaching. I do less and less because of the professional activity. I try to maintain a little bit of teaching in engineering school. And I teach I have a lesson on autonomous mobility.

I also participate in the evaluation of the civil servants of what we called the École nationale d’administration, which is the Institute that trained the theater executive of on French states on digital and public transformation. And you know, it’s not really my main focus, but I think it’s important to do that, to train the next generation so that they can directly have the best ideas that we have developed. And it’s also very interesting to, you know, when you teach something, you always learn yourself and I love that exercise.

Jaspal Singh [00:03:04]:

That’s a great point. I fully agree with you when you teach something, you learn yourself and actually you need to prepare before teaching. Because in today’s world, the students are much smarter. So you get some of the smartest question from these young students, which forced you to go back and learn. So thanks for sharing that. I really appreciate what you’re doing, preparing the next generation and teaching them and sharing your knowledge, the practical experience from the world.

Now you did your master’s in computer science at École Polytechnique and later you did your PhD in Cryptography from University of Paris and Orange. After that you started your career as a security expert in various government department, you serve as a Chief Technology Officer of state within inter minister distal department.

And in 2019, I think you decided to join RATP as a head of innovation. So I’m curious to know why this carrier move because you were doing great in the public sector, you’re working on some exciting project. What excites you to join RATP? And what does your typical day look like at RATP?

Côme BERBAIN [00:04:10]:

So, yeah, I spent almost 15 years in Cybersecurity, Digital Transformation, starting from classical engineering stuff, research codes, making technical projects and then I evolved to management strategy and politics. And so I did a lot of things in this field of digital and at some point my, I was thinking I need to apply that to something to sector that is involved in the, I think one are the two big challenges for time, the digital transformation and the climate change. And if you look at the existing sectors the mobility sector is exactly at the early of these two challenges. The digital is making that move and changed. And we see new forms of mobility every day. And in the same time, mobility is a huge part of the CO2 emissions we have today.

Côme BERBAIN [00:05:13]:

And so it’s a perfect place to try to change things and a lot the society and people to have a cleaner way to move. And, the digital is one of the elements that can accelerate that. And so I started to look at this mobility sector and then quite quickly, I found the RATP, which is a great choice. We have a long tradition of innovation with the Paris Metro, the first automatic metros with dematerialized tickets in the nineties. And we are of course, very famous for Paris, we are now in 700 cities in the globe. We are in London, we are in Tuscany, in Kelan, in Hong Kong, in Washington. We are everywhere in the world. So it’s, it’s creates a place work.

Côme BERBAIN [00:06:11]:

And we clearly are at the center of this climate change and digital transformation a typical day. I’m not sure there’s a typical day. Typical days look like a long series of helping people from my teams trying to solve a problem they have on the last experimentation we are trying to build the innovation, we are crafting, and this is all kind of problem. It can be technical, it can be strategy. We can be in buying strategy, your market strategy everything everyone is every day is different. It can be a legal problem to, we had lots of discussions about how can we legally use cameras and AI? It’s one of the odd subject we have now. And so helping my team, helping our business units they have problems.

 

Côme BERBAIN [00:07:09]:

They try to figure out how they can solve them. And we look at what the innovation tools, what methods we have with the partners, we know, and try to give them a new way of looking at the problems they have. And usually lots of the innovations we create, It’s helping the people from business units to look differently at the problem they have. And because usually they already, before coming to see us, they already tried lots of things.

So we are trying the same thing as not very clever trying to say, okay, let’s look at the problem differently. Let’s bring a new partner around the table. Let’s take a look at the different technology. For example, It is usually one of the key component to make that. And after that I try to save a bit of my time to meeting people from the ecosystem and reading about all innovation in the world.

Côme BERBAIN [00:08:06]:

What are other people are doing it in the mobility sector, but also outside of the mobility sector. Yeah, you probably know the concept of Serendipity. You need to cultivate that. You need to take every day, a little bit of your time to look at differences and what are competitors doing? What are other people in the mobility industry doing? What are other people in other fields are doing? And you clearly see that it’s a great source of innovation, and having this ability to look at things differently.

Jaspal Singh [00:08:43]:

Oh, yeah. I mean I can say after listening to you that you always have an interesting day because you are dealing with so many problems, like you mentioned, not only the technology side, but also the policy & legal side. I love your point about having some time every day to talk to people in the ecosystem. Also, not only from virtual, but outside. Reading, I think that’s very important because a lot of time people don’t read and don’t try to learn what’s happening around them and miss the new wave or new innovation. So as your role as innovation head, you need to do that because then only you can tell other people that how you can do. That’s great.

In fact, my follow up question is something you recently mentioned innovation is one of the parts of RATP DNA.

Jaspal Singh [00:09:31]:

And in fact, I like the tagline, which RATP published everywhere. It’s “RATP love startups”, which is a great, a small note, but a great line because it shows that it’s love innovation. It’s love new ideas. It’s except different perspective. Currently, there are 180 projects going on within RATP involving 140 partners, including startups, university incubators, manufacturers, industry partners, like you mentioned. So can you briefly share about the structure of innovation department within RATP given that the group has so many different subsidies, you mentioned that you have more than a hundred subsidies across the globe. So how this innovation department can work with so many different subsidy. And can you share the engagement model with the startup, like how you engage with these startup? Because that’s one of the key point. A lot of authorities face challenge is how to engage with these innovation companies and innovators.

Côme BERBAIN [00:10:25]:

So on the organization, we’re not very innovative in that. We have a central team that deals, we see the strategy, the governance, the main innovation programs on autonomous mobility, on smart city, on AI and robotics. And that deals with the innovation methods and tools that we can mutualize. Like innovation labs, the startups, the participatory, and then we have people in all the business units that makes the link, which is that central team and the operational team on the grounds. And some of them have themself, little teams, vocally are daring. Some other people helping them that’s really, depending on which business unit we’re working on. And it’s very different from you know, when you’re a small city in France or when you are in the engineering department in Paris. It’s clearly not the same thing, and we need to adapt to that.

Côme BERBAIN [00:11:35]:

But in all of that, you can create innovation, not the same kind of innovation, but you can create innovation adapted to the business unit and to the who you’re working with. And clearly the key elements is how you make the information moves between all those peoples. And that’s a real challenge to do that at the scale of a group, like we have on the startups. Today what we do with startups is that we try to add them accelerate. So every year, we make calls, we start from our problems and we describe those problems and we make calls and saying, come and help us solving those problems. And then, we have a lot of candidates, like this year, we had more than 200 candidates on problems. And then we select the startups that we want that, where we can do something together.

Côme BERBAIN [00:12:42]:

It not, it doesn’t mean the is not valuable. It doesn’t mean they’re doing bad thing or whatever. It’s the question is, can we do something together? And once we have made this solution, then we start an innovation project with them starting by verifying the value, verifying how the technology is working and making the first steps, like usually first experiments. And if it’s working, then we can make the classical innovation stream making bigger and bigger steps and finally going for product, if it’s possible. We learned that sometimes it’s not that easy to work with really early startups. For two reasons, they’re very early and we are very big. So it means we are very slow and we learned that if you, it’s not helping them to work directly with them. So we love early startups because they are inspiring us.

