I'm Paul Comfort, and this is Transit Unplugged.

And on today's episode, we do another special podcast sharing

with one of our friends in the network of transit related podcast.

This one is with Brandon Bart Neck's podcast, the Future of Mobility.

And his guest is Larry Burns, formerly worked with General Motors, and a

leader in the autonomous vehicle space.

I think you'll be very interested in what he has to say about the true

objective for transportation, and why accessibility trumps speed, and

why he's so optimistic about the future, and how we can create a safer

transportation ecosystem, all on this special shared episode with our friend

Brandon Bartnack's Future of Mobility.

Thanks for being with us today on this episode of Transit Unplugged.

And stay tuned for the interview.

Today's guest is Larry Burns, joining for a round two discussion.

Who's Larry?

He was General Motors Corporate Vice President of Research and Development

and Planning from 1998 through 2009.

After that, he went to University of Michigan, Professor of Engineering

Practice and was the Director of the Program for Sustainable Mobility at

Columbia University, as well as consultant to the Google Self Driving Cars and

Waymo and several other major companies.

Larry is a true legend and innovator and leader in this space of future mobility.

Wrote the book Autonomy, the quest to build the driverless car and

how we will reshape our world.

One of my favorite books, certainly my favorite book in

this space of future mobility.

And has done foundational work in electrification and

autonomy and rethinking what the mobility landscape looks like.

So, I mentioned at the beginning, round 2 discussion with Larry, he

joined episode 93, which was one of my favorite episodes of the podcast so far.

If you haven't listened to it, I strongly recommend you go back there and listen to

that first and then join this discussion.

Although this discussion can also be standalone, there isn't

necessarily too much to build on.

Bye.

In that discussion, episode 93, we talked about Larry's background at GM,

how he thinks about mobility, his work in automation, and Electrification and

rethinking what he calls automobility and really the way in which we're

moving goods and people through this ecosystem and the work that's being done.

Great kind of foundational discussion here.

We pick up for this discussion with really the top level question, the fundamental

question of what is the objective?

Why?

Why do we care about mobility?

Why do we care about transportation?

What are we trying to solve?

What are we trying to provide as a service to individuals in society?

And I think that's a fundamental question, and it seems really simple.

But also the assumptions, many of the underlying assumptions that shaped

the transportation ecosystem, that shaped mobility, they've changed

over the last years and decades.

And so it's critical that we take a step back, re ask yourself, what

are we actually trying to do here?

And from there, we can then put the right solutions in place.

I think an awesome, wide ranging discussion here.

We talk about accessibility, we talk about the importance of

getting mass out of the system.

We talk about the importance of getting the crash out of the system, about

getting speed out of the system, how to do some of all of these things.

As always, wonderful discussion here with, with Larry.

I hope you enjoy it.

Please enjoy this conversation with Larry Burns.

Today I'm joined once again by

Larry Burns

for round two discussion here.

Larry, thanks for coming back on the podcast.

It's my pleasure,

Brandon.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah, I'm really excited here.

So the, uh, episode 93, we, we, we spoke and, um, one of my favorite episodes I've

done on the podcast so far was, uh, yeah, listening back and preparing for this.

And I, I think great to get your unique insights and expertise from, you know,

your time at GM and also sense and I don't know, the, the combination

of optimism and also realism and understanding of the technology and

where how everything comes together is.

Really remarkable and I'm looking forward to getting your thoughts

on a few different, uh, a few different topics here today.

So, the first kind of, where I want to start is maybe the

most fundamental question.

So we're talking future mobility.

I think where I want to start is what's the point of mobility?

What's the point of transportation?

So what, what are we actually, why do we have a transportation ecosystem?

And why is it so important that we provide mobility and movement of goods and

people?

Yes, yes.

I, I think that hierarchy is really important.

Transportation lets you move from one place to another.

It lets you access activities like jobs and school and retail stores,

entertainment that's taking place at a location other than where you are.

You jump on a vehicle, you walk, you ride a bike, and you transport yourself.

Transportation is also important because goods come to you.

And the transportation of goods in an economy are very, very

important to support that entire system from raw materials to

finished products to consumption.

So, it really, really is integral to, um, how we live and how our economies prosper.

But transportation in and of itself isn't the only way we can access activities.

Um, very importantly, what we've seen since the late 70s and early

80s is an explosion of communication and information technology that's

reshaped how we access activity.

So just think about e commerce.

Um, uh, today I can buy something almost anywhere in the world

by shopping 24 7 off my laptop.

And have it at my door many times within a day and that's pretty remarkable versus

having to get in my car and go to a store.

Um, I can remember, I'm old enough to remember when the first

automatic teller machines came out.

Before the ATM, I would get my physical paycheck and get in my car

and have to get to the bank on Friday at lunchtime because that's the

only time I could get to the bank.

Cash my check to get some physical money to spend the next week.

And, and now my kids don't even get cash.

And they don't go to a bank.

And they don't need to make that trip and schedule their lives around that trip.

So, what I'm getting at here, Brandon, is something bigger than transportation.

I like to call that accessibility.

Your ability to access the things you do to live your life.

And those are things like your job, and things like your family, and

things like, uh, going out to eat, and, uh, going to the movie, going

to church, those kinds of things.

And what we're seeing is the explosion in information technology

and communications technology is allowing us to have enormous growth

and access without having to travel.

And not having to make a trip saves you a lot more time

than making that trip faster.

So I think it's extremely important for anybody in the transportation business,

especially personal transportation business, especially the automobile

business, to really understand where accessibility is headed, and how

this next wave of information and communication technology, you know,

we've got the 5G, the quantum computing, the mixed reality, holograms, all of

that stuff, how could that reshape?

The way we live our lives and how could that reshape the economy and

what's the role of mobility devices?

I'm using those terms specifically.

I'm not saying a car, but mobility devices in, in that life that we lead.

So I, I think accessibility is a very, very important, um, uh,

future under, thing that has to be understood in the future.

And

it, it feels like it's, it's critical to be

able to question assumptions while, while doing this review.

So, right, so like my, my job, say on the business development front, 40

years ago or 30 years ago or whatever, would look very different, right?

