David Keith | Mitsui Career Development Professor and Assistant Professor of System Dynamics, MIT Sloan School of Management

Sustainability and mobility: two buzzwords thrown around at will in today’s most pressing conversations, but what do they really mean? How do they relate to each other? And what can we do to more effectively intertwine them? Kent Larson, Director of City Science at the MIT Media Lab, will explore the core issues at stake in today’s landscape of sustainable mobility, introducing concrete measures of sustainability to be addressed in each of the day’s panel conversations and challenging panelists and attendees to work through today’s most difficult yet pressing sustainable mobility challenges.

Kent Larson | Director of City Science, MIT Media Lab

The car has been king for the past 70 years. It is entrenched in American infrastructure, financial systems, and even cultural heritage. Cars have been one of the hallmarks of the American dream and freedom. In facing a new world of (seemingly) sustainable transportation innovations, how do we extract ourselves from the shadow of yesterday’s automobility and reimagine the next generation of transportation? Is it even feasible to envision a future without cars/personal motorized transportation? Or have we dug a hole too deep to get out of?

David Keith (Moderator) | Mitsui Career Development Professor and Assistant Professor of System Dynamics, MIT Sloan School of Management

Jon Coleman | Director of City Solutions, Ford Smart Mobility, LLC

Angela Johnson-Rodriguez | Transportation Organizer, Transportation for Massachusetts

Kate Fichter | Assistant Secretary for Policy Coordination, Massachusetts Department of Transportation

Sasha Manoosigh | General Manager, Motivate

Technology is reinventing the way people and goods move from point A to point B. Apps, gadgets and AI are all converging to offer creative and novel solutions to mobility issues of all kinds. But, are these tech solutions addressing the right issues? What is required for these technological developments to serve society’s needs and increase sustainability? This panel will explore the latest innovations in mobility technology, ranging from infrastructure tech to sharing platforms and big data analytics, and analyze them from a sustainability perspective.

Dante Ramos (Moderator) | Senior Editor, The Atlantic

Eleanor Joseph | Director of Business Development, Via

Justin Holmes | Director of corporate communications and public policy, Zipcar

John Burgoyne | Program Associate, BCG Center for Public Impact

As we move into the future of transportation and we watch the former predominantly analog world digitize into the palm of our hands, we’re left with huge questions of access, scale, and sustainability. In this panel we will be diving into the local perspective to understand how various stakeholders are addressing these challenges given particular Massachusetts-specific constraints. How does the state with the oldest continuously running streetcar in the world develop and/or update the infrastructure needed for transportation 2.0? How does Massachusetts prepare to address the issue of congestion when according to a report by research firm INRIX, its capital city wasted an average of 164 hours in traffic in 2018 (the highest in nation)? How much of the state’s $17.2 billion transportation capital budget will go towards these innovations, and how will public/private partnerships impact and shape the use of these taxpayer dollars? This context-specific lens will help to understand if/how these concerns translate to other places and mobility issues, and present the opportunity for dialogue around solutions being implemented, considered, or in need of policy-based or technological innovation.

Ceasar McDowell (Moderator) | Professor of Civic Design and Co-Chair, MCP Program, MIT Urban Planning

Chris Dempsey | Director, Transportation for Massachusetts

Chris Osgood | Mayer Walsh’s Chief of the Streets, Transportation and Sanitation, City of Boston

Matthew Ciborowski | Senior Planner, Arup

New mobility technologies are revolutionizing the way people travel and the use of urban space. How should governments be thinking about integrating ridesharing, micromobilty, electric vehicles, and autonomous vehicles into the existing urban infrastructure network? How can private companies and governments work together to ensure the optimal roll-out of these technologies, especially given the large upfront cost and long lifespan of infrastructure investments? And when should all of this happen? This panel will explore all of the pertinent opportunities and challenges facing government and companies alike in the integration of new mobility technologies into urban infrastructure paying attention to access/equity, and the environmental impact of massive infrastructure investments.

Andrew Hawkins (Moderator) | Transportation Reporter, The Verge

Colin Murchie | Senior Director of Business Development, Utilities and Public Partnerships, EVgo

Melinda Hanson | Senior Manager for Sustainability, Bird

Willa Ng | Director of Mobility - Streets, Urban Systems, Sidewalk Labs

Nigel Jacob | Co-Founder, City of Boston, Office of New Urban Mechanics

Andrew Salzberg | Head of Transportation Policy and Research, Uber

Just as the car replaced the horse-drawn carriage in a matter of decades, there are technologies out there that have the potential to totally upend our understanding of transportation today. This showcase will offer an opportunity for participants to interact with cutting edge technologies that have the potential to upend transportation as we know it today. Drones, AV bikes...no cars at all?

