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 innovations in transportation and logistics to share their thought about the key changes in the sector, about their work, and what is their forecast for the future.

Today, I’ll be speaking with an urban planner turn innovator. He’s a distal mobility expert and planner, startup advisor, and thought leader who understands and is equally passionate about the intersection of cities, movement, and technology.

He worked for more than 15 years in the USA in different roles, helping cities to plan mobility and transport infrastructure. Later, he moved to Europe and worked with multiple startups in an operation and business role. In this podcast, we discussed various topics including the future of mobility, public transport sector in Europe, the idea of 15-minutes city, evolution of micromobility and growing startup ecosystem in Europe.

I’m so happy to welcome Scott Shepard, Chief Commercial and Product Officer, Assitobe. It’s now time to listen and learn.

 

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

Scott Shepard [00:01:22]:

Thank you for having me. I appreciate Jaspal.

Jaspal Singh [00:01:25]:

So today I’ll be spending time getting to know about you, about your professional journey and your thought on innovation in mobility sector.

 

To begin with, I would like you to share a little bit about yourself with our listeners. Also, are there any interesting facts about your career that are not on LinkedIn?

Scott Shepard [00:01:43]:

Yeah, because everything’s on LinkedIn, right? so yeah, little bit about myself. So yeah, I’m Scott Shepherd. I am trained as a geographer and urban planner, so I love cities. I love maps and I love data and that’s been kind of a constant theme across my 23 years plus career in North America, in the US, and now here in Europe for the last five years.

Yeah, so I’ve held many different roles in government, private sector consulting operations. And now I’ve been really focused on the mobility startup sector for last five years. And it’s been a very interesting circuitous journey if anyone’s seen my LinkedIn profile, that’ll come up to light themselves and understand. But again, I think mine has been really layering in more insights related to this passion for just the physical, I would say form and structure of cities, of understanding how people live and move and act, and then really kind of embracing this focus.

Scott Shepard [00:02:51]:

Now, I would say the last 10 years on the specific subject pivoting a bit away from generalist land use and urban planning towards transportation planning and mobility. That’s really been my focus in the public sector.

Now in the startup world and in the last five years since we’ve relocated my family and I to Europe, to here to Lisbon Portugal, it’s been really in digital mobility. So startups that are focused on mobility as service on demand mobility and riding that whole wave of innovation or hype either way you want to call it. You could say smart cities, you could say micro mobility kind of dabbled in all these different areas and domains.

And just a kind of a quick fun fact of something that’s really not highlighted in my LinkedIn profile that I would say would be maybe, I don’t know, it could be interesting or not, is my first internship after college, when I graduated with a Bachelor’s of Geography from yeah, the University of Vermont in the late nineties I was focused on producing digital maps and cartography for the recreation sector for hikers and skiers, which was interesting because I used to live in the state of Vermont for about nine years.

Scott Shepard [00:04:12]:

And there’s such an outdoors you know, recreational tourism economy there. So I got to actually map out in GPS, the hiking trails and biking trails in Stove, Vermont, and Burlington, Vermont. And it was like the dream job. I mean, I was only paid like six bucks an hour. I guess it wasn’t an unpaid internship, which was good. I was paid, but, and I did that for about eight months. So this was during and after I graduated, but it was really interesting because I felt like, wow, I chose the right field. Obviously, it ended after the internship was over, but it just felt like wow, if you could actually choose the right field and do pursue something that blends, you know, outdoor recreation with your own field of study in college, then you’re onto something and I’ve taken some different twists and turns in my career.

But again, that consistency has been kind of maps and data and understanding just the spatial world, the physical world. And yeah that’s been one, something, one thing I’ve tried to maintain and keep real.

Jaspal Singh [00:05:22]:

Amazing. Quite impressive. I would say, your journey so far, and now I know if anybody lost in those hiking trail and biking trails, who’s the right person to contact it, you know?

Scott Shepard [00:05:34]:

Yeah If you lost in Vermont, I’m the one that mapped those out back in 90s.

Jaspal Singh [00:05:37]:

And also, to help to find because now you studied each and every point in those points. So that’s great. Amazing. It’s fun to understand what you do after your internship, because sometime it shape up your career in a way you never ever imagine.

Like you mentioned, you did your bachelor’s in geography and your master in city planning from San Diego state university, you know, you started your career as a transport planner and but you did a major shift in 2014 when you become a VP of business development.

Scott Shepard [00:06:05]:

Yes, I did.

Jaspal Singh [00:06:06]:

Yeah. And I, I know you worked with a lot of these cities and transit agencies in us but later you decided to move, like you mentioned, with your family and work with the startups in Europe. So would love to know a little bit about your journey in the transit world. How was it and what did you learn during that phase? Both in the US and in Europe.

But my main question is that you move from a “car-oriented society” to a “transit-oriented society”. And at the same time, I feel it’s also a shift from a “innovation led society” to a “policy led society” in Europe. We have more policy-driven decision making.

So, you have seen both the continent very closely now. What do you think both North America and Europe can learn from each other?

Scott Shepard [00:06:53]:

Oh my gosh. So it’s a different world.

Okay. Well just quickly about my own journey and then how that translates to, yeah. So it was a family decision. We decided to relocate to Europe. My wife is Portuguese, so she’s an academic she’s pursuing her doctorate degree here. So we decided to what became kind of a I would say a temporary move became more of a permanent move.

And now I’ve kind of really embraced the whole kind of startup mobility sector here in Europe. And I’ve seen kind of these different, I would say cultures as well as the different business practices, the different clients and the different you know, ways that cities function operate. But in terms of lessons learned trans-Atlantic between us or NORTH AMERICA to Europe and vice versa, something I’ve written quite a bit about actually last three or four years, it’s something I’ve really focused on or to use the Yiddish term.

Scott Shepard [00:07:45]:

It’s my shtick. It’s my little, yeah, it’s my angle. I really try to kind of promote this as this American dispatched in Europe, reporting from abroad, talking about what I see here in Iberia in Europe and comparing that to what I experienced in the us or California in a very auto-centric culture in the most auto-centric city of the auto-centric state, you know, Los Angeles, that whole thing. And obviously, as you may or may not know, I wrote an article on this, that one of the actuals deciding factors of us moving to Europe was that we would go to a one car household. So I am maintaining that. I was so burnt out of commuting and maintaining two or three automobiles and doing that whole process for years and years in California across the us. I decided, you know, I needed a clean break from that.

Scott Shepard [00:08:32]:

Not only continent but going into new lifestyle. So that bore fruit, and now I’ve been basically without a driver’s license for four and a half years, and I will never go back, even if we were to ever move back to the US. I will not own a car, although that’s more difficult there, but I think that’s part of this whole kind of personal and professional journey, and then tying it back to what I’ve learned, learned here, versus what I remember back in the US or vice versa, because I have kind of pontificated on that quite a bit. Yeah. Is really, yeah, it’s a focus on the roles of the public and private sector. That’s one of the biggest, biggest takeaways I notice between Europe and North America one we can kind of twist it or maybe repackage it of innovation versus traditionalist, but it’s a real kind of social construct too, of the role of mobility and public transportation here in Europe versus the role in North America or in the US. Let’s leave maybe Canada out of the equation for a second, but at least in the United States and the United States really as the viewers and listeners would all know in the public sector, in the US and public transit agencies to use the French term is laissez fair.

Scott Shepard [00:09:50]:

It’s hands off. It’s very light touch, minimal intervention, market driven innovation. That’s great. You know, you have a lot of innovation test labs, you have many different pilot projects, you have many different startup competitions. You have smart Columbus in Ohio, you have the transit tech in New York city. What the name of the program that New York MTA has. I have to remind me, yeah, it’s a Mobility Tech Lab. You have the transit tech, this is all part of the kind of American innovation of attracting the private sector to bring the best and the brightest to the forefront. And, and this is great and I’m a huge proponent of that. But in terms of this balance between the proper role and stewardship of the public sector and public transit authorities and agencies versus the role, the proper role of to use the cliche now, what is the role of private vendors?

Scott Shepard [00:10:45]:

The role of the company that I represent Assisttobe, or other transit tech vendors, whether they offer on-demand services or they offer Mobility as of Service MaaS or anything else, you know, I don’t want to call it a slippery slope, but there’s a bit of a gray area in terms of really positioning these. I would say innovation solutions that can be fully operationalized, that can be sustainable. I’m talking about North America now. Yeah. And that can be scaled to a level that they become a benefit or an asset for the public sector to serve their stakeholders, their taxpayers, and their constituency, getting away from these short-term grant funded projects. As we see, you know, these six month projects, shiny objects to something that can really move the needle. Whereas here in Europe, the innovation cycles much slower.

Scott Shepard [00:11:39]:

It’s more policy driven. It’s more comprehensive. So we have the entire process that is rooted in regionalism and metropolitan. I would say urbanized units. So, the entire urban planning process here is based on regionalism as you know, and mobility. So, the common thread is to use the it’s, the acronym is the SUMP the Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan that does not exist in north America at all. There are 256 SUMPs in the European union. So, when you take that approach, everything from outside, it might be a slower moving ship, but everything in that takes a more logical approach of the interconnectivity of the built environment, the physical environment and the digital environment and how the pieces flow. So it may, well, one could argue that could be more of a barrier to entry to new innovation, but I would challenge that. There’s plenty of opportunities for new innovation in Europe and certainly in the UK as well too.

Scott Shepard [00:12:42]:

But it’s a bit of a different role in terms of startups in the private sector. Companies like myself have to understand the rules of engagement. We cannot run roughshod and just deploy solutions without asking for permission. So we have to understand that there has to be a value to present to the public sector, such that there will be a meaningful discussion and then embracing the business models that might yield lower margins at first from a commercial perspective. But they are here for the long term. Yeah. So that we see this in the micro mobility world right now, we’re seeing massive success from many of the scooter startups right now. Yeah. Such as Bolt, such as TIER and such as VOI. Thhey take much more of the European approach to private sector innovation because they work nice with cities and they understand the rules of engagement.

Scott Shepard [00:13:30]:

They understand this kind of Eurocentric process to not necessarily avoiding the public sector, but they’re hitting all the right notes to make sure that they are embedding themselves in a digital or physical offer that is really providing a public good. It all is about the Commonwealth in providing a public good. It’s not about nationalizing things or making things public domain. And the state takes over the scooter share. And there’s no private sector innovation, not at all, but it’s understanding this real nuance. So there’s not this like the scooter wars we saw in 2017 in the US, where scooters were thrown in sidewalks and creeks because cities were so angered and pissed off that there was no dialogue. So I think we’ve learned a lot of less, and I’m not saying that the European models better than North American model, but what I’ve seen on both sides of the Atlantic, whether it’s Mobility as a Service MaaS, whether it’s micromobility or whether it’s other Software as a Solution SaaS startups in the mobility select sector. It’s understanding the rules of engagement, understanding the proper role of public versus private.

That’s, I’d say one of the key takeaways being an American dispatch in Europe and learning those hard lessons. And then trying to kind of pivot, and work in a landscape that does encourage innovation, but in a more long-range approach, not a quick win, not, you know, a quick win over six months, but over many years.

Jaspal Singh [00:15:05]:

No, all these are great point. Thanks for sharing that. And I fully agree with you sometime these quick wins are not good because startup get just six month of highlight project, but after that, there is no future, that’s all the runway they have maybe.

Scott Shepard [00:15:17]:

Right? Yeah.