If, if you think about a, submitting a proposal at some point, it was, you know,

type it up, print it, and then get in a car and go drive it and drop it off.

Or even if it's going to a, a fax machine or something, but looking at

that, at that access or that process of.

I'm getting something physical and going and dropping it off

and delivering it in person.

Like, I haven't ever thought about getting in a car to go deliver a proposal, right?

So like, that's a trip that's not even part of my consciousness or part of,

part of consideration at this point.

Yeah, let me give you another example.

My daughter has a meal planning business.

That's what she does, a digital meal planning business.

So we cook her recipes frequently and one day we were going to make.

Uh, a dish that required tandoori seasoning, which is not something we

would normally have in our pantry.

And we were gonna make it the next day, and so I, I thought, well,

I'll go to the store, which is three miles away, and buy my tandoori

seasoning, assuming they would have it.

And by the time I would have driven to the store, parked my car, walked

around in the store, bought the season and came back, it probably would have

been about 30 minutes of my time.

And, um, plus the gasoline cost and the depreciation cost of my

car insurance, my other option was to order it on Amazon Prime.

And Amazon Prime had it on my porch.

Now this is only a 3 ounce bottle, Brandon, had it on my porch in 16 hours.

And it was 5.

60.

And if I would have factored in the travel cost, not even my time cost,

but the travel cost to go to the store, plus buy it at the store,

I would have been looking at 10.

So it was an amazingly good deal for me to get the tandoori seasoning

delivered to my house because I didn't have to make the trip and it

was a good, very, very good value.

And as someone might ask, but Larry, asking a 200 pound delivery person

to bring a three ounce bottle of seasoning and put it on your porch.

A delivery van isn't that bad for sustainability?

Well, not necessarily because so many of my neighbors are buying

things from Amazon as well.

Rarely does an Amazon truck come to my house without stopping at

a couple of neighbor's houses.

So it's this marginal cost of going from the neighbor's house to my house, versus

the cost of me driving to the store.

I find all of that very, very interesting, Brandon.

And so this blending together of how we consume and how we plan our activities.

What's so important about me not having to go to the store is I didn't have

to constrain myself around the store hours and spend my time doing that.

So this life flexibility, part of the reason we're seeing so much debate around

remote work, it's the flexibility that it gives people on their schedules.

Um, and it's enormous flexibility, especially, you're not just

saving your commute time.

But you don't have to be at a certain spot at a certain time necessarily anymore.

And that gives you great freedom compared to what we've had in the past.

By the way, that's what a car is all about.

Why would somebody pay 40, 000 for a new car and leave it

parked 95 percent of the time?

It's because they want instantaneous access.

They want to get in their car and go where they want to go, when they want

to go, with whom they travel with.

Whenever they want to, they don't want to re solve that transportation

problem, so they're buying accessibility when they buy a car.

Not, not specific trips.

Freedom to go where you want to.

That's what I think has to be understood to understand the future

of mobility and understand the future of transportation, and then therefore

the innovation and the business opportunities associated with all of that.

One mistake someone could make in business development is to say the

future is going to be like the past.

And I'm going to extrapolate from the last 10 years forward to the next 10 years and

put my business plan together around that.

I think right now that's a very, very risky thing for any company to be doing,

is that extrapolated volume calculation.

And so you think

that this, this understanding is fundamental to a lot

of different aspects of the future of mobility, understanding that,

no, what we're actually providing is not It's not a trip, it's not, what

we're providing is accessibility.

Yes.

It's fundamental, Brandon.

And a synonym for accessibility is freedom.

We're providing freedom.

We're providing opportunities for everybody to realize their full potential.

Just this weekend I read a paper about The state of health of the Americans,

and actually Americans are not as healthy as people in many other countries.

And it has a lot to do with a group of Americans who do not have

good access to health care, or good access to education to learn

about how to live a healthier life.

So we, we need to let everybody realize their full potential, and

to let everyone realize their full potential, they have to have access.

To things like knowledge and information and, uh, and

opportunities, and that's what this is all about, and transportation,

I think, has to fit within that.

Let me give you another example.

I was hired by Transport Canada to do some work in this area.

And so Transport Canada could be looking at, or Canada as a country, could be

looking at adding a lane to, um, uh, interstate highway through Toronto.

Or they could be looking at providing, um, internet access.

Um, in a remote area of Alberta.

And you might say, those are two different things.

No, they're not.

Both of them are accessibility strategies.

You've got the group of people in rural Alberta who can gain access to

everything the internet brings by having better internet service, or you can save

commuters and other travelers through Toronto a few minutes, um, on their trip.

A lot of people save a few minutes.

Both of those are accessibility, it's, we're journeying, our life is

a journey through space and time.

Um, and, uh, every one of us has this life trajectory going from place to place,

spending time to get to different places.

And, uh, therefore, if you're gonna study movement, you've gotta study it

in terms of geography and time use.

And that's why communication, information, and transportation fit together so nicely.

So I would argue, we shouldn't have a Department of Transportation, we shouldn't

have a communications agency, we should have a Department of Accessibility.

And make the right infrastructure trade offs between better

communication infrastructure or better information infrastructure.

or better transportation infrastructure with the overriding goal of

people having better access to the things that they want to do.

Again, that's the freedom.

So yeah, I think it's really important to understand the future that way, Brandon.

And I think a related topic or question to one of the core

themes you hear of people who talk about safe, sustainable, transportation,

whatever verbiage they use, is that the optimal solution is a bunch of really

big, tightly packed cities where people are Walking and biking to what they need

and then that somehow, that solves most of these problems because you're not

getting, you don't need as many vehicles on the road and you're not emitting as

much and all of these types of things.

How do you think about that solution and also the impact of kind of understanding

what we're actually trying to solve for accessibility, flexibility here and

how that shapes what success actually looks like within this landscape?

Yeah,

yeah.

Yeah.

First of all, I start with some simple data.

When you ask Americans where they live, um.

53 percent of Americans say they live in suburbs.

24 percent say they live in rural areas.

And the rest, which is like 23%, 24 percent say they live in cities.