Côme BERBAIN [00:13:49]:

And we try to focus more on a little bit more natural startups, where they already have product, and we can really make a project together. And it’s okay for them if making the decision take two months. And if you do that within very early startup, the risk is killing them. And we don’t want to do that. So you really get the question is what can finding startups, we can grow accelerate and something which is mentally valuable is they have a new perspective. They have new solutions that we have lots of experts and experts that will help them to understand, what are the real constraints on existing systems. And when you mix those, those two elements, then you can make really great things. You have the start of bringing freshness, new ideas, new ways of looking. And in the same time, the experts, they can add solving the other problems, which are not the core of the problem, but this is real acceleration for the startups to go to real solutions that were execute on the field.

Jaspal Singh [00:14:59]:

Now these are great point. In fact, I can see some similarity with Transport for London TfL because they also share that the first thing, they ask question to a startup is that do you have a runway for six months. Because like you said in the big organization, it takes time to move things. And it’s nothing wrong in big organization. You need to take care of a lot of things, a lot of corporate governance issues. So you need to make sure that the startup can have that much of runway to grow. And I like your point. You don’t want to discourage anybody, but you want to make sure there is a product and that product can be used and bringing the innovation with the expertise is very important because sometime I meet these founders and I find that they have no clue about the reality of how the real world work, because they think you know, they can change everything, but there are a lot of things in the backend, which is difficult to change. So thanks for sharing these thoughts. And I love the way you structure, you launch this accelerator call and got so many 200 entries, and I can imagine it must be a very tough call to decide 10 or 15 entries from these 200, because everything look exciting. And as an innovator, you feel so curious to learn about different solutions, but you have to stop yourself and say, which one will work.

Côme BERBAIN [00:16:13]:

Yeah. Clearly and something which is tap as an innovator is to kill projects. But you need to know, to do that at some point is better for everyone to say, okay, it’s not working. It doesn’t bring the value we wanted to have. It’s okay. Learn, what did we learn? We learned something that’s a success. Let’s celebrate that, but let’s go to something else. And that’s something we are, you know, it’s every day we’re learning to do that, trying to kill projects properly. It’s difficult, but it’s really mandatory. You going to do anything.

Jaspal Singh [00:16:54]:

Yeah, it’s the most difficult part, like you mentioned. And now my next question is about the innovation culture within the RATP group. Like you mentioned, it’s a big group. It’s so many subsidiaries and so many functions are there, but I love what RATP did. The structure that innovation around four sectors.

• One is about everyday innovation, which affects the traveler
• Second is about invent the city of tomorrows, so focusing on smart city technology
• Third point is about decarbonized mobility and city
• Fourth is to improve industrial site

I saw that RATP has such a big function of engineering, construction, mechanical side does. So they are, they are improving the industrial side as well. So how these four areas are covering all key, functional area of RATP. And also, can you share some interesting, innovative projects in this area, one you are doing, or one you’re exploring because it’ll be important for startup to know what are the area RATP focusing on now, and what are you looking some solution for the future?

Côme BERBAIN [00:17:58]:

So with this four pillars, we, we cover pretty much everything we do. So the first one is innovation for day to day travelers. It’s really, how can we make their life easier? How can we reduce the exploitation problems we have? And on that it’s really focusing on the user experience.

And then you can have innovation on all part of that. You can have innovation when people enter the subway, for example, or once they are inside how can you guide them? How can you have a better management on the problems that we face every day, because we can, you can do lots of things to avoid those problems, like predictive maintenance. And we do a lot of that, but still at some point there are problems that happens at.

Côme BERBAIN [00:18:54]:

So how do you manage that? How do you help people getting a new opportunity, a new way of moving if you have some problems somewhere and really that’s working on giving them good information at the good time and the good place. And it seems to be easy to say, but it’s really difficult to do the second pillar is a, we have is a long-term effort. It’s the question of what will be cities in 10 or 20 years. And on that we clearly are mobility operators and we work for example, in autonomous mobility with shuttles trips and, and buses. But it’s also a question on how we shape cities. Mobility is a city shaper. And we have developed through the years expertise on construction of buildings.

Côme BERBAIN [00:19:56]:

We started by building houses on top of Bus Depot. Today, we make more and more complex constructions mixing houses offices or industrial sites inside of cities. And this is really big questions about what will be cities in 20 years. How do you add adapt cities to climate change? How do you create, how do you reduce the public space for cards and how do you improve it for public transportation? So this is really long term subjects, but they are really interesting to look to look at.

The third subject is linked to that if the question of the combination how do we reduce CO₂ emissions? How do you create more public transport, how to help pull people, how do you reduce the emissions of road transport?

Côme BERBAIN [00:20:53]:

And we have lots of effort on buses with Biogas and electric buses, and we start to have hydrogen buses. And even on top of that, it’s really a question of how do you help cities to decarbonize? How do you able to add trees inside of the cities? We are a part of that. We are not doing that alone, but we can be a part of that. And cities desperately look for solutions. So, we can provide some of the solutions. And the last subject is we are an industrial company and we are an industrial company in the middle of cities. So it means, or industrial tools are so constraints. You know, it’s not, you like you’re a car company, you have plants, 20 kilometers from whatever cities you can do, whatever you have, lots of spaces, you can put robots and whatever. We’re not, some of our plants are down under the earth. It means just to bring the elements, to bring a machine, to bring a robot is complicated. And in the same time it brings lots of constraints and from constraints, growth innovation.

Côme BERBAIN [00:22:09]:

So we have huge subjects on that on this innovation, on tackling this to specificity, but also on classical industry innovation, 5G, BIM robots, really peer printing. It’s all, I mean, classic stuff for industry innovation, but it’s a great feel of innovation for us.

Jaspal Singh [00:22:33]:

These all are great points. And I love what you shared that example of building housing over the bus Depot. I know there are a couple of site in Paris where RATP is doing that experiment. And I think with the electric buses, when there’ll be no emission, it’s much easier to build the housing near the bus Depot because earlier the conventional buses, people don’t want to live near the bus Depot. And generally these bus Depot used to be outside of the city because of this problem with the noise. But now you can do much, I mean, there is no maintenance. You don’t need to do much of maintenance in the electric buses except the body part. But I think it make much more sense. And I love what you said about how the constraint bring innovation and force you to rethink what you’re doing and what is required.

Jaspal Singh [00:23:18]:

And all now I would like to discuss about this corporate venture capital side of RATP. Lot of people don’t know that RATP has a Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) firm, which is RATP capital innovation, which is investing in sustainable mobility, urban real estate, and last miles logistic startup. And the fund has so far invested in 7 startups and has more than EUR 30 million under management.

So how does innovation department work with RATP Capital Innovation, and how do you decide which sector or startup the group should invest? What kind of things you look before making investment in any company?