Jaspal Singh [00:15:20]:

And that’s all the runway they have. We still have the funding, and in Europe there is that approach of long-term engagement and creating a structure and all and we will be discussing about this point about micromobility in detail, because I fully agree with you.

Scott Shepard [00:15:36]:

Got ahead of yourself on that one.

Jaspal Singh [00:15:36]:

It’s great. You mention about those points.

You mentioned about, there are 260 SUMPs project in Europe. I mean, I think these all can be the great case studies for anybody who’s interested to learn about planning or transport planning.

Scott Shepard [00:15:53]:

Absolutely. The more I have discovered and embraced and really kind of understood this entire comprehensive urban planning process that is really fixated on mobility as that common thread in metropolitan regions. It has positioned myself now. Even though I have kind of a superficial knowledge of it, but I’m already becoming a champion of it even as this American in Europe, because it just makes sense. Yeah. And it’s something, even in some of the innovation that we’re leading with my company Assistobe that we’re bringing to market and embracing this comprehensive approach to land, use public transport and even private mobility and how everything is interwoven there. These are not I would say segregated silos, which has been my experience in the American land use planning, comprehensive process over many years. 10-15 years ago, where you have a comprehensive land use plan, and you have individual chapters, you have an economic development chapter.

Scott Shepard [00:16:59]:

You have a public health chapter, you have an infrastructure chapter, you have a land use chapter. There is some interconnectivity between the two, but each chapter is almost an individual narrative or an individual deliver unto itself. And there’s, I’m not saying there’s no rhyme and reason, but it creates this. I would say balkanization of, I would say the interplay of the future policy ambitions of local regional and state governments that seek to influence positive and sustainable land use change in metropolitan regions in the US. And it was always kind of a bit of a frustration for me. So it was kind of interesting to see how they basically just completely took that comprehensive planning process that was started in north America. It was educated to me that the SUMP process is actually rooted on comprehensive land use planning in the United States.

Scott Shepard [00:17:58]:

Yeah. But by fixating on mobility and transportation as that common thread, that was where it all naturally comes together. And they were able to actually come up with initiatives that were able to attract capital investment in infrastructure funding to really reconfigure cities. Even before COVID hit, even before a lot of the emergency funding hit when we saw the Corona, bikeways the popup bike lanes and a lot of these temporary interventions, which now became permanent, like in Milan with the car free city center, Barcelona what’s happening, in Berlin right now, even in Lisbon, but these were all rooted, or these were all kind of concepts that were part of this SUMP framework. But for luck or whatever we want to call it, this maybe one of the positive silver linings of COVID. Other people would disagree with me is that through an emergency, I would say intervention, many of these some initiatives were at least able to be a trialed and investigated.

Jaspal Singh [00:19:08]:

Yeah, that’s true. That’s kind of our only silver lining from the COVID.

Scott Shepard [00:19:15]:

Maybe is D for the urban planners. Right. I don’t know, but I was excited about the time, even though I was locked down, I couldn’t leave my house was wearing a mask, but it was like, oh, at least we got popup bike lanes and we got car frees. Yeah. But I can’t really go out and use them and don’t get

Jaspal Singh [00:19:28]:

This helped to change the city a little bit. And I can tell you from North America side also, like in Canada, I saw a lot of discussion started on this, reserving more space for cyclist and pedestrian rather than just for cars.

Now you mentioned that you are working in mobility startup space for last five year now. And you work with two MaaS startup earlier, but now you’re working as a Chief Commercial and Product Officer of Assistobe system.

Scott Shepard [00:19:55]:

Yeah. Now I’m out of MaaS. I’m not even working I’ll discuss

Jaspal Singh [00:19:57]:

With now out of MaaS, is it a choice or you have something more in mind, but can you share a little more about Assistobe system and what is the problem Assistobe solving?

Scott Shepard [00:20:10]:

So it’s a little plan word, so it’s assist to be. So it’s like, you know, it’s just general management consulting speak. It’s just a fun word. We, our board of directors like, maybe we should change our name, you know, especially if we attract more investment or we go to Series A, you know, maybe we need a cool term, that’s more mobility or transit friendly, then we’re like, nah, we like this. It’s catchy. We’re getting some positive feedback. We’re just going to go with it. So yeah, it’s just to be so the problem that we’re solving is really at the strategic planning level of public transportation, or here in Europe, Public Transport in North America, public transit, same thing. So what we’re doing is trying to affect organizational policy change at a 50,000 foot level for an entire public transit authority.

Scott Shepard [00:20:57]:

And to use more of the US term an MPO (Metropolitan Planning Organization). And what we’re doing is leveraging data science through our use of artificial intelligence and machine learning. I know it’s becoming a little cliche now everyone’s saying this, but we’re applying this to a really specific use case, meaning that we’re using AI and machine learning through leveraging a variety of data sources. And I think this might be another question we come up to later.

We’re assembling a variety of data sources to understand the real historical and current passenger demand of urban transportation systems. And this is a key differentiation because by doing so through our data science team, we’re able to leverage and train our models in machine learning to come up with either short term optimizations yeah.

Scott Shepard [00:21:56]:

For tweaking and making changes to your public transit network in the short term. And these changes can be fiscal. They can be financial. They can be operational. So level service, changing frequency, changing occupancy, that standard stuff, they can be qualitative so they can be passenger comfort. So again, this comes down to frequencies, standing room, that kind of thing. So how do you deliver a better service for passengers? And they can be environmental. So for decarbonization purposes. So yeah, understanding working on optimization KPIs to come up with better carbon footprint outputs. So there’s about four different methods in our optimization model using AI machine learning through data science of these multiple data sources. I’ll speak about later training our model to come up in short term optimizations one or running automated prognosis predictions to come up with either seven day or 30 day advanced look automated.

Scott Shepard [00:22:57]:

So that’s one thing. And then the final aspect of what we’re bringing to marketer, the value that we’re adding is developing a comprehensive land use and transportation planning tool. That is similar to geographic information systems or transportation modeling systems, but different. And it’s different because again, it’s a strategic planning tool. Our platform covers three steps, explore optimizing plan. So this is the chronology of the transportation planning. I would say world in our plan module, which is the third step allows for a multitude of stakeholders to run either manual or automated scenarios of future land use urbanization and transportation network, expansions or redesigns. And this does not seek to replace the work of public transportation, consultancies, the private sector, consultancies architecture, engineering firms. And this does not also seek to replace the, the complex GIS or transportation demand modeling software. This is this seeks to augment or compliment those by providing an organizational and a policy change tool for strategic planning.

Scott Shepard [00:24:15]:

So a variety of stakeholders within a public agency authority can have better data driven decisions and better conversations. There’s five different stakeholders that we target in a public authority. They’re the service planners. They are the operators; they are the executive office. They are the engineering capital public works, and they are the finance office. By providing a view into all five of these different user profiles. We’re able to embed our platform to really affect organizational policy change. And that these are the power centers, the decision-making centers of public authorities. They hold the treasury, they hold the purse, they hold the political power and the decision-making power. This is not to criticize or minimize the role of service planners or schedules. They’re just as important in a public transport authority, but many other tools in the marketplace only focus on the service planner or the data scientist or the highly trained specialized expert. We’re trying to kind of democratize that process by bearing, by developing a very intuitive, easy to use platform that all different stakeholders can derive their own meaningful insights and affect organizational change. That’s why we exist as a company.

Jaspal Singh [00:25:32]:

Well, that’s quite interesting. And in fact I was thinking that actually, you didn’t change your role. So earlier you were working on a MaaS project, which was external, but now you’re working on a project which is internal. Because like you rightly said, there was no application which integrate the finance and the operation and planning and that’s right. That’s right. As well as the operator. So it’s quite interesting topics.

Scott Shepard [00:25:54]:

Exactly.

Jaspal Singh [00:25:55]:

That you’re bringing all these departments together. And I think it’s important. Like you mentioned earlier there was no tool available, so you can’t do that. But now there are. With the technology, with the AI, with the machine learning and AI, you can do all these kinds of stuff and bring all these departments together. And not only we can see the impact on passengers but can also see the impact of planning on the financial side of the business.

And, can the plan, your stuff based on where the transit agency, if not making money at least can save some cost and not losing at the same time, the point which you mentioned, which is quite important is the passenger comfort without compromising what the passenger comfort to provide.

You gave that good example, what Assistobe is doing. But I want to go a little more specific with the first pilot project you’re doing with Klaipeda Public transport in Klaipeda, Lithuania. So you are actually helping the city to understand real percentage demand, distribution and behavior in the short term.

Also you’re using machine learning and AI to help the operator, to replan their schedule and frequency and match service with the consumer preference in real time.

So not only creating a one side view of world and saying, okay, we should replan the service, but also considering the consumer preference and how they want to look and use the service. So you will not only help them to understand the past trend, but you will actually make a prediction for next seven days based on the real percentage demand and optimize their and save cost and all. So, it’s looked quite interesting.

And as a planner, as somebody who’s working in the transportation can vouch for it. That it’s quite interesting.

So, I’m curious to learn about some of the early results from this project and how will the transit network change after the implementation of the complete system. Like you mentioned about Explorer, Optimize and Plan, how the system will change once you have a Plan module, and like you were touching that point earlier is what kind of data you will use to train the algorithm, because that’s a key challenge algorithm?

It’s like a lot of people say artificial intelligence, but you need a lot of data to train that AI system. And how will you source that? Because that’s one of the key challenges that how to get the data to train the AI.

Scott Shepard [00:28:17]:

Yeah. so the Klaipeda use case that we’ve kind of published and announced what they’re doing right now. So they’re one of our clients in lift landing the Baltics. So we’re working with their public transport authority. They’re a bus authority. They don’t not have light rail. And we’re working with them right now on their increased passenger demand in this post COVID, post lockdown mode right now. So what they’ve basically understood in their own legacy systems in their own data, data analytics of platforms through power BI and other sources yeah. They’re experiencing an average about a 2% passenger increase week over week. It’s plateaued about 1% increase, but it’s much more rapid passenger ridership increase than they had previously estimated let’s say, in the February or March timeframe.

Scott Shepard [00:29:12]:

Yeah. So there’s a bit of a challenge right now to meet this unmatched demand right now, in terms of their supply and rebalancing their network. So what they’re doing right now, as we speak in early June is they’re going through more of the manual process of the rescheduling changing their timetables, changing the frequencies of their existing bus network, and they’re going to be evaluating their results, but they’re going to be using the assist be tool in our optimized module to evaluate the results of their interventions and the rescheduling aspects to look at these historical short term changes and then run new. What if analyses based upon better passenger comfort operational cost savings, as well as adjusting their occupancy and frequency to come up with new assumptions as we move later into the summer. So we’re going to be doing some spot checks over the next few weeks of how the passenger distribution has changed.

Scott Shepard [00:30:10]:

Let’s say in early June, we’re going to be validating those results. As we move into July running. This is to be tool ingesting that data, which I’ll talk about in a moment and then commenting up with these different, I would say scenarios that we’ll be able to save and then run a baseline and then come up with new what if analyses so that they can basically start operationalizing this. And then basically starting to use this is to be tool, not to replace more of their formalized you know, scheduling legacy process, but basically informing from a strategic planning level, how they can do these. I would say iterative spot checks, and then come up with some more interesting I would say assumptions that could be an alternative to more of the orthodoxy of service planning. So this is how we’re going to make our tool sticky.