So while the study of transportation, um, seems to always come back to, uh,

the study of congestion, which seems to come back to congestion in cities, which

seems to come back to uh, light rail or subways or buses as alternatives to cars

or the walkable city, um, at least in America, three quarters of Americans have

voted with their choices to live somewhere other than a, a dense population center.

So back to this theme of freedom, I don't think it's up to me or

any politician to tell me where I should live or how I should live.

I think I should be able to make my choices.

I certainly don't want to harm other people with my choices.

We've got to manage these externalities of our choices.

So, your question is so important because why have cities existed historically?

Well, that's where the knowledge was, that's where the innovation

was, that's where the markets existed, but that's where the jobs

existed, and the goods existed.

But now, in today's world, I don't have to live downtown.

To do certain kinds of jobs, I can live in, remotely and do that work.

I don't have to live next to my doctor to get telehealth.

I don't have to live next to stores to have, um, goods delivered to me.

And I can get enormous amounts of information from around the world.

So I would contend the fundamental historical drivers of dense

urban areas are, are changing and changing dramatically.

And we saw that play out when the pandemic hit.

The speed at which people who lived in New York City and San Francisco and

the tech industry left the downtown area and moved to smaller towns in

Colorado, Florida, and elsewhere and haven't come back is remarkable.

And that is having a major impact on the economies of those cities.

So I would say you have to understand that through accessibility and the

pandemic put a lot of these initiatives on steroids and gave us a window into how

we, how we might be living differently.

Now my daughters are 35 and 32 and they've, they've been around long

enough to see the Great Recession.

I worked for General Motors when that hit.

We went bankrupt.

Um, I left.

I was an officer at GM.

So that's a big family crisis for us.

Dad's lost his job.

And then they've seen the pandemic, and they've seen companies cut

back when the pandemic hit.

You know what their conclusion is, Brandon?

They want to work for themselves.

They're tired of having their destiny controlled by things they can't control.

So they've both adjusted their career path to try to get into a world,

a gig worker kind of a world where they can control their own destiny.

So I think a lot of important stuff is playing out right now in the world and all

of that comes back to the auto industry and the kinds of cars and vehicles

that we might need to move around in.

And I think we really need to be examining this because what's happening, and we

talked about this in the earlier podcast.

Um, I do believe we're going to get to autonomous driving.

It's not a question of whether, it's a question of when.

And yes, it's taking longer than a lot of us had hoped or a lot of us had

hyped, but when you look at the enabling technologies that are out there to solve

the remaining challenges, you look at the continued progress of Waymo, Cruise,

Aurora with the trucks, and you look at what's going on in China, we will find the

value sweet spots with those technologies.

I think that's absolutely going to be central to getting the mass out of the

vehicles that we're moving around in.

I am really, really concerned in the United States about how

heavy vehicles have become and how much horsepower they have.

Just a couple facts quickly.

Since 1982 to 2022, 40 year period, if you look at the new cars built

and sold in 82, and compare that to the new cars built and sold in 2022.

They're 40 percent heavier in 2022, and the horsepower is 175 percent

higher, and speeds are about 55 percent higher, the rate of acceleration.

Um, and, and, um, and you say to yourself, let's see, mass is

related to kinetic energy, which is related to severity of crash.

If you hit someone and if you hit a pedestrian in a vehicle 40 pounds

heavier, Going faster than I had historically, the chances of the

pedestrian surviving go down dramatically.

Or a bicyclist, or a scooter rider.

And so, now you look at what we're doing with electric vehicles in the

United States, Cadillac just started talking about the Escalade IQ.

Brandon, it's a foot longer than the Escalade, it's four inches wider than the

Escalade, and a typical gasoline based Escalade weighs about 6, 000 pounds,

and this vehicle weighs 8, 500 pounds.

It has a 200 kWh battery, which weighs between 000 pounds, they haven't made

that public, but either number, that's the weight of the Detroit Lions offense.

Imagine going to the store to buy some milk and an Escalade IQ, and

knowing that you're taking the entire starting offense of the Detroit

Lions with you and your vehicle.

And then you say, okay, we're going to put a 7, 500 incentive

on that vehicle to get somebody to buy it because it's sustainable.

Yes, it's electric.

I get that.

But we really, really need to think hard about it.

So why is this dovetail back to accessibility?

Well, I think not only are we going to change the kinds of trips

we make in the future, I think we've got to make those trips.

and vehicles that are much better tailored with our physical mass.

So when I go from my home to my country club, and I've got a Chevy Traverse,

that's a 4, 200 pound vehicle, why am I not taking a 1, 500 pound vehicle?

Or maybe a 800 pound motorcycle?

Safety!

We gotta get the crash out of the system, get the mass out of the system,

and get the vehicles much more aligned.

With our body mass, recognizing speed isn't the be all, the

end all, it's flexibility.

Flexibility gives you much more accessibility increase than

a marginal increase in speed.

So this is all this stuff spinning around in my head right now, but

that's why accessibility, electric vehicles, autonomous vehicles,

mass, speed, horsepower, all those things are interrelated.

And I think for your age, Brandon, and your kids, um,

this is a really pivotal moment.

Um, to, to get this right.

We've got to get this right.

And

how, yeah, and how do we do that, right?

So like the, what you mentioned on the surface, right, of, or you look at the

Hummer, there's other, I don't want to just pick on GM, because it's not

just GM, because there's, there's other heavy vehicles on the road that are

faster than they need to be, and Oh, the

Lightning, yeah, the Ford F 150 Lightning's a heavy

vehicle, yeah, yeah, you name it, you can find them all, yeah.

So, but, but, so the thing though is, you can see

how they come into existence, right?

So, There's people who are asking for this, and if you look at the users,

they also want to be safe on the road, they want to be able to tow certain,

they want to, on the odd chance that they take the whole family for us up

north here, right, or wherever on a road trip, they have the space for that, they

can afford whatever price tags put on it, they don't really care about the

weight because they don't feel it, they like, they like having So, um, yeah.

A heavy, like a fast vehicle.

So like you can see how people are making purchase decisions.