Côme BERBAIN [00:23:57]:

So RATP capital innovation is a dedicated company. One of the subsidiary mainly for administrative reasons. We have regular exchanges between the two teams on the startups. We share, we all speak to startups, so we need to be synchronized. So we have real exchange. We look at the technology, the interest use cases. Do we think that there are some values? We source startups together.

For example, we partner the European Startup Prize for Mobility which is a prize that is under the patronage of European Parliament. And that’s every year brings together the best startups in Europe on mobility and city management city experience. And we clearly, we do that together. We share all that and then once we have we clearly see the strengths and of the different startups we have.

Côme BERBAIN [00:25:01]:

Then at some points, we start aligning that with the group strategy where is the group today and where it wants to go in the next years and at the end. The final decisions, I taken by the RATP members on finance strategy and development. So the beginning of the process is really classic. And at the end, it’s each time it’s a specific case. We are not professional investor. So we invest on things that are really correlated to strategy and the way we develop on the world.

Jaspal Singh [00:25:47]:

Yeah. I mean, I actually agree with your point, like, you’re not the professional investor, but actually you are the client. So, you know, what technology and what innovation is required in the long term, because sometimes the investor just bet on different startup believing that it’ll work, it will not work, but to be on the other side, the RATP is a client also for these startups. So as a client, you know, which innovation will.

Côme BERBAIN [00:26:13]:

Yeah, we usually don’t invest in startups where we are directly clients. Well, more looking at partners, things that are complementary to us than direct clients. I won’t say it’s you know, it’s a rule and we’ll never do that. As I said, each case is a little bit different. But yeah, the idea is more to make partners allows the ecosystem to grow than investing in direct partners. If it’s kind of happens that, like we said, we want to buy this company because we think it’s pretty nice, but then we do that with direct investments not using.

Jaspal Singh [00:27:00]:

Interesting. Thanks for sharing that point. I was not aware, so it’s a good strategy. So you don’t want to have any conflict or any other issues. So keeping it two things separate, so looking more partnered rather than just as a supplier. That’s great. Thanks for sharing.

Now, in your role, you must be meeting many founders who are building startup in the mobility and logistic area. Sometime it’s difficult to decide which idea will work and which will not work. Like you mentioned getting 200 entries and selecting only 15. It’s a difficult task. So I have two question is like one, what are your evaluation criteria to find the next good startup or next Unicorn, or next big technology company. And what is your advice to the founder and startup in mobility sector based on your experience so far, what you feel they should do, or they shouldn’t do when they are working in this area?

Côme BERBAIN [00:27:53]:

So I’m not trying to find the next unicorn that that’s too difficult. When I immediate founder, when I meet startups, I’m looking at a few different things. First one is I’m looking at the, the use case. Is it realistic for me or for someone else? I mean, it can be for someone else, but what is the probability that, that is a real problem and that the solutions they try to, the problems they trying to track is a real problem. The second thing I’m looking at is the technology, is it working? And can it scale it can work on a bench and lab or on the startup desks? The question is, can it scale? So is there any regulation issue or how can it deploy?

Côme BERBAIN [00:28:56]:

And the third thing is anyone willing to pay, because at some point startup it’s company, you need to, you need to earn money. Solutions can be brilliant. Problem can be real, but if no one wants to buy it, then you won’t make new money on that. And it’s one of the biggest cuts when you look at the pipe of the tariffs. It’s use case is real. Technology is working. Does anyone wants to pay for it? No, too bad. The last thing is the team, the funder vision and the team is around it. You know, sometimes when the startup starts the problem is not the good one or the technology is okay, but not revolutionary. And finally, the one wants to pay for it. But if the team is good, then they can try to change a little bit progressively once they learn, what’s the real problem who is willing to pay for that. And that’s a question of the quality of the team. If the team is good, if they’re motivated then they can make the modifications that are needed to make the startup successful. Otherwise, if the team is like too now reminded on their initial view and not able to listen to people, then it probably won’t work.

Jaspal Singh [00:30:35]:

Yeah, I like what you mentioned about that everything can work, If team is good, nothing will work if team is bad, because if they are narrow minded, they are not listening to the partner or investors or, or client. I mean, nothing will work. And that’s what happened. A lot of these startup fail because they keep their mindset to a narrow product and that they don’t want to change. In fact, I spoke to one of the venture capitalists who is investing in mobility startup, and that’s what he said, the team play a big role in any investment otherwise the whole product and idea will be gone very soon.

Côme BERBAIN [00:31:12]:

Yeah. And I mean, for me, almost the main thing is, do you have the impression that the team loves work together?

Jaspal Singh [00:31:20]:

Oh yeah.

Côme BERBAIN [00:31:22]:

If you know, if there’s is the good casting, and they love to work together, they can crack whatever problems they have. But if they don’t love that then first problem, you know, it won’t work.

 

Jaspal Singh [00:31:39]:

Yeah I mean, if they are not sticking together, so that’s a perfect recipe for the failure sooner or later. There will be some cracks and, and the whole thing will fall apart.

Now shifting a gear, a bit.

One of the key things, which is going to happen in Paris is the summer Olympics. So summer Olympic will be in Paris in 2024. So we adjust around 720 days around, or even less. RATP is a mobility partner of Olympic 2024. And this will be the first game fully aligned with the climate goals. In fact, the Paris city promise that a 100% of spectators will travel by public transport during the games so that they can drastically reduce total carbon footprint for the game. So, it’s a big event for Paris.

And I think for RATP group, because you will be kind of managing the whole mobility for the city and RATP is already planning to launch some futuristic projects, including autonomous electric vehicles, urban air mobility, and many other. So, I’m curious to learn about some of these projects and how RATP preparing for the game. What kind of pressure at innovation department is there, like you need to showcase some of the big innovation at this game.

Côme BERBAIN [00:32:57]:

So we are deeply involved in the Olympics, but we are not a partner in the terms of any Olympic terms. And you know, in Paris there are several operators, one of them, but we’re not the only operators around. So we have a huge coordination efforts to do with urban mobility, which is the, the organizing for all of host. But clearly if you look at where the Olympic sites are deployed, we will be clearly very concerned. We have a dedicated program manager just for the Olympics dealings with a lot of problems. And clearly innovation is the easiest one. So if you look at more on innovations. Clearly, we are preparing some projects on urban air mobility with experimental service between Charles de Gaulle airport, which is one of the airport in Paris and one or two points in Paris.

Côme BERBAIN [00:34:08]:

Trying to showcase really this you have an mobility. We also preparing experiments with autonomous buses and also with hydrogen buses. We probably, we have a full hydrogen line for the Olympics. And we also prepare to receive the world. So we recently completed the first deployment of an AI that we developed that allows to translate instantly several languages. What’s every ATP agents are saying on mics. You know, we have classic situations where we have prerecorded messages in different languages, but, you know, you have, these exploitation is art. And in that case, then it’s ATP agent that takes the mic and speak in French. And then a French people understand, and a few others, but we miss a lot of people. So we develop this AI, it’s now able to instantly translate in English and German.