Scott Shepard [00:31:05]:

We want to make it almost obsessive compulsive. We want to have the users be addicted to the tool because they’re going to be so interested in playing around these different data combinations that they’re going to really derive some really interesting insights, and they’re want to share it, and they’re going to want to evangelize, and they’re going to want to really start understanding what these tradeoffs are.

And then they can circle back into more of the traditional scheduling process, the traditional running, your demand modeling process, that would more in the plan module, etc. So ours is more of an iterative tool, whether it’s an short term optimizations of near term data or long range planning assumptions, which I’ll talk about in a moment that we’re bridging that gap between the legacy tools, the processes, and the lack of insights. Again, within the organizations that are lacking right now, but getting to our ambitions of building out our plan module, that’s the third step in the assist to be journey.

Scott Shepard [00:32:06]:

Yeah, so we’ve already unveiled our Explore module in April. Okay. We’re in the process of unveiling now at the MOVE London conference next week, our Optimized module, and that will be live for all our pilot customers and new commercial customers. And then our Plan module will be live in August and that’s where we will follow up and work with Klaipeda and all our other customers on planning out their future transit networks and doing these. What if analyses of synthesizing land use transit demand, other urbanizations and coming up with these interesting assumptions related to either network redesign, but at a very high level, not stuff that the real detailed transport consultancies like Walker and associates does in Portland, Oregon, or all the different transport consultancy. We know we’re not obviously not going to replace any of the work that they do.

Scott Shepard [00:32:58]:

They’re doing the really detailed bus network redesign. Yeah. But we’re empowering the PTAs and PTOs to at least start having a better dialogue. And maybe even some of these transport consultancies using our tool to have much more this meaningful, collaborative discussions. So that these short term I would say interventions can be exposed. So that there’s, there’s a much shorter, I would say time to market in terms of waiting for these long range, comprehensive assumptions or studies to be published and generated this really. It’s much more of a iterative process that allows for this interim approach of the more Orthodox transportation planning you know model.

Jaspal Singh [00:33:52]:

Well, that’s quite interesting. Like you rightly mentioned it’s important to diagnose the problem first before even going into the detail plan. So Asistobe tool can help city to understand which are the idea they should start going for the deeper analysis. What are the hot spots? Yeah. What are your issue?

Scott Shepard [00:34:08]:

It’s like taking your car into mechanic and doing a tune-up and finding out what what’s wrong with my automobile. So that’s what we’re doing with public transit networks. Are there areas of over under Klaipeda capacity? Are there areas where their fiscal overrun or constraints? Are there areas where there’s passenger discomfort or a lack of sustainability in decarbonization?

So all these outliers we’re helping expose this data to the public sector, so they can start challenging these assumptions and ask better questions. That’s it. We’re just giving them the data they already have. We’re improving it, making it better, which I’ll talk about data in a moment right now. Yeah. And then presenting that in a very intuitive, sticky, easy to use interface that requires basically no training. This is not a complex GIS software tool that requires like 300 hours of training and certification. You pick up the tool and you understand immediately what is being presented to you, either in a table, in a map or in a query. It’s so simple. I mean, anyone could use it. So, and that’s exactly what we’re doing because we’re, again, we’re trying to democratize the process within public authorities and they’re really challenged right now.

Jaspal Singh [00:35:19]:

It’s like a no code GIS tool.

Scott Shepard [00:35:24]:

I like it. Yeah. No code. Yeah. I’ve done plenty of coding in my world. And I was a certified GIS professional, and I went to hundreds of hours of training all. So yeah, that’s my own story in my own group.

And don’t, I want to build that tool, right?

Jaspal Singh [00:35:39]:

Yeah. it’s so complicated. And you, so when training,

Scott Shepard [00:35:43]:

It’s just a rabbit hole and every single dropdown menu button is like hours of training, just to get some level of return on your investment. I mean, we’re spending tens of thousands, hundreds of thousand dollars in software licenses for just specialists to operate these tools, maybe one or two people in a hundred or 200 person organization, and they are presenting their maps or their charts to everyone. But unfortunately then you’ve created a world of gatekeepers. Yeah. And they hoard the data, they hoard the results and not others can really have some meaningful conversation around what is happening in the in the agency or in the general city. So this comes really back to your second part of the question is around data. So the data is really that’s. You know, that that’s really the value that Asistobe brings.

Scott Shepard [00:36:34]:

It’s not our user interface. It’s not even how we present or represent the data, which is very simplistic and very intuitive, but it’s the data science and how we derive insights from a variety of different hardware and software sensors to basically serve back a higher quality product to our clients. Meaning that unlike many other competitors or other offers on the market, we’re not just taking commercial off the shelf. Third party data sources like census data, like land use data, this and that. And just throwing it in a map and renting that in a tool, what we’re doing is we’re actually spending five, six weeks in a detailed onboarding process. Okay, we’re doing about 99% of the work working with each one of our public sector clients we’re taking data from, of course the easiest source would be APIs like GTFS we do work with that.

Scott Shepard [00:37:26]:

Of course, we love that. Yep. We work with NetEX, that’s another API data source. We work, we’re going to be working with private mobility, data sources, micro mobility, such as MDS, such as maybe GTFS when that’s, when that goes live and other sources. So public and private mobility, but also more of the hardware sensors too. Of course, like passenger counting systems, like ticketing systems, and then even broader multimodal data solutions like telecommunications data. We have a commercial partnership with Telia data. They’re one of the largest telecommunications providers in Scandinavia, in Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia. And I think even Denmark. So all of these data sources are basically bundle bundled, packaged, cleanse, and served back to our customers in a data onboarding process that takes roughly about five weeks or so. But it’s time well spent. We do not even expose our tool to our clients until the data is right.

Scott Shepard [00:38:27]:

Because as we know, garbage in garbage out. Oh yeah. So if we bring garbage in, we’re going to spit garbage out and it’s a very superficial it’s, it’s a very transient tool. That’s only going to provide high level insights in a cardio graphic output. But if we get the data right, and we train our model, our AI machine learning model, not only can we present a higher quality of accuracy of the data, which is roughly about 85 to 90% accurate in terms of passenger distributions, we’re giving them a higher quality than that. We give that they give to us. Yeah. But then we can train our model and make that data even better for short term optimizations, automated prognosis and then the long range, urban planning scenario. So it’s really the best of both worlds, because if you spend the time getting the data right in that five or six weeks, oh yeah.

Scott Shepard [00:39:16]:

Then you’re giving a to use the British term. It’s bespoke, it’s customized. This is not off the shelf, but it’s customized. And that’s part of our commercial offer. We charge a service for that data onboarding it’s part of what we propose to our clients as part of our software as a service. But customers see the value in that because they’re getting a superior output and more in actionable insights into their data. And that’s again, another reason why we exist. It’s not our UI and UX, which is wonderful. We have an excellent product and design team, but it’s really the data behind the scenes. It’s, it’s the tip of the iceberg effect.

Jaspal Singh [00:39:54]:

I think that’s very important because if it’s garbage in, it’ll be garbage out. So you have to first perfect what kind of data you are inputting in the system, and then get some valuable result out of it. And also the interpretation is important. Getting some graphs and some diagram is, is good, but if you’re not able to make any decision, it has no use.

Scott Shepard [00:40:18]:

It has to be actionable that’s to be decision. And that’s why we’re building our tool to be actionable across the decision-making power centers in a public authority. Yeah. And sometimes that’s a service planner, but many times it’s not many times they’re performing a function. We do like service planners, but there are other stakeholders that we need to empower to and make sure that they can take data driven decisions. And that’s another reason why our tool is very important.

Jaspal Singh [00:40:43]:

Yeah, I think the world is becoming that every tool should be able to use by everyone. They should not be any barrier for using tools.

Scott Shepard [00:40:52]:

So it’s high barrier to entry right now. Yeah. In many otherwise different tools

Jaspal Singh [00:40:55]:

Like doing anything on the map and that’s how the Google map and other tools are making it more and more easier people to that’s. So let’s do that now. You know, we have seen the last year has been a big shift in the mobility sector, not only the public transport players, but also the mobility players in the private sector also suffered. And the reason is a travel behavior and the travel pattern have changed.

In fact, when I spoke to some of the city, there are more traveler in the transit system during the weekend than on the weekday. There is a complete shift. So the job of transit agency, and like you mentioned, the service planner is becoming more and more difficult because the things are so dynamic and so fluid. So there is an opportunity in adversity. So we are seeing a tough time, but I always see as an opportunity because you can innovate because good time make you lazy and hard time make you more innovative.

So can you share how this crisis will need some unique solution for transit agencies and how will the artificial intelligence and machine learning can help to improve the transit KPI? How can we leverage the technology to improve the service? Not only from the cost point of view, but also from the customer point of view.

Scott Shepard [00:42:07]:

Okay. Yeah, so during, and now as we move, hopefully I think we are outside of COVID, but we’ll stay through this process. I keep listening to different stories every day, but yeah. But in this new travel you know, mobility demand in public and private mobility and how it’s impacting public transit yeah. We’re seeing different distribution across space and time. So we’ve moved away from the standard five day commutes AM PM peak-off-peak period.

The Orthodox, you know transportation transit, planning process, just something that is distributed across weekdays and weekends and different hours in the day. So, we’re seeing multiple peak periods now yeah across multiple days. And it’s not consistent Monday through Friday now. So we’re seeing different days with different hotspots. We’re seeing about maybe four or five peaks now per day across maybe two or three days.

Scott Shepard [00:43:06]:

Now we’re seeing some interesting peaks, maybe not Sundays, but Saturdays. So, and we’re seeing new interesting, I would say distributions of motor split and usage of public transport on a more polycentric manner. So if you were to look at a metropolitan region, so if we talk about London, we talk about Los Angeles. We talk about New York or Tokyo. We’re seeing a much more polycentric distribution of mobility than we did 24 to 36 months ago. So that was, you know, suburb to CBD, CBD suburb in, out in out. Now we’re seeing much more of a neighborhood centric pattern, localized travel NMT has been reduced. So we’re seeing shorter trips. We’re seeing more frequent trips across different times of day. We’re seeing trips that are being distributed to more neighborhood centers, you know, even Los Angeles at one point in time, it’s my hometown was coined as the polycentric city.

Scott Shepard [00:44:04]:

And it really is. It’s a city of villages. And quite honestly, even London is too. Yeah. It’s not just one central business district, even though both cities, you have the city of London, you have a downtown Los Angeles, but you have many different 20, 30, 40 nodes across a region of 8-9 million people. And really what we’re seeing COVID or postcode is lending towards that natural kind of neighborhood human-centric activity of, I would say, say urbanism, that lends itself to more sustainable mobility, but the impacts on public transit are that they’re having to rebalance their passenger distribution models, their demand, their level of service and challenging their orthodoxy over the last 80 years, 75 years since the second world war. Yeah. So basically everything is upside down right now, but if you’re an urbanist like me, or even like yourself, it’s pretty cool. I like it because this lends itself to the 15 minute city, right?

Scott Shepard [00:45:00]:

This lends itself to really interesting types of interaction within the built environment, some stuff that’s happening that makes the entire metropolitan region fun and interesting and discoverable so that we’re not just robots all community at the same time on a freeway or on a bus, on a train or, you know, going to the downtown and going back to the suburbs. But we’re discovering new neighborhoods. We’re blending our schedules. We have hybrid work environments now. So I won’t even get into that unless you want me to, but we can talk about the new work environment. And how the whole office model has changed, which is obviously that feeds into this whole new passenger distribution and movement. But I think the entire city as a whole is being rediscovered. And I think that that’s a positive outcome of COVID not only is active transportation front and center.

