Mobility Innovators

Maulik Vaishnav ([00:00:00]):

We are actively looking at something internally to come up with a process through law and procurement that is sort of dedicated to our department. So I stay tuned is all I can say. It came out of a pretty extensive review and conversations with all of these sister agencies and learning from some of their lessons of how open-ended you want to be. And I think are moving in a direction where we want to focus on sort of putting out couple of problem statements or areas of focus and not just sort of get attacked with a lot of random sales hitches, which we already get without having a program. But we have used some of the current processes you know, some of the mobile journey planning. Some put out an RFI (Request for Information) and we are reviewing some of the responses. So, we try to use existing pathways, but we know some of them take a longer time and we want something for innovation that can kind of let us pilot things quickly and then put out those results for the world to see before deciding if we want to go through a full-blown process and have fully embed a certain solution into all agency operations.

MIL ([00:01:26]):

Welcome to the Mobility Innovators Podcast.

Jaspal Singh ([00:01:32]):

Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of Mobility Innovator Podcast. I’m your host, Jaspal Singh. Mobility Innovator Podcast invites key innovators in the transportation and logistics sector to share their experience and future podcast. In this episode, we’ll be discussing innovation and customer experience in public transit speeds.

Our today guest is the Vice President of Innovation at Chicago Transit Authority. Chicago Transit Authority is an operator of mass transit in Chicago, including rail and buses. The system operates a fleet of 1,900 buses and around 1,200 rail cars carrying around 800,000 riders every day.

He started his career as GIS intern and later joined CTA as a project manager for strategic and resource planning. In 2012, he also served as a transportation policy advisor at City of Chicago Mayor’s office from 2019 to 2022, where he helped advance the strategic plan for transportation. He’s currently responsible for customer experience and marketing strategy, meeting the movement action plan, payer policy and integration and innovation for the check management office.

I’m so happy to welcome Maulik Vaishnav, Vice President of Innovation at Chicago Transit Authority (CTA). It’s now time to listen and learn

Jaspal Singh ([00:02:52]):

Hey, Malik, great to have you on the show, and looking forward to our discussion today. It’s great to see you are leading the innovation in one of the oldest agencies in in transit in North America. I can see the poster in your background – 125^th year. I don’t know how long it was, but it’s great to see.

Maulik Vaishnav ([00:03:10]):

Thank you, Jaspal. Thanks for having me. It is a few years old. But yeah, it, it’s a pretty old rail system and it’s great to be on your podcast.

 

Jaspal Singh ([00:03:21]):

Great. So, I want to start with your personal journey because I was quite amazed to see how you have grown in your career. You have around 15 years of experience, but I saw you spend more than 11 years of experience, or I would say 80% of your professional life with CTA, which is amazing.

What motivates you to join transit and I would say what part of your job is actually helping you or motivating you every day to continue in this job? And if I may add also, can you provide, what’s your role as a Vice President of innovation at Chicago Transit Authority?

Maulik Vaishnav ([00:04:00]):

Yeah, that’s a great question. So, like many folks in transit people are very personally invested because of interest in trains or buses, or traveling. That is not that different from my journey. But I was an urban planning master’s student with also focus on economics. And I was very interested when I moved to Chicago for education you know, many years ago in how you can get around so easily without car ownership as, as many of us immigrants do. And now when I often visit India or other parts of the world I’m just amazed by the quality of metro systems in Delhi and Bombay that are way superior to anything right now that we have here. So, it’s sort of an inversion that has happened in the last 20 years. But I initially, after grad school worked for Arab for a couple of years, which is a MA major international design and planning firm, engineering firm, and focused on many kinds of transportation projects and really saw that, you know, while a lot of money in the US is spent on, you know, highway construction, lots of infrastructure projects to move cars I really wanted to not go in that direction too far and was very interested in seeing how I could focus on transit.

Maulik Vaishnav ([00:05:37]):

And also, when I saw CTA hiring for a position in the planning department saw as a gateway to come back to Chicago as well. So yeah, I joined about 11 years ago as a resource planner, and since then have held many roles at the agency. I think my sort of career trajectory was very focused by the, the Ventra Fair Payment System which is an open loop system that CTA started bringing on board in 2013, about a year after I had been here and my focus was very much providing ridership analytics and data and reports to other parts of the planning department and the agency early on, and got to be part of the process of that transfer from the old system to the new system and all the hiccups that come along with it.

Maulik Vaishnav ([00:06:29]):

Not just on the writer’s experience side, but on the backend of how you’ll change and integrate systems and still keep all of your sort of reporting and analysis alive. And that brought me into sort of the finance side of things, how to use some of this transactional level very rich data that was coming through now on an account-based system. So, you could sort of anonymously track behavior very differently than before because when you had sort of a plastic, or a mix, right, what we call it seven-day pass, you kind of threw it away and bought a new one. Well, now you’re not throwing this account away, you’re just constantly adding different products on it for years to come. And that’s sort of building this very data rich environment. So that really helps sort of focus us on improving our fare policy to not only make it more equitable, but also make a lot more accurate assumptions of revenue and ridership impact.

Maulik Vaishnav ([00:07:33]):

That brought me into sort of larger fare policy discussions and how transit sort of interacts in the larger environment because it’s not just the cost of transit we were seeing in the early 2010s when the rail ridership was just up and up over here. One of the biggest contributors of that was the parking costs in downtown Chicago in the Loop. So it’s an interaction with exogenous factors that really influences a person’s decision to take transit in many cases. So I was very interested at the same time as ride hailing was growing sort of exponentially too and, the prices were very low to attract their customer base, that it was starting to impact transit and that was also a very data rich environment. And that got me a lot more involved with the city of Chicago and eventually sort of went over there for a couple of years in the mayor’s office.

Maulik Vaishnav ([00:08:40]):

And the main thing was that we wanted more of a congestion pricing sort of scheme for some of these new modes but then also paved the way, hopefully in the future for a more robust sort of mobility pricing scheme that prioritizes sustainable modes. And yeah, so that’s sort of been my trajectory. And I came back to full-time to CTA over a year ago to join a new department. So, the Chief Innovation Officer at CTA has been around for a few years, but when she got to form a full fledge department, I came on board as the VP and it’s very interesting now to sort of focus a little bit more on all of these learning at sort of the most interesting time where the riders, the demand is ready to come back post pandemic.

Maulik Vaishnav ([00:09:39]):

It’s really, do we have a lot of the experience elements figured out, the service elements figured out to sort of accept this new form of travel where going to downtown just for a nine to five job will not be the 40 to four 50% of the ridership we used to have, but the services are not really designed for this new normal of having that off peak frequency and also attracting riders to take transit and see transit as a pathway for other types of trips. So, the innovation department is really focusing on sort of the rider experience also marketing CTA, the right way. And at the same time, we also do manage sort of the Ventra fare payment system, the fare-boxes. So there’s a bunch of items that currently form the innovation department, and it’s exciting to kind of bring all of this information to you know, execute a strategy that will hopefully make us a lot more competitive in the coming years.

Jaspal Singh ([00:10:48]):

Thanks for sharing. I mean, there are a lot of good points you mentioned, and I can say that you are so busy with the job you mentioned with so many tasks you’re doing. So, it’s we’ll discuss some of these points in our discussion. The one thing I want to share, which you mentioned that a lot of people come into transit as a personal passion and, I tell people that transit is like a religion. So, once you are converted to this religion, it’s very hard to go out of it. So, we are lucky to have you, and we see that you are bringing that new approach, the data-centric approach and, and bringing technology into the system because I think that’s what is missing.

Now, you mentioned you work with the mayor’s office, so I think it’s a good opportunity at the same time you went there between 2019 and 2022, it was the most challenging time to be in any public office, you know, pandemic, lot of things were happening. Everybody was wondering what to do, what not to do. So, I would love to know what were your highlights of your, during those three years, what did you learn, and what kind of thing you feel the public office needs to do differently now? Because post, I mean, I tell people it’s pre-covid and post-covid era. So in the post-Covid era, how do you think that the public office need to recognize and think about the future?

 

Maulik Vaishnav ([00:12:12]):

No, that’s a great point. I like the religion sort of thought process. Very true. So just a few months before the pandemic, obviously we didn’t know it was coming but that October before that is where we successfully passed at the city council, the new sort of congestion fee for Ride Hill. And that was a huge success story. And also on we were onboarding a new commissioner for the Chicago Department of Transportation and sort of thinking about what is the larger transportation policy platform for the mayor, and what are the things we can get done in the next four years? A lot of excitement. And then you just, you know, slapped in the face with the pandemic. That definitely sort of changed what the public officials who were really focused on keeping us all safer doing many of the things in transportation then become sidelined very quickly and in, in that phase of 2020, very understandably.

