The document discusses transportation trends and commuting methods in the U.S., highlighting that driving remains the primary mode at 86.1%, while public transportation usage is increasing. It provides insights into various urban regions like New York City and San Francisco, featuring their complex transit systems and challenges such as congestion and parking issues. Additionally, it touches on emerging technologies and services in transportation, including ride-sharing and city planning initiatives by companies like Sidewalk Labs.

1. Transportation & Traffic Opportunities
in USA
Hartti Suomela
May 2016

2. Driving Still Dominates:
Methods of Commuting in U.S. (2012)
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Driving 86.1%
Public transportation 5%
Walking 2.8%
Other (incl. biking) 1.7%
Work from home 4.3%

3. General Observations of Transportation
Ecosystem(s) in U.S.
• Driving is the main method of transportation / commuting
–At certain cities public transportation is also widely used (e.g. New York)
–Note also that more Americans used buses, trains and subways in 2014
than in any year since 1956
• 10.75 billion trips (source: American Public Transportation Association)
• Transportation/Transit landscape is much more fragmented in U.S. than in
Finland
–Regulation on federal, state and municipality levels
–Service provider and other players are a mix of federal, state and
municipality level players in addition to many commercial (private) players
• Public transportation owned, constructed and maintained by local & state
governments
–Biggest exception: (Federally owned) Amtrak

4. Americans and Cars
• There are 1.3 people (including everyone) for every car in U.S. (Ward’s study 2011)
– About 240 million cars in U.S.
• Total vehicle sales in 2015 in U.S.: 17.5 million
– New Record!
– 31.4% were leases!
– Plug-in electric vehicle share: 0.66% (117,000)
• Tesla Model S 25k, Nissan Leaf 17k, Chevrolet Volt 15k
• In 2016: 1. Model S – 2. Volt – 3. Leaf
• Average American spends 101 minutes per day driving (Harvard Health Watch, 2013)
• The American commuter spends 38 hours yearly stuck in traffic
– In Washington D.C., Los Angeles and San Francisco the average is over 60 hours!
• Cost of owning and operating a car is about $8,700 annually (typical sedan, 15,000
miles)
– Has decreased slightly due to declines in gas prices and finance charges
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5. Example: New York City Metropolitan Area
• Roughly 8.5 million people (est. 2014)
• 1,214 sq km (total)
• 5 boroughs (counties)
• 3 airports (JFK, LGA, Newark – although
this is on the New Jersey side)
• Extensive freeway system with very little
room to grow (bad rush hour congestion)
• Only locality in U.S. where over ½ of
households do not own car
– Over 75% in Manhattan!
• In 2005 54.6% of New Yorkers commuted
to work using mass transit
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6. New York City: Public Transportation
• Most extensive network in North
America
• Runs 24/7 in parts
• Accounts for 1/3 of mass transit in the
United States
• 2/3 of the nation's rail riders live in NYC
metropolitan area
• In 2013 ridership in NYC subway was 1.7
billion and buses 803 million
• MTA (Metropolitan Transit Authority)
operates most of the system
– Buses, subway & commuter trains
• There are also other operators like Port
Authority of New York and New Jersey,
Roosevelt Island Tramway and Staten
Island Ferry
• MetroCard is the current payment
system
– Single rides, pay per ride & unlimited
– Based on magnetic strip
– Operator is Cubic, a San Diego-based
company which also operates fare
collection systems in other localities
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7. Example: San Francisco Bay Area
• Roughly 7.5 million people
• 18,000 sq km
• 9 counties, 101 municipalities (cities and
towns)
• Biggest cities: San Jose (1M), San
Francisco (800k), Oakland (400k)
• 3 airports (SFO, OAK, SJC)
• Extensive freeway system with very little
room to grow (bad rush hour congestion)
– Car pool lanes on many freeways
– Additional toll lanes being built
• Park and ride network (car pooling)
• Basic information about the
transportation options at: 511.org
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8. SF Bay Area Public Transportation:
A Very Complex Equation
Public services
• 6 major overlapping bus transit agencies
(AC Transit, Muni, SamTrans, VTA, Golden
Gate Transit, County Connection)
– Additional smaller ones (like free-of-
charge shuttle service for Stanford
campus area – Marguerite Shuttle)
• 4 rapid transit rail systems (like BART and
Caltrain)
• 2 light rail systems (San Francisco Muni
Metro, VTA Light-rail)
• A number of rail lines (=train lines)
• Ferries
Private
• Multiple cab companies (Yellow Cab, SF
Cab, Luxor Cab, DeSoto Cab, etc) with
multiple mobile apps
• Airport & other shuttle services
• Uber & Lyft
• Other transportation & car sharing
startups, like RelayRides, LeapTransit,
SideCar, etc.