Scott Shepard [00:45:54]:

So walking and cycling and more, you know healthy forms of mobility, but people are rediscovering public transit across different neighborhoods across different times and understanding that there’s much more to a city than what they thought of in 2019. And I think that’s a really great outcome of COVID if there is another silver lining. And then this is an opportunity for my company just to be, to work with public transit agencies, to challenge these orthodoxies of scheduling passenger distribution, and long-range transit planning, and come up with new assumptions using AI & machine learning, training their models, looking at special events. These kind of new, I would say outliers and these new trends in. I would say mobility patterns over the last 24 months and rebalancing their networks for new findings and new opportunities. So we’re very excited to work with public agencies to make their services much more consumer centric and less ridership centric.

Scott Shepard [00:47:06]:

So, it’s putting the consumer first. So that’s really another paradigm shift in the public transit world is thinking consumer centric versus passenger centric. And of course, to use the cliche for Mobility as a Service MaaS, which has been my world over the last four years is multi-modality of course. Yeah. So now every PTAs and PTOs is forced. They didn’t want to 24 or 36 months ago, but they have to, now they have to be multi. They have to. So not only does that mean deploying a MaaS app that integrates scooter share bike share on-demand and public transit, but in their entire consumer offer, they have to think of embracing private mobility as part of their door-to-door solution as part of their consumer offer to make their service in terms of leveraging taxpayer subsidies meaningful. And I would say appealing to this more consumer centric approach. So again, to quote some others in the industry recently, it’s a shift in KPIs from tracking ridership to tracking mobility accessibility, mobility access versus ridership. So it’s a much more qualitative metric now versus a quantitative metric.

Jaspal Singh [00:48:33]:

Yeah. And I think which is the need of the hour. You need to shift from that ridership or revenue-based approach to human-centric approach. You need to understand

Scott Shepard [00:48:41]:

Human-Centric approach neighborhood centric approach.

Jaspal Singh [00:48:43]:

Neighborhood centric approach. And in fact, my next question is about that 15-minute city, which you just mentioned.

So basically, there is a lot of discussion going on between this concept of “10-minute delivery” versus “15-minute city”. There’s a lot of noise about this rapid delivery concept that you can get your day stuff in 10 minutes. This is good for consumer because you can just order and everything will be at your dose seven in 10 minutes, but what planner wants, and you are a planner at heart.

Is the 15-minute city where people can avail basic necessity within 15 minutes of travel. Although the venture capitalists are putting so much of money in this 10-minute delivery concept, they invested $15 billion in 10-minute delivery startups since the start of 2020. So within two year, $15 billion has gone in these company, including Getir, Gorilla, Joker etc. I mean, the list is going on and on and on, but we are not seeing much funding happening for building 15-minute city, which you just mentioned except in Singapore and few other places, not many cities are talking about this 15-minute city concept.

So my question is which way city should go? Should they leave to have this 10-minute delivery startups to build the rush hours and all? or the city should really work about this 15 minute city concept?

How urban planning can play a key role in this important scenario? Like how urban planner can design the city in such a way. And do you also have any role model for others? Like, do you want to share some examples of that 15-minute cities for others?

Scott Shepard [00:50:24]:

Yeah. So there has been some interesting opportunities yet tension between the public and private sector. A lot of it driven from venture capital in these multiple waves of innovation over the last five years, I would say, starting in 2016 to today, these waves, you know, included autonomous vehicles, smart cities you know, scooter sharing, bike sharing, and now we’re in On-demand delivery. And you know, this kind of the peak hype cycle, we look at the Gartner quadrant and all that stuff, where do these, what is it the trough of disillusionment or whatever. Anyway. So I’m not quite sure where we’re at on that. I mean, we’re kind of a little bit of mix for venture capital and On-demand delivery.

All I have heard some troubling signals, but it can go both ways. Yeah. But in terms of the consumer, I would say demand for 10-minute delivery and their appetite for that.

Scott Shepard [00:51:17]:

Pardon in the pun for on demand like restaurant delivery or, you know, parcel delivery and that hitting a peak during COVID and how that’s basically kind of blown up the entire retail and commercial model in more so north American city. So it has not been as prevalent as, you know, Joss bell here in Europe. So the 10 minute delivery has not received quite as much of a bullish push here on this continent as north America. Although it’s certainly prevalence, the apps are everywhere, but it’s done a bit more cautious and a little bit more surgically. So again, the, the bullish aspect of on demand delivery is clearly north America, us and Canada. Yeah. And urban planners play a key role in that. And there is obviously attention between the, the 10 minute on demand consumer, I would say model versus the 15 minute city, which is more based on, I would say Orthodox traditional, urban planning principles, because let’s remember the 15 minute city is not new, even though I’m not trying to criticize the work of Carlos Moreno or an, and Hidalgo, or the city of Paris or many different cities that are introducing the concept of 50 minutes city, cuz I’m a massive proponent of that and of as well of tactical local urbanism.

Scott Shepard [00:52:43]:

But to be very realistic, if you, any one of us have been a, a student of urbanism, it’s really a repackaging of traditional neighborhood development TOD or market urbanism. So pre-industrial urbanism localized urbanism before the industrial revolution. So we’re talking Britain, we’re talking Britain in, you know, the sixteenth or seventh century. So we’re talking very localized activities that were pedestrian centric, horse and buggy. So you have a catchment area. Anything that you can walk to that you can go to your store, you can go to your market, you can go to your APO carrier, you can go perform your local needs. That is the 15-minute city. It’s just a new brand on a local level, but it’s imprinted on a metropolitan region because again 300-400 years ago before the industrial revolution, we did not have mega cities.

Scott Shepard [00:53:37]:

Right? Well, we had mega cities 2000 years ago, obviously ancient Rome, but a little thing like the dark ages happened. So the mega cities disappear. So we didn’t really have mega cities again until the 20th century. Right? So what we’re doing is applying a pre-industrial revolution concept of urbanism onto a post-industrial or post-urban world, which is great. I’m a proponent of that, but that lends itself to a bit of tension because if there are more traditional urbanist and I consider myself one in that sense, because I do believe in more of that orthodoxy of neighborhood human-centric mobility and activity within a modern 21st century metropolitan built environment, which is great. You can have both at the same time, they’re not diametrically posed. There is a tension though. Now when you introduce venture capital and you introduce the private sector in promoting instant delivery and promoting on demand or 10 minute deliveries that unfortunately, as we know, tend to promote people being a bit more what sedentary.

Scott Shepard [00:54:43]:

Yeah. So now they’re not active. So what are they doing? They’re not going out into the neighborhood. They’re not part of that 15-minute city. They are on their couch. What was the movie? What was the movie where everyone was transported in pods? Wall-E the movie and you know, they’re very sedentary and they’re just moving around. There’s no activation. There are no people aren’t moving. So  I’m not saying that they’re diametrically opposed, but there has to be a careful balance. And that’s really where quite honestly, the public sector has to take a more activist role. So that’s where the urban planners like myself are ones that actually work for governments have to go in and take the best of private sector innovation like on-demand delivery, curbside delivery, and understand now that the curbside is a real estate asset.

Scott Shepard [00:55:35]:

It’s monetized. Now we get that. We see many startups like Uber and you know, other startups out of Silicon valley. And even out of the east coast that are providing on-demand mobility, data insights that can help public sector municipalities understand and rebalance their public right of way for you know, Amazon ups as well as restaurant deliveries. Yeah. So we’re not trying to prevent that type of activity, but we’re trying to integrate that within a policy framework. Now this is where policy comes back in. So this is, come back to the SUMP right now. We’re now we’re going to travel across the Atlantic, the SUMP. So the SUMP is not mutually exclusive, meaning that the SUMP or if done right, a North American comprehensive Urban Plan can embrace On-demand delivery. It can embrace autonomous vehicles and On-demand shuttles, but it has to be done in a way that promotes policy goals that are sustainable.

Scott Shepard [00:56:38]:

So who is best or who’s best trained, or I would say understands those insights. Well, it’s obviously the local community too, that maybe they’re positioned better than urban planners, but it has to be a collection of stakeholders that can really start understanding how these different levers can be utilized for a more, I would say, greater good and a better policy outcome. So we do not want to prevent innovation because many different cities were firewalls to new innovations, such as scooter share and bike share. As we saw in 2017 or 2018. And they took two heavy handed approach. And they just begged permits. And then they told the private startups to pack their bags. So that’s not a positive approach either. So we can embrace on-demand mobility and 10 minute deliveries, but we have to do so in a way that balances the public realm from the private realm, we understand, you know, the public right of way.

Scott Shepard [00:57:45]:

We understand passenger movement. We understand mobility flows in our transportation networks so that we do not come up with an outcome that you know creates new congestion, new unsustainable outcomes, and completely privatizes the public domain so that the curbside becomes a complete, I would say, marketplace for on-demand providers. And there’s no more space for senior citizens for disabled, for children and for people to just navigate and be part of the public realm. So that, that is really where the public sector does need to take an activist, not a heavy hand role, but activist role and be a champion for better public sustainable urban policy. That’s the key and promote the 15-minute city in the process.

Jaspal Singh [00:58:39]:

No, I really like your answer because that’s how the thing should be not, not stopping an innovation, but at the same time, the public sector play an important role to make sure it’s equitable to everybody. Not some people should get benefit of it. And other people who are disadvantage or left out, like you mentioned about old people, like curbside management is good, but it shouldn’t at the cost of people who actually need those spaces. And they couldn’t able to use it and give benefit to only one small segment of the society. I really like your answer.

Scott Shepard [00:59:12]:

Yeah. I mean, there’s been pushback even on robotic deliveries, right. I know in Toronto where you’re at, I mean, there’s been some pushback to that in the public domain, in the public right of way. And sidewalks, that’s one specific use case, but again, we can’t go too far in either one extreme, so yeah, VCs cannot completely privatize the public realm and cities and municipalities and transportation agencies cannot be a complete firewall to new private sector innovation. There has to be good public policy that embraces both.

Jaspal Singh [00:59:42]:

I like it. And thank you for sharing that perspective because sometimes you always have one side of the view.

Scott Shepard [00:59:49]:

It’s very binary.

Jaspal Singh [00:59:51]:

Yeah.

Scott Shepard [00:59:52]:

It’s very either pro-private sector, no government intervention or anti-government or pro-public sector municipality, no startups. And that that’s really just taking steps backwards. We shouldn’t be having this zero-sum game discussion that that does no one, any favors at all

Jaspal Singh [01:00:11]:

Should be win-win. So now my next question is the point which you earlier discussed is about the evolution of micromobility in Europe that how the micromobility emerge in Europe.

In fact, e-scooters started in the US with Bird launch the first operation and in five years they have become so obvious everywhere. However, I say, Europe is leading the implementation of shared E bikes, eBikes and all. And I believe that the reason for same is like you mentioned, is a strong public led policy framework or a strong public transport network.

I would like to share this case from when Voi, S-Bahn Stuttgart, and Mobimeo executed a joint pilot project in 2020. They found that with better integration, public transport uses increased by 35% and use of micro-mobility used by more than 250%. So it was win-win for both of them.

So now again, I ask you to put your planner hat, and tell us like why this micromobility is a big success in Europe than in any other place. And is micromobility the future of transportation what is going to be the biggest trend in micromobility over next three to five years?