Maulik Vaishnav ([00:13:18]):

But I think some of the immediate things that I remember working on were related to how quickly we can bring, you know, some form of relief to people who had bought their, you know, monthly passes and things like that. We didn’t know how long this virus was going to stay around. So, it was just a very, I remember it being a very interesting time for government folks like to make decisions after having enough information to sort of make that leap. And we had to make a lot of leaps without exactly knowing, what was on the other side a few months out. So, I remember that being a very different approach that everyone had to get used to. Since then, I think one of the biggest focus was or should be across the country and what some other places are doing was on biking.

Maulik Vaishnav ([00:14:11]):

People were not driving; our streets were empty. There was just such an opportunity and, in some ways, a missed opportunity at this point in reallocating the street space in dense urban areas like Chicago. It’s very flat. You know, an urban trip is generally between three and six miles. Why are people driving their cars around? If they are, you know, fully abled bodied and they would bike for recreation, then why not for other use cases as well? So, I do think we tried a few things with open streets, shared streets, and trying to speed up some of the bike lane installations and also did sort of pandemic bus lanes and a few routes because there was a lot of inequities we were seeing in the ridership change we had at the height of the pandemic, there were a few bus routes and rail lines coming into downtown.

Maulik Vaishnav ([00:15:05]):

The commuter rail there were retaining eight to 10% of the ridership. So, nine out of 10 people were gone. And then you go to 79th Street on the south side of Chicago and 55% of the ridership is riding in 2020. And, and some of these numbers, you know, maybe take them the grain of salt I’m speaking from memory, but just huge disparities. So from a social distancing standpoint, if you have half the people you’re used to seeing on a bus, and we are in the middle of 2020, it’s a health hazard for folks, for the employees who are still showing up to work and driving these vehicles that we had to quickly figure out what is, how to try to move some service around to make sure that this is a very essential part of folks who do have to get places that we can’t just turn off transit.

Maulik Vaishnav ([00:16:05]):

But at the same time, how do we make sure you know, we are able to handle this new normal without exactly knowing where we were headed. So, I remember a lot of those challenges that kind of took over. But at the same time, the climate action plan update for the city, a new trails vision and equitable transit-oriented development plan, so many of these things happened in, in the last three years. So, I think there’s a lot of sort of success stories from setting the goals. I remember when I got there, I didn’t see any document except, funny enough, a health plan that talked about increasing the mode shift towards non-car modes in Chicago as a goal. And now it’s embedded in the CDOT strategic plan. It’s embedded in the public health plan, in the climate action plan. So hopefully the implementation of that remains to be seen, but we have sort of made sure that the goals that the city is setting, and the strategy is moving towards is in the right direction. We are not going back into a car-centric world. So, I’m hoping that that trajectory continues.

Jaspal Singh ([00:17:20]):

I fully agree with you because I mean, I tell people what you don’t know, you don’t know. So, the first thing is to know what you don’t know. And then the second thing is to take action on that. So, what you mentioned, like bringing those plans creating those strategy documents is useful because at least now people know what are the important areas they need to work and what are the reasons? And, I can imagine that time during pandemic, it was so uncertain world. You don’t know what is going to happen next week, and you have no long-term plan. You were just living day by day, and making decision on the go and appreciate, I heads off to all the transit operator who were running the service as well as people working in the city office because they cannot work from home.

Jaspal Singh ([00:18:02]):

They have to be on the ground, and they have to make sure that the service is being delivered. As you mentioned, 55% ridership during height of the pandemic means those people have no other choice but to go out and work. So, it was a difficult period. Now it’s behind. I don’t know if it’s fully behind or it’s not behind, but we will, we would love to know what’s, what’s going on. But before that, I want to know, now you work with Chicago Transit Authority, which is the second largest transit agency in the US. Sometimes it’s a third or second, there is a debate I don’t know which one, which side you are on. And it’s among the one of the biggest transit systems in the world. Can you share more about the system, what the Chicago transit system look like?

Jaspal Singh ([00:18:43]):

Because the people who listen to this podcast are from around the world, it’ll be good for them to know how big the Chicago Transit authority system is all about. And also, it’s one of the oldest systems in the world. And being the oldest, like you mentioned when you visited Delhi and Mumbai and Singapore and Dubai, you see new system and you feel like, wow, they have managed to build a good system. But Chicago used to had a good system, but it’s just now old. And now you need to think about how to rebuild it or how to bring more innovation. And that’s why you are here. That is how the innovation can help to make the system more efficient and improve the service. So, would love to know how innovation is helping to revive, or rebuild the whole Chicago transit system.

Maulik Vaishnav ([00:19:36]):

That’s a great question. So CTA is obviously, I still follow saying it’s the second largest US transit system.  I do think what’s really interesting is that we have the third busiest bus system after New York and LA and the third busiest rail system after New York and DC. But LA’s rail network is pretty small. It’s growing, but comparatively, and DC’s bus network is really small. So, when you combine US as a system, we end up coming out as second. But I do think LA has some opportunities to sort of overtake us. But also LA has a much higher population. So, merely per capita based in Chicago, will still continue to be sort of much more competitive of a transit city than, than la but we have about eight rail lines.

Maulik Vaishnav ([00:20:33]):

They sort of form mostly a loop based system. Loop is our downtown. So most of the rail lines are sort of feeding into the loop. And that’s where some sort of the legacy issues you brought up really come play, because the city has really changed in its patterns, and our bus network still carries more people than rail. It used to carry 70% of the ridership 30-40 years ago, and now it’s about 55-45%. But still, you know, really forget about the bus network often in sort of this conversation about transit. And it is so vital to Chicago and being that direct neighborhood connection point. So, we have about 127 bus routes mostly on a grid network. Chicago, you probably know, just like Toronto is a very grid-based city. And a lot of the sort of streetcar network was not retained like it was in Toronto or Philadelphia.

Maulik Vaishnav ([00:21:38]):

So the buses do a lion’s share of the work in moving people and connecting them to the rail system where the rail doesn’t go. And you also pointed out that some of the parts of the l the elevated structure are really old. So, a lot of the speed of good repair capital projects are in the works where the red purple modernization on the North Side, it’s sort of rebuilding some of these track structures and realigning them while maintaining service at the same time. So that has been sort of one of the signature things we have tried to do is minimize the impact of some of these construction projects. But due to sort of overall US nature of limited funding both at the state and federal levels where we are really missing out is the expansion of the network.

Maulik Vaishnav ([00:22:27]):

Because if you’re spending billions of dollars in state of good repair and making the system fully accessible, all of which is absolutely necessary places like New York and Chicago and Boston, we have a really hard time then also finding billions of dollars to build new rail lines or, BRT networks, though BRT is a good opportunity that Chicago really needs to jump into as well. So from the innovation side we are involved in sort of the immediate meeting, the moment action plan of sort of what are some of the immediate rider concerns that we need to alleviate. And a lot of them are more based on the sort of service and other safety and security challenges on the system. But in terms of sort of the larger customer experience roadmap that we are working on sort of the pain points in every step of the journey from a rider deciding that I will take transit to getting off the system and hopefully choosing to come back based on that experience.

Maulik Vaishnav ([00:23:32]):

A lot of the infrastructure components come into play as we are building some of these newer stations or new rail cars come into the system. We are jumping in with sort of the departments such as infrastructure and operations and leading some of the aspects of rider experience coming into play. So, you can think of us as sort of the advocate for the rider, and sort of providing ideas for solutions or making that that connection between what the experts are doing when they know where to pour concrete and what kind of structures we need to, how is the rider going to interact with this space?

Jaspal Singh ([00:24:15]):

I think that’s the most important point. What you mentioned is how the customer will interact with the system. A lot of the time we forget about that. We forget about, we try to build something very fancy, or we think about something really modern, but then we forget how the customer will interact and how customer will feel connected with the system. And you rightly mentioned, I think that’s a sad part, like not many cities able to expand at the same time, cities are changing, we are becoming different kinds of hub. The suburbs are emerging, some settler towns are emerging, but then you don’t have those connections and our service design still follows the whole pattern. Whereas you need to change in London, I mean, the previous statistic was they change 20% of their route every year. So, in a kind of a five year, you have rebuilt the whole system, which is important because your ridership pattern keep changing.

