1. ITSinnovationandentrepreneurship
™
™
TheintelligentchoiceforITS
MCITY • VIDEO DETECTION • INFORMATION PROCESSING • 10 YEARS OF THINKING HIGHWAYS
thinkinghighways.com
Volume 10 Number 4 January 2016
thinkinghighways.com
NORTHAMERICA
EDITION
INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS AND ADVANCED TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT
THEEVOLUTIONOFSMART
THE ENFORCEMENT AWAKENS
HYPE CYCLE
How the sector has kept pace over the last decade
Where next for autonomous vehicles?
HTenyearsofThinkingHighways
10
3. www.thinkinghighways.com22
COVER FEATURE
(Re-) enter the entrepreneur
Smart and Connected transportation is innovating, evolving and
transforming faster and in more complex ways than ever before.
However, a few have stepped up to lead it, with a little help from their
friends, as David Pickeral elucidates
P
icking up from my “State of Transi-
tion” discussion at the end of 20151
,
the past two years – encompassing
the NHTSA rulemaking,2
the EU Mobility
as a Service (MaaS) Alliance,3
The Detroit4
and Bordeaux5
ITS World Congresses and
now the Fixing America’s Surface Trans-
portation (FAST) Act6
and the US Depart-
ment of Transportation (USDOT)7
Vulcan8
Smart Cities challenge (more on these last
two later) — have witnessed an unprec-
edented degree of public and/or private
sector-driven change across and between
the intelligent transportation system (ITS),
telematics, wireless, information and com-
munications technology (ICT), mobile
network operator (MNO), infotainment,
and Connected and Autonomous Vehi-
cle (CAV) industries as well as the vehicle
OEMs themselves.
Up until now, this change, however rev-
olutionary, positive and necessary has also
created a certain degree of uncertainty,
even instability as ATMS merged (some
might even suggest collided head-on)
with ADAS, and government and indus-
try stakeholders debated the merits of
dedicated short range communications
(DSRC), Wi-Fi, LTE, “5G”, Mesh and more.
More fundamentally the key question
among stakeholders (inclusive of but
not limited to equipment manufactur-
ers, service providers, network opera-
tors, investors, regulators and the public)
has evolved rapidly from, “So what?” to
“Where do I sign up?”
FUDGINGTHEISSUE
Certainly there has been a lot written and
said about the evolution and convergence
of ITS-CAV by any number of pundits, aca-
demics, industry thought leaders, visionar-
4. www.thinkinghighways.com 23
ENTREPRENEURSHIP
ies, dilettantes and just plain crackpots (and
feel free to place me in any one or more of
these categories).
We have explored, ruminated and even
pontificated about the way forward over
more years than many of use care to recall.
Perhaps the end result of all this dialogue
may have been merely to obfuscate the
issue, creating risk perception that con-
strains the potential of the future in favor of
proven,comfortinglegacyideasaboutplan-
ning, procuring, designing, building, operat-
ing and enhancing transportation systems.
However, at some both point abstract
aspirations and outdated methods need to
be put into practice as the speculation of
many, mired in the inertia of the past, gives
way to the actionable path forward created
by few. As the late Dr. Carl Sagan, one of
the greatest scientists and philosophers of
the 20th Century observed: “In every time
and culture there are pressures to conform
to the prevailing prejudices. But there are
also, in every place and epoch those who
value the truth… Future generations are in
their debt.”9
Theseseekersoftruthhavecomeinmany
forms throughout the course of human his-
tory — be they religious, social or political
reformers, scientists, and of course inven-
tors and engineers. In the case of transpor-
tation so many seminal transitions in this
industry related to both products and serv-
ices were started by entrepreneurs.
CONFORMISTSNEEDNOTAPPLY
Simply put, with the significant (and most
recent) historical exceptions of post Sec-
ond World War Mass Transit and the Inter-
state Highway System and its equivalents
worldwide, much of the real disruptive
change in transportation innovation since
the Industrial Revolution began has always
been initiated as the result of a few focused
individuals. Entrepreneurs of the previous
two centuries started small, but ultimately
redefined how people and freight could
be moved more rapidly, at lower cost, and
with a higher degree of safety than previ-
ous generations had come to expect.