Scott Shepard [01:01:37]:

So let’s just take a trip down memory lane for a second and then we’ll get to where we’re at now. So yeah. So 2016-2017, the first scooter share starts popped up in San Francisco and Santa Monica. So yeah. You have Lime and Bird and all that. So we know about that and we know kind of the stories around how they started launching and then others quickly followed suit. And that led to the scooter wars and everything yeah. Around 2018, scooters hadn’t entered the market yet in Europe at that point. So in 2018, there were no, I mean, I’m trying to remember here because I was still, I was in mobility service, but we were really focused on bike share and car share at the time. But not even scooter share at least for my former company Free2Move, which is a subsidiary of now of Stellantis group.

Scott Shepard [01:02:31]:

We were an integrator of car share providers and then we slowly started integrating scooter share at the time in Berlin because that’s where our home market was, but scooters didn’t even start hitting the market in Germany and other European markets until around early 2019. And by summer of 2019, it was the wild west. So we were starting to see what North America saw, you know, maybe 18 months before that. Okay. So that’s fine. We saw this really kind of peak hype, right. We didn’t quite get some of the scooter awards here in Europe, but like you saw in North America in the US, but we saw some interesting backlash where there was a complete negligence of, I would say lobbying or outreach to public authorities in those early scooter days in 2019 that gave them a black eye. So I have to name the company here.

Scott Shepard [01:03:24]:

We named some companies that’s Bird and that was in Luxembourg. It was pretty embarrassing. So they basically cleared out their scooters in a day because they did not ask for permission at all. So they were basically copying the model as we known Silicon valley that had happened in the US for six years in, you know ride share and now in scooter share. And that was a real troubling signal for the scooter share operators in Europe. And they were like, oh boy, we got a problem on our hands here. These rules of engagement that we were doing in the US to some level of success, we were getting market share. We were getting a bunch of quote-unquote champions that did not care if we had an operational permit, but we got enough people using our absolute, we could demonstrate market traction and, attract more Series A or Series B.

Scott Shepard [01:04:10]:

So we made our investors happy. We had some happy customers with subsidized rides. Everyone’s happy, right. Cities are pissed off, but everyone else is happy. That does not fly here in Europe. No, no, no, no. that did not fly. So they started with that. They were tinker with that and they started realizing that there was a different way of doing business. So we started seeing on the horizon, some new players that were entering the market just before COVID hit. And those new players just in the scooter world were Voi out of Stockholm. Yeah. And Tier out of Berlin. Yeah. So what did they do? They flipped that whole Lime & Bird model on its head. They did the opposite, especially Voi. They started doing active engagement from the start with cities, not necessarily lobbying, but understanding what the actual challenges are, understanding the policy framework, understanding their actual building transportation challenges.

Scott Shepard [01:05:10]:

And then trying to weave in their offer in a way that was not only as less intrusive as possible, but started addressing some of the challenges that they were seeking related to their gaps in accessibility related to mobility, some underserved areas. So by doing so they were able to make a much better business case for at least demonstrating their service. And this is pre-public tenders. This is pre RFPs. Yeah. And they were able to deploy pilots on a much quicker basis than some of the American micromobility providers at the time. And you could start seeing a divergence in this whole kind of philosophy of micromobility. So then what happens? So March of 2020, so we’re staring into the lockdown, right? I’m on lockdown here in Lisbon. I don’t know how bad it was there in Toronto, but I couldn’t leave my house for like three or four weeks.

Scott Shepard [01:06:07]:

It sucked. It was awful, it was very dystopian, you know? So it’s like, well, I could walk out my house, but I couldn’t leave my town. So, you know, the whole thing, it was just, it was really weird for like late March, early April. So things started reopening and scooters share just dropped off. Right? Yeah. And there was no rides. I mean they just basically had to eat it. And we know again, back to Bird, you know, the layoff there and all the other scooter share providers, they had to layoff a huge percentage of their employees. But we saw some interesting things happen in micromobility because actually from a labor and employee perspective, guess what? The European MSPs mobility providers, they weren’t laying off their employees though. They obviously had different labor contracts and models. So they had like in Germany and other countries, they had more of a furlough scheme where they were still paid a salary, but they weren’t laid off and given like a stimulus check like in the us.

Scott Shepard [01:07:05]:

And they off the payroll. So you have a different laborer structure in Europe than there, but not only that, a lot of these venture capital backed to micro providers made a pledge to keep their staff on payroll because they thought that that was part of the better business model that they were offering to their cities. And they realized if they had happy employees, they would have happy cities. They would have happy investors and they would have a happy bottom line. That’s it? They just got it. It made complete business sense. I mean, not to say that they didn’t do it because it was the golden rule right thing. But they knew that that’s how they were going to scale. Once COVID started declining and guess what? COVID started declining. We went through a few waves. We went through, you know, alpha went through Delta, went through Omicron, multiple waves, but each wave, they started getting massive market traction.

Scott Shepard [01:07:56]:

And guess what? Massive investments. Yeah. So now you have the big three on the market. You have Voi, you have Tier and you have Bolt now. And Bolt obviously started as a challenge to Uber here in Europe. But just in rideshare, that was up until 2018. Now they’re dominating the continent along with Voi in bike share and scooter share. So that holy Trinity, like I say, you know, to use the monotheistic world, you know, it doesn’t matter what religion you are, but to use the cliche that is really the holy Trinity of micro mobility in Europe right now is Bolt here and Voi and they dominated because they took this approach to use my own hashtag cities first. Really. They place cities in the public sector. First. They realize that that is good for their bottom line. That’s going to keep their investors happy.

Scott Shepard [01:08:44]:

That’s going to that’s how they’re going to scale. They’re going to launch in more cities, they’re going to win more contracts and they’re going to push out some of these American micromobility players out of the market like Spin. They left Europe. They got nudged out. They couldn’t work in open permit markets. Right. So the real backstory, they got nudged out because of market share because Voi, Tier and Bolt were dominating. So a lot of the, and obviously Bird and Lime have re-entered the market and they have redeployed, but there has not been as much of a consistent market expansion to the level of the European big three, when you compare all of the operators post COVID. And what I’m saying though, is that Lime and Bird have maintained their market share. They had a massive market share before COVID and they did not decline, but they have not expanded.

Scott Shepard [01:09:36]:

But what you’ve seen Voi here, in Bolt is they have eclipsed. And that’s because they’ve taken this new approach. So the two main American micromobility operators have maintained their foothold and they’ve continued operation, but you haven’t seen that level of expansion, which has pleased venture capitalists. They want to see expansion, they don’t want to see status quo. They don’t care about status quo. They care about how many new cities are you going to launch in. And that’s how you go to Series D, Series E or you track money from the European Investment Bank, which is what Bolt did that is where the big money’s at. And that’s what they’ve been able to do because they took this approach, that position, the public sector, and understood their needs. And that’s how they’ve been able to win all these public closed permit markets as well, too.

Scott Shepard [01:10:24]:

Right. So for example, like what happened in Oslo recently where it was only the European big three or it was Copenhagen. It was Voi here in, Bolt. Nobody else and why, because of this, they won, there was a finite out market, three permits were offered in that RFP. They got it. That’s a perfect example of that. So again, Spin was more of an outlier because they were taking much more of a campus centric approach. Their approach was a bit less market share. Obviously there were subsidized at the time by Ford motor company, but Ford sold them off. Now, now they’re part of Tier, right? So it doesn’t really matter. So Tier is rebranding as Spin in the US. So it’s very interesting that what goes around comes around, right? Yeah. They left Europe, but now Tier is colonizing North America under the Spin brand. So it’s just amazing that what was originally an American colonization of micromobility on this continent is completely vice versa. Now, now the Europeans are working towards North America. I think that’s the biggest takeaway of 2022 right now. It’s the biggest takeaway.

Jaspal Singh [01:11:31]:

And it’ll be interesting to see how they can replicate the success they have achieved in Europe and North America. And actually we are seeing in north America cities.

Scott Shepard [01:11:40]:

Yeah, because North American cities are not quite as accustomed to maybe some private mobility operators taking such of a collaborative approach. So I think they still have their resistance up in a way. And you still see many North American cities anti-micromobility in a way, but I think Tier took a very smart approach that they’re rebranding under a known quantity, which is Spin. So that gives them an advantage. I don’t know what the approach is of Voi or Bolt or what their strategy is for entering the North American market at that point. Maybe someone else can comment on that, but I do see that in terms of the future of micromobility in North America and how they can become at least sustainable or maybe profitable in the long term. They’re going to definitely have to rethink the model of pre 2019.

Scott Shepard [01:12:40]:

It might not necessarily be a completely Eurocentric approach, which works here, because I don’t think that will work in the US. Maybe it is more of an approach that Spin took, and Spin was very successful. A lot of college campuses and certain clothes permit markets in the US. Maybe that model works. I don’t know, but I think that they’re going to have to change it up. And it’s going to have to be maybe a blend of the European model and the US model and, trying what works. But again, micromobility works best where there is the built environment, higher densities, the physical infrastructure and public transit has to be in place to lend itself to first and last mile. Right. So in lower density cities or suburban districts where you have micromobility, maybe as a trial or pilot it might not be good in the long term in the US or even Canada. So I don’t know.

Jaspal Singh [01:13:36]:

No, that’s quite interesting. And thanks for sharing the full background about micromobility. I mean, I would say this 10-15 minute is like a class of 3-4 hours where you can learn everything about how the micromobility started and how it works and how it’s shaping up. So thank for sharing.

 

Now I want to touch another important topic, which is close to your heart. It’s Mobility as a Service MaaS because you worked first with Free2Move, you just mentioned a MaaS player and later with Iomob, which is a decentralized MaaS player. So you’ve seen both the world and, and you understand from both sides, like why it should work and why it should not work.

So even though MaaS offers a great promise to provide seamless mobility as a cheapest cost. And to be honest, I am one of the big advocate because I see an opportunity. But at the same time, yes, I understand. We’re not seeing a big success in this space.

Scott Shepard [01:14:36]:

No, we are not. No, we’re not.

Jaspal Singh [01:14:38]:

And one of the key reasons is the lack of business model and the trust among stakeholders. They don’t trust each other. So they are not coming forward. So I just want to understand, what do you think are the key reason that it’s still not mainstream? And if I can ask you two or think prediction in this area, what is the feature of MaaS look like?

Scott Shepard [01:14:59]:

Yeah, I think that the two main lack of success factors or failure factor. Let’s talk about the failure factors. The failure factors, as you mentioned, are unsustainable business model. It’s just simply not profitable, at least under a business consumer model that that’s dead-on arrival. It’s just not going to work. So they tried that out many different providers for about four years and they finally realized up until about COVID that they just, they pivoted away from that. So, all the MaaS providers, other than maybe Whim, but I think Whim is finally pivoted away from that too, where they’re focused much more on an indirect business model where you have to have some patron. This patron Saint to MaaS has to be either a government or the patron. Saint is a corporate benefactor, like an employer. So someone has to pay for MaaS.

Scott Shepard [01:15:50]:

Someone has to subsidize MaaS. It’s not going to be the general public. They’re not going to foot the bill because the startup is going to run out of money. They’re going to run out of runway and they’re going to go bankrupt, that’s it? Yeah. MaaS does not work. So, it’s going to be B2B2C or B2B2G. Those are the only two business models that have a chance of success. And those are even yet to be proven, not either, but either theoretically those have a path to profitability at some point.

But again, that comes down to scale though, right? Because you have to have enough of these indirect business to consumer models that can open up in enough private mobility clients or enough cities that will pay for it. I don’t know yet. We got to see because how can you scale this?