Jaspal Singh ([00:25:07]):

And in fact, my next question is also about that. You mentioned about this meeting the moment scorecard. It’s quite interesting. I check that scorecard on CTA website, and love some of the data you have put there. But the sad point was when I say the first data, it was about the ridership, it’s still not there. It’s still 60% of the pre pandemic level. But I had a very interesting discussion with one of the agency and they told me our riders are back, but ridership is not back. And I was curious like, what does it mean? They said things like, people are back in the system. Those who were using transit before are using now, but they’re not using it the same way. They do not go to the office every five days. So they are going to office two days and three days.

Jaspal Singh ([00:25:49]):

So in term of a rider, they are a hundred percent back, but of a ridership it’s still 60- 70%. So it’s like a new normal. Do you see the similar trend at CTA is like riders are back but not the ridership because people pattern has changed. And one point you mentioned in the beginning is like, our system is not designed for this new normal, we are not designed for these nonpeak covers kind of a service. We always think about 7 to 9 peak or 9 to 11 peak, and then 5 to 7 peak and that’s it. But now the ridership is spread out, people don’t go to office every day or probably they don’t go to nine to five, they go to whatever they need to go to. What is the strategy you’re adopting or what are you advocating internally to, to make these changes? I know as a innovation head, you trying to convince other people to make changes.

Maulik Vaishnav ([00:26:39]):

That’s a good point. You’re absolutely right. We are seeing that, especially with the Ventra system. As I said, it’s account based, so we have a much better ability to track those numbers Yeah. In terms of riders versus rides. And our ridership team continues to tell us that the number of cards on the system is starting to look pretty similar to pre pandemic. But the number of rides per card is what is not returning. And then we are able to do a lot of ridership segmentation, which feeds into sort of some of the work we are doing on the experience side. And the segments are also telling us who is riding differently. So if you were in the, the peak only rail segment, what are you doing now? And it’s very interesting to see both from the perspective of a rail network being able to have its own right of way and quickly get you through congested places.

Maulik Vaishnav ([00:27:44]):

And then buses being stuck in traffic. That combination is really impacting people’s choices right now. So if say about 15 to 20% of our riders only knew of us as a 9 to 5, I take 10 trips per week and they’re all on rail, a hundred percent rail ridership, they don’t even know or have taken their local bus route in the neighborhood, even though it exists every quarter to half mile on a grid network. What are they doing now? They’re the ones who ride four times a week and that’s where we have only recovered 40% of ridership and then you have the segment where folks who are on the 79th street bus route riding you know, half of their rides at the height of the pandemic, they are back at ed plus percent.

Maulik Vaishnav ([00:28:42]):

And then you have the special event segment and sort of this, I’ll come downtown for fun. And Chicago’s summers are, you know, known for being really exciting. And so we are breaking record highs at a time in the past month, in the month of May and some of the first weeks of June, we have seen sort of weekly records that we would never see in spring when the school goes out a session.

Jaspal Singh ([00:29]:10):

Cause that was Taylor Swift effect.

Maulik Vaishnav ([00:29:12]):

Yeah. Taylor Swift definitely had an impact, but it’s kind of interesting because Soldier Field is kind of located requiring a couple of transfers to get to it. And even then, just the number of people who want to be out there for sort of festivals at Millennium Park or, or whatever else is going on, they are jumping on transit.

Maulik Vaishnav ([00:29:32]):

So, it’s not that easy to sort of quickly realign every part of service. But to your point, what mentioned with London is very interesting. We have, you know, six or seven garages. We have x number of rail yards. Is there a future where we can just sort of make sure we are redoing 10 to 20% of schedules and processes every year? So, there’s sort of a continuous improvement process. Yeah. so, CTA did start a bus vision study but it started right before the pandemic to look at. In some ways, our grid network is designed pretty perfectly. If we have 5-to-10-minute headways is sort designed in the most efficient way to deliver really good service, you do have to make a transfer, but the transfer is generally coming, but the current headway, that’s problematic. Suggesting that people may have a 10-to-15-minute wait on the front end, another similar wait for a transfer at that point, you might as well drive or take the train system.

Maulik Vaishnav ([00:30:39]):

So that’s some of the things we have to think about and sort of go back with the planning department and think about this was our bus vision objective pre pandemic. What is it going to be now? Yeah, it’s very but still work on that process to provide a network that is ready for the future. I do think that bus speeds, you know, people are pretty satisfied in our ridership surveys with their bus speeds when the traffic volumes were low, but the traffic has come roaring back. And our buses are stuck in it. There’s a lot of interest in Chicago and improving the sort of the streetscapes, and making a lot of our neighborhoods a lot more walkable. And how we combine transit into that is really important, especially bus. So, we are seeing some progress on sort of having islands for bus stops that are much more accessible.

Maulik Vaishnav ([00:31:41]):

Accessibility is a big issue where our buses could be a hundred percent accessible, but the conditions of the sidewalks make that ride really difficult. But I don’t know if we have gotten to a point where the reliability and speed of the bus network is anywhere near where it should be. So I think that’s a big focus for Chicago in general that we should think about. Because I do think some of these new patterns will be a lot more successful on the bus network. A lot of demand of going from neighborhoods to neighborhoods on weekends on buses and the evenings. So, sort of thinking of not having a super peaky system, but a sort of a continuous 10 minute frequency from say [2:30] PM to [8:00] PM right now, the peak is sort of a couple of hours of super boost of transit if you look at pre pandemic. So, sort of smoothing that out. So, some of those ideas are very much in consideration, but it’ll be interesting how quickly we can roll some of these out to folks and people can start experiencing the benefits.

Jaspal Singh ([00:32:55]):

No, that’s very interesting. And I would love to know, like you mentioned about these segments, customer segment, like peak only segment and regular user and special even. Do you also label them with something? I remember there was a study done long back and they actually level these segments. Do you have any code words for these kind of users?

Maulik Vaishnav ([00:33:14]):

Yeah, we I wonder, well, if you’re referring to something we did years and years ago of building rider profiles, that was before my time at CTA and before any of this data rich environment. But right now, we have kept the labels internally to be pretty standard and not like Target, you know, where they have labeled you as some kind of a buyer and they know everything about you. But, it’s more of the biggest differences we see is what we call infrequent versus a frequent customer and how different those groups are from each other. And it’s understandable. One is sort of either sort of a suburban person just coming in for specific kinds of trips or a tourist. The infrequent group really grows over the summer very rail heavy not so much inter transferring.

Maulik Vaishnav ([00:34:11]):

And then on the other end we have sort of our seven-day pass bus riders, like very equity focused. They’re really looking to make sure you know, they’re, every time they get a paycheck, they’re going and buying that seven-day pass. They’re dependent on transit. So, we slashed our pass crisis to sort of reflect some of this segment behavior. And we did that for about, it’ll be two years, but that has had huge impacts in terms of equity and making sure that our one-day pass at $5 and seven days at $20 is really affordable. And while inflation has, you know, skyrocketed, our fare have gone back to sort of you know, 20 years in reverse. Because one, it’s a really important objective in terms of a policy objective, but also, it’s really helping make sure people are coming back to the system. And, I think that is also a big part of the ridership recovery.

Jaspal Singh ([00:35:14]):

And also I feel when we talk about climate change and health, and other things and environment. So, it’s important to bring more people in transit because that’s a way you can, you can reduce cars on the road and the congestion and the traffic on the road. Let’s zoom if everybody needs to drive a car, how scary the world will be because we’ll be stuck everywhere and there’ll be so many cars on the road. So, it’s, I try to tell people it’s not about making it affordable, it’s also bringing health benefit for everybody. So it’s more meeting climate goals and all. No, great to hear that because I don’t know many agencies which do are doing that segmenting their customers and understanding their demand. And I think that’s very important. Instead of taking a blanket this season of saying slash pay for everybody or slash reduce price or, or change service, you know, which segment needs more attention and which segment is actually working well, why to touch that point.

Jaspal Singh ([00:36:09]):

And I think the data driven approach is very important. You can’t just throw the ball in the dark cause we don’t have finite resources anymore. The resources are limited. So you need to really think about what need to be done. And, I’m really glad to hear that you are already thinking about making these things flexible. I think one-point, which agencies also need to think about, do we really need 12 meter bus on every route or probably need to have a different size of bus. I don’t know what’s your feeling in that area? But that’s also, I feel is it’s not only about surveys, but also vehicle design and, and bringing more flexibility.