Côme BERBAIN [00:35:19]:

And we deploy that on three lines. And we did that really recently, a few months ago. And the target is the Olympic, is for the Olympic. We want to have deployed that on all the on the completes network and in the languages of the Olympics. So the five languages of the Olympics. So we still have two years, but okay. It’s still a little bit, we need to. We cannot rest on this subject. We want on time for the Olympics, but clearly it’s one of the innovations that will be ear for real.

 

 

Jaspal Singh [00:35:56]:

Well, that’s quite interesting a real time. I remember recently Meta was doing, like Facebook, was doing something similar, but they were doing more for the text, not for the speech. So it’ll be quite interesting, a real time translation.

Côme BERBAIN [00:36:12]:

And one of the things that we had to do is to train AI is all the names of the stations and all the expressions that we use. Yeah. Otherwise, the AI was translating, you know, a bit stupidly at the beginning. And yeah, we had lots of work retraining the AI to be able to adapt to.

Jaspal Singh [00:36:36]:

Emotion.

Côme BERBAIN [00:36:37]:

Yeah.

Jaspal Singh [00:36:38]:

And also adding the emotions and like, if there is some humor and then you want to add a little bit of humor in the other languages too. So it’s a challenging task.

In fact next question, you know, which you, which you mentioned earlier about that RATP vision about introducing robot for the industrial side. And I would say that RATP among the very few agencies in the world, which are using drones and robots in the daily operation and maintenance activity in November 2021. RATP infrastructure team added Perceval, the dog robot developed by the Boston Dynamic and then RATP infrastructure, arm inducing the Elios 2 Drone delivered by Flyability in the Paris Metro to perform inspection of elevated asset using computer vision and AI.

What do you see the future maintenance facility will look like by adding these kind of robots, drone, and these kind of facility, and how can these new technology enable the operator to improve efficiency? Because I think like you mentioned, it should solve some real problems. So what kind of problem these technologies are solving? And my last point is because I know in Paris, in Europe, the union is very strong. So did you face any resistance from the workshop staff? And they see these robots are walking along with them and doing some work.

Côme BERBAIN [00:38:03]:

So on this topic, we’re not focusing on improving efficiency. We focus on improving the quality of life of our agents. As I said, we operate underground. Some places are like rolling nightmares to inspect. For example, when you have to do inspections under platforms. It’s very tiny. Today some places, people need to troll on the knees to be able to perform inspections or in other places, we are very elevated sailings of lateral channels. And then you need to have people that climbs on things. It’s takes time, it’s painful. It can generate accidents. So already was to say, okay we need to try to find new solutions for that. One of the big challenges we had is nothing is flats.

Côme BERBAIN [00:39:03]:

And we needed to, we trying robots is not something new at RATP. We try, we started to use robots in the nineties and the beginning of the century, but it was a lot of robots that were on wheels. And the problem is that nothing is flats. Tracks are not flats and you have cables everywhere. So it was too difficult to do. So it was, there was some experiment in that, and it was just killed. And what we really have found now is that the technology of drones and the technology of robots that can work are now match enough so that we can use them operationally. And then you can send those drones or those robots in places that are difficult for people to access.

Côme BERBAIN [00:40:01]:

Yeah. And if you do that you still need some people to pilot the drone or guide the robots and to analyze the collective data and add their expertise in their experience on what is the real problem and what kind of work you need to do to solve the problem before it’s becoming bigger and bigger. So it means that that’s why we don’t have any resistance from the people, because in fact, we are helping them solve their problem. Of course, we have efficiency gains, but it’s not the initial intentions. The initial intention is removing the fact, the places that are so painful, you don’t go, or you go, you know, you don’t want to go. And once doing that, we can solve the real problem. And once the agents have the tools in their end, then they start using it everywhere. So it, you know, then you can, at the end have some gains on productivity, but that’s not the initial concern. We do that by trying to have a better quality of life for agents.

Jaspal Singh [00:41:17]:

Like in the beginning, you mentioned your role is to help others. So with these projects, the idea is the how to help these maintenance staff or operators. And then by helping others, you gain some efficiency and opportunity to meet some other goal. But the ultimate idea is that how to make the job much easier and faster. I like your point, what you mentioned about these technicians. Now they have these cameras and they can see with these cameras. And I mean, they can get some assistance from the computer, but they can also use their own experience and find out whether it is a problem or whether it can be useful. That’s great. And I think that should be the motive always it’s how to help to make people job easier rather than thinking about replacing them.

Jaspal Singh [00:42:03]:

I love that point. Now you mentioned about that the decarbonizing the city is one of the key goals for RATP and RATP group is investing heavily in electric buses. And I would say, it’s been one of the largest international operators that you’re in inducting electric buses from different manufacturers and managing different technologies, like opportunity charge, fast charge, slow charging in different countries. So my question is which technology, according to you will survive in the long run because there are so many technologies? Now wireless charging, induction charging, opportunity charge etc. which technology you think will survive in the long run. And one of the key challenge for big organization is how to share knowledge across different geographies. RTAP group is working in 14 countries around the globe. So how do we make sure that some of the learning you have from one country can go to another? Just to add one more point to this question is what type of system you use to manage your fleet in charging infrastructure? Are you developing any kind of inhouse it system or platform to manage these fleets, because it’s a big change. And I think for the operator like RATP, it must be a big project.

Côme BERBAIN [00:43:22]:

So today, the two most advanced cities are London and Paris. For them, we have strategy on learnings made with TfL in London and the possibility in Paris. And that’s a total of 5,700 buses. That’s huge and it’ll be a mix of Biogas and electric buses. And what we see is we clearly focus on slow challenging at night. That’s really adapted to buses. It’s kind different when you have a car and electric car or other kind of electric vehicles, but buses, usually at night, they sleep, you can charge them. And today the autonomy of buses is enough to complete a day of exploitation. Yeah. so we have a few fast charging systems, you know, for assets.

Côme BERBAIN [00:44:30]:

And in some cases, you need to have, okay, I have this bus, I need to fill it very quickly. But it’s clearly a minority. It’s more like the vast majority is slow charging during the night. And we perform that. So we look at opportunity charging. The fact is it’s a nightmare in terms of infrastructure in the city and in some places, you need, it’s impossible to deploy garage operations embrace lots. You’re very quickly in heritage perimeter and adding this kind of things. It’s very complex. It’s the most impossible. So it’s costly. So you need to have really good reasons to do that. I will not say it’s does not, it’s never happening. But clearly it’s not the focus we have.

Côme BERBAIN [00:45:26]:

It would be more complex things today. We see more and more cities, smaller cities that comes to us saying, okay, we want to shift buses to bring a green fleet. And what we do is we’ve a pool of experts. We can send them to say, okay, how do you define the strategy? What is the best mix between Biogas and electric, or hydrogen? What do you want to do? Because lots of cities, when they start the questions, they have no idea of the differences, the costs, the, the drawback in advantages of each of the solutions. And there is no bullet solutions. There is no magic bullets. It’s not one solution that fits all each city has, is we need, you need to find a good mix for each city.

