The Future of Public Transportation in the Era of Mega-Innovation

Abstract: Today we are facing a new profound wave of innovation that is changing again the transportation paradigms. As before since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, new patterns are modifying civilian ground transportation, specially in metro urban areas, where Public Transportation stockholders have to adapt or die. The advent of autonomous vehicles with Waymo technology established in few urban areas in the US, the spread of the Transit Oriented Development policies in many US metro urban areas due to housing accessibility scarcity, the adoption of new forms of communication where large satellite networks can connect directly to smartphones and the surge of artificial intelligence are making the 20s of the XXI century a perfect storm of innovation.

As our metro areas are growing more vertically in the third dimension due to population growth, our transportation systems stay virtually in two dimensions creating artificial congestion points between supply and demand of transportation services. This paper will try to present the new scenarios where innovation is going to change our way to move around our metro urban areas, our perception of Public Transportation and Private Transportation, our expectations and demands, and finally, who will pay the price of innovation by winners and losers.