You can see how that demand is driving R& D and development

decisions from the automakers.

It feels like this is not a system that's going to reach an optimal

conclusion without some type of external involvement here.

Like, what's,

what's the fix?

I think, um, number one, when we buy a car, we tend to buy

a car for the occasional use.

So the trip up north with the family and the dogs is a trip that maybe my wife

and I might make eight times a year.

But every day we're using our vehicles to move around locally and we're using a

vehicle designed and engineered for that occasional trip to make the everyday trip.

Somehow we've got to flip that around.

Somehow my everyday trips really need to be tailored.

to the fact that most of my everyday trips are made by myself,

occasionally with one other person.

In fact, 80 percent of the trips in the U.

S.

are one or two people.

But our cars are designed for four and six people.

And the trips I make typically every day, I'm not going over 45 miles an hour.

At least the speed limit on those roads don't exceed 45.

But yet, um, most of the vehicles we have can go 100, 120.

So if we can somehow flip this around and incentivize me to make

my everyday trips in a vehicle much more aligned with what's sustainable.

And it has to be safe, Brandon.

That's the number one requirement.

The number two requirement is it has to be spontaneous and responsive.

It has to be convenient.

And, um, then it has to give me a compelling experience.

So when I talk small vehicles, I'm not talking, you know, a cheap car.

Boring vehicle.

I think I could be in an exquisite, luxurious experience sitting by

myself in a mobility machine going from my home to my country club,

arriving as the best dressed rider in a vehicle that makes a statement,

but it happens to be 1, 500 pounds rather than four, five, 6, 000 pounds.

So somehow I think, I think it's a couple of things.

Number one, we have to get a A feedback system where lower mass begets lower mass.

The smaller the vehicles, the safer the system, the safer the

system, the more willing people are to ride in smaller vehicles.

Secondly, I think we have to have the ability to get you that occasional

use vehicle when you need it.

Not riding in it all the time, but it gets to you conveniently.

Think car rental.

But think, the car shows up at your door when you're ready to

make your trip up north and it shows up at your door autonomously.

So you're not getting the labor costs of having to get that car to you.

So somehow if we can flip this around, and I'm, I'm, I don't mean to be pie

in the sky here, this is not easy.

And I'm somewhat idealistic, I recognize this.

But if you're looking for solutions, we've got to flip this around.

Rather than me buying a vehicle that can do everything.

And then compromising the one person, low speed, short trip by taking that

vehicle that does everything, flip it around, have me own or lease the

vehicle that does optimally most of the trips I make, and then find a way to

get an occasional use vehicle to me.

And I think those businesses can work.

Rental car companies work.

Heck, if you go To Denver in the winter because you want to take a

ski trip, they'll be, oh, there's a lot of four wheel drive cars that

you rent in Denver because that's when you need a four wheel drive car.

Somehow the rental car companies make that business work.

So I just think there's business models and there's ways to rethink this.

Autonomous vehicles are very, very important, not just for me riding

around without having to drive, but very important if we're going to have

shared fleets like that, getting the empty vehicle to me so I can ride in it.

And not having to have a labor cost to do that is an exciting opportunity.

I think there's a solution.

Um, again, I don't want to sound naive that it's going to happen immediately,

but your generation better get on with thinking about this because I don't

think you want to wake up 40 years from now like I have woken up 1982 to 2022.

All of this effort by regulators, everybody, in that

entire period from 1982 on.

Keep in mind, Brandon, the first safety regulations, the first fuel

economy regulations, the first emission regulations were in the 1970s.

So, the United States leaders acknowledged we had issues.

And the measure of progress on the automotive fleet in the United States

is that in that time period since we acknowledged we had an issue,

cars have gotten 40 percent heavier and 175 percent more powerful.

How can that be part of the answer, given the role that mass plays with respect

to energy consumption, with respect to safety, and with respect to material

consumption when you build the car?

So that 200 kWh battery in that Escalade IQ has lithium in it.

And everybody's concerned about lithium mines.

So we're gonna mine lithium, put it in a 200 kWh battery.

That's going to sit idle 95 percent of the time and we're worried about

geopolitical and environmental aspects of lithium mines.

We've got to really step back, Grant, and I think rethink the

future through an accessibility lens.

Communication, information, and transportation.

How do I get access without having to move because that's much more

energy efficient than Moving faster.

And then when I do have to move, how do I do that access tailored to

the real requirements of my trip?

A one person trip, shouldn't that be in a one or two person vehicle rather

than a four or six person vehicle?

Um, all of that kind of thought process.

So I think, I think it can be thought through, Brandon.

But I'm telling you, if we just keep doing business as usual here, and we

extrapolate the past forward, Your generation is going to look back

and be as sad about the results as I do when I look back on my cohort

group and where we've led the world.

Yeah, and how, I don't know, so we talked to, we've touched

on it here, we've talked a bit on the last discussion about, you know, the

importance of autonomy and you mentioned get the crash out of the system allows

you to get the mass out of the system.

You have this positive loop that will allow us to over time.

If we, when, when we do have more autonomous vehicles on the road in safer

conditions, that, that will bode very well, um, but in the, in the meantime, or

as we continue to develop that technology and prove it out, um, I guess back to,

back to this question of like, what do we, who are the main people who can actually

make an impact on here and, and how?

And I mentioned, I mean, the personal user, right?

Like, I don't know, is it worth, do I take the, uh, And MARTA is maybe a

strong word, but is it worth it that I go and buy a light vehicle just because

that's, that's the right thing to do?

And maybe it's slightly riskier for me driving my, my son around?

Is it right for, I mean, the OEMs will say, hey, we had that, we

had those light luxury vehicles.

They weren't, they either weren't selling or they just weren't making as much

on a per margin, per vehicle margin basis from a profitability perspective.

So they lean into these big vehicles and like there's other actors who.

I don't know, people have good excuses for why we are where we are.

Like, who is, yeah, who owns the burden and should take the first

step here of actually let's, let's get us towards a safer,

better system?

That's a marvelous question.

I happen to believe safety's gotta be the overriding priority.

