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Inside the Transit World's Biggest Week: Our Special Edition from Chicago
Last week, about 13,000 people who plan, build, fund and run America's transit systems packed into McCormick Place in Chicago for the American Public Transportation Association's TRANSform Conference and EXPO. The EXPO comes around once every three years. This one was a homecoming. The very first APTA EXPO was held in Chicago in 1981.
Transportopia was there. It was a spectacle, and it was information overload. More than 800 companies filled the show floor with buses, railcars, fare systems, charging gear and autonomous shuttles. APTA President and CEO Paul Skoutelas called public transportation "a $102 billion industry experiencing unprecedented momentum."
One episode can't cover all of it. So our expanded News & Views special edition focuses on the conference's final day and APTA's Innovation Summit, a series of seven-minute talks in the spirit of TED.
The day opened with a laugh. Chicago improv group Funny You Should Care staged a family on a plane. Dad is the Department of Transportation. His sons are Transit and Highways. Guess who's flying first class, paying with a credit card called "the bond market." The room laughed. A few people winced.
Then we hear from Cara Mazzei of Hitachi Rail, which supplied the trains and driverless train control system for Honolulu's Skyline. It's the first fully automated urban rail system in the United States. Cara's talk covers what it takes to build a rail community on an island that had never had a modern passenger train. Think farmers markets on station platforms, robotics students, a community college pipeline and a mayor who spent $1.5 million telling everyone the train is on time.
Download Cara's presentation deck here.
Next week, we go deeper on Skyline in our full-length episode with Lori Kahikina of the Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation and Roger Morton of Honolulu's Department of Transportation Services.
More from Chicago on Patreon
Our Patreon supporters get even more from Chicago in the coming days. There are two more Innovation Summit talks. There's also a bonus conversation from the EXPO floor about Argo, a small electric on-demand bus from Canada. Argo has no fixed route and no printed schedule. You book in an app, and it picks you up near your door for a standard bus fare. Amid acres of full-size buses and walk-through trainsets, I kind of fell in love with it.
Join us at transportopia.org/patreon. Upgraded members get a Transportopia sticker and their choice of a Transportopia mug or cocktail tumbler. Your support keeps this show independent.
Skyline Video
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