Scott Shepard [01:16:39]:

How can you replicate this? Right? Because that, that has to be demonstrable to venture capital. They want to see replicable recurring revenue. And even if the recurring revenue is a Software as a Service SaaS, a license, whether it’s ARR annual recurring revenue yeah. Or MRR monthly recurring revenue, just to make it really basic for everyone here, VCs want to see that, or even strategic investors, if they don’t see that they see you cannot launch enough cities who are going to pay for this and license your product, you know, paying a $100,000 a year or whatever. And you spread that across 12 months, you got a problem, you got a real problem. So that’s the first thing. The second is what you mentioned, the private mobility providers not playing well amongst themselves or not playing well with the MaaS provider or the aggregator or the public sector.

Scott Shepard [01:17:34]:

And that’s what we call commodification. So they fear that they will lose their touch with the consumer. So why, if you are a scooter share provider, are you going to be bundled or aggregated in a MaaS app? What value, what benefit do you have versus just using your own app and going direct to consumer, there has to be some hook or there has to be some benefit fiscally commercially for you to want to integrate in a multimodal offer. Although we’re seeing some promise on that. So, the barriers to entry or this resistance to commodification starting to subside right now in more interesting multimodal combinations. I’m still skeptical of the business models penciling out yet. That’s yet to be seen in this indirect model. I don’t know yet. I’m not sure, but we’ll come back to that. But in terms of this sphere of commodification, that’s been subsiding since COVID, we’re seeing some interesting combinations where multimodal MaaS platforms are simply being offered by the scooter share or the bike share providers themselves.

Scott Shepard [01:18:39]:

So they’re basically bundling in other combined mobility, their offers and presenting the business case to their partners, that it makes sense to join forces. That’s one way, or it could be Uber or Lyft, so we know what they’re doing. Right. So that we have that. So we have ride-hail doing it. We have even bike-share and scooter-share doing it. And it’s like bidirectional right now. It’s like the wild west. It’s CR everyone’s going multimodal right now. Yeah, and then again, yeah. So we have that. And then of course we have multimodal coming from the public sector or from cities themselves. So we have these kind of interesting combinations, but the problem just all is that these are still fragmented markets though. They’re still subsets of the entire mobility ecosystem. So we’re not seeing a combined multimodal mobility offer that integrates all mobility services with a geographic territory.

Scott Shepard [01:19:33]:

And that is yet to be proven out. And I’m not sure if that will happen. And I think there’s more, I would say institutional and commercial reasons, not technological reasons, but commercial reasons why that won’t play out. And I don’t think it ever will. I think we’re always going to see a subset of multimodal offers of MaaS or of journey planners or just of journey planners that have deep linking. Maybe that’s good enough. Maybe we don’t even need MaaS. Right. David from the University of Sydney who did the Sydney for MaaS trial, the guy’s a genius. He talked about this, he says, stop one, stop calling it MaaS. And two, maybe we don’t even need MaaS. That maybe that’s asking the wrong question. Maybe not all the city. Maybe at the end of the day, maybe we just need a journey planner and deep link.

Scott Shepard [01:20:16]:

Maybe that’s all the consumers need right now. Yeah. Who knows? We cannot really track their preference, but MaaS has a value, but maybe we need to think about this in smaller chunks and do something that’s a bit more pragmatic that has more commercial traction that brings the right providers together and delivers more quick wins versus being so overly ambitious of combining or aggregating all the offers in an entire universe. Whereas maybe we need to get a little bit more back to basics with MaaS. Maybe that’s really the key and it does not dilute the, the value of MaaS, but it makes one, a little bit more palatable to consumers. Two, it gets providers on board a lot quicker. Three, it demonstrates commercial traction to investors much faster and four, it gets governments more interested in being the stakeholder or steward of combined mobility.

Scott Shepard [01:21:16]:

So it sells, offered to them more so that they just don’t drop the ball and say, Hey, that’s not my world. Let the private operators do it. It gets them a bit more activated into it. It does not necessarily need to be, let’s say a walled garden. It doesn’t have to be a monopoly. So that’s a problem of dust balls. We have these walled gardens that we’re moving away from. We have interesting kind of combined mobility apps right now. That are they’re decentralized or central. I’m not going to speak about blockchain or any of that. But you know, we have these different, interesting combinations right now and they’re subsets. And I think that they’re starting to gain traction or we have interesting offers like what split is doing with you know, the super app model where they’re just basically super powering existing apps.

Scott Shepard [01:22:01]:

You know, that’s the Southeast Asian model that’s like in Singapore and Indonesia and Malaysia. Yeah. That’s the super app model. I’m not quite sure if that is going to take root in Europe. I’m not sure yet. I’m not saying I’m a skeptic, but it’s yet to be seen if the super apps will conquer Europe or even North America, we’ll see. I don’t know. It could be. So there’s all these different like these different kind of derivatives of the same thing. But I think one thing I do think we need to resist and move away from is the walled garden and the monopolization, I think that’s bad. So that would be the old model of maybe where I don’t know it could be Uber or Lyft wanted to combine all mobility one and have just a private app. And they own the entire ecosystem.

Scott Shepard [01:22:46]:

I think having all combined million, one private app where they own that entire consumer relationship has some issues to it. But then on the other side, the public sector could commit that same mortal sin too, that you have a public sector MaaS wall garden. And there are a couple cities in Europe that have done that too. And I think that that’s problematic as well, where they have a little too much control over who’s in and who’s out. So that serves at this gatekeeper model where maybe the PTA or the municipality serves as the central authority versus this. I would say enabler of MaaS, they tend to kind of control monopolize. And I think we just need to be careful about that. And maybe this middle path where we have a mix of journey planners with delink, we have combined multimodal offers where we have a subset, or maybe if it’s even decentralized, I’m not criticizing that too.

Scott Shepard [01:23:45]:

It could be using blockchain where you have kind of a full open ledger, and you have different mobility providers using tokens and exchanging information and they decide to opt in or opt out. That’s an interesting model too. So it’s to be seen. But I think the actual commercialization though is still a problem though. And it’s yet to be seen how MaaS will be profitable and in short term within the next year or two these, I would say B2B, B2B2C or B2G have to pencil lot soon. Otherwise, we’re going to see more backlash. We saw the first wave of backlash about a year or two ago, and we’re going to see more backlash until they can demonstrate profitability. So the, the heat’s going to be on pretty soon, I would say.

Jaspal Singh [01:24:30]:

And that’s a great point to mention about that we don’t need to create new Monopoly by having some of these apps, which has everything. And also, I agree with you fully about that you don’t always need a MaaS as a very big app, which can offer you everything from one small thing to all probably you don’t need, you know, and, some city probably just need a journey planner with a deep link.

Scott Shepard [01:24:56]:

I never, if you asked me a year ago, I would’ve never said that I’d be like, no you’re crazy. No, it has to be as one app you know, it has to be operated by the public sector or private and that’s it. I was very much fixated on it. Now I’m starting to have a change of thought. This is my own personal journey. I’m like, you know, maybe we maybe we get back to basics and do something a little bit simpler and, show some value there. Maybe that’s okay.

Jaspal Singh [01:25:22]:

What I really agree with you is let consumer choose what more they want to add on? What topic they want to add on, rather than forcing everything?

Scott Shepard [01:25:29]:

Maybe I just want to discover and look, maybe I don’t want to pay, maybe I just want to discover. I don’t know. You know, I mean, I do it myself in Google maps all the time and I dig blank and order service through another app, or, I mean, you know, so I’m not saying my preference is better than others, but we do have to be cognizant that there’s not a one size fits all. There’s not a one size fits all in Southeast Asia or in Europe or North America, or even Latin America. We have to be very heterogeneous about this.

Jaspal Singh [01:25:57]:

Oh yeah. People are so different. So you can’t have a same model. Like, I really like the point you mentioned in the previous question, probably the way micromobility is successful in Europe. It’s not the model. It can be replicated in US because it a different model.

Scott Shepard [01:26:09]:

Sure. It probably won’t work in the US.

Jaspal Singh [01:26:11]:

So you cannot say that, okay. This is the only way it has to be done.

Scott Shepard [01:26:18]:

No. I’m actually, now that you mention it, I think the European model you know, if you were to copy paste that in North America, it would not work. But what I would like to say though, is that the former North American model pre-COVID will not work either though. So there has to be some difference in terms of how micromobility is to sustain itself, whether it’s Lyft operating scooters and bike share, whether it’s Uber expanding to that market, whether it’s Bird or Lime or even now Spin is a different story because they’re now subsidized first. They were subsidized by Ford. Now they’re subsidized by, by Tier. So Spin is very lucky because they’re an outlier. They’re always subsidized, never by venture capital. They’re subsidized by this behemoth. Right. So Spin gets a pass, right. They can just do what they want to do. Good for them. They’re

Jaspal Singh [01:27:04]:

Smart.

Scott Shepard [01:27:05]:

They’re smart. Right? They are not chasing the next Series D, or Series E round, you know, good for Spin. They got it easy, but what I’m saying though, is that in this world they’re going to have to take a bit more of a friendly public sector approach. We are starting to see that now in Chicago with the scooter share pilot there and the emphasis on the scoring of points for equity of course. We didn’t talk about that. Scooter safety. So you know, the hardware and software, the form factors of scooters that integrate, you know, whether it’s computer vision or GPS to maintain sidewalk safety. And, you know, geofencing and all this stuff, you got some really interesting new startups working on that, like Drover AI, like Mona, then you have Superpedestrian with their kind of all in one with a acquired, I forget was Newtech whatever. So the, the pedestrian scooter safety is a huge scoring points for the private mobility operators to operate in closed markets. So these companies are really smartening up and focused on these qualitative metrics. And that’s, that’s a good thing. That’s a good thing. So we’ll see, you know, we’ll see what happens, but north America will definitely have to do it different than Europe.

Jaspal Singh [01:28:28]:

Yeah, I agree with you. And now, my next question is actually about the different new innovation happening in mobility sector. So you are very active in the startup ecosystem. I can imagine that you must be meeting hundreds of industry experts, startup founders, and other partners who must be sharing a lot of new idea about future of mobility with you.

Talking about, okay, what can be done, what will be the future of mobility? So I would like to ask you which technological innovation you are more bullish. And what is your view on other, for example, are you more bullish on:

• Electric vehicle?
• Autonomous mobility
• Urban air mobility,
• Electric scooter or micromobility
• Demand responsive transport

 

What do you think is the future and what probably will not grow that much?

Scott Shepard [01:29:14]:

So let me talk about what will not grow that much. And they’ll go to, I’ll talk about what I’m embarrassed and I’ll talk about on books. What will not grow that much as has been proven is personal autonomous vehicles that is not going to grow that much. So I would say Uber, Lyft, Waymo’s. Waymo’s first offer of personal autonomy. What they’re testing in Chandler, Arizona, they’re doing a lot of stuff in Phoenix there a few years ago. That that is not going anywhere. That is a really slow and investors have really lost their appetite to that. So it’s still a thing, but we’ve seen a massive shift away from that and realizing that that’s going to take a long time to generate traction. That’s one thing. The others show promise let, let’s go to from bearish to bull to what I’m sort of really tell it about to what I’m really excited about.