And so would I want you to just buy a light vehicle and perhaps put you and your

family at risk because you're trying to do the right thing from an energy standpoint?

I would be concerned about that, Brandon, but I'm also concerned

about the safety of pedestrians.

My goodness, there's a tragedy in Detroit just this last week where

the CEO of Eastern Market and his wife, as pedestrians, were hit by

a car in downtown Detroit and she died and he was severely injured.

I don't know the specifics around that crash, but that's an unfair Um, situation,

the pedestrian having to be put up against a vehicle moving at a speed and

a mass like it is, so I just, I just feel like, um, we first could do, you know,

digital twins of the system that we're envisioning and really begin to better

understand This, uh, lower mass because lower mass dynamic and where it could end.

I, I believe in the field of dreams.

If I build it, they will come.

So I think we've got to show it in some places and in some communities

where people indeed can live with a much lighter mass mix of vehicles.

They can indeed get the occasional used vehicle.

But, but I, I do think regulating fuel economy has not gotten the job done.

Um, I, I shared cars in general statistics versus 1982.

If you look at pickup trucks specifically, pickup trucks, 1982

new pickup trucks versus 2022 new pickup trucks, they're 50 percent

heavier, 210 percent more powerful.

Zero to 60 is 60 percent faster, and you know what?

There's been no improvement in the fuel economy of those pickup trucks.

For 40 years.

So, scratch our head and say, that's not, that hasn't worked.

So maybe we have to start thinking about regulating mass.

Maybe we could do that in a proactive way, where I incentivize people who

buy lower mass vehicles, or And a, um, uh, uh, uh, on the other side,

if you get a, if you want to have a larger, heavier vehicle, you have

to pay more for your license plate.

And that, that's done in Europe, by the way.

That's not a new idea.

But just public policy in general says there's an externality with mass.

That my decision to drive a much heavier vehicle has an impact on you.

Because you're mixing in a fleet of vehicles with my heavier vehicle.

How does that compare to secondhand smoking?

When the world realized, or the United States world realized that if I

smoked, I'm impacting my office mate, and therefore, I shouldn't be able

to smoke in front of other people, that's a big deal, and the rate of

smoking is down dramatically, so maybe there's some lessons learned here.

It's not going to happen overnight.

But the first step is, I think, acknowledging that what's been done in the

last 40 years hasn't gotten the job done.

The second step is realizing that if we keep making these vehicles

bigger with EVs, we're not on a path to sustainability the way the

environmentalists think we might be.

And therefore, we've got to do something different, and maybe the

two real leverageable variables in this system are mass and speed.

And I can demonstrate, Brandon, in detail with graphics and other things

how speed is way overplayed as an important thing in our daily lives.

What I'm saying is, if I can improve your speed twice as fast in your daily

life, that doesn't come close to the accessibility enhancement I give you just

by giving you flexible working hours.

Because flexible working hours lets you be at more places at more times,

lets you manage your schedule better.

So if your metric is accessibility, uh, speed matters, being able to go faster

than I walk matter, but it certainly doesn't matter 70 miles per hour on I 96

versus 85, or 90, and the flow of traffic.

So I think enforcing speed limits is going to be important.

I think we've got to get the masks on, we've got to enforce speed limits.

And then I think we have to get incentives for less mass begets

less mass and ultimately get to that by showing what's possible.

So I don't give up on that.

I'm hopeful that we can find a way to solve it.

And the first step is to recognize we've got a problem here.

But we've got an opportunity.

We have a huge opportunity with accessibility.

Because if we can get everybody these things and laptops and

really good access to telehealth.

And all of that stuff.

I mean, you take something like diabetes, does a person have to physically go to

the doctor to have their diabetes treated?

Or can you do that with, with, uh, sensors through your, your, your phones

and other things and get the medicine there through an e commerce type system?

And, and really move the needle on health because of accessibility,

which is information communication.

Is this making sense, Brandon?

Yeah, it is, and I guess one quick side note on the speed

question, or the speed note, actually, one of the, when I did a deep dive a

few episodes ago with Waymo, Francesca Favaro on safety, I asked her what was

the biggest surprise for her as she got into the data, and she said, yeah, the

impact and the crazy speed involved in such a high percentage of the crashes

and incidents that they were viewing, it's, yeah, it's potentially astounding.

I mean, I can't, how big How much speeding actually contributes to

certainly the safety aspect and even the sustainability aspect, right?

Vehicles moving faster, like it's, it's nonlinear the amount of additional

energy that they utilize as well.

If you look at the history of transportation planning and

transportation engineering, a lot of the.

Tools came to be when the interstate system was being planned in the U.

S.

in the 50s and 60s.

And so you had to do a cost benefit analysis on adding capacity to a lane

in the freeway, to the freeway system.

And so they would say, well, by having more capacity, we can save travel time.

So we would save five minutes for a lot of people.

And so you take a lot of people times five minutes times wage

rate, and that's a lot of benefit.

The real question is, what are those people doing with that 5 minutes?

Versus really having the flexibility of maybe, uh, getting to work anytime

between 7 in the morning or 9 in the morning, leaving anytime between 4 and

6, and realizing how that enables you to be a coach for your kids baseball

team, and have access to all kinds of experiences in your life because

you have more control over your time.

And that's much more valuable than that marginal increase in speed.

And I always wonder when, when people do blow by me on the expressway, I'm

saying where are they going, and why do they have to get there, and why

are they putting me at risk to be able to go 90 miles an hour on the freeway

rather than 70, and what are they going to do with their extra 10 minutes

when they get to their destination?

So I, I just think we have to have a, we really need to step back and

think about what's going on here and not say, Something as simple as

we just have to get everybody in an electric vehicle and we're all set.

That's not the answer to sustainability, Brandon, for your generation.

Not that electric vehicles are bad, I really believe in them, but it's a much

more complex, much bigger set of questions than we just gotta get everybody in

an electric vehicle and we're all set.

Yeah, and I think this point of realizing the under arching

objective and what we're actually trying to do which is enrich lives

with Giving the ability for people to move from place to place and to have

goods moved from, from place to place is so important and something that I've

struggled with kind of anecdotally, right?

