CommuteCon 2020

Welcome and Opening Remarks

Jeffrey Chernick
Co-Founder & Director
RideAmigos

Keynote: The Science of Smart Commuting is Pooling and Telework

Professor Susan Shaheen will present market trends in pooling and telework and the role technology is having on shaping consumer behavior and expectations. She will discuss the growth of telecommuting, opportunities and challenges of pooling, and the role of incentives. The presentation will conclude with thoughts on how COVID-19 may impact longer-term traveler behavior.

Susan Shaheen
Co-Director
Transportation Sustainability Research Center at UC Berkeley

Nudge Me Baby One More Time

When's the right time to try to change someone's commuting behavior? Getting it right could boost your commute program's effectiveness at no additional cost - and getting it wrong could be costly. In this talk, learn what behavioral science tells us about the best time to act.

Jessica Roberts
Principal
Alta Planning

LA Metro's New Mobility Regional Roadmap

Emma Huang will present on the genesis of LA Metro’s first-and-last mile partnership with Via, which is now in its second year of operation. Metro’s pilot with Via aims to make on-demand trips more accessible to a wider audience, and to leverage Via’s service to connect riders to transit. Huang will also speak about Metro’s New Mobility Regional Roadmap – an effort by LA Metro to lead the LA County region towards reaching consensus on the best path forward around managing TNCs and micro-mobility, like e-scooters and dockless bikes.

Emma Huang
Principal Transportation Planner
LA Metro Office of Extraordinary Innovation

Legislative Update: the MORE Through TDM Act

Current federal transportation policy is lacking in regards to the support and understanding of Transportation Demand Management. To ensure that TDM programs and policies receive the necessary attention they deserve as effective strategies to address congestion, mobility, and air quality issues in communities throughout the county, the Association for Commuter Transportation, working with Representative Dan Lipinski (D-IL) has introduced the MORE Through TDM Act.

David Straus
Executive Director
The Association for Commuter Transportation

Short Break

Stretch your legs, grab a snack, answer an interactive audience poll, or share your favorite transportation joke!

Capitalizing on Collaboration: How MA TMAs joined forces to provide cooperative TDM services

This session will present the model that 13 TMAs in the Greater Boston area have adopted to collaborate on areawide programming and service delivery including a joint RideAmigos platform and areawide marketing events.

Allison Simmons
Principal
NorthEase Consulting

Rural Mobility: Ensuring Geographic Equity of Mobility Advances

As transportation technologies and practices undergo a current rapid transformation, rural contexts for emerging trends have not been central to efforts in the research community. This presentation explores some of the challenges of commuting and mobility in rural communities, impacts of recent trends, as well as strategies to improve geographic equity. Rural areas exhibit different characteristics and needs as compared to urban areas, reflected in commuting behavior and mobility choices. However, shifting patterns of demography, employment and commuting offer opportunities for revitalization in rural and small communities.

Andrew Duvall, Ph.D.
Transportation Behavior Analyst, Mobility, Behavior and Advanced Powertrains Group, Center for Integrated Mobility Sciences
National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)

Incentivizing Commuter Behavior: Using focused incentives to reduce transit overcrowding

Public transit riders are increasingly facing a ride home with extensive delays and overcrowded trains, which is often exacerbated when a local event increases demand during the evening commute. Governments tend to tackle overcrowding through investment in infrastructure— more trains, more buses, more rail lines, and more bus routes. ideas42 and the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) partnered to pilot a solution that would be responsive to overcrowding during weekday evening Chicago Cubs home games in 2017.

Doug Palmer
Vice President
Ideas 42

Advancing Sustainable Commuting at LinkedIn

In January, LinkedIn joined Microsoft in their carbon negative pledge, with a goal to be carbon negative by 2030, and to remove all historical carbon emissions by 2050. One large area of focus is the employee commute. Danielle will share what this announcement means for the LinkedIn commute program, and dive deep into how they are continuing to enhance their bike program to get more butts on bikes.

Danielle Glaser
Head of Bay Area Transportation
LinkedIn

Short Break

Stretch your legs, grab a snack, answer an interactive audience poll, or share your favorite transportation joke!

Why Carpool Matters Now

According to FHWA, the average American commute is 13 miles. Even in areas that are relatively well-served by transit, transit commutes can still take twice as long as driving alone. How can we better serve these trips, while reducing our impact on the planet and increasing access to economic opportunity, both today and in the future? We’ll explore the potential of a time-tested mode, carpooling, to have new and profound relevance to the way we move today.

Dani Simons
Head of Public Sector Partnerships
Waze

Behavioral TDM

The City of Durham recently received Bloomberg Foundation funding to apply