From the canals of Thomas Telford; to
George Shillibeer’s omnibus10
; to the rail-
roads, tunnels, bridges and ships built by
Marc and Isambard Brunel11
; to the transoce-
anic steamship lines of Samuel Cunard12
;
to the transcontinental stagecoach routes
of Ben Holladay13
and then the transconti-
nental railroad of Leland Stanford14
; to the
pioneer automobiles created by Karl Benz
and Henry Ford; to the first North Ameri-
can metro financed and built by August
Belmont, Jr.15
; to the
North-America wide
bus network woven
together by Carl Eric
Wickman16
; to the elite
global airline launched
by Juan Trippe17
fol-
lowedbythedisruptive
low cost carrier created
by Herb Kelleher18
…
all combined strong
business acumen, the latest technology, a
consuming passion to succeed, and an often
flagrant disregard for convention and how it
had “always” been done before.
Along with the innovations and trans-
portation products and services that these
entrepreneurs produced there were any
number of their peers in adjacent industries
whose efforts were as essential as their own
to their ultimate success. Whether motive
power provided by the genius of Tesla, steel
from the enterprise of Andrew Carnegie,
financing provided by the Mellons, commu-
nication provided sequentially by Samuel F.
B. Morse, Alexander Graham Bell and finally
Marquis Guglielmo Marconi, and business
information systems perfected by Thomas
J Watson Sr. and Jr. that taught the world to
THINK!,19
by the start of the new millennium
there was a formidable legacy of success in
transport development, and legacy infra-
structure supporting it, to build upon.
Even the consultants that supported the
transformation of the industry during this
period were entrepreneurial, with Edwin
Booz devising entirely new methodolo-
gies to gather and analyze transportation
data long before the advent of software
and algorithms to provide unique insights
to his clients that resulted in lasting change
through the refinement of operational and
business practices.20
Standing on the shoulders of these 19th
and 20th Century Entrepreneurs (and in
some cases graduating from universi-
ties established by them!) the present
day transportation entrepreneurs blend a
diversity of backgrounds, experience and
invariably talent as never seen before and
across a wider spectrum of both device and
data driven enterprises.
Whether from humble origins working
from scratch or born into means they are
able to capitalize upon, the achievements
that preceded them while in no way being
obligated to follow the conventions these
achievements had established. Sir Richard
Branson, Travis Kalanick, Garrett Camp,
Ehud Shabtai, Elon Musk, Brian Souter,
“Therehasbeenalotwrittenandsaidabouttheevolutionand
convergenceofITS-CAVbyanynumberofpundits,academics,industry
thoughtleaders,visionaries,dilettantesandjustplaincrackpots”
“Entrepreneursoftheprevioustwocenturies
startedsmall,butultimatelyredefinedhow
peopleandfreightcouldbemovedmorerapidly,
atlowercost,andwithahigherdegreeofsafety
thanpreviousgenerationshadcometoexpect”
5. www.thinkinghighways.com24
COVER FEATURE
David Neeleman, Logan Green, Antje Dan-
ielson, Robin Chase, Joseph Kopser, Craig
Cummings, Shelby Clark and many other
present day Entrepreneurs have already
made great strides to develop the 21st Cen-
tury model for mobility, even to the point
of that being a distinct concept from trans-
portation itself, which no previous genera-
tion had done much less even conceived of.
ABIGGERBANG
Once again these innovators hardly oper-
ate in a vacuum but do so in the context
of strong technological and operational
engagement with adjacent industries and
with resources ranging from financing to
bandwidth to rights of way. ICT is now no
longer working in parallel to support trans-
portation enterprises as in the previous
two centuries but increasingly infused with
it while consultants (not to mention the
transportation operators themselves) have
a full array of big data and analytics tools to
assess, predict and advise.
Like their predecessors, today’s entrepre-
neurs have been both lauded and vilified
in the media, the market and the public
eye. Love them or hate them their impact
is beyond question reinforced on social
media and even traditional TV through
such topical shows aired worldwide as
Shark Tank and Dragons’ Den, and even
celebrity cameos such as that of Tesla’s Elon
Musk this past Thanksgiving on the popular
US comedy The Big Bang Theory.