So like, I chose to live, I choose, continue to choose to

live in a suburb because I, this is for, for various reasons.

I have now a commute that's an hour one way on an expressway, which I, on the

surface, would, would never want to do.

But the fact that I'm making that drive on average twice a week and I do it.

When it makes sense, and timing's very flexible, and I'm remote on a day like

this, and I'm able to be there with my son at breakfast to help out with,

like, there's so much more factors that, like, if I take a step back and look at,

like, the super rational mind is, no, I should live right next to my work, and I

should optimize, and I should just make all my decisions around that, or, like,

I should live in a city center for all the reasons so that I can walk and bike

to places, but, like, that's not what I've valued in my life so far, and I

don't think it's because I'm Thank you.

Foolish, or that I, I mean, I'm probably foolish for other reasons, but I don't

think it's because of poor judgment.

It's just I'm optimizing for something different than

what has been the narrative.

Absolutely.

I say that's just let everybody realize their full potential.

Let everybody have the freedom to live the way that they want.

By the way, the person that decides they want to live in a downtown

area Also should have the peace of mind that if they're walking

downtown, they're going to be safe.

They're not going to be compromised by an escalade limousine rushing down an

avenue to try to beat a light because they think they've got a client in the

back seat that thinks their time is really more precious than the safety

of the pedestrians on those streets.

And that doesn't mean you can't have escalades as limousines.

Yes, you can.

But my thesis would be, you have to pay for the externality of your mass

and power if you want to have one because you are imposing a risk on other

people, and I don't think that's fair.

Yeah, and I think this is a tough question, but it goes

along with, so, getting towards this, this future, safer, accessible, kind

of transportation ecosystem or mobility ecosystem or, Just even out beyond

that, like in enriching lives, we mentioned kind of the externalities and

the role potentially of public policy.

You also, one of the themes here has been, there are business opportunities

opening in the cracks too, right?

Of like, as we make this understanding that, as we realize that, no it's not.

It's not that people want to move from place to place in

an incrementally faster way.

It's that they want flexibility and they want accessibility.

That's how something like Amazon, right?

That whole business was built around solving this.

Do you have any thoughts on, either examples of, or thoughts of,

kind of, um, theoretically, like, where there are additional cracks,

where there are real business opportunities and opportunities to make

an impact?

Well, I'm going to kick myself on this one a bit, because my dissertation, I

went to University of California, Berkeley for my PhD, and I wrote my dissertation.

It was a book called the um, Transportation, Temporal and

Spatial Components of Accessibility.

It's a real mouthful, but I was into this stuff in the middle 70s, 1970s,

and I, and I wrote the book, and the conclusion in the book was really

that this, this time dimension and flexibility was more important than speed.

That came through crystal clear.

Also what came through crystal clear at that time was it was

going to be really tough for bus systems to compete with cars.

If the metric is accessibility, if you've got a car parked outside and you

can spontaneously go where you want to, when you want to, and not be relying

on routes and schedules, you just really, really have a better solution.

So I have that on my mind, and then I begin to watch the, looking

back, because I did not work on this subject after I graduated.

I went to work at General Motors and learned the business of

designing, engineering, and manufacturing cars, and I loved it.

It was a great career.

And it wasn't until 1998, when I became head of R& D at GM, that Rick

Wagner, who was my boss at the time, said, Larry, if we were inventing

the car today rather than 100 years ago, what would we do different?

And he said, I need you to think about that for us.

That liberated me to go back and begin to think about accessibility, Brandon.

And what I realized is all the things that have come along in

information and communication.

So the laptop computer, the mobile phone.

Um, streaming, um, virtual reality, augmented reality, um, and uh, e commerce.

All of those things happened, and I said, well, what happened in the transportation

industry to enhance accessibility?

We were more obsessed with cup holders.

And the last big accessibility innovation in the transportation system in the U.

S.

was the interstate system in the 50s.

So what I'm saying here is focus on time flexibility as

a business and an innovator.

Anything you can do that helps people use their time more efficiently, and helps

them have better experiences in life around that, I think you have winning

business opportunities because Apple, Amazon, um, you know, uh, Microsoft,

uh, these extremely valuable companies.

They really innovated in accessibility and the communication and

information technology world, but it really came back to time use.

Even Google's foundation, Alphabet's foundation, was search.

And when I wrote my dissertation, I had to go to a physical library

to get a physical journal article and check it out and reference it.

They came up with this search capability, which has turned into this enormous

capability of access to information, with great business models behind it.

So I think we're just getting started, to be honest.

Even though the journey from 1980 to today on accessibility with the communication

and information innovation has been phenomenal, and it's reshaped how we

live, I think it's just getting started.

And the technology that's going to now combine in the next 10

years, Again, quantum computing is an example, and all of that.

I think there's going to be a huge set of new business opportunities,

but I don't think it's going to be rooted in physically moving me.

I think we're going to be physically moving, uh, electrons and atoms,

and, and, um, bits and digits and all of that stuff, information,

and throw 3D printing into the mix.

And you begin to think about the labor implications of that.

I'm on the board of a real estate developer in Florida.

We're doing a new town called Babcock Ranch.

We just hosted an innovation workshop for home building.

My gosh, Brandon, the progress that innovators are making with

3D printed homes is phenomenal.

And you think about the labor implications of 3D printing a wall.

With the exterior surface finished with the 3D printer, the interior surface

is finished with the 3D printer.

There's not drywall.

The conduits for the HVAC and the plumbing and the wiring are all

integrated into those wall systems and they snap together like Lego blocks.

So, again, it's productivity driven, it's time use driven, and that's

where the business opportunities really are in all of this.

And you know what's good about it?

I think it's more sustainable.

Much more sustainable.

So, um, there's a winning combination out there that sustainability is good

business if you use design innovation to deliver new, exciting experiences

to people, but really, really gets the waste out of the system.

Because a lot of that waste is over processing and extra material

and extra energy and extra mass.

So if I was your age, I would be focused on what I call design innovation.

Focused on the entire experience of people living their lives.

How do we make them better?