Introducing sustainability into the future of mobility is far from a one-size-fits-all challenge. Different countries—and different communities—have different transportation needs and different societal end goals. Reynold D'Silva from Go-Jek, Indonesia’s unicorn TNC (Transportation Network Company), will dive into the subject of geographic differences in the realm of sustainable mobility. He will discuss the rise of the company, its structure, and different needs and demand that they have found in different markets.

Reynold D’Silva | Senior Vice President, Head of Data Marketing Innovation, Go-Jek

As technological innovation makes seismic waves in mobility, not everyone benefits equally. Thus, there is a growing need for the private and public sectors to collaborate and ensure that gains are shared. These two sectors will need to find ways of aligning incentives in order to effectively manage major socio-economic challenges including: transportation access, improving social inclusion, creating jobs, and reducing vehicle congestion. This panel dives into current equity challenges within the mobility landscape and explores how the public and private sectors can work together to address them.

Zeninjor Enwemeka (Moderator) | Reporter, WBUR

Paul Healy | JD Candidate at Yale Law, Contributor to Oxford Urbanist, Oxford Urbanists

Ammar Malik | Associate Director of Research, Evidence for Policy Design at Harvard Kennedy School

Kathryn Carlson | Director of Transporation, A Better City

Joël Hazan | Head of “Future of Mobility”, BCG

Within cities, people and goods have traditionally travelled on different vehicles and had different origins and destinations. Yet, today e-commerce is changing customer behavior and urban logistics patterns, increasing the number of last mile vehicles while complexifying urban logistics operations. With the aim of rendering cities more livable, reducing vehicle miles traveled, and allowing for sustainable urban transportation, could goods and people transportation exploit their once siloed technologies/industries to learn from one another and explore potential synergies?

Brooke McKenna (Moderator) | Department of Traffic, Parking & Transporation, Cambridge, MA, Assistant Director for Street Management

Josué Velázquez-Martinez | Director of MIT CTL Sustainable Logistics Initiative, MIT CTL

Omar Hoda | Principle, Deloitte

Patrick Browne | Director of Global Sustainability, UPS

William Chernicoff | Senior Manager, Global Research & Innovation Toyota Mobility Foundation

Far from the old car/public transportation dichotomy, mobility today is a cluttered field featuring all kinds of services, apps and systems. Public transit is suddenly just one of many options to get from Point A to Point B, accompanied by TNC (Transportation Network Company) rides, scooters, shared bikes and everything in between. This, in turn, has sparked rumblings that mobility might be moving in the direction of being a service rather than a public good. If so, who is responsible for investing in this new tech that has the potential to drastically affect the lives of citizens? Should governments offer incentives for businesses to ensure that their innovations are sustainable? How can public-private partnerships offer more tailored solutions? What legacy mobility items need to be preserved and what can we look to the future to solve? The questions are endless. This panel promises to solve them all.

Molly Turner (Moderator) | Professor, UC Berkeley

Marc Klein | Vice President of Data and Digital Advocacy Solutions, Majority Strategies LLC

Clara Brenner | Co-founder and Managing Partner, Urban Innovation Fund

Rich Davey | Associate Director, BCG

Seleta Reynolds | General Manager, Los Angeles Department of Transportation

As we will see throughout the day, ongoing innovation in the transportation sector is offering unheard of opportunities for growth and progress both in cities and beyond. Yet innovation is invariably connected to turmoil—and the challenge of the new: how to adopt policies and build a new regulatory structure around innovation so that it can be properly harnessed and work towards desirable end goals? And do we even know what those desirable end goals are? What kind of future and what kinds of cities do we really want to build? Robin Chase, co-founder and former CEO of Zipcar, will dive into the pressing questions raised throughout the day’s conference, offering insights into how best to chart a path forward.

Robin Chase | Co-Founder and Former CEO, Zipcar

Jason Jay | Senior Lecturer and Director, Sustainability Initiative, MIT Sloan School of Management

Join us for a networking reception after the event!