Whether enjoying rock star status or
laboring (for the time being at least) in
obscurity, all entrepreneurs across geog-
raphies and across the years have essen-
tially one thing in common — motivation.
The immediate imperative that entrepre-
neurs have to achieve tangible, monetized
success tends to brush all confusion and
uncertainty aside. There isn’t going to be
a pension or even a retirement plan match
and there are no points for playing through
the bureaucracy, being a loyal “company”
person or “good team player,” or finding a
safe niche to hang out on some big govern-
ment or big corpo-
rate organizational
chart. If the ITS-CAV
transformation is
going to be success-
ful, and few now
doubt that it will be,
motivation will con-
tinue to be central to
the process.
CORPORATECONSTRAINTS
On that note, established companies, espe-
cially large public corporations, are by virtue
of their entrenchment of decades, genera-
tions or even centuries, often at the mercy
of an ever more connected and commen-
surably reactive customer base and, even
more, the global investment community
— a community that now includes millions
of amateur day traders clicking in their cubi-
cles during their lunch breaks — reacting
to profitability signals literally hour-to-hour
based on the latest industry analyst assess-
ment, earnings report or social media feed.
This has unfortunately led in recent years
to what might be called ‘diseconomies of
scale’ by creating a strong (and perfectly
logical from a strict balance sheet stand-
point) aversion to risk, viz, why assume the
risk of innovation when we have product
lines that are already selling profitably to
meet target?
Moreover, the lead time for corporate
ROI is by most estimates shrinking – now
the action-reward cycle is more like 2-3
years, not the 3-5 famously cited by Amazon
founder Jeff Bezos some years ago. Along
the same line of reasoning, unworkable
decisions need to be reversed that much
faster before they show up in the bottom
line which also tends to incentivize inaction
atthe topand perhapsevenmoreacrossthe
mid-to-senior ranks beneath them who may
value the stability of the status quo even at
the price of missed new opportunities.
By this I certainly do not mean to criti-
cize big corporations, where I myself have
spent a very rewarding portion of my
career and which are and will inevitably
remain the backbone of the global econ-
omy and the primary creators of wealth for
investors and citizens as long as a free mar-
ket economy exist on earth. However, this
does make the role of both the entrepre-
neur and, as I will shortly explain, govern-
ment all the more important.
TOPCOVER
Having been born in Washington, DC half
a century ago this spring and spent 41 of
those 50 years in and around the Beltway
(and been employed by four different gov-
ernment agencies during my early career
before taking what turned out to be a very
gratifying a leap onto the corporate ladder
17 years ago) I try to avoid the temptation
to lapse towards either cynicism or opti-
mism when it comes to my expectations of
public institutions.
Far too many people seem to gravitate
towards the extremes of blaming their gov-
ernments for the lack of progress in trans-
portation and expecting them to solve all of
their problems — and more than a few do
both. There has been a great deal of rhetoric
from industry, and even from within other
facets of the public sector, that government
should simply step out of the way and let
the market run its course. As justifiable as
this may appear, this legally shall not, and
practically must not happen. As I have said
in this and other forums — and will continue
to stress not because it is my personal opin-
ion but because it is a statement practical of
reality supported by centuries of historical
fact—transportation, behind perhaps only
“Standingontheshouldersofthese19thand20th
Centurygreatsthepresentdaytransportation
entrepreneursblendadiversityofbackgrounds,
experienceandtalentasneverseenbefore”
6. www.thinkinghighways.com 25
ENTREPRENEURSHIP
health, food and nuclear energy, is the most
heavilyregulated industryonearthandwith
very good reason.
Through in the laissez-faire regulatory
environment of the 19th and early 20th
centuries transportation along with other
industries (e.g. mining, manufacturing,
agriculture, pharmaceuticals, food serv-
ice, telecommunications) operated largely
unchecked, often with disastrous human,
social and economic consequences such
as pervasive environmental damage, ram-
pant disease, horrific industrial pollution,
massive crop failures and of course railway,
highway and maritime disasters (including
even the loss of the Titanic which was as
much the result of nonexistent ICT regula-
tion as it was poor contemporary transpor-
tation safety oversight)21
. With the Great
Depression as a backdrop the largest gov-
ernmental reshaping in the history of the
United States consolidated Federal power
and resources for generations to come.
