Preparing Cities for a Transportation Revolution - Wellington

TRANSPORTATION in our cities is on the verge of an extraordinary revolution. New ride services such as Uber are growing, while vehicle connectivity and automation technology are rapidly developing. But with rumours and speculation filling the air, city leaders and planners face a minefield of contradictory predictions and extraordinary promises for the future of transportation.

Here is what people are saying about this workshop:

• "Eye-opening, thought-provoking, challenging (in a good way!)"  Philip Morrison, Engineer, Beca
• "Covers a broad range of issues relating to new mobility with a focus on the potential impact of AVs on the transport system." Tony Sizemore, Transport Planning Manager, NZTA
• "Opening your mind to the prospect of automated transport and how it will be integrated into your city."  Melissa Shipman, Dunedin City Council
• "Not necessarily a workshop with bold projections on timing or usage but rather explores the issues of planning, implementation and factors resisting change". Participant, Christchurch
• "A good broad overview of the rather complex world of future transport mobility options - lots to think about." Glen Koorey, ViaStrada

The details:

This New Mobility Workshop is designed to prepare city leaders, transportation and land use planners, entrepreneurs, future thinking citizens, and anyone who has responsibilites in transportation decision-making for significant coming changes to mobility.  The focus of the workshop is on planning for both short and long-range evolutionary impacts of ride hailing, Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS), and vehicle automation from both general and local planning perspectives in order to prepare cities and communities for transformation. 

The workshop addresses the contradictory predictions and extraordinary promises, and explores product diffusion models to propose:

• Four sequential 'Automated Vehicle Eras' that we are likely to live through; 
• Two key future mobility markets and the forces encouraging and discouraging each of them;
• Four immediate responses available to planners and politicians;
• Four anxieties associated with automated vehicles;
• Nine reasons vehicle automation analysts believe traffic congestion will be tamed, and reasons to think they are wrong;
• Six reasons people will retain vehicle ownership rather than prefer robotaxis;
• Four performance metrics for managing concessions to private sector robotaxi fleets;
• And more.....

This workshop is one of a series in regional centres of New Zealand and Australia.  Attending a workshop in your regional centre means that you will work in a group of local peers to consider the implications and imperatives of each AV era, and enhance your understanding of the underlying issues influencing the speed of change, linked to your local context.

Half presentation and half group discussion, the workshop content and exercises will shed light on why the urban and infrastructure-planning aspects of these developments to our transportation systems are as difficult as they are important.  Participants will be guided past challenges of uncertainty about future developments and technological innovations to consider actionable solutions that can begin today.

The workshop content is based on the recently released text book, The End of Driving:  Transportation Systems and Public Policy Planning for Autonomous Vehicles, (Grush-Niles, 2018, available from Elsevier).  There will be a prize draw for a copy of the book at each workshop:  among all participants who register for early-bird tickets (deadline 30/7/2018).  The workshop has been developed in collaboration with the authors of the book.

This Wellington workshop is hosted by Beca at their office at 85 Molesworth Street.  Beca will also provide refreshments during morning and afternoon breaks, plus lunch.  Please ensure to indicate during your registration if you have any special dietary requirements.  We thank Beca for their leadership in hosting this event and others around the country.

Workshops are also planned in other New Zealand and Australian cities as follows:  Auckland, (happened in August, see news media here), Christchurch, Dunedin, Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane.  If you are not in Wellington, click on this link to find the Eventbrite page for your city.

Students:  There are a limited number of free scholarships available.  If interested, please send an email to paulminett@tripconvergence.co.nz explaining your interest in the session, detailing your course of study and institution, and requesting consideration for a scholarship.  

Please click here for the full PDF flyer.  Please note that the New Zealand and Australia workshops will be presented in full by Paul Minett.

We reserve the right to cancel or reschedule any individual workshop in the series if there are insufficient registrations or other complicating factors.  Full refunds will be provided.