Autonomy, electrification and equity - some thoughts on emerging personal mobility and why transit is important
Samitha Samaranayake
Cornell University
School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
The future of personal mobility aims to be electric and autonomous, but currently with a massive focus on personal vehicles. For example. the current focus on achieving carbon-neutral mobility is via aggressive investments in personal electric vehicles and charging infrastructure for these vehicles. Unfortunately, this is reinforcing our dependency on personal vehicles and does not help mitigate issues such transportation equity and congestion. Exploring opportunities to create better mass-transit systems has the potential to help address some of these concerns. Furthermore, autonomy has the potential for enabling new transit modes. This talk will discuss opportunities and challenges in this space.