Maulik Vaishnav ([00:36:47]):

Yeah. at one time, CTA used to have 30-foot buses and then now it’s standardized to 40 foot and the articulated 60 foot buses. We have tried to think about some of the ways in which we can better meet frequency if we had more kinds of vehicles serving different purposes. And I don’t know if we will be able to sort of manage that while we are also working on electrification of the fleet, which I know we’ll talk about. But I do think that our sort of sister agency pace in the suburbs just launched a PACE Connect pilot yesterday or day before where some of the overnight service that connects into our Rosemont Blue line and serves some of the airport employer areas such as the cargo, which, you know, have veered overnight hours and they’ll, they’ll be powered through Via.

Maulik Vaishnav ([00:37:49]):

So sort of thinking about some of those relationships, Chicago’s sort of regional setup is very interesting, where some of the, what we call more productive routes and, the dense parts of the system are with CTA. And then some of our suburban services in the Kohler counties that connect into our network and feed into it and feed into Metro are with pace. So, they are definitely looking into it as our sister agency and moving in that direction. And I do see several opportunities even in the city to maybe improve access to ADA vehicles, or just frequency and flexibility with thinking about different kind of or sort of using on demand sort of models to think about that. For the most part, we always have enough passenger load factor most of the day in say, 80% of our routes where you probably want a bus. But that, still leaves a room for flexibility and I think we should think about that. So that is on our radar, but our sister agency is doing something right now that’s interesting and moving in the right direction.

Jaspal Singh ([00:39:09]):

Great to hear that because I, I think the new world is all about innovation and the first thing in innovation is about testing different things and see what will work and what will not work. Because until, unless you try something, you’ll never know if it works or not work.

Now you already mentioned about the CTA plan for electrification, and I think CTA also have a big ambition to have all electric fleet by 2040. It’s looked far away, but at the same time it’s not that far away to reach to that level because you need to replace 1,200 buses and not only buses, but you need to make infrastructure ready. So right now, I think CT has around 11 buses recently placed an order for 22.

I think one of the biggest things with electrification will be the process re-engineering, like the way you’re working today, it has to change. You cannot plan the buses; you cannot think about the set same way. So would love to know what kind of technological intervention you’re thinking to make that transition possible. Because I think a lot of agencies are scared now, especially in North America, I feel, because they feel like it’ll be very complicated. But I tell people that with technology we have much better technology available to do.

So would love to know what is the role innovation department is playing to make that transition happen?

Maulik Vaishnav ([00:40:31]):

That’s a great question. So we now actually have more than 20 electric buses in operation. We have been getting a few in the last few months. So, it is impressive that when you have small numbers you can quickly double the fleet. But we went from, you know, 11 to 22 very quickly. And as you, as you saw, we placed an order for 22 more and have continued to apply for any funding with Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality (CMAQ) grants or LoNo (Low or No Emission Vehicle Program), or other things that are coming up so that there’s a consistent sort of supply that we start building. Many of the environment folks continue to think it’s still not fast enough. Especially when you hear, you know, China replacing, you know, a fleet of, I don’t know, a hundred thousand of buses.

Maulik Vaishnav ([00:41:17]):

We didn’t take that model like in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill, you know, there’ll be more money by, it’s still sort of either competitive or is it a formula. It’s up to the agency to go through the procurement processes. So, we’ll continue to have to sort of build that roadmap which we have sort of put out the framework in a charging forward plan. Innovation’s role has been relatively limited because I do think the OEMs are bringing us pretty decent sort of bells and whistles inside the vehicle. So, we do look at how to make sure our Ventura tapping system and the fare boxes all of that is working with some of the really better doorway design and better ed access into the buses especially the electric bus. But a big chunk of it will be our, is having to be basically rebuilt.

Maulik Vaishnav ([00:42:12]):

One, they are beyond the useful life for what they are right now, given how the capital funding is structured. So a lot more funding will be needed to make sure those garages are being upgraded or being rebuilt and then they’re rebuilt for the electric bus. Like that’s the future that’s coming. So right now our infrastructure and operations teams go in to a couple of garages and they are building out couple of slow chargers for overnight charging. There are a couple of fast chargers we have looked at some of the relief points. So one of the things, I think there are two interesting things with Chicago. One is our routes can be very long. So our grid network where Ashland and Westerns, they go for, you know, in one direction 20-25 miles or run, which is basically an operator has sort of, you know, breaks at either or both ends and then they are immediately back in operation.

Maulik Vaishnav ([00:43:13]):

And second part is the winter similar to Toronto the performance of batteries and sort of the technology is really impacted by how much snow and cold weather will be out. So we have been testing all of that to figure out what is the lifecycle of some of these vehicles. And the earliest couple of buses we got, you know, they had to be sent back, and some of the upgrades had to be done to them. Their prices are coming down. So, there are sort of lots of factors of why it is okay to be cautious. Even the zero emissions or low emissions buses that we would buy now in the next 10 years to replace some of the very old 18 years old buses are infinitely better for the environment. And at the end of the day, the frequency is what will reduce emissions.

Maulik Vaishnav ([00:44:07]):

I think we just forget about the fact that getting someone out of the car into the bus, no matter how the bus is being run, is the best way to reduce emissions. And I think we are trying to push on that too. None of that changes the goal to be fully electric by 2040, but to your point, it’s 16 and a half years away and there are six garages to be rebuilt and that looks like a capital project that takes two to three years and you’ve run out of time. So it’s, it’s an aggressive timeline for the amount of upgrades and funding that needs to be figured out between now and then.

Jaspal Singh ([00:44:47]):

I, to be honest, I fully agree with your point. There is a lot of discussion about electric buses everywhere and I feel the buses are much better than cars. So it’s already much emission friendly. It’s carries so many people, so per passenger kilometer emission is much lower than any other vehicle we are using and rail system is already electric, so why not push people to use more rail and buses so their per capita emission will be much lower. So, this whole debate about whether we should have more buses or we should have electric buses, I’m more supportive of having more buses rather than just electric because people will not wait for 30 minutes to get an electric bus. They want the bus in the next five minutes. I’m curious to know what kind of like now you’re managing 20 buses, so how you are managing the charging system and planning. Are you using the existing charging you’re doing manually, or you have already automated some of the stuff?

Maulik Vaishnav ([00:45:48]):

That’s a good question. We do have, as we go into a new garage, so we first started on the 66 Chicago route that connects Austin on the far west side to Navy Pier on the far east side. And we have sort of those quick chargers on the Navy pier side because that’s where the relief point is, and the overnight charging happens at the garage of that route. Now we are expanding to 63rd street on the south side. So, the garage then serves that route is getting the latest technology. So, beyond that, I think it is very interesting. Every time there is an upgrade to the technology, whether it’s faster charging or the battery life has been increased 10%. Our bus engineering team was, are experts at this and I know much less than them, but they have to sort of think about are we good with these 20 buses as they are or these 40 buses or do we need to make changes to them?

Maulik Vaishnav ([00:46:51]):

Yeah. or are we just going to focus that the new orders need to have some of these things included. So I think that’s going to be an interesting question where how many retrofits can you do and afford if the technology is going to keep moving leaps and bounds? But we could get to a point sooner than later where the incremental improvements start to get smaller and smaller, where as long as our range is being met and we don’t have to have a much higher spare ratio of buses which starts to get expensive then we have reached a point of being able to deploy, you know, a hundred buses, 150 buses that are fully electric.

Jaspal Singh ([00:47:31]):

Yeah, I think the point to mention about the way technology is changing so fast, it’s like you can change your mobile phone every year because it’s changing. The camera is getting better, the voice, but it’s hard for these, some of these capital set. But I think in automobile sector, and that’s what I feel sometime from a transit, we need to look at what’s happening in automobile space. They are doing this SDV (Software Defined Vehicle) kind of vehicle software design vehicle where like Tesla, so you don’t change the hardware, you upgrade the application. So, you make the battery more efficient, you get the data. And I think we need to see that kind of innovation in the bus sector as well where if there is any upgrade you can do over the air, and the system can be used for the next version or next quality. I’ll not say next quality, but basically you can have the next generation of vehicle by just upgrading the software. So, which we see in our software.

Maulik Vaishnav ([00:48:27]):

That’s, that’s very true. I like that Tesla of buses very interesting

Jaspal Singh ([00:48:35]):

In fact, I was in Barcelona and EMT Madrid, they launch a new bus vehicle design and it’s looks so sexy. And I told them, it’s look like a Tesla of the bus. So, I’ll happy to share those pictures with you.