NEWPOWERGENERATION
For that and other reasons, the vast majority
of those in a senior decision-making capac-
ity today grew up during those 60 years of
unprecedented Federal Government power,
resources, and influence that stretched from
the New Deal in the mid-1930s to the end
of the Cold War in the early 1990s — this
inclusive of course of the period in which
the Interstate Highway System was planned,
funded, procured, and constructed.
It was also the era during which local
and state governments, almost invariably
with significant federal support, took over
en masse the once private and prosper-
ous transit properties which had failed in
large measure due to competition from
the personal automobiles as one (or more)
appeared in every garage and driveway.
Add to that the creation of Amtrak in 1971
and it is easy to see how a culture of Fed-
eral Government dependency arose in the
US, and was paralleled in many aspects by
Canada, the EU member states, and other
governments throughout the world.
Transportation thereby moved from the
realm of entrepreneurs and visionaries,
into check-writing bureaucrats and politi-
cians with the foregone conclusion that
many aspects of mobility were operated
at a loss merely out of governmental social
obligation. All of this co-developed along
with the North American power grid and
the public switched telephone network
(PSTN) both with heavy public support
through funding and regulatory impetus
such that by the time “Ice-Tea”, the first
modern, comprehensive Surface Trans-
portation Authorization and the precursor
to the FAST Act, was signed in 1991,22
gov-
ernment at all levels had gotten squarely
into the infrastructure business.
Now the pendulum is swinging back
again and it is practically unlikely that any-
one of any age now in the workforce will
be able to rely on that sort of public sec-
tor funding in any economy during their
professional or biological lives. While there
havebeenalotofveryarticulatearguments
by some of the most brilliant minds here
about the lack of
leadership in and
beyond Wash-
ington,23
the fact
remains that, big
government or
small government,
the tide of spending has not just gone out,
but the ocean itself has dried up.
If anything the current situation in ITS-
CAV is perhaps in a small way more com-
parible to the creation of the national
railway network in the latter half pf the 19th
Century. Then the Federal Government was
instrumental in facilitating and providing
oversight for the project, however the real
innovation and investment came from pri-
vate investors and entrepreneurs (yet again
invoking Stanford – who incidentally also
switched sides of the public/private table
himself to serve as Governor of California).
The situation is much the same today,
where the Federal Government, through
the Federal Communications Commission
(FCC)inamoveveryanalogoustothoseland
grants that made the railway network pos-
sible, allocated 75MHz of licensed spectrum
for the purposes of deploying CAV wireless
technology, to include DSRC for safety criti-
calV2Vand,possibly,otherapplications.24
At
the risk of stating what should be obvious,
and has been generally accepted by the
modern democracies of the world, only gov-
ernments may do that sort of thing.
Beyond the world of public land grants
and frequency allocations there are other
more immediate roles involving so called
“inherently governmental functions,” such
as operational oversight, criminal prosecu-
tion, and international treaty negotiation
which simply cannot be delegated into
private hands, and essentially are not in all
nations with a functioning government.
Moreover they are critical responsibilities
profoundly affecting all economic strata of
citizens that are shared effectively across all
three branches of government to balance
legislation, enforcement and adjudication.
In particular it will be important that the
courts, legislatures and administrations
(Presidents, Governors, Premiers, Ministers,
Kreyetars, etc.) will be able to provide some
necessary measure “top cover” for CAV
deployment. This is not by any means to
allow for faulty engineering, poor quality
control, or inconsistent standards develop-
ment, or to prevent legitimate claims for
loss or injury, but to assure and protect the
responsible companies and academic insti-
tutions that follow acceptable design and
operational practices.