And then, um, the technology innovation that lets you have even greater

experiences in your design system.

And then I would throw in some operational excellence because you

gotta deliver the good experiences.

Huge opportunities out there.

Yeah, cool.

And while you're talking there, I mean, so I just recorded it just, just before

this, I'll probably come out a couple of weeks after this, this episode.

But with, uh, Corey Clothier talking about AV or autonomous vehicle

applications and this, this question of like, where, so what you're mentioning

of autonomous vehicles and what we're talking about here is like private use

vehicles is that's the Holy grail that we're working towards, but even, even

in the mid midterm, there are autonomy.

Capabilities.

So we talked about like applications of on a mine moving, you know, a 90

mile stretch and not needing a driver or like on a huge, on a huge campus,

the ability to send a vehicle to go pick something up for you and come back

rather than you needing to go do that.

Like, it feels like even in the here and now today, there are really cool

technologies that exist of where you can apply Things like an autonomous vehicle

in a closed setting and yeah, you can save that trip, save that time for the human.

Absolutely, we're gonna find those use cases and some

people call that geofencing, but they're getting darn close, Brandon.

When Mary Barra introduces ultra cruise and she says it can handle 95 percent of

driving scenarios, that's pretty profound.

Now, that's not 95 percent of miles.

A driving scenario may be, uh, weather, uh, traffic conditions,

um, those kinds of things.

Time of day, day of year, wind, uh, dust, those things.

But that 95 is going to become 96, it's going to become 97, 98, and at some point,

rather than calling it advanced driver assistance system, where the assumption

is the technology is assisting the driver, we're going to flip that around.

And a occupant in the vehicle is going to be assisting the technology.

It's a big switch, but it's real important to understand what I just said.

Now the assumption is most of the driving is being done with the

technology, and occasionally I need a human to help me make a decision.

So let's say, you know like on your mapping system in your car, they

say, Hey Brandon, in a quarter of a mile you're going to turn right.

And then they say in a thousand feet you're going to turn right, in a

hundred feet you're going to turn right.

In the future, it might be, you're sitting there and you're engaging with your kids

and having fun, maybe you're playing a game in the car or something like that,

and then suddenly, Hey, Brandon, in a quarter of a mile, I'm going to need

to have you help me make a decision.

And that's the technology asking you that.

And they, it then says, up the road, we're going to make a left turn.

I've done this many, many times as my technology can handle it, but today

The weather's a little different, the traffic's a little different.

Would you just look out the window, right and left, and when I say I

think I'm ready to make my left turn, you say yes, you're right.

Boy, that'd be a big help to me.

It's that kind of thing, Brandon.

So now it's, the human is assisting the technology.

And that's going to completely change the experience of everybody in the car.

And when we start to approach that capability, and you're saying,

as a driver, you have to sit with your eyes on your road, your hands

over your wheel, your feet over the pedals, you're not going to do that.

Driving is the distraction at that point in time.

And you're going to let your mind wander.

That's just a reality.

So, oh, this is going to get exciting.

And then you say, the camp is kind of setting.

So some people would say, how wasteful is it that Larry would dispatch his

robotic vehicle To run up to the wine store to get the wine store to

put some wine in the car to bring it back home all those empty miles.

Well, if I had driven my car to the wine store and drove it back, they

would not count that as an empty mile.

They'd count that as a loaded mile, but it's the same miles

and it didn't use my time.

So some of this is rooted in these metrics that we talk about.

And I know when I first started writing about autonomous vehicles, they were

uber like systems without drivers.

Oh my god, people would jump at my analysis and say, we can't have

all those empty miles out there.

Well, there's a lot of empty miles.

Think of all the empty seat miles when I drive my 8 passenger

Traverse with just myself in it.

I'm taking seven empty seats with me all the time.

So the point we're making here, Brandon, in our discussion, there is enormous

opportunity to make the world better.

There's enormous opportunity for everybody to be able to flourish.

I'm talking about Republicans and Democrats, red states, blue

states, rural areas, college educated, high school educated.

We've got to get our mind around how do we make things better

for everybody simultaneously.

I think this accessibility lens And the way that technology is going to shape

how we can access things in the future in a much more energy efficient, much

safer, much more materials efficient world with much greater equality of access.

All of that is there for the having by your generation, because my

generation dropped the ball big time.

And you just touched on, or you've touched on this a couple

times, but this idea of like the, the common critiques of the empty miles or the

incremental drop off from, from Amazon.

It sounds like that's not necessarily something that's,

that's super concerning to you.

And then part of the, part of the things I've struggled with when that

idea gets brought up, and we talk about robo taxi fleets and, you know, you,

you picture this future of a bunch of, Empty Ubers driving around waiting for

something like these, all the actors in the system are going to be optimized

to minimize those empty miles and to be as efficient and effective as possible.

Right?

So

why, why, if you were a fleet owner, if you were a fleet owner

and your cost structure was depreciation and maintenance and insurance and energy.

Why would you have your car driving around empty, hovering, you, you would

have it go set, set and stage somewhere.

And we, we, you know, it's hard to pin down exactly how many parking

places are in the United States.

But I think a good rule of thumb is on the order of six to eight parking spaces

exist for every car in the United States.

So we've got a huge amount of land today.

Some of that can still be used for these vehicles to stage themselves and not

ride around, but they can go somewhere and just stage in an orderly way.

But you know, there's a lot of people who would just soon not have the futures

we're talking about here today happen.

So they're gonna find these dramatic alternative stories.

Like, oh my gosh, a cruise vehicle caused some traffic to back up in San Francisco.

Well, you know what?

There's a lot of everyday drivers who cause traffic to

back up in San Francisco, too.

We just don't report on it.

We report on the cruise vehicle or the Waymo vehicle that does that.

But I think you should be optimistic.

Your listeners should be optimistic that, personally, I don't think

anything needs to be invented.

Honestly, invented to make this world that I see play out, and this world that

I see play out, I think, has a whole lot of positives associated with it.

But if there's groups of people who think, well, we've got that job done

by making every car 1, 500 to 3, 000 pounds heavier, uh, with lithium

ion batteries, and we've solved the climate change issue in transportation.