Côme BERBAIN [00:46:19]:

So we help them to do that. And then there are two cases, either. We are already the operator of the city. Then we use those experts to train the local teams and to do, to be able to start the transition. And then we are providing them support so that if they have questions, then of course we can add them. And in some cities, we are not at all the local operator, but does still know that we are already have done that several times. And so they come to us to add them, define the strategy, and depending on the case is challenging their local operators or helping the local operators to do the thing, because it’s not that easy to do especially if you want to do it on full city, it’s risk to be able to not complete this transition.

Côme BERBAIN [00:47:16]:

And at the same times now they see that they don’t have a choice. They need to remove their diesel buses or old stuff and bring new one. And they need to do that in an environment when economic constraints for cities is a reality. So, making this transition by mastering the industrial products the adaptations that you need to do the consequences and exploitation on maintenance and keeping the budget. It’s something which is really tough to do all at the same time. So, we are clearly here to do that. And yeah, by sharing the experience we have in London and in Paris, we’ll see clearly more and more cities that do that on the tools we have to manage the fleets. It’s a mix between systems made by manufacturers.

Côme BERBAIN [00:48:15]:

Like when you buy an electric bus. You have some software that comes with it. It’s the same thing for the charging station. And at some points, there are some automated component tops of that, to be able to manage everything clearly it’s place where we can do lots of it’s quick changing very quickly. And we can do lots of innovation on those things. But this is the only the beginning I mean, making buses, electrics is makes something it’s a clear shift between on the ecosystem. In fact, we starts looking at the digital transformation of the energy sector. This is completely different from what we have on classic diesel and new competencies. It’s new profile, everything is new. So it’s you have a, a white page and you try to write something and sometimes you just erase and start again.

Jaspal Singh [00:49:25]:

I agree with you. It’s like creating new job and new opportunity. In fact, I met one startup, which is doing work on battery analytics and their role is that when you have a full fleet of, let’s say 5,000 electric buses now, how do you take care of battery health, which battery need attention, what kind of charging strategy and how to optimize their State of Charge SoC and all those kinds of stuff. So, nobody thought about these kinds of companies or these kinds of tools earlier, but it’s emerging. So it’s like a wide slate and you’re creating new tools.

Another new transition happening is the hydrogen and fuel cell technology. And you mentioned that RATP group is very bullish about this technology. You will have one line at Olympics, which will be hydrogen, but my point is, hydrogen is still evolving like you mentioned, biogas and electric vehicle. They are much more advanced and much more proven. Even though many countries are bullish, they want to become the future hub for hydrogen energy. What is your view on hydrogen? And my question is why you are bullish about hydrogen technology. When do you think we can see the mass adoption of hydrogen buses or fleet or vehicles, because I spoke to many expert and they still feel it’s 5 to 10 years away.

Côme BERBAIN [00:50:47]:

So clearly hydrogen is in the middle of the peak. You know, technology will do everything, including coffee. If you start to look at it a little bit more seriously saying, okay, what are the use cases? What is the technology match ready? Is anyone wanting to pay for that? You can see that a visibility answer. All those three questions on some specific parts of the use cases. The two use cases we found interesting are the places where electric buses no longer working, for example, 18-meter buses. For 18-meter buses, electric buses are you need opportunity charging to exploit them. It’s made complicated. It’s made very costly at the same time, 18 meters buses. It’s perfectly fine. There is another case which is small minibuses in suburban area, going from down to town, those buses, they are already running 300-400 kilometers a day.

Côme BERBAIN [00:52:00]:

Yeah. It’s too much for batteries. And since it’s mini buses, you cannot put too many batteries on them. So on those cases, hydrogen is great because it has no emissions except water, very long autonomy charging in 15 minutes. So that makes them really interesting for that. I’m pretty sure it won’t replace electric buses. As I said, it’s a question of mix. If you look at the city, if you look at how the territory stone, but are the lengths of the lines, how many people do you move? How many 18 meter buses do you have in many mini buses? Do you have, there is a place for hydrogen. It’s not a big place, it’s a small place, but yeah, this place exists. And we clearly see that the, the, the vehicles are coming today. We had a first bus in productions today in Paris, France.

Côme BERBAIN [00:53:01]:

Hydrogens come directly from wind energy fields. That is nearby. So you claim need to have green hydrogen. Otherwise there is no case. And we will have a complete bus line for the Olympics here in the France. But there are that, you know, on that sense, public transport is trying to bootstrap an ecosystem from mobility. And for me, there are two factors that will make the success and the mass production of hydrogen or not. The first one is trucks; our trucks are going to adopt hydrogen electric trucks is something really complicated. And hydrogen is related to mobility, trucks, boats. That’s the good case for them versus you. You are in the really line and the lower line.

Côme BERBAIN [00:54:07]:

If tracks are great rates, then clearly you will have mass adoption. And the second thing is what’s the price of green hydrogen. Because at the end, the objective of hydrogen is making things decarbonize. So if you, if the products, if you’re not using green hydrogen, then it’s no case. And today green hydrogen is still very expensive compared to not green hydrogen. But if you look at the increase of prices of gas recently then yields the price of hydrogen’s not that far from being even with the price of gas or with the price of biogas. So, it’s probably a good candidate to go further than Biogases on places, because even if Biogas is a less pollution than diesel bus, it still emits some gases. So, hydrogen can emit only water. So it’s perfect for that. So, it’s more a long-term things, 5-10 years and clearly the question of what price of hydrogen will be? but other trucks going for that, if those two are going in a good direction, then totally it’ll develop. Otherwise, it’ll stay niche on the public transport ecosystem.

Jaspal Singh [00:55:41]:

I love your analysis. First the 18 meters and small buses, because there is a restriction how many batteries you can put on the vehicle. So it makes perfect case. And secondly, the prize and the trucks, because the truck is a huge number and the moment the trucks start using hydrogen or converting into hydrogen, it’s given that economy of scale like we achieve in electric buses because there are so many buses all around, so you can use it. And I think you rightly mentioned, it’s like once we have some success in these two parameters, the producing the price, or making it some price parity, and secondly, commercial adoption of hydrogen, then we will see more and more of these vehicles coming. No, I agree with you. It’ll be complemented

Côme BERBAIN [00:56:28]:

On hydrogen. We add something which is small, but which is nice. You can also use hydrogen on not on mobility, on static use case. And we replace some diesel-based power generators on our building sites by hydrogen-based power generator. And it means no emissions and no noise. So the neighborhoods is they love that. They don’t want that. We come back to diesel building site is always making noise, but if you can reduce that, then you are improving the quality of life with citizens around. And, when you do lots of constructions and building stuff that’s something important for people to accept the transformation you’re doing in the city.

Jaspal Singh [00:57:21]:

Oh yeah, it’s the customer, or, you know, the people buy-in very important when you’re implementing a new technology, a new solution. If it’s making their life better or adding some other problem in their life. So the hydrogen genset, I think definitely is people most love it because no noise, no pollution. It can be closer to your house, and you can get the unlimited energy wherever you need by switching it on, it’s not cheap, but it’s, that’s unlimited.