Although there will be some unavoid-
able failures and unfortunately even acci-
dents involving CAVs as there have been
“IftheITS-CAVtransformationisgoingtobe
successful,andfewnowdoubtthatitwillbe,
motivationwillcontinuetobecentraltotheprocess”
7. www.thinkinghighways.com26
COVER FEATURE
throughout transportation history, the
potential for reduction of what is now well
over one million traffic deaths worldwide25
will certainly offset these. Meanwhile, it is
essential that governments ensure that the
inevitable litigation profiteering that must
inevitably accompany this type of imple-
mentation as it did cruise control, air bags,
etc. does not raise the cost of adoption and
reasonable indemnification so high as to
slow the progress that must be made.
GETTINGREAL
In delineating the strengths and challenges
of each of these three different elements
of the entrepreneur-industry-government
“triangle” it becomes evident that a symbi-
otic relationship is emerging. In this context
I have by no means forgotten about aca-
demic institutions, which unlike the others
reside not so much at a single point of the
triangle as at the very center of it. Whether
public or private being in most cases at least
partially insulated from both political agen-
dasandprofitmargins,academiahasledthe
way in such things as collaborative research,
open standards, and P3 development.
Academics are thereby ever more agile in
their ability reach across all three points of
the triangle, and often multiple ones in the
same transaction. It is hardly surprising that
the vanguard for CAV development, and the
training ground for the next wave of entre-
preneurs from both a technology business
enterprise standpoint, have been recent
projects as the UMTRI-USDOT Connected
Vehicle Safety Pilot26
, the University of
Waterloo WatCAR27
, the Virginia Tech Trans-
portation Institute’s work with the I-81 Cor-
ridor Coalition28
and, of course, Stanford.29
In terms of government, while it is as pre-
viously noted an era of doing more with less,
USDOT has perhaps more than any agency
in Washington become adept at doing just
that. Indeed, in writing this article I origi-
nally thought to acknowledge by name the
leadership at the ITS JPO,30
RITA,31
OST,32
NHTSA,33
FHWA,34
FMCSA35
and FAA36
dur-
ingthecurrentandpreviousAdministrations
that made the current oversight and enable-
ment posture of USDOT a reality. I soon real-
ized that that list would be unmanageably
long, and that I would run the risk of leaving
out key executives and thought-leaders past
and present in the process, both appointed
and SES (with an appeal to at least my fellow
Americans to know
asweenteranelec-
tion year what that
last important dis-
tinctions means!)37
.
During the
final few weeks of
2015 four events
took place here
in Washington, DC that to me solidify the
theory that while such challenges and
unknowns as the Fiscal Cliff, the 2016 elec-
tions and others still lurk here around the
Beltway, it is clear that government-indus-
try-entrepreneurs (academia) are, despite
a lot of rhetoric, more aligned as a partner-
ship of equals than they ever have been in
Smart & Connected Transportation.
The first two were the FAST Act and the
Smarter Cities Challenge co-sponsored by
USDOT and Vulcan as already mentioned.
Add to that the Telecommunications Indus-
try Association (TIA) Vehicle Connectiv-
ity Workshop38
and USDOT Smart Cities
Forum39
– each done both live and by web-
cast with archival materials copied – and it
becomes clear that things are progressing.
In many ways the exploration and the
debating must die down to at least some
extent, and as mundane as this sounds it
is going to be essential that CAV technol-
ogy does becomes ‘commoditized’ much
as all other aspects ICT have over the past
30 years. There will always be room for
innovation, new products, and proprietary
solutions within the context of CAV. But in
David E. Pickeral, JD, has 28 years of
leadership experience in both public
and private sector related to realizing
the potential of information and
communications technology (ICT) to
enhance transportation effectiveness,
efficiency, accessibility, sustainability,
intermodality and safety from the local
to the global level. He is currently the
Chief Strategy Officer & Partnerships
coordinator for Weather Telematics
(WTX) and TRIMETA, as well as having
several other leadership, advisory and
entrepreneurial roles worldwide.
www.linkedin.com/in/pickeral
For a list of refences for this article please
see page 57.
order to ensure widespread adoption and
acceptance there needs to be an embed-
ded base of technology for CAV that is
standardized, ubiquitous and to a large
extent interchangeable. In many ways the
opposite occurred in legacy smart trans-
portation technology for ADAS, AFC and
ATMS, that involve stovepipe systems that
have to be replaced rather than upgraded.