Now you are managing innovation like you’re working in the innovation department and one of the key role for you is to keep track of the market, what new is happening. And you must be meeting with a lot of people coming to you, reaching out to you, sharing new technologies and new trends. And you also keep reading like what new trends are happening. Like we see autonomous vehicle now running in San Francisco on public road freely, urban air mobility and metaverse and, and a lot of other things are coming up.

So as an innovation leader or somebody who is responsible for innovation at public transit agencies, I would ask, what are the trends which make you feel very excited? And at the same time, what are the things which keep you awake at night? Like you feel like, man, if these things happen, we need to be really worried about. And at the same time, you see like, okay these new technologies are available like AI probably I can use it to make customer experience better and improve services. So, what are the key trend you you’d like and you dislike?

Maulik Vaishnav ([00:49:52]):

That’s a great question. I try to avoid focusing too much on being sold constantly about what could be done on our system. But I do think innovation also means a lot of the process changes we need to bring in. So, I think partly there is a lot of new items coming on board. I don’t mind being the second to try it out and not the first. But at the same time, if we can sort of make sure the nuts and bolts at the agency are improving and we are shortening the time of bringing pilots on board and things like that is also a big focus. But I will say that what’s really exciting is how much we can use some of the automation technology. Hopefully, fingers crossed, we can get there where some of the employee pressure of being in operations can be made easier.

Maulik Vaishnav ([00:50:53]):

Yeah. as I think about Paris or even Montreal, I mean these are very labor friendly places and they have figured out, you know, fully autonomous rail systems, we, we need to think about that in the US more, more openly because frequency is king and it’s also not going to happen overnight. So, if you can openly start thinking about it, plan it out, it’s still, you know, many years away and then the operations positions can become so much more interesting in terms of managing that. Like Vancouver and other places. So, I think that really interests me. But on the bus side, even if we don’t get to a fully autonomous bus tomorrow, I do think that some of the Level2 or Level3 technologies that we are already getting from the OEMs on using cameras and laser for pe pedestrian detection collision turns sort of some of the audible sounds you can make about doors opening or they’re not closed in a much more like friendly way than the beeps that we generally hear.

Maulik Vaishnav ([00:52:02]):

All of those, like little things have been really exciting to see and the amount of data they’re collecting that will eventually be very useful for sort of some of the vision zero plans. Our processes are everywhere. So, I’ve always insisted to our DOT and others that we have eyes on the city like nobody else. And if some of these cameras can provide them a lot of the data, and to us it can really have an impact on sort of the safety of the system on our roads. Some of the other things, they’re sort of connected vehicles. We did a small pilot with the DOT here on one of our routes to just kind of see how we can have the back and forth conversation with the signals and what other sort of step two ideas we can implement that included a couple of garbage trucks as well because the city has a lot of leap that needs some of this sort of vehicles talking to each other.

Maulik Vaishnav ([00:53:02]):

And vehicles talking to fixed technology. The other part you sort of mentioned, I’m really interested in seeing how AI and other items can really help us improve customer communications and multiple languages. Languages, you know, we have to meet sort of limited English proficiency requirements lP requirements, we can do more. So, I think some of this technology can help. We are looking at a Chat bot features. I know every other agency has a chat bot. But I do think it’s really important to open up another line of communication for writers. Because right now you can call in, you can tweet at us, you can send us an email. All of those are sort of two steps. Is there something that sort of pops up and it may not be a live agent, but could answer a lot of questions for certain customer segments to that point of knowing that some people are asking us very basic questions about our system that do not require any human to sort of spend time responding to them.

Maulik Vaishnav ([00:54:09]):

So that is in the works. And the last thing I’ll mention is sort of the bus enforcement, the cameras with AI to be able to map out all of the bus stops, bus lanes, even bike lanes and all of these things where cars are shamelessly parked and getting in our way. That’s something we are really interested in bringing on soon because the city council did pass a two-year pilot in Chicago to create a downtown zone where we can sort of use technology for parking violations. So, we are moving in that direction as well. So, I know there’s a lot of hodgepodge of things, but all of this is sort of bringing on pieces of sort of new and exciting things into our operations and, and sort of adding to our project list in the innovation department.

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

So like I said, you are quite busy and you have a long project list. I mean all these projects, I know it’s take a lot of effort to implement and  the point to mention about automation both for the road for the buses as well as for the rail. It’s sad that we don’t have many automated systems as of now, but like you mentioned somewhere you need to start the discussion. WMATA and MTA are now really seriously thinking about it. In Montreal, we have already a system which is working. Toronto recently did some work in that area. So some of the system are coming up and I think the technology is there. It’s just the policy side. But you know, one of the important challenges, the labor shortage, we don’t have drivers, we don’t have operators available.

Jaspal Singh ([00:55:47]):

And yesterday I was talking with somebody and it said it’s not only about the driver if you see all kind of manpower is shrinking because people don’t want to go into those small manual repeated jobs where they want to do something more creative. So, anybody, like there is a shortage of accountant everywhere. So there are no accountants who can file your taxes and who can maintain the book key, who can do the bookkeeping and other stuff. So, there is a shortage of manpower and I think when I was looking at the CTA website, you are also hiring 700 drivers this year, 50% is achieved. So which good because we are half mark of the year and 50% is achieved. But you need to pay bonuses to join, to ask these people to join. And, I think the hiring is tough, but retention is even more difficult to keep those people in the workforce.

Jaspal Singh ([00:56:40]):

So I would love to know what do you think as some of some short term and long term solution to solve this challenge? Because I don’t think tomorrow this thing will go away. I mean, after I did a study and they are predicting by 2025, 50% of the, the driver workforce will be out of out of work, they will be over age and they don’t want to continue. They will be in the pension systems, but they want to leave. And do you think transit agencies can do something different in this area? Like any thought you have? I know I can’t say what CTA can do, but any wild thought as a practitioner.

Maulik Vaishnav ([00:57:22]):

My personal opinion I do think the long-term solution is some form of automation that makes this job easier and also has that variety component to your point that you’re not doing the same thing over and over. I do think Chicago is on top of that a little bit unique because the competition for logistics jobs here is insane, right? Like you, you have every sort of type of company in this sort of arena fighting for the same kinds of skills and CTA is fighting with that. In terms of attracting frontline employees, I do think some of the uptake we have seen in the last few months as we’ve, you know, been very transparent, putting everything out in the scorecard it’s always good to hear. So, the scorecard is coming from the innovation team. We are collecting all of that.

Maulik Vaishnav ([00:58:21]):

A quick segway there is that, you know, generally when you put a report out in a government agency, you do it once or you do the same thing over and over and over. We change that scorecard every single month shamelessly to improve it over and over, and I promise you’ll change it again. And mostly to add more matrix to make it more of a Power BI dashboard. And it’s really internally making people comfortable that it’s okay, the number of feedbacks we get about here are all the red flags with what you are doing. And then 99 out of a hundred do not materialize. Mostly we have gotten that you’re providing us with too much information is the only red flag I’ve been told. But we want to continue to be transparent. We have all the data, we can turn it back around relatively quickly, and I think it is sort of good to keep us on track.

So I do think the hiring pays for bus operators has really increased. On rail, I think some of the internal processes takes several steps to get there. That has a huge impact. You need people to train people. That is a big thing. I think that gets missed. Where, why can’t you suddenly train a hundred operators instead of 20? Well, you’re going to need five times as many trainers and where do they come from? They come from the folks who are currently operating the system.

Maulik Vaishnav ([00:59:55]):

It’s, it’s a very interesting situation to be in. I think one of the ways that we can just be very transparent it’s APTA, it’s Transit Center. A lot of folks have sort of put out reports and just as transit agencies of like, this is the backlog and this is the attrition. So, we are really being open with that information. So, no one kind of gets the impression that magically everything we had in 2019 will be available at the end of this year. I don’t think we are removing a bunch of hurdles or steps, however we want to call it, but some of those are imposed upon us by rules and regulations. So some of it will be a policy-based decision at some point with requiring CDL, for example, commercial driver’s license you know, we can work with the Secretary of State to see if there is something can, that can be done there to shorten the process or make the payment easier from CTA all kinds of things that we’re, we are either doing or in the process of talking to people.

Maulik Vaishnav ([01:01:03]):

But I do think at the end of the day, people in this market are getting multiple job offers really quickly. And to your point, it’s happening in headquarters as well. If it’s going to take me six weeks to make an offer, there’s an 80% chance that person has found something else. So yeah, there are many aspects of just sort of the speed that we need to provide. And then when people are on board that they’re a huge priority. One of the things is that a lot of the customer experience pain points are directly connected to an employee pain point. So the quality of the break, break room, the restrooms, the infrastructure, the has an impact to the term decision to stay here. And I think a lot of that is, is something we are taking into consideration.