Nope, that's not the answer.

I'm all in favor of electric drive, all in favor of zero emission vehicles, all

in favor of alternatives to fossil fuels.

But from a transportation system standpoint, adding all that mass to

the system makes no sense to me at all.

By the way, we need to benchmark China on that.

That's not what's happening in China, Brandon.

They're playing, they're getting some really, really compelling vehicles with

30 kilowatt hour batteries in them.

You know, one sixth to one third is big.

And, um, they're playing it differently.

Well, and I'll take a stab at this, but if you

had to kind of, as we close here, summarize the key points that you're

hoping someone takes away from this.

So, what I'm hearing is, one, the foundational thing is understanding

what we're trying to optimize for is not number of trips or speed of trips

or anything involving necessarily the traditional metrics, but it's

Accessibility, it's flexibility, it's the ability for people to access the

things that will enrich their lives, whether it's through moving themselves

or moving goods to, to, to them.

And two of the biggest things that we need to be driving to get out of this system is

mass of the vehicles and the speed of the vehicles moving, with the end objective

being, those are huge factors for safety as well as sustainability, but really,

Safety is critical in both of those areas.

How close is that to a kind of a neat summary and what would you add or change?

That was per that was perfect.

If you were in my class, I'd give you a pretty good grade on that summary.

I'd say you paid attention really well, and I appreciate that, but you nailed it.

That's exactly what's going on.

Great, yeah, and anything else you're hoping someone

takes away from the conversation here?

Just don't give up.

I think there's really some 25 years old again, knowing what I know, I'd

be extremely excited about the career opportunities, the new business growth

opportunities, and The, uh, ways to make life better for a lot more people, but

we, we have to get out of this trap of, of, um, right and wrong and, you know,

all these different extreme political views that people are taking on, because

that, that's causing frictional losses in the system when everybody can be

flourishing, really, really can't.

I mean, you hear this debate about the, you The East Coast elites in the city, the

East Coast urban elites versus the rural Midwest people or the rural South people.

We don't need that.

We have a chance with these technologies, in my opinion, for everybody to benefit.

No matter where they live, no matter what they want to do in their life.

And when everyone jumps quickly to judge something through those kind of

political lenses, that's not, that's not serving us well, Brandon, so.

I'm hoping, uh, people will open their minds up and understand some of these

concepts more broadly and, and, and see this path forward, uh, is very compelling.

All

right.

Yeah.

And I think that's a, that's a great place to leave it.

Well, Larry, once again, really appreciate it.

This has been a lot, a lot of fun, great getting your thoughts, definitely learning

and has, has my mind, uh, thinking about many different things and I hope to

hope the same for anyone listening here.

So yeah, really appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Stay in touch, please, Brandon.

Thank you.

Bye.

Well, there you have it.

Hope you enjoyed that conversation with Larry Burns.

So, what stands out?

First, the, starting with why, right?

Why are we doing this?

What are we trying to achieve?

And the key thing is we're not moving vehicles for the sake of moving vehicles.

We're not even moving people or goods for the sake of moving people and goods.

What we're doing is enriching lives through mobility.

And we're providing access and flexibility, we're providing access

to The services and the places and the things that people want and so

when we reframe and we think about that ecosystem, we also realize that

physical vehicles and infrastructure is not the only piece of the puzzle here.

All of this whole technology ecosystem plays together, right?

We talked at the beginning about a few things of like, yeah,

trips can be replaced, right?

So like this podcast interview, this was recorded virtually.

I do these from almost always virtually virtual In the past, I would have needed

to gone outside, somehow transported myself to a location where Larry was, have

this discussion, move back, like, there is no effort that can be done to speed up

that physical travel that would be faster or more effective or even, I think, safer,

more sustainable than the way we did this.

And there's downsides to that, I mean, especially in this situation,

right, there's benefits of being in person and that connection and The

conversation you can have in it, all of that, but there's also tremendous

benefit in leveraging things outside of the physical transportation realm as

part of this overall solution of what we're trying to solve for, which is

accessibility is, as Larry mentioned.

So that reframing is critical.

And then when you think about the key levers that we have to

pull and the key challenges in the system, which we talk about.

Mass and how mass begets mass.

And we continue to add mass as well as speed to the system.

That's not sustainable.

It's not safe.

There's a bunch of, uh, negative externalities that come with that.

So how do we solve this?

And we talk about the importance of public policy, as well as the importance

of all of us who are in this space doing work, realizing the objectives and our

role in trying to find solutions that.

Ideally provide positive externalities, or at least aren't

making things worse for others.

And so, a lot of challenges we talk about here.

One of the things I always appreciate about Larry is the optimism

that also comes along with this.

Of, yes, there's challenges, there's, you know, kind of this death spiral

of sorts in the mass world, right?

Of mass begets mass, we get heavier and heavier and faster cars, and

electrification makes us worse.

And there's a lot of challenges here.

Well, we also should be optimistic because we continue to innovate

and we continue to find solutions.

There's a lot of solutions out there.

There's a lot of great work that has been done, is being done,

and will continue to be done.

And there are solutions out there.

So let's keep working towards them.

So that's, that's really what stands out to me.

It's this different framing of.

The challenge that we're facing, some thoughts about prioritizing

the challenges and solutions, and also just the overarching optimism

that comes with it of, yeah, we'll solve this and we'll figure it out.

Hi.

This is Tris Hussey editor of the Transit Unplugged podcast.

Thank you for listening to this special episode of Transit Unplugged with our feed

drop guests, Brandon Bartneck and Larry Burns from the Future of Mobility Podcast,

look for the links to subscribe to the Future of Mobility in the show notes.

Coming up next week, we head to Kansas City, Missouri.

Where we talk with Frank, wait, the third President and CEO of the Kansas

City Area, Transportation Authority, or KCATA on everything of this

really unique agency that straddles two states and several counties.

To get the job done.

Now, if you want to make sure you are always up to date with whatever

we're doing on Transit Unplugged.

Make sure to follow us on social media and get our newsletter.

All the information can be found@transitunplugged.com.

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