Scott Shepard [01:30:10]:

Next is urban air mobility. That’s interesting, but I think it’s a little bit further out than what is being promised right now. I think in test hubs, I think, you know, my hometown LA is testing that out there. There are some interesting use cases, but we really need to scrutinize and think about what problems we’re solving before we get to a point where are we just replacing helicopters for the wealthy, like we see in Sao Paulo in Latin America. I mean, is that what urban mobility is where you just hop from one skyscraper to next, or is this really solving a real institutional demographic and quality of life challenge in a city? So I think that the technology’s there and it can be deployed in closed environments and pilots, but I I’m a bit skeptical outside of certain innovation districts. For some reason, my hometown of Los Angeles, LADOT loves to be this test bed of everything new.

Scott Shepard [01:31:07]:

And I don’t mean to criticize LADOT, but man, it’s like every shiny object comes out of there, whether it was autonomous, whether it’s urban air mobility, whether it’s on-demand, whether it’s, you know universal mobility access, everything is happening in Los Angeles right now, my hometown. And they’re using as a test bed more for good than bad. It’s a bit of future drama and, and some of it is not as much focused on the needs of fellow Angelians yeah. In disadvantaged communities throughout a city of 4 million people, my hometown. So just to kind of shine the light in Los Angeles, that’s what’s going on there and urban mobility. I know that came from Eric Garcetti’s administration there fixate on that.

Scott Shepard [01:31:56]:

Good for them. But I’m, Bearish on that right now. So let’s move on on-demand or micro transits or DRT, it’s the same thing, right? You guys call it micro-transits. We call it DRT here. So I am bullish on DRT /micro transits when it makes sense. So when it makes sense, if it addresses transit deserts or gaps in transit districts of underserved communities of low to medium density urbanization. Suburban areas, areas that have an underserved coverage, but not necessarily serving a high number of passengers or riders, but just covering a geographic catchment zone, a polygon show, if you will, that basically checks off the box saying you draw on a map. Let’s say I’m here in Europe. And I’m looking at a map of, I don’t know, Southwest St. Guards and it’s a suburban community and the public transfer authority realizes that their fixed route does not serve that community.

Scott Shepard [01:33:01]:

So they want to introduce a new On-demand service. Now that could be an interesting offer, or if they’re trying to increase ridership on middle performing, fixed route bus and rail networks, On-demand makes sense for feeder buses, 8- 10 capacity shuttles, On-demand smartphone base. And you want bring people into those multimodal hubs. That’s great. But here is the devils in the details. I don’t like the North America model of micro-transit and DRT, what has been done right now with many transit tech providers. And I’m not even going to name the names, but what’s been done right now for the last three or four years and what’s being lobbied hard, is replacing fixed route with on-demand. That is really problematic because many public transport authorities in North America and mainly in the US, we’re seeing this a lot in the Sunbelt right now in Texas, North Carolina, Arizona more of the suburbanized auto centric communities that really had a very strong relationship with the car.

Scott Shepard [01:34:03]:

And they had a really minimal appetite for public transport in the first place and are more than comfortable to privatize or shut down all of their fixed route and move it completely to privatize on-demand. I don’t like it.

And I’m very bearish about that one. That’s disingenuous two. That is a poor use of taxpayer dollars. Yeah. And three it’s design. Well, I got back to disingenuous because it’s promising two things to quote Jarret Walker from Portland, Oregon, it’s promising ridership and coverage at the same time yet, as he says, that’s geometrically impossible. You cannot do both. You can either deliver higher riders in a smaller geographic zone, or you can deliver fewer riders in a larger geographic zone on demand. But if you’re basically pitching both, then you are hoodwinking the public sector and you are going to be siphoning away, public taxpayer dollars from operational budgets allocated on an annual basis of fixed drought to on demand.

Scott Shepard [01:35:01]:

But we can have the best of both worlds if we do it. Right. Which is why I’m medium to level bearish about on-demand because what has been happening in North America is disingenuous. And we need to flip the script on that if that’s going to succeed otherwise we’re going to have a bunch of cities with app based on-demand services, fixed route, or be canceled everywhere, and you’re going to be moving less passengers and you’re going to be wasting taxpayer dollars.

So as we move on the spectrum, what did we talk about? Was it micro-mobility? What were the other ones, electric vehicles?

I’ll save those for last, because I’m probably the most bullish about like micromobility and even public transit. But I would say as we move along, like robotics delivery on-demand you know deliveries, I think that there’s definitely a growth market there. Yeah. I’m a bit less bullish on robotics delivery right now, because I think that there’s some pushback from certain cities in the challenge for the right of way and the sidewalk space. And I think that there’s some interesting robotics deliveries companies that are hitting some headwinds on that right now. And I think that’s a problem. So they’re going to have to resolve that and take a much more interesting approach for how they you know, pursue cities and their offer in kind of closed loop testing environments. So that that’s yet to be seen.

Scott Shepard [01:36:31]:

And that that’s kind of going the route of personal autonomous vehicles right now. I’m not convinced of that where I’m getting more bullish now is commercial autonomy. Now commercial autonomy, like commercial truck, I would say tandem I would say use cases where you have autonomous trucks traveling across 100-200 kilometers in really open ecosystems where they’re able to train their models and deploy their solutions at scale. I think we’re seeing very interesting trials in Netherlands yeah. In Denmark and even in North America, I think that’s the path forward for autonomy is that on a commercial scale. Robo taxis are quite interesting in Asia. Yeah. certainly in Korea, South Korea, in Singapore and in some other areas is quite interesting in China.

I’m not sure if that’s scalable in Europe or north America. So I’m bullish in Asia on that, but not quite you know, on both sides of the Atlantic it’s yet to be seen. And I think the policy and the public sector value needs to be proven to whether robotaxis are going to serve a public good or they merely just in automation scheme. So we’ll, we’ll see how that plays out.

Jaspal Singh [01:37:55]:

Agree with you. That’s a, that’s an important point. You highlight it.

Scott Shepard [01:37:58]:

Yeah. That, that gets down to the policy level and whether or not cities are going to allow it, or they just do not want to automate that, that’s really all it is. Whether or not they can do it, whether or not move it got acquired by Intel two years ago to prove out robo taxis in Asia is completely, regardless of the point though, the point is our city’s going to allow it. If they’re not, then you can not scale it. So forget it. Right. So then, we move on.

To wrap up here, micromobility and that type of offer and public transit, I think that has the most promise. And I think that given the upsurge of micromobility in the pandemic and it proving out its value as a last mouse solution, it’s proven that it fills in these gaps.

Scott Shepard [01:38:44]:

Not for everyone, not everyone’s going to or want to take a scooter, not everyone’s going to take a bike, but it’s really proven to be this really interesting offer in the mobility mix that is, can be part of a menu of options that promote the 15-minutes city, which I think is awesome. It’s wonderful.

So let’s promote that and let’s stimulate that. Let’s encourage that. So I think that investors are seeing that, and they’re going to see that by working well with cities, whether it’s a European model or not, they’re going to realize a return on their investment. And that is probably one of the most promising offers in conjunction with of course the holy grail, what I work on public transportation, of course. So public transportation is not going anywhere. Guys. I know we said public transit was dead 18 months ago.

Scott Shepard [01:39:30]:

Sorry. It’s not going anywhere. It’s coming back with a vengeance and not only is it coming back with a vengeance, but it’s coming back multimodal. Oh yeah, it’s coming back consumer centric and it’s coming back smarter and, and better with AI & machine learning. And it’s coming back with micromobility and more interesting offers that, that basically resolved the 15 minutes city. So that’s really just to cap off where I’m the most bearish versus the most bullish. The most bullish is smarter 15-minutes cities with micromobility, active transportation and public transit. That is where we’re at. And that’s where we’re headed.

Jaspal Singh [01:40:05]:

I fully agree.

Scott Shepard [01:40:05]:

And investors are going to see that. I mean the I am seeing a lot of money going into that area and public transport is full now in Asia already. They have crossed their peak in 2019. So the what club they doing in Europe?

That’s why that’s all-European countries now. It’s amazingly successful. So I mean that just that’s proof in itself.

Jaspal Singh [01:40:32]:

Yeah, that’s my next question, because you mentioned about how the vintage capitals are more bullish now in this area. So you’re working also as a board advisor in multiple startup and work very closely in the ecosystem. You have seen a big uptick in the number of startup in Europe, including the mobility startup. So we’ve seen in last 3-4 years, there are so many startup has come out of Europe, which were not the case earlier. So how do you see this?

Yeah, it’s really remarkable. So how do you see the startup ecosystem is evolving in Europe and how the startup are changing the mobility landscape in Europe? And what is your advice to the founder who are starting or scaling up in Europe? How should they grow and work in Europe?

Scott Shepard [01:41:17]:

Yeah. So yeah, we’ve seen kind of a pivot or a shift away from more of the traditional models in mobility or kind of that MaaS 1.0 to offers that are definitely embracing multimodality, as well as, offers that now kind of resolve this on-demand ecosystem. But in terms of the mobility startup world in Europe, I would say we’re seeing a lot more activity at the unicorn level now. So we’re seeing massive valuations, although it’s softening a bit now with the whole inflation crisis. So we’re hitting a bit of a plateau, but I don’t see that softening in the long term. And I think that even if we’re moving into a bear market right now, there’s still massive opportunity for early to mid-stage startups to raise venture capital right now. So late stage startups, I think Series-E are going to have some, they’re going to have some headwind, they’re going to have some trouble, but I think Seed to like Series A, Series B, there’s still a lot of opportunity in Europe.

Scott Shepard [01:42:23]:

There’s a lot of money sloshing around and there’s going to be a longer time to hit your term sheet and to close. But if you make your pitch right, then you are going to realize some great successes as the market heats up, hopefully as you know the military conflict you know, declines in Europe and we get back to a little bit more normality. I think we’re going to hit some really interesting economic times in the startup world in mobility here in Europe. And I guess my advice to, you know, founders and to even VCs is play, the long game is play the long game focus on these newer hungry startups that are looking to extend their runway. They’re looking to sustain their offer and they really have value to add in Europe.

Scott Shepard [01:43:20]:

And that this is really where the market is starting to prove itself as a self-sustaining ecosystem, meaning that it’s not just Sequoia Capital opening up an office in Berlin anymore from Menlo Park, Sand Hill Road in Silicon Valley. These are local homegrown European VCs that are self-funding and self-financing right now. So we’re seeing a little bit what we saw, which was good and bad up until COVID, let’s say in 2019 was a lot of Silicon valley, California base VCs setting up shop in Germany and in the Netherlands. And they have their operations still, you know, Sequoia Capital here. They’re still around. But what we’re seeing a new trend is now that these massive valuations of unicorns are coming from European VCs and I think that is the key takeaway is even if we’re entering a bear market play the long run, because Europe has already created that foundation for venture capital for future investment of new ventures going in forward.

Scott Shepard [01:44:24]:

So that would be my advice to founders is to understand that the European ecosystem is there for the long term and to VCs is to invest in these Seed, Series A, Series B and look at the long run outside of the current inflationary crisis, because there is a massive talent, 550 million people in Europe. And it’s a huge growth markets for innovation, just in the mobility ecosystem, I am not talking about FinTech, I’m just talking about mobility. So yeah play the long game here that this is the action is here.

Jaspal Singh [01:45:01]:

We agree it’s a big market. And if you play long, you will always win the market because there are multiple players and multiple innovation because I talk to a lot of these public transit agencies in Europe, and they have a very clear vision, how they want to expand the reach of public transportation, and they understand the need for technology to do that. They know that they cannot just do it. So they need a good technology system to expand that. So I fully agree with you, it’s playing along and will work with them.