Jaspal Singh ([01:01:59]):

I love your last point about how the customer pain points are very much related to employee pain points. I mean, if employees, like I was discussing with the CEO of Columbus, Ohio, and she mentioned how they’re building a new facility now where they will have a childcare facility for the employees. So, people can come to job, they can lead their kid to the childcare facility so that they can perform their duty because it’s not easy. And, if you talk to any people, any driver who is working in this gig economy, like why they’re working there is then the biggest factor is flexibility. They’re looking for more flexible options that I can choose the day I work, the, the shift I can work and I can better manage my family. And I think post pandemic people have that awareness about, okay, life is very unpredictable, so you have to make sure you’re there for your family and you take care of that.

Jaspal Singh ([01:02:50]):

So I think what you mentioned about is that the providing best serve facility to employee is very important. So really interesting to learn about that. From your side now you are also responsible for customer experience. And throughout our chat you focus on things like how to improve customer experience and touchpoint. And I think one of the key things in today’s world is this game theory, how to gamify the whole thing. And the young generation looks for that kind of feature. Like my kids, they look for some fun. They don’t want to go somewhere just for the purpose of going. They want to see something more additionally, you know? So I think our world is becoming like more, they’re looking for some better experience and unique experience. And you also mentioned recently in one of the discussion that kids are the future rider and they are the advocates for the transit network.

Jaspal Singh ([01:03:44]):

So let’s say if the kids are not using the transit network, nobody goes to mayor office and say, Hey, we need public transportation system. And that’s what happened in the early twenties, you know, when we used to have a card system, but everything was destroyed during that period. But to attract kids, you need to do something interesting. And that’s what some of the agencies are doing. Like TransLink Vancouver recently they launched this transit card with the DC superhero. So, Superman transit card and Spider-Man transit card. And similarly in MTR Hong Kong, they have metaverse. So, you can travel in Metaverse and experience a rail journey and bright light rain in Miami they launch NFT collection, like you can collect NFT and all those kinds of stuff. So some of these are crazy ideas. Some of these are doable, not doable by the public agency. What’s your thought about that this kind of initiative and what are the things you are planning to do differently at the CTA to make customer experience really, you know, memorable and they are not coming back to system just to go point A to point B, but also to experience?

Maulik Vaishnav ([01:04:54]):

Yeah, we have a lot of fans and a lot of them are young fans, right? So yes, and I always say that a lot of the, the service criticism that that is thrown at transit agencies across the country is actually not a bad place to be. To your point, when transit was struggling 30 or 40 or 50 years ago and there was none of that momentum, the quick political solution was to rip it apart. And do we want that in a few years where it’s like, yeah, go and, you know, to balance your budget, we are not going to give you any more funding. You can cut 30-40% of your service because you know, no one’s asking for it. So, we need that momentum to fight for funding. So that long-term we have solutions. I think what CTA did really interesting early on in like 1999-2000 was the U-Pass program, the university program.

Maulik Vaishnav ([01:05:44]):

So I’m sort of jumping back and forth between sort of kids and, and, but we had to find ways in our sort of fair systems over the last few decades to sort of create that pipeline of future full fair paying writers. And Chicago’s a very interesting place. Cause a lot of people are sort of very, you know, I was born and brought up here. And so, most of the stories you hear about folks it generally comes from folks who said they were raised in a family with little money or no cars, and therefore they had to take the bus and then they have had sort of positive experiences or that’s part of their life. That’s where they’re fighting for it. I’ve always thought about what, what, what about the folks in a lot of sort of wealthier parts of the city.

Maulik Vaishnav ([01:06:40]):

Are their kids not being exposed to public transit because they don’t have to, or are they still interested in freedom and all of the things that come with it? So, we haven’t figured out sort of what we call a signature event card. We do that for special events and other things. Yeah. But you’ve just given me an idea to come up with a design for a signature card that, you know, attracts or can target folks who are very young, but they don’t need a card. Up to age of seven, you write for free and then reduced or student fare, then you pass and then full fare so up to the age of at least 18 or so, if you’re part of any of these situations, fare is not component you may have to deal with.

Maulik Vaishnav ([01:07:28]):

So then we do have to think outside the box in that sense. And it’s very interesting what some of these agencies are doing to sort of attract that. But we are thinking about it from a marketing perspective. So one of the campaigns we are thinking about launching, not thinking it’ll be launching very soon, is what we call, we’re calling it more with. So right now, the price to go anywhere are skyrocketing. So, if you took CTA, you’re left with a bunch of extra money to spend on other things and that’s sort of ha having a picture of a kid with an ice cream cone or whatever it might be Yeah. That they do is like, Hey, why don’t you focus on spending money on this for your kids than on you know, parking or taking something else that’s a lot more expensive.

Maulik Vaishnav ([01:08:13]):

So that is definitely on our mind. But then sort of this idea of learning, there’s so much to learn in as experiential part of taking transit and just kind of being a lot more attuned to everything that’s going on. Kids quickly pick up a lot of the street names and where they are. So young because of the trains, they take that it’ll take them a lot longer to realize they live on this street, but because the station is named that and they’re like curious about it. A lot of interesting things are there and you’re just giving us ideas, but our CTA store website is very interesting and there’s lots of local folks who sort of, our brand is very popular and lots of kids items on it. There’s like a onesie that says future CTA rider. So we, we do try to focus on that segment quite a bit. But most of it has focused on sort of, you know, purchasing gifts for your loved ones. But we can also think about how we can do some, you know, giveaways or things that gamify

Maulik Vaishnav ([01:09:19]):

You want to be on the system as part of that game. So that’s very interesting.

Jaspal Singh ([01:09:23]):

Yeah, I don’t know if you remember about the Pokémon game where you need to catch these Pokémon and travel all everywhere, and it was crazy because people were walking, but because of that game, people start walking and, and sometime in a danger zone they were walking on the street without even looking the traffic light and all. But I think that’s important. And what you mentioned about connecting transit with the lifestyle, when the cost of living is so high, how can transit make is much more affordable and, and give you life back. And, and I think the other thing I try to tell people is the mental health issue, if you are surrounded by people, you will feel better and you never know. I know some people who found their life partner on the, on the transit, right?

Jaspal Singh ([01:10:07]):

So you can meet interesting kinds of people, and you can make some lifelong friend. You never know what kind of stuff can happen on transit. So, we need to talk about these good stories more. Now you are among some of the few transit professionals in the US who has traveled in different part of the world, because I remember you mentioned about you’ve been to in Canada, you’ve been to Europe, you’ve seen system in Asia.

And as a transit nerd, you will always try to experience, you will go out and experience a system when you go out, you see this system and now you come back home, and you work. So what are the lessons you think transit system in the US can learn from outside, and one should emphasize more? And how do you feel that the transit system in the US can reinvent themselves? I mean, like you mentioned till 2010 ridership was just going up and up, up, up. A lot of people don’t correlate, but I have some data which show how the emergence of ride hailing sector, this whole car booking and on demand actually has a big impact on the ride hailing. So how do you think the system can be reinvented now after facing this kind of shortfall?

Maulik Vaishnav ([01:11:24]):

Yeah, very interesting. I mean, when I go to other countries or, or see other transit systems, it’s very evident that the US. It’s a policy choice that was made decades ago and now we have to sort of fight politically to change the ratio of funding. And some of that is slowly happening. But as we saw with the, with the infrastructure build, while the focus on transit biking and other modes was increased it wasn’t as the expense of spending on car infrastructure. So, I think that ratio is really important that you can make the pie really big. But if it’s still 80-20 and transit is on the receiving end of 20%. You are setting us up for failure. So I think that is a huge issue. And I think Canada has been really interesting because it is still a relatively car-centric society, but the prioritization of transit from funding to on the street to the quality of the rolling stock and infrastructure in the last 20 years just shows how many more people will take it. Because both Montreal and Toronto at some point overtook Chicago’s ridership. And now if you just look at sort of North America, we would be like at number six or something because you would have New York, Mexico City, then Canada, then Chicago. So it’s very interesting that a lot of people are interested in taking transit. The other big change we are seeing is sort of the affordability thing you brought up, but especially in housing where Canada is notorious for being very expensive to live in.