• Private ferry services
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9. San Francisco Bay Area: Biking options
• Commuting by biking is more common in San Francisco than in the Silicon Valley area
• Biking routes have been improved in the area in the past 10 years, but still bad spots
exist
– Annual Bike To Work Day (in May) spreads awareness
• Some public transportation vehicles offer no-cost bike transport (like Caltrain & some
bus lines)
– Bike to the station, ride to close of your destination, bike to your destination
• Caltrain (and many Silicon Valley employees) offer also bike lockers at parking lots
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10. San Francisco Bay Area:
Traffic Payment Systems
• FasTrak https://www.bayareafastrak.org
–Toll payment system based on long-range RFID used on the Bay Area
Bridges and Toll Roads
–Also work in Southern California
• Clipper Card https://www.clippercard.com
–All in one transit card in SF Bay Area and could be used in parking as well in
selected locations
–Not all transport authorities do not yet accept Clipper
–RFID based
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11. San Francisco Bay Area: Other topics
• Parking
– Public parking pricing and availability varies from one city to another – many cities are
struggling with parking and in-city traffic getting out of hand
• Parking enforcement varies
• No parking discs (like in Finland)
• Could be based on chalk mark on tires, or handheld devices where license plates are entered
manually
• Cities lose a lot of money for not being monitor parking violations accurately
– Plenty of private parking service providers (mostly garages) available
• Hourly or flat rates
– Many rail stations (except the ones in SF) include big (for fee) parking lots for
commuters)
• EV charging
– For free charging spots available (either by manufacturers like Tesla, by cities or by
employees)
– Also for fee charging systems are being built
– Home installed fast chargers (require 200+ Volts) are available as electricity to homes is
delivered at 250V although outlets at home are 110V
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12. MaaS Discussions in Silicon Valley
• The previous minister of Transport and Communications for Finland started
discussions with the City of Palo Alto around MaaS in early 2015
• Palo Alto started recruiting surrounding cities, counties, municipalities and
transport providers for collaboration
• Preparations still on-going
–“Reduce Bay Area Commuting by 25%” white paper is being drafted
–Looking for comprehensive, silo-breaking solution
–Enterprise Commute Trip Reduction employer pilots (31 proposals)
–Congestion pricing studies
–Etc.
• www.jointventure.org/maas
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14. Uber and Competition
• Using cash to drive scale and growth – Lyft is also spending a lot of money to gain
traction: $50 vouchers for discounts
– Lyft has promised to cap losses at no more than $50 million per month (referral
fees and subsidies)
– In February, Uber earned an average of 19¢ per ride in the U.S.
– Uber takes about a 25 percent cut of a typical fare, most of which goes to antifraud
efforts, credit-card processing, customer support, marketing, and software
development
– Not included in Uber’s profitability calculations are interest, taxes, or equity-based
compensation for employees
• Uber in March: 169 million rides world-wide, 50 million in U.S.
• Lyft in March: 11 million rides in U.S.
• https://news.greylock.com/why-uber-won-5598a2a66561
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15. Moovel – Daimler’s Ride Sharing Business
• Daimler is merging two services to create Moovel North America
– RideScout, which Daimler bought in 2014 and allows app users to find the fastest
route using public transit and sharing services
– GlobeSherpa, a mobile ticketing service based in Portland, Ore., that Texas-based
RideScout acquired last year
• Moovel North America is a subsidiary of Daimler’s Moovel Group GmbH mobility
services unit that owns the car-sharing service Car2Go, taxi-hailing app MyTaxi and
other services
• Products:
– Moovel Transit (formerly TransitSherpa)
– RideTap
• An SDK to allow users of third-party apps to find the fastest route to a destination by using
public transportation, hailing a Lyft vehicle or reserving a Car2Go vehicle
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16. Sidewalk Labs Building a Smart City?
