Building a mobility operating system requires leadership of cities, says LADoT

A mobility operating system cannot be privately built, it must be open and governed by cities, according to the Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADoT). Speaking at the Consumer Electronics Show 2019 in Las Vegas, LADoT general manager Seleta Reynolds described how the authority had published specifications to manage scooters following what she described as an “explosion of private companies”. She explained that the first bucket of application programming interfaces (API) provides consistent
January 10, 2019 Read time: 2 mins
A mobility operating system cannot be privately built, it must be open and governed by cities, according to the Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADoT).


Speaking at the Consumer Electronics Show 2019 in Las Vegas, LADoT general manager Seleta Reynolds described how the authority had published specifications to manage scooters following what she described as an “explosion of private companies”.

She explained that the first bucket of application programming interfaces (API) provides consistent ways for companies to talk to cities and share information with them. The second bucket of that code puts the LADoT into the product workflow of those communities.

“We are not tapping them on the shoulders and asking them for more data sets; instead we are delivering services that we already deliver today. Eventually, it would be great if we had a creative set of pricing tools, but we can start at the kerb,” Reynolds added.

At the same CES session, ‘Creating Seamlessly Integrated, Connected Mobility Operating Systems’, Scott Corwin, future of mobility practice leader at 1979 Deloitte, warned that a completely open system where people contribute on their own would attract small players over big ones - which leaves the question of how to get to scale.

“The dialogue is really about investment funding as the kind of money it’s going to take is going to be pretty significant - as well as the technical capabilities to do what needs to be done,” Corwin added.

Leon Kalvaria, chairman, institutional clients group at Citi, stated: “We are at the dawn of the age of autonomous. There will be some very significant private investors in autonomous as they can see what kind of business model they want whether a fleet model, goods delivery model, and that may provide the opening for that kind of dialogue.”

UTC

Related Content

  • November 23, 2018
    Vision technology: the future in focus
    Just a few years ago, terms such as ‘embedded’ and ‘polarisation’ were buzzwords. But now they are real and present examples of vision technology in action – and, Adam Hill finds, the ITS industry is waking up to a number of possible applications Every aspect of the intelligent transportation systems industry moves quickly – but developments in camera technology change with a rapidity which can appear quite bewildering. And with ITS providers constantly searching for an edge against fierce competitio
    Read More
  • October 26, 2017
    Data collection becoming a crowded market
    New ways of gathering data can revolutionise traffic and travel management, so is the writing on the wall for the traditional methods? Jon Masters reports. There are two big industries that stand to be revolutionised by massive increases in data – healthcare and transportation, says Finlay Clarke, the UK managing director of the smartphone sat nav traffic app, Waze. “At present we’re really only at the start of how cities, in particular, will be transformed,” he says.
    Read More
  • September 10, 2021
    Effortless mobility for everyone
    To improve the way we move people around, a lot of stakeholders are going to need to start cooperating and aligning, suggests Edwin van den Belt, software architect at Dat.mobility
    Read More
  • October 22, 2018
    Grey areas: who's legally responsible for C/AVs?
    Connected and autonomous vehicles are an exciting development in the ITS sector – but amid the hype some big questions about their deployment remain unanswered, finds Ben Spencer Connected and autonomous vehicles (C/AVs) have the potential to change the way we travel - and to eliminate road fatalities. But policy makers and regulators will need to ensure user and public safety is included in future planning. The legal and insurance industries will have to catch up, too. For example, questions over who is
    Read More

Highlighted Content