Scott Shepard [01:45:28]:

And then one last thing I’d like to add to is there’s some interesting hotspots and growth markets for VCs and founders to be aware of that are really popping up even during the inflation crisis and the whole pandemic and all that stuff that are coming under the horizon are certainly in central Europe. We saw some interesting activity. In Austrian, in Hungary, even in Poland, up until the pandemic and now, and quite honestly, Turkey in Instanbul. I mean, it’s crazy. I would’ve said the same thing about Berlin two years ago, but man Turkey is off the charts right now. All the, obviously it’s a mix between Europe and Asia, but you know, I’m going to classify it as Europe for this conversation only because if you’re an investor, it’s a growth market. Look at Turkey.

Jaspal Singh [01:46:12]:

Yeah, I agree with you. And they have so much of talent. People are so smart.

Scott Shepard [01:46:18]:

So I’m really bullish about that market, but the full European consonant too. There’s a lot of stuff.

Jaspal Singh [01:46:24]:

So that’s why you moved there because you see European.

Scott Shepard [01:46:30]:

I moved here cause my wife is Portuguese. Right. She’s the world. I followed her.

Jaspal Singh [01:46:35]:

I’m kidding.

Scott Shepard [01:46:36]:

I realize that after the fact it’s like, there’s some interesting stuff. I always led to be US, North America. That’s where the action is. No, there’s some equal, interesting activity happening now in the last two years here in Europe. That’s my message to the audience.

Jaspal Singh [01:46:51]:

I would say everywhere, even if you go to Africa, it’s going crazy Africa, you know, what’s happening in Nigeria innovation. Yeah. Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa.

Scott Shepard [01:46:59]:

Africa’s super-hot right now, Latin America. I mean, God, I just amazing. And it’s, I love it. I love all this activity south of the equator. I’m super happy to see that. I just think it’s a great move for the world. Really good.

Jaspal Singh [01:47:14]:

That’s great. So now, Scott we discussed so much about public transportation, technology, latest mobility trend and all, but now want to spend the last five minute to learn a little more about you.

We have created this rapid-fire question down. So to ask you five questions

Scott Shepard [01:47:32]:

I’m going to wear your hat right now. Gimme your hat weird tur. I’m going to wear.

Jaspal Singh [01:47:36]:

Yeah. So we will ask you five questions and you need to just answer them quickly. Okay. If you’re ready, then I’ll go for it.

Scott Shepard [01:47:43]:

Sure. Yeah.

Jaspal Singh [01:47:45]:

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

Scott Shepard [01:47:51]:

Oh gosh. Wow. Well, way back in the day, I was going to be like a psychology psychologist or therapist, even though I married a psychologist and therapist, which is, there’s a reason for that. Then I just realized, I just don’t have that much patience for people. So that was like a past career. But I moved away from that.

So at my old major was sociology and psychology, but I moved into something a little bit more physical and you know material, which is cities and maps. So yeah, that was, that was it a previous career pursuit.

Jaspal Singh [01:48:21]:

but you still, your better half of your life is psychology so I can see it’s.

Scott Shepard [01:48:27]:

Yeah. Sociology that was my mind. I love sociology. The kind of the patterns of people, you know, group think political psychology, economics, all that stuff. We could talk at end about that.

Jaspal Singh [01:48:39]:

Oh, great. Great to hear that. Now you travel so much around the world, which is your favorite city in the world?

Scott Shepard [01:48:46]:

Oh gosh. Well, it’s been mainly actually Europe, Latin America and North America. So it hasn’t really been Africa or Asia yet. So I can only speak to that, but hands down my favorite city and I’m probably going to get some backlash in this guys is Berlin. I absolutely love Berlin.

Berlin, Germany is my favorite city in Europe. And people are going to, why Scott, what the hell? It’s that makes no sense. It’s, you know, the wall. I mean, it’s just, it’s not that pretty. It’s not like Paris. It’s not Venice. It’s not Copenhagen. I love Berlin because it’s so imperfect. It’s such a work in progress. It was so devastated by the first and the Second World War, especially Second World War. And it’s still this patchwork of neighborhoods and zones and second sectors that are just in this flux of urbanism old, new communist capitalist.

Scott Shepard [01:49:37]:

And it’s just an it’s world history in a microcosm of one city crystallized. And it just, it has so much energy there bottled up. You know, it, it just it’s mind blowing. It’s really expanding, especially for a puritanical North American, like me is so used to the US cities that are very much, you know, Orthodox and then being in a city like Berlin, it just, and being an urbanist and wearing my urban planning hat being in Berlin. Yeah it just having to rethink all my assumptions of what a city could be. So yeah I love it.

I’ll say it’s one of the best public transit networks in the world too.

Jaspal Singh [01:50:13]:

Oh yeah. it’s a startup capital of the Europe.

Scott Shepard [01:50:19]:

Absolutely. Oh, I think that’s also Mobility startup thing. That’s I love it as well.

Jaspal Singh [01:50:22]:

You already answer my next question, but I still want to ask you, which city has the best transit network in the world?

Scott Shepard [01:50:29]:

Well I don’t know, in the world, I was hearing recently that actually it was at Dubai has two or three minute headways for its train network. Maybe, you know, I’ve never been to Dubai, but I heard it was super high frequency, which I wasn’t aware, but I was completely blown away again when I went to Berlin or when I went to Copenhagen and I was seeing five minute headway. So five minutes between each train, arriving at a station yeah. To use the transit planning geek term. So that for a North American is mind blowing because we North Americans Toronto’s pretty good. Right? Montreal is good. And Vancouver, the rest of Canada and then us not so good.

We’re used to 30 minute headways or 60 minute headway. Right. You’re going to wait at the bus and you’re going to wait and you’re going to wait and you’re going to play Wordle. And you’re just going to wait, wait, wait. And eventually the Buses is going to ride. Right. So you don’t even have to think twice when I go to Berlin and I miss the train. No problem. Just the next one.

Scott Shepard [01:51:23]:

It’s just natural. So having that be so conditional and so reliable it’s reliability real. Oh yeah. So reliability is the factor that nudges people to public transit. I like fair fee rather than free public transit. I like the pilots that they’re doing in Boston and other US cities. That’s not going to move people to public transit. It’s reliability and frequency and quality serve. That’s what’s going to move people if you can’t get that, right. People are still going to drive or use their other forms of mobility.

Jaspal Singh [01:51:52]:

You should plan as a visit to Hong Kong or Tokyo. Sometimes they have a 60 to 90 seconds of highway. Yes. It, so you just blink your eyes and there is a next one.

 

Scott Shepard [01:52:03]:

Maybe that’s too frequent. I don’t know. No, I’m joking. You have to get, you have to have passengers wait a little bit, right?

Jaspal Singh [01:52:09]:

Oh yeah, that’s it

Scott Shepard [01:52:11]:

Wasn’t feel, they apologize if they’re a few seconds later, something like that.

Jaspal Singh [01:52:14]:

It’s on national headline. If the trains are late, it’s a national headlines.

Scott Shepard [01:52:19]:

Oh my gosh. Gosh.

Jaspal Singh [01:52:20]:

So it’s a big thing there.

Jaspal Singh [01:52:23]:

You go. So my next question is and maybe a little bit tricky for you is like, which is your favorite startup in the mobility sector.

Scott Shepard [01:52:31]:

You mean as a company,

Jaspal Singh [01:52:33]:

As a company

Scott Shepard [01:52:35]:

Startup in the mobility sector. Wow. Huh.

Jaspal Singh [01:52:41]:

I know it is Asistobe, but what other?

Scott Shepard [01:52:47]:

Yeah, I would say just, not even, because it’s even unique or innovative what they are, but just their success as a startup is bold.

It’s Bolt. It’s amazing where they came from to where they are now. And just the massive amount of capital, they have been able to raise, the massive number of cities they serve of passengers they have in their platform and that they just offer a service that makes the public and private sector happy.

And, they have a really recognizable brand, these green and white scooters, these green and white cabs or bikes. I mean, they’re where it’s at right now. It’s Bolt. I mean, yeah. Tier and Voi, but Bolt is really unique because this really scrappy startup in Estonia and they played the Silicon Valley startups at their own game. 10 times, better, 10 times better.

Jaspal Singh [01:53:42]:

Because they were earlier competing with Uber and they were, everybody written them off. Like they said, okay, Bolt is gone. And they came back

Scott Shepard [01:53:51]:

Came everyone wrong and they made Bird look bad during birds firing of 300 people via zoom call back two years ago during COVID and actually Bolt made like a public statement saying we do not lay off any of our employees – COVID or no COVID. They made it a point that they value their employees. So by taking that qualitative approach, they hit all the right marks. So I have massive respect for that in that.

Jaspal Singh [01:54:15]:

That’s great. It’s a good answer. I love that company too. I mean, I love all the mobility startup, but yeah.

Scott Shepard [01:54:22]:

They came to mind

Jaspal Singh [01:54:25]:

Yeah. So my last question is if you can change one thing in your life, what would it be?

Scott Shepard [01:54:31]:

Oh gosh, what would it be? Oh man. Yeah, I would say, what would it be? It would’ve been being a world traveler at an earlier age, not being forced by my wife to move overseas when I was 43 years old and having only visited two or three countries, but having the world experience when I was in my twenties and thirties and kind of getting out of that American corporate world, maybe a decade or two earlier, would’ve made me a little bit wiser and a little bit more worldly at this age of 48.

Although you could say better, late than never. And I needed to kind of be pushed out of my comfort zone by my adventurous wife. Who’s Portuguese American, which I love dearly. But I think that in hindsight, had I taken that leap earlier, even before I was married, I would’ve been a different person, but you know what? Everything happens for a reason right now. And I’m oh yeah. So happy that I have this experience living abroad noun. I wouldn’t change it for the world, but yeah. I would say I would’ve only done this maybe like 15 years earlier. That’s the only thing I could’ve changed.

Jaspal Singh [01:55:35]:

Yeah. But that’s great. Still, like you said better than now, than never. So at least you’re doing it.

Scott Shepard [01:55:41]:

Couldn’t wait till we were going to retire. We had to do it in our middle age. Right that’s what we did.

Jaspal Singh [01:55:47]:

That’s what we. A lot of people just think about.

Scott Shepard [01:55:49]:

And then I think there is a fact or they wait until they retired, you know, oh, I’m going to visit Europe or I’m going to retire in Spain or Portugal when I’m 68 or 70. No, life’s too short for that. Do it now do it now.

Jaspal Singh [01:55:59]:

I don’t know if you know this fact or not like the only 33 or 34% American have passports.

Scott Shepard [01:56:05]:

You know, I know that very well and it embarrass me every single day. Jaspal, don’t remind me. Don’t remind me, please. It’s a national shame. I’m sorry. I was hoping I was hoping you wouldn’t bring that up because you’re absolutely right.

Jaspal Singh [01:56:18]:

No, I’m just kidding. I know

Scott Shepard [01:56:20]:

More of my fellow country. People need to go travel outside. That’s my only message.

Jaspal Singh [01:56:25]:

Just go abroad and see how

Scott Shepard [01:56:27]:

How is it, just see yourself

Jaspal Singh [01:56:29]:

Yeah, I agree. Thank you so much, Scott. I mean, I really love this session and the conversation. You have so much of knowledge good.

Scott Shepard [01:56:39]:

You do too from you. It’s both directions.

Jaspal Singh [01:56:44]:

Thank you so much. It’s a great fun