• Sidewalk Labs: Alphabet’s urban technology-focused subsidiary
• Recently a lot of buzz about "Project Sidewalk”
– A plan to create a district in which it can trial self-driving cars, Wi-Fi solutions, new
public transport, and other city planning advances that modern technology make
possible
– Does Sidewalk Labs want to own land outright on which it can build a planned
community that could house "hundreds of thousands of people," or does it want to
accept bids from counties for its city of the future?
– Who would cover the cost – estimated to be tens of billions of dollars
• http://www.wsj.com/articles/alphabets-next-big-thing-building-a-smart-city-
1461688156#:OywRauhlVIo23A
• http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/15/11437236/sidewalk-labs-plan-build-city-google
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17. First Autonomous Track Day
May 28th & 29th
• http://selfracingcars.com/
• At Thunderhill Race Track,
Willows, CA
–2.5 hours north of San Francisco
(240 km)
• Autonomous Racing
• 20+ teams confirmed
• Organized by Silicon Valley
entrepreneur Joshua Schachter
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18. Electronic Logging Devices for Trucks
• https://www.finpro.fi/web/eng/news/-/asset_publisher/dHI7/content/electronic-logging-devices-to-
the-us-2
• All the trucking companies are required to start using ELDs within 2 year grace period (ending Dec,
2017)
• ELD’s minimum requirements
– no need to track vehicle or driver real-time
– no need to include driver – carrier (trucking company) communication capabilities
– automatically record date, time, location, engine hours, vehicle miles, ID information of driver
– Syncing
– to be able to transfer data during roadside inspections “on-demand,” via either a wireless Web-
based services, email, USB 2.0 or Bluetooth
• No paper logs, however supporting documents
– a maximum of eight supporting documents, either electronic or paper, for every 24-hour period that
includes on-duty time including: (1) bills of lading, itineraries, schedules or other documents that
show trip origin and destination, (2) dispatch records, trip records or similar documents (3) expense
receipts, (4) electronic mobile communication records sent through fleet management systems or
(5) payroll records, settlement sheets or similar documents that show what and how a driver was
paid
• https://www.fmcsa.dot.gov/sites/fmcsa.dot.gov/files/docs/FMCSA-ELD-Final-Rule_12-10-2015.pdf
• Others: KeepTruckin, Omintracs, PeopleNet, Rand McNally, Telogis, Teletrac, TruckTracks, Zonar, etc…
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19. Other Topics of Interest
• Developer offerings
– Hackathons, for example Toyota http://toyota-itc-hackathon.devpost.com/
– Developer programs, for example Ford https://developer.ford.com/ and GM
https://developer.gm.com/
– OEM tech incubator programs, for example Jaguar Landrover
https://www.jlrtechincubator.com/
– Techstars Mobility http://www.techstars.com/programs/mobility-program/
• Partners include Ford Motor Company, Magna International, Verizon Telematics, Dana
Holding Corporation, Honda R&D Americas, and McDonald’s
• Sources of information
– Future of Transportation Weekly http://tinyletter.com/transportation
– Meetups, like Connected Car SF
– Websites like Logistics Management http://www.logisticsmgmt.com/ , Connected
Car Tech http://www.connectedcar-news.com/ , Automotive News
http://www.autonews.com/ and others
– About VC funding & Start-ups: CB Insights, PitchBook, Mattermark, etc.
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22. F=ma of potholes
• Based on New York experiences
• P=s+g
• Estimate the number of potholes by adding s (total snowfall, in inches, times nine
hundred and thirty) and g (the resurfacing gap, in lane miles, times eighty)
• http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/04/25/the-nate-silver-of-infrastructure
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