Jaspal Singh ([01:13:02]):

Damn expensive

Maulik Vaishnav ([01:13:03]):

And the US is becoming more and more like that, where Chicago really is a shining example of being one of a very large cities that is frankly still pretty affordable. So, the equitable transit-oriented development policy that got sort of prioritized just earlier this year or late last year is really important to make sure that we are prioritizing a lot of affordable housing. Very close to transit and I do think that is an area where we can build a lot of momentum because it makes it really easy to bring people to transit. If we are not going to invest in bringing more transit to people, if you’re not going to expand the systems and such. The other big fascination I have, we’ve talked about automation, but it’s the rolling stock in Europe and other places I go to, I mean there are some really old systems, but then there’s just a lot of one, there’s a lot of companies but there’s just a lot of interest in like letting you have the best experience on the vehicle itself.

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

Yeah.

Maulik Vaishnav ([01:14:17]):

And that has been very interesting to see that we need to sort of bring over here. But you know, that that is sort of happening a little bit on the bus, like our Electric bus is very interesting infrastructure in them. But I think we are moving on the rail side slowly, but it’s still something that I always find interesting of how nice some of the infrastructure is in terms of the rolling stock in some of the other cities. So, it all depends on funding at the end of the day. So, we’ll see where we end up in a couple of years where you know, California and New York just stepped up for their transit systems. Illinois has to do that in the next couple of years. But let’s see, the federal government can do something because they did for covid reverse a lot of things that haven’t changed since the Reagan era in terms of funding transit operations. And if that could be a long-term solution that could really also make a difference.

Jaspal Singh ([01:15:20]):

Yeah, I agree with you. I mean, funding has a more, I mean, when you have a consistent level of funding available, you can invest, and we can reinvest in the infrastructure and it’s also depend on the policy level. Like in Toronto, we have a new mayor, and she doesn’t have any driving license, so she still ride a bicycle. So when a mayor is riding a bicycle. So, you have to make sure that the bicycle lanes and the tracks are good. So I think it’s, it’s a cultural thing. Sorry, you were saying something.

Maulik Vaishnav ([01:15:54]):

No, I completely agree with you. I was telling my cousins like, you can only work for her because I didn’t follow the election too closely, but I saw that part of her agenda and I was sold. And you know, we are starting to see some of that momentum in Boston. The mayor ran a very transit oriented campaign. We haven’t seen that at that level in Chicago, but hopefully at some point there’s enough of aggressor’s movements where biking and transit becomes sort of a political movement in the city hall. So that would be very interesting to see.

Jaspal Singh ([01:16:33]):

I think it’s happening what you mentioned, it’s happening. It probably not at the pace we would like to have, but it’s happening, like you mentioned about Boston that mayor she’s lifelong transit user and she’s promoting, and she built a team around, she handpicked people who are pro transit, and talk about whether it’s transition, walkable, city, affordable transit. I think one thing you mentioned about affordable housing. I think the definition of downtown needs to be redefined in US downtown mean the commercial buildings and then you live in suburb. Why Canada is a little bit successful because in our case, the downtown doesn’t mean commercial, it means everything. It’s housing. And when you have housing, you will, you will have ridership. In fact, a lot of people don’t know Calgary.

Jaspal Singh ([01:17:22]):

They used to follow US models. So they were trying to copy more US than Canada. And now they are changing, they’re investing millions of dollars to redesign some of these commercial buildings into housing buildings. So they have official projects where they are converting commercial buildings into housing. You don’t need to build new house; you don’t need to build new buildings. So, what you are doing here? Redesigning those highest skyscrapers into a housing unit and make it much more affordable. And I think that’s what US need to follow as well. You have a lot of commercial building and now need to rethink if people are not coming back to office, what is the use of those building

Maulik Vaishnav ([01:18:03]):

Quick plug for Chicago? We are doing the same. Maybe the scales might be a little bit smaller, but I was at the mayor’s office when the recovery plan was being put together and there was a lot of focus on people just need to come back to the office. And you still hear that, but I think there’s a little bit of a recognition that because US built a lot of its infrastructure for one use purposes, you’re obviously suffering the consequences now. And one of the LaSalle corridors in core of our loop the focus is on retrofitting some of the vacancies into residential housing with some affordable goals. So, we are headed in that direction, and I think Loop is the neighborhood, downtown neighborhood in the US that has added the most people in the last 10 or 20 years. Like in some stat we come out at the top in terms of residents that have been added in downtown Chicago. So, I think that’s absolutely true. If we just focus on one use, then you’re not going to have that much gain on all sectors, including uses of restaurants or just people on the sidewalk and everything, hospital transit systems.

Jaspal Singh ([01:19:20]):

So it’s also about the safety of the city. You know, when you see more people on the street, it becomes much safer enough. Now one thing you mentioned is the challenge that any innovation executive pace is the process and it’s not about bringing new technology, it’s also engineering the whole process or change management. That’s one of the big challenges. And I think in the management world, we now talk about open innovation, design thinking, agile methodology. I mean, these are new age management practices and I know many agencies around the world are using it like they have a design thinking at per inhouse. Some of the agencies follow these agile methodologies would, I’ll be very curious to know what your perspective on that is and does you follow some of these practices that CTA, and also do you have any open innovation program to work with startup like in New York, MTA in New York, they have a program to work with startups. So is anything happening at CTA?

Maulik Vaishnav ([01:20:17]):

That’s a great question. So the first part is that there are few PM positions in our department that are new. Okay. focus is on bringing that kind of thinking one dedicated to writer experience, customer experience, and the other on some of the operational sort of pilots, to your point, either internally there are some sort of laser intrusion or camera readability through which you can tell if there’s any intrusion on the tracks.

Jaspal Singh ([01:20:47]):

Okay.

Maulik Vaishnav ([01:20:48]):

You know, we very interesting sort of concepts. But we need that kind of very clear pathway of how to implement this quickly, how to do it right and then be okay, like we’ll take ownership of failing. I think that’s important because a lot of the other departments one don’t have the bandwidth but also aren’t sort of, they didn’t come up with that idea that it’s okay to sort of fail. The second question is about having the ability to work more openly, we are actively looking at something internally to come up with a process through law and procurement that is sort of dedicated to our department. So, I stay tuned is all I can say.

Maulik Vaishnav ([01:21:35]):

It came out of a pretty extensive review and conversations with all of these sister agencies and learning from some of their lessons of how open-ended you do want to be. And I think are moving in a direction where we want to focus on sort of putting out couple of problem statements or areas of focus and not just sort of get attacked with a lot of random sales pitches, which we already get without having a program.

Maulik Vaishnav ([01:22:08]):

But we have used some of the current processes you know, some of the mobile journey planning, some put out an RFI and we are reviewing some of the responses. So, we try to use existing pathways, but we know some of them take a longer time and we want something for innovation that can kind of let us pilot things quickly and then put out those results for the world to see before deciding if we want to go through a full-blown process and have fully embed a certain solution into all agency operations.

Jaspal Singh ([01:22:44]):

Yeah, I mean, I say it’s like a dating thing. So you did and you see whether it’s a solution which has long term impact or not, whether it’s scalable or not, like some of the solutions are good, but they cannot, you cannot scale it up. And, what you mentioned, I know in Paris they are using a lot of drones and Boston Dynamics Dogs to do track inspection because it’s not possible for humans to go every night and, and check everything. So, using computer vision, they are analyzing and finding out if there is any problem with the track, and reporting back to the control center. So, I think some of these technologies will be good. And I think the real way of working is to pilot to understand whether it fits within the organization or not. So glad to hear that you already have some of these problem shipments defined and we come out in the market, so happy to, like the people who will be listen, like there are a lot of startup founder who listen to the podcast, so they will be interested to apply and participate. So, your mailbox will be busy.

Maulik Vaishnav ([01:23:48]):

Yeah, just stay tuned to for a couple more months and then hopefully we’ll, we’ll be on track for being able to accept some of that.

Jaspal Singh ([01:23:57]):

Great. Now this is my last question and Maulik and it’s a talk of the world these days about AI and Generative AI. Everybody’s talking about how generative AI and AI will change the world, take away our jobs and, and market will change. But my point is, how do you think this new technology can be implemented by transit agencies? And I had some discussion and there are some potential use cases, but I would love to know more from you. Like, have you explored any use cases for Generative AI in transit world?

Maulik Vaishnav ([01:24:34]):

That’s a great question. I mean I still kind of think that some of just the detection technology we talked about is very interesting. The ability for AI to generate sort of messages or indicators for what they find through pet and collision tracking on buses where right now we are collecting the data or it’s coming in, but you need someone to go in and analyze. I can see a lot of some of the, these things like the KPIs. How do you use AI in transforming the data much faster? Yeah, I can see that being a big place. The chat bot could have components I mean it’s already sort of using you know, canned language, but then it can learn and produce some predictive work for us where the responses are getting much more tailored for the writer.