 

Côme BERBAIN [00:57:50]:

That’s that in clearly, it’s no noise no emissions and that’s already something really nice, make it big, impactful

Jaspal Singh [00:58:00]:

Now I want to talk about this point, which you mentioned about the use of AI. I think use of AI is growing in every sector, including in public transport. You mentioned that how you’re using AI for language translation for your vehicle inspection or tracks inspection. So, I mean, AI can help to unlock the value of data to improve the quality and efficiency in public transport sector. How do you see the use of AI in different function for transit agency? You mentioned about couple of use cases, but what are the other cases or some examples you want to share with RATPs very aggressively using AI to improve the efficiency, or I would say also help the transit operator and the workers.

Côme BERBAIN [00:58:49]:

So AI is something that can help all parts of organizations as soon as you have data and people read, use it. So we have strategic program on AI that tries to cover all the spectrum of what we do here at RATP. So going from helping our customers or maintenance or industry, or even, you know what you call support function of finance and human resources. So to give you a few example so I mentioned the AI that perform translations we have a lot of AI for predictive maintenance on trains, on trucks, on whatever you can do maintenance on. Yeah. It’s really a powerful tool. The question is you need to craft each time the goods sets between the sensors and the AI.

Côme BERBAIN [00:59:56]:

And there’s big question on, are you making sensors on the train or are you or are you making sensors on the tracks? And what are you looking at? And sometimes it’s more interesting to get sensor on the train that can look at the tracks or sensors on the tracks that look at the trains, than having sensor on the track for the track or the train for the train. So, yeah. You need to do that and because sensors can cost a lot. And once you have made that, then you can look at what kind of use cases are interesting and where do your AI bring them to the best value for your money? We have also we have a lot of cameras and so we look to what we can do with cameras and AI.

Côme BERBAIN [01:00:46]:

And you can do amazing things as long as you respect people, privacy. but for example we had an experiment where we just measure the way people are the density of people on the platform and helping them saying, okay, lots of people are please go there, then you will have a better control for your travel. And that’s where, and you don’t track anyone. You don’t recognize anyone. It’s just, you know, counting people. And that’s quite well. And we have a lot more and more AI working on this kind of things. We also have AI that helps you on safety. For example, we have anti-collision system for trams. That has been dropped. Because sometimes you can, you know, turns are very bad at breaking and inside of cities, this is so complex environments.

Côme BERBAIN [01:01:50]:

You can have people from going from anywhere and, people and bikes and scooters and cars and buses and whatever. And some in some places we have big collisions problems and anything that can helps us anticipate this kind of things and give helps the driver to look at something that he didn’t have seen or he could see. But a little bit later if we can help him anticipate, then that that’s way better. We’re working also on an AI that detects people that stay on trains after service,

Jaspal Singh [01:02:34]:

Interesting

Côme BERBAIN [01:02:34]:

You know, people that fall asleep or stay on train and good to get out and that finish on the service tracks. And then you need to some, to send some guys to just get the people out training, bring them back to the station. So this is the kind of thing it’s you know, it’s, if you can say, oh, wait, there is someone still on the train. That’s something that can clearly add the people themself and the exploitation, because it’s less othered on the expectation. So that’s a few examples, but you know, the possibility of AI’s are very big. We just, at the beginning of exploring all those the question is how do you make the goods? The good value for the good money you have and not. It’s easy to craft huge projects of AI that cost a lot that bring only very few values. So, the question is really the balance between the senses, the AI you develop and the value you generate. If you really look at the pro that the project like this, there is a lot of things to do.

Jaspal Singh [01:03:44]:

And like this idea about using AI to check whether anybody left in the train or not. Because I remember in some of the agencies, they have a person who go from front to back, just to check if there is anybody sitting or sleeping inside the train and they need to take out. So, it’s a cost. So probably you can do much efficiently and much faster because then you don’t need to stop. You can just check within five second is any object or anything left in the train, and you can do, I mean, it’s a small function, but it can bring a lot of efficiency to turn around. Well, thanks for sharing. I really love like you mentioned, it can be used everywhere, but you need to balance the value and the cost.

Jaspal Singh [01:04:27]:

And does it really bring a real value on the plate now during the pandemic? One of the key challenge for transit operator was the ticketing and payment because many of the city were using physical ticket and all, and what we’ve seen after this pandemic there was a greater push for contactless ticketing. How did the ticketing change in the Paris region? What are your view on some of these emerging technologies, like Open Loop pay system, mobile ticketing, Be-in and Be-out, people don’t need to take out anything and the mobile phone can calculate everything or biometric. Like you’ve mentioned that the camera can be very good use, so using people facial recognition as a ticketing. What are these technology you feel will be the future or at RATP or experimenting with some of these technology?

Côme BERBAIN [01:05:17]:

So ticketing now is it’s managed by Île-de-France. So we work with them and COVID was clearly something we accelerate the deployment of SMS payments on mobile, especially in buses. And we with them, we recently started the process of completely removing the contact going on Navigo cards. And so clearly that’s that huge evolution and the crisis made them accelerate, but it’s something that, more or less, more than an acceleration, not, I would say it’s not, it was not triggered by the crisis. So in Paris, it’s clearly the authority is defining the roadmap and we work with them to do it, but it’s slow them that are making the innovation process.

Côme BERBAIN [01:06:17]:

And that on this question of ticketing, we innovate more in other cities. For example, in Brest, which is in the west of France and Britain where testing a connecting ring that allows you to take the birth and trams and allows you also to pay as a smartcard. It’s a ring you have on your finger. And with that, you just use it as a card. So it’s when testing this kind of new use case. How can you do the ticketing differently than with a card? And it’s clearly something interesting. We also look at BiBo and technologies like that, but clearly, it’s still tricky in some cases the concept is really interesting, but you have some cases where the system is not working exactly as it should do for lots reason, because at some places you lost a connection or at some point the smart fronts reboot for whatever reason, or, yeah.

Côme BERBAIN [01:07:29]:

And the question is, how do you manage those cases? And that’s failure management is really tricky, is really complex. So the idea is really good. When everything works fine, it’s very efficient, but when it’s not working fine. Then you start to have a big, an open field of how do you deal with those cases? And it’s lots of different cases. So that’s a trick, that’s a tricky one. The question is with the Ukraine crisis, we see more and more people and the climate change aspect. We see more and more countries going on not trying to do that, trying to say, okay, let’s look at Germany. What Germany did? Nine Euro ticket for everything. And so it makes people’s lives so simple.

Côme BERBAIN [01:08:24]:

So perhaps on this ticketing subject, the solution is not technological solution. Is it perhaps regulation or, you know, simplicity of use for people. It’s probably that’s the good solution. And on biometrics, we clearly see that it must be culturally accepted and it’s illegal at least in Europe. It’s also illegal, some of the countries in the world are agreed to do that. But yeah, this should be cultural accepted. And for now on, we don’t do this kind of thing. We think it, perhaps not the way we would like the society to go on. Clearly the technology works, but the question is not the question of technology. It’s question of, do we want to add that? And some countries will answer YES. And some countries would answer NO. And yeah, it’s a question of whether the countries want to do it or not more than anything. And the countries we today tends not too much to do that.