Simply put, the market can no longer afford
to do that – and starting in 2016 I think the
change will start hitting the bottom line
and, thereby, the balance sheet.
Once it does, with all of the elements
described in place, and whether through
rapid organic growth, partnership or (as
appears to be the trend already) acquisi-
tion, the potential in this era of Unicorns
to leap from Local-to-Global, tomorrow is
the exciting possibility that all of us have to
look forward to whatever our niche in this
industry.Althoughnooneislikelytoachieve
true Nirvana in the coming year, collectively
we have as an industry taken a large step
towards enlightenment that may yet move
us towards the best of all possible worlds.
“Indelineatingthestrengthsandchallengesofeach
ofthesethreedifferentelementsoftheentrepreneur-
industry-government“triangle”itbecomesevident
thatasymbioticrelationshipisemerging”
8. www.thinkinghighways.com 57
NOTES AND REFERENCES
REFERENCES FROM THE ARTICLE ON PAGES 22–26 – (RE-) ENTER THE ENTREPRENEUR
1 http://edition.pagesuite-professional.co.uk/launch.aspx?eid=9f2a9cab-429c-4bcf-9ae7-94b3879a9696&pnum=14
2 http://www.safercar.gov/v2v/index.html
3 http://maas-alliance.eu/
4 http://itswc.conferencespot.org/?qr=1
5 https://proceedings.itsworldcongress.com/login
6 https://www.transportation.gov/fastact
7 https://www.transportation.gov/smartcity
8 http://www.vulcan.com/Areas-of-Practice/Philanthropy/Key-Initiatives/Smart-City-Challenge
9 Cosmos, Episode 1, “Heaven & Hell”, PBS Television, 1980
10 LondonBuses-ABriefHistory, John R, Capital Transport Publishing, 2000
11 MenShips&TheSea, Capt. Alan Villiers et al, National Geographic Society, 1973
12 TheCunardStory, Chris Frame and Rachelle Cross, The History Press, 2011
13 TheExpressmen, “The Old West” series, David Nevin et al, Time-Life Books, 1974
14 AllAboard–TheRailroadinAmericanLife, George H. Douglas, Smithmark, 1996
15 722Miles–TheBuildingoftheSubwaysandHowTheyTransformedNewYork, Clifton Hood, Simon & Schuster, 1993
16 TheGreyhoundStory–FromHibbingtoEverywhere, Oscar Schisgall, J. G. Ferguson Publishing, 1985
17 TheJetAge,“TheEpicofFlight” series, Robert J. Sterling et al, Time-Life Books, 1982
18 Nuts!SouthwestAirlines’CrazyRecipeforBusiness&PersonalSuccess, Kevin and Jackie Frieberg, Bard Press, 1996
19 ABusinessandItsBeliefs:TheIdeasthatHelpedBuildIBM, Thomas J. Watson, Jr., 1963
20 OntheMove,Booz•Allen&HamiltonTransportationConsulting1915-1994, John F. Wing with Robert D. Randolph, Booz Allen Hamilton, Inc., 1995
21 https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/wrc15-transport-yes-its-you-david-pickeral?trk=mp-reader-card
22 TheIntermodalSurfaceTransportationEfficiencyActof1991,(ISTEA) full text at http://ntl.bts.gov/DOCS/istea.html
23 http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/the-avenue/posts/2015/11/16-congress-transportation-bill-leadership-kane-puentes
24 http://www.its.dot.gov/DSRC/dsrc_faq.htm
25 http://www.who.int/gho/road_safety/mortality/en/
26 http://www.its.dot.gov/safety_pilot/
27 https://uwaterloo.ca/centre-automotive-research/
28 http://www.vtti.vt.edu/research/i81/
29 http://cars.stanford.edu/
30 http://www.its.dot.gov/
31 http://www.rita.dot.gov/
32 https://www.transportation.gov/office-of-secretary
33 http://www.nhtsa.gov/
34 https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/
35 https://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/
36 http://www.faa.gov/
37 https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/senior-executive-service/
38 Materials at: http://www.tiaonline.org/events/vehicle-connectivity-workshop
39 Presentation recordings available at: http://1.usa.gov/1YkHuxN