Maulik Vaishnav ([01:25:37]):

So I do see some of those areas. I think the most interesting thing I’ve sat through is still the ability to sort of map the whole streetscape through the bus cameras and sort of identify every piece and sort of improve accuracy as you drive more on the route and beyond just citations. That’s just so interesting from like a public works perspective of knowing what’s the quality of your infrastructure and when can you predict that you’ll have x percentage of potholes, or other issues? So, I’m kind of interested in how it can fit into the larger transportation industry. There’s a lot of predictive maintenance of rail tracks. You kind of mentioned that the drone stuff, but also some of the rail cars have a lot of technology providing that connection with how many passengers are on the vehicle.

Maulik Vaishnav ([01:26:30]):

Yeah, a lot of that has existed pre-AI, but I am hoping that the AI will make it a lot easier for agencies that haven’t implemented some of this to do it a lot quicker. So, I think how could we use some of the ideas that, you know, Japan has in everything you can learn about the system by just looking at all kinds of customer information that we can bring here faster if we can use the AI technology in some cases. So I know that’s not a complete answer, but those are some of the areas that I’ve been thinking about that CTA currently might not have that we could bring on the system.

Jaspal Singh ([01:27:06]):

No, I fully agree with your point about like, you already have some of this data but you don’t take action. And what with AI you can do is actually go step further. Like if any incident happened, I was giving this example, if incident happened, the bus break, the windshield or something, the automatically the maintenance department know that they need to ready a maintenance, the windshield for this bus, it’s coming to this depot or this area by this time. And then automatically that process can be, you can assign the worker who is available checking out seeing his time, like how much time he’s taking for other job, and by that time he’ll be free. So, matching up those things. So, I think with AI you can make the process much more efficient and faster and, and I know you are, you love data and you’re using data for a lot of your decision making so that you can expedite more with, with AI and, and do that.

Thank you so much, Maulik. I mean, I really enjoyed our discussion. It’s quite long we, but I always end my podcast with little bit of rapid-fire round and it’s very quick. Some people like it, some people don’t. But the idea is to know personal side of you, if you are ready, I’ll quickly launch this rapid fire

Maulik Vaishnav ([01:28:18]):

Do it. I didn’t prepare for it, so you’ll get a real rapid fire from you. I’ll just respond, whatever comes to my mind

Jaspal Singh ([01:28:25]):

That’s what we want. So, you know, my first question is, if you were not in transit, or mobility space or urban designing, what other professions you would’ve selected?

Maulik Vaishnav ([01:28:35]):

Well, I always wanted to go into sort of weather forecasting. That was very clear from the beginning, but I hated physics in college. I was like, this is terrible. I’m not doing this.

Jaspal Singh ([01:28:46]):

Interesting. Now you travel all around the world, so which is your favorite city and why?

Maulik Vaishnav ([01:28:54]):

That’s a very tough question because there are so many answers. Very privileged first world response. But I was very impressed with Tokyo. I mean, a lot of people would say that. But I went to Beijing in 2007 or eight before the Olympics, and I was it was the most surprisingly, like I was very pleasantly surprised by Beijing. But now I think it would be unrecognizable 15 years later. So I don’t know what it looks like.

Jaspal Singh ([01:29:25]):

I was there in 2018 and I can tell you it’s completely different. It’s you know, they have eight ring roads, it’s 14,000 square kilometers city and the last ring road, it can take you like more than 26-27 hours to just complete that round. So it’s so long. So that city has grown. It’s amazing to see what happened. In Beijing and a lot of Chinese city. So, what you said is absolutely right now, what is the one thing do you wish you should have learned early in your career on your life?

Maulik Vaishnav ([01:29:59]):

That’s a tough one. I mean I already speak a few languages, but I started taking French in high school and I wish, I mean, I grew up in a smaller town in India before that, so I wouldn’t have access to it, but it would’ve been more interesting, and I think I would’ve learned and retained so much more if I was exposed to it even sooner. So, I do miss that. Like I was in Paris and I was like, I still remember and pick up on a few words, but one, they don’t like people who can’t speak proper French anyway, so they’re rude to you. But I wish I could speak French well today, which I can’t. And I don’t think, if I try to learn now, I don’t think it’s going to work. But maybe I’m wrong.

Jaspal Singh ([01:30:42]):

And, with AI, I don’t think you need to learn. Like now you go different city, you take out your phone and Google translate, people just speak, and you get a real time translation in English. So, I don’t know how the language will work in feature.

Maulik Vaishnav ([01:30:55]):

That is so true. Yeah, AI for language translation, that’s a good one.

Jaspal Singh ([01:30:59]):

I mean now Facebook meta and Google, they are building so many languages in their system, which is, and real time. I do a lot of document translation. It’s so good. And so easy like within five seconds you can translate anything. Now my fourth question is any memorable or influential moment from your professional journey? Like what lesson did you learn from that experience? Something you felt like, man, that happened, but these are the lesson. I got it.

Maulik Vaishnav ([01:31:27]):

That’s a very good question. I mean, the recent memory I would’ve to sort of think about that, but in the recent memory when I was at the mayor’s office, like my professional upbringing has been very much focused on having a data driven approach and knowing answers to a lot of questions and sort of guiding decision making. But then you go on the political side and you’re in the room where the aldermen have to vote on something. It’s a very different environment and sort of knew that, but to sort of be in the room and experience that was very interesting that people can manipulate data and those who want a certain outcome will use the same information you’re giving them and present it to the world in a very different way. So that was, that was a very interesting experience. And I think when you’re part of a data team, you’re so focused on accuracy, I would just spend so much energy making sure, like a writer share ridership report wasn’t off by one digit.

Maulik Vaishnav ([01:32:36]):

And there’s importance to that. Accountants can’t not ignore, you know, 1 cent of a dollar. But now in the position I’m in is like, it’s so much more about the story and not about that specific number. So sort of focusing a lot more insights and how that turns into action became a lot more important to me. And I, and I wish it would’ve saved me a lot of sort of angst early on if I knew that that’s the end result, that it’s okay to be off by a number and all of that. Yeah. So it’s very interesting journey just being part of the same agency from that start to now.

Jaspal Singh ([01:33:18]):

I love that point because recently I learned this point about data driven and data informed. So you know, like some people are data driven decision making, but you should have data informed. Like you can’t rely purely on data because data will keep evolving. The world situation will change and it’s hard to predict.

 

Maulik Vaishnav ([01:33:39]):

Yeah.

Jaspal Singh ([01:33:40]):

Okay, so this is my last question. If you could change one thing in life, what would it be?

Maulik Vaishnav ([01:33:47]):

Okay, that’s like an impossible question to an answer.

Jaspal Singh ([01:33:50]):

Well, let’s say you got a superpower and you can change one thing.

Maulik Vaishnav ([01:33:54]):

Yeah. I mean, if you want to make it professional, and I did, I forgot about it in what keeps you up at night answers. I’ll combine the two for you. But very concerned about the size of vehicles and sort of the vehicle industry, personal vehicle industry completely out of control. And, basically setting our cities up for a disaster. So that is a huge concern of mine. But I don’t know how I could change that with a superpower other than, you know, make that impossible. But I do think we need some serious solutions there especially in the US So

Jaspal Singh ([01:34:36]):

You can put a command that any vehicle which is oversized has to shrink and half of the size.

Maulik Vaishnav ([01:34:43]):

Yes.

Jaspal Singh ([01:34:44]):

Great. Thank you so much Maulik. I really enjoyed our conversation. Really good to talk to you and get your feedback. And I know your job is not easy and talking about innovation, it’s take a lot of time and efforts to convince everybody and I love what you mentioned about how you’re bringing these problem statement and work with innovators in the market. So, we’ll help to promote that and, and see if we can bring some more new idea to you.

Maulik Vaishnav ([01:35:10]):

Thank you. This was very interesting. Thank you for thinking of us and hopefully, you know, it’s an interesting conversation for all your listeners. So thank you for having me.

Jaspal Singh ([01:35:21]):

Thank you for listening to this podcast. If you like this podcast, thank you for listening to this podcast. If you love this e 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 to improve the, if you have any feedback or suggestion for us, please do write to us info at the rate mobility hyper.com. I look forward to see you next time. Thank you.