Jaspal Singh [01:09:39]:

So it doesn’t make sense.

Côme BERBAIN [01:09:41]:

No, it doesn’t make, make that, that sense.

Jaspal Singh [01:09:43]:

Yeah I agree with you. It’s like biometric ticking, there is a lot of buzzword about it, but at the same time, we don’t see too much of adoption, so customers are not comfortable. So there are like some Asian countries, in Japan, in China, in Moscow also. They implemented the special recognition, but I didn’t see too much of adoption from people because they’re not comfortable, but I love your, this connected ring concept. I would love to see more detail about that and share in the show note, because it’s interesting. So when you meet somebody, you can exchange ring and give them a public transit card rather than giving something else. So it’s exchanging vow to use public transport more and more.

Now follow up to my previous question about ticketing. The other aspect is MaaS Mobility as a Service. So it started as a buzzword couple of year, and then there was a lot of hype but we don’t see any major success story. Any work RATP or any work you’re exploring in MaaS area. And you think it’ll work or you think it’ll not work like any perspective you have on MaaS.

Côme BERBAIN [01:10:51]:

So MaaS is clearly the kind of innovation that gets out of the hype. I like three years ago MaaS was the everything including coffee. And what’s interesting with innovations that went out of hype phase that’s the place where you learning the real use cases, the real value, what does it really brings to people? And so we have our MaaS applications it’s called RATP and here is working here in Paris. And we are working with MaaX which one, which is one of the French company that was working on this kind of subjects for a long time. And so today the applications is live and you have, of course predict transfers. You still have VTC bikes, E-scooters. And we made a choice that is we want full integration that is especially payments and the ticketing phase, because you see some of the MaaS applications around the globe. You have the availability of price, for example, then you click and then it sends you to another app and you need to create an account and introduce your credit cards element, and you just do it.

Côme BERBAIN [01:12:21]:

And we used to say, we want to have perhaps less partners, but integrated one. And so today you can use it. You want, you need to, you want to have bike on E-scooter, you click and it’s done in seconds and you don’t have to create a new account and you don’t have to do that. So today the application is live. And we have very good ratings on the app stores. We have more and more people using it. So, it is perhaps little bit early to get real conclusion on what the benefits are since it’s only one yea, but clearly, it’s very encouraging and we clearly see that that’s something promising for the future and to develop in other cities in the world.

Jaspal Singh [01:13:14]:

That’s good. So it it’s like you are experimenting with it and you’re getting good response, which is good. Like if user like it. and I agree with your point, if you don’t have fully integrated services, people will not use it. Like if you need to go to another app and download it, or create a new account, add credit card. So it’s kind of adding multiple steps. You have to make it seamless, like click book it and, and start using it. Great to see that you are doing. And I would love to know more in coming days how you evaluate and what kind of result you get with this with this MaaS application and see how you want to expand across the globe in other countries as well.

Jaspal Singh [01:14:02]:

The other key innovation we are seeing right now is about this micro mobility. And in fact, Paris is emerging as a hot bed for innovation in micro mobility space. There are many companies which are choosing to locate in Paris. And I think the reason is in Paris, you have a high urban density. You have very excellent infrastructure and then also the support from the transit operator and authorities is great. In fact, RATP Capital Innovation invested in electric scooter to company CityScoots.

How do you think this micro mobility will reshape our city? Because a lot of people think that they will compete with public transport, or they will take away passenger for public transport and any lesson from RATP experience with micro mobility, how one should work with this new innovation?

 

Côme BERBAIN [01:14:48]:

So micro mobility that is now reshaping, our cities is bike friendly. And the COVID crisis just at make a huge acceleration on that. And we see cities trying to change the affectation of public space for micro mobility and especially for bikes. The question of whether it’s taking people from the public transport depends really on the way this space allocation is done. If you add that micro-mobility on bus lines, or if you make them interfere and making, reducing the bus speed, for example, then clearly you would have a bad cycle, you know, you re you reducing the bus speed. So that quite inefficient. So people seeing be faster with bikes, so they take bikes. So you have more bikes. So you still re the more bikes you have, you the more and more you’re reducing the bus speed.

Côme BERBAIN [01:15:54]:

And then you are wrong. But if you said, okay, let’s share space in an effective way that is micro mobility need their space and buses need their space. And if you make them ply tighter and not competing with each other. The real competitions we need to face is carbonized cars today. That’s the thing that is making pollutions, making CO2 emissions and thinking too many public space for the number of people that’s transporting. And on that micromobility that are objective lies and need to work. That way the limit with micro ability is, it’s really true in density centers. You mentioned there are lots of companies that are in Paris.

Côme BERBAIN [01:16:53]:

The very funny thing is look at how many of them are in the next cities close to, you know, Paris is very small cities in terms of occupied space. So if you look at all the rest of the cities then you have still a very dense area that is Paris plus the first line of suburb. And lots of micromobility, they just stop to Paris and you need to have them go further, but the further you go, the less density there is. And the more and more cars you have, because people don’t have any other choices than doing that. So, the micro mobility, they need to be you today, the challenge for micro mobility and also for public transport is to go in those thick third layers of suburbs, where today you almost have no other choices than cars and a few trains, and to create new solutions for that.

Côme BERBAIN [01:18:00]:

And on those places here, again it’s micro mobility and public constraints. I realize. And it’s one of the things we’re exciting today. We are piloting autonomous mobility in at the last station of the train line in the south of Paris. And on those places, you don’t have any other choices and taking car to station. And we try to, with autonomous vehicles, we try to create new services for that and again, you need to create infrastructures to secure the use of micro mobility so that people can take the bikes to do three kilometers to go to the train stations. And today in those places, if you want to take a bikes, you’re middle of cars that goes at 70 kilometers per hours. You need to be very sure and not be afraid at all bike in those situation. And if you don’t, if we don’t do, if don’t work for those people, then clearly we will lose the battle of decarbonizing the mobility. It’s the question of micro mobility is not the city centers. It is those places where you just have car and nothing else.

Jaspal Singh [01:19:17]:

I mean, playing a role of a last mile function, because that’s how they started that the micro mobility can cover the first and last mile. And you rightly mentioned in a lot of these suburb area, people need to drive. I know in my neighborhood, everybody takes their car to the Go station and then take a train, but then you have a car just to cover the distance. And still, you are emitting carbon. And probably if you have a better option, likes AV or these micro mobility service everywhere, probably you will not take your car and you can take these scooters to cover 3-4 kms distance easily.

Côme BERBAIN [01:19:54]:

And the parking of the train station is full at [8:00] AM.

Jaspal Singh [01:19:58]:

It’s

Côme BERBAIN [01:19:59]:

Bad. And you basically stack cars that don’t do anything at parking all day.

Jaspal Singh [01:20:05]:

Oh yeah.

Côme BERBAIN [01:20:07]:

Non, non-optimal at all.

Jaspal Singh [01:20:09]:

We have a five stories car parking station. And it’s by, like you said, eight o’clock it’s packed and everybody take a train and go, but I mean, probably you don’t need that space. You can use that space much efficiently by integrating scooters or bringing these autonomous fleet.

Now, this is my last question. I think we have a lot of interesting point cover so far, but this question is very important because it’s very relevant to your experience, which is cybersecurity. You work in this area, you started in this area. So you have expertise in this in this field. And I would say cybersecurity is emerging as another big challenge for public transport operator, especially after this digitalization wave, because earlier we were not connected that much, but in last 4-5 years, we are seeing a lot of attacks happening, cyber-attacks happening on this the transit agencies around the world, especially in North America.

Jaspal Singh [01:21:04]:

There were some news where the system will hack. So as an expert in this area, how do you think public transport operator can be ready to face this future cyber threat? Because I think this will increase. It will not slow down here or stop here. It’ll continue to increase. And if you can share some of the good practices followed at RATP group to make sure the system is secure for any external threats. And when you’re working in 14 countries, you can’t make it foolproof, but how you make sure that it can withhold those kind of attack.

Côme BERBAIN [01:21:39]:

Yeah. No one can really say it’s really for cyber you know, the question is not will it happens, it’s when. Yeah. And so I’m not in terms of cyber. I have a colleague that is dealing with that, but clearly even on the innovation projects we manage, for example, I mention autonomous vehicles. We add cyber checks on all our vehicles. We use and it’s clearly one of the safety model, we were looking at this elements is someone can take, is it possible to take control of the vehicle and on distance? And but otherwise you can have lots of problems on the ticketing systems or on the system that follow the buses that know where all buses are or on the Metro systems.

Côme BERBAIN [01:22:36]:

So clearly each type of systems, you need to have this cyber assessment analysis and response. And the inference, the good thing is that we have a very good national agency for cyber defense that is supporting companies in order to have the good practice out to make them in place of the good governance. How do you make people understand the risks? And then what are the good solutions to be able to put in place that you can reduce that risk and try to try to master it? It’s really, you need to be really humble when you’re speaking about cyber. It’s a very difficult subject. One of the things, which is still very difficult to do is when you do in the same time safety analysis and cyber security analysis, you know, the safety experts. They tend to look, they have some models free now very classic, very well known.

Côme BERBAIN [01:23:46]:

And they considered risks with probability. And when you are working on cyber you usually don’t know to quantify the probabilities. And your accurate is adapt. It means if you close the door, it will go through the window. So that’s very difficult to make the two of them work together. It’s something which is still a challenge. It’s same. This is true for all industrial activities where you have this kind of our subjects. And that’s tough one, but we are clearly working on it with the RATP of the national operator. And what like on buses, what we learn are various projects, we replicate through the world.

Jaspal Singh [01:24:38]:

Oh, that’s great. I agree with you. It’s very hard to predict when the next attack will be, and even if you close the door, there are so many windows are open. When you have so many users, you don’t know which system can be vulnerable to these attacks and how to prevent these attacks. And it’s hard to predict because the way we are connected we don’t know what can happen tomorrow and how system will crack.

Now, we discuss about transit. We discuss about technology and mobility. Now it’s time to learn a little more about you and to do that, we have this Rapid-Fire question round, and generally we ask these five questions, it’s a short one. And we ask our guests to answer them quickly so that we learn about who they are really behind their role day to day job. So if you’re ready, I’ll start these five question:

Côme BERBAIN [01:25:34]:

Go.

Jaspal Singh [01:25:34]:

Okay. So my first question is if you were not in the cybersecurity or transit sector technology sector, what are the profession you would’ve selected?

Côme BERBAIN [01:25:43]:

I probably would’ve become a musician

Jaspal Singh [01:25:46]:

Musician.

Côme BERBAIN [01:25:47]:

Yeah. When I was young and still trying to do a little bit at, and one of the things I love is making music together with people not by my own. It’s really question of how you can, you create a group of people, and you try to produce together something that is better than all, each of what each people can, can do by itself.

Jaspal Singh [01:26:15]:

And probably in feature, you’ll bring some AI feature for the music generation, you know, it’ll be interesting.

Now you have travel around the world, you have been to different cities and all which is your favorite city in the world?

Côme BERBAIN [01:26:32]:

I think I would say Paris. I mean, I love cities like Berlin or Vancouver. But that’s still Paris is very great place to live and work.

Jaspal Singh [01:26:45]:

I mean, Vancouver, where is my favorite, but Paris is my favorite too. I’ve been there and it’s a lovely city. But now next question can be a little bit tricky. It’s like, which city has the best transit network in the world?

Côme BERBAIN [01:26:59]:

So for this one I’m required in Paris.

Côme BERBAIN [01:27:03]:

No you know, the question is what, what do you mean by best? Yeah, a transit network. It should be elected to the city to the people that live there. The best transit network is the network that serve the citizens and the city activities. And so clearly Paris is, it’s amazing, but it’s not that the only one London is amazing. Tokyo is amazing. One is really impressive for me is Venice it’s smaller city, but a really good approach on how to integrate inside of the city. And perhaps because they’re a little bit smaller, they can reduce things faster than what we can do in bigger cities where everything is so complex. So clearly Venice is in very interesting case.

Jaspal Singh [01:28:01]:

Now I love your answer is saying the best should adopt to the city. And in some city, probably it can be very simple. It doesn’t need to be having multiple modes and all, but it’s serving the city and citizen. It’s best for people. I love your answer. Thanks for sharing that.

Which is your favorite startup in the mobility sector?

Côme BERBAIN [01:28:21]:

That that’s a tough one. I would say Zenpark

Jaspal Singh [01:28:29]:

Zenpark

Côme BERBAIN [01:28:30]:

Is it’s a startups that allows to share your packing space, read time. And I mean, it’s so great solution. It’s so useful. And, and at the same time, when you discuss with the app, the vision of the future of cities, which is amazing, how do we convert all these parking’s that we build from euros? Now we have all these assets, how can we use them to do something different that’s almost not a mobility company. You know, their assets are concrete. It’s parking space, but in the same times, they’re transforming the way mobility is done in cities from outside of the mobility sector. I love that. I love this, the ability to go through sectors.

Jaspal Singh [01:29:28]:

Yeah, I agree with you. It’s sometime there is some of these external innovations have more impact on the sector whether than trying to reinvent something from inside. Now, my last question is if you can change one thing in life, what would it be?

Côme BERBAIN [01:29:45]:

If we can reduce the carbon footprint of mobility

Jaspal Singh [01:29:50]:

Yeah.

Côme BERBAIN [01:29:51]:

That’s, you know, it’s 30% of what we have today, what we so if we reduce that at least by two, I mean, we already made big progress for humanity.

Jaspal Singh [01:30:06]:

That’s a great mission. And I think that’s what pulled you also in this whole transit sector, your mission of this climate change and making mobility and people life more efficient.

Thank you so much, Come for sharing all your insight. I really love this conversation with you and learn a lot from your experience.

Côme BERBAIN [01:30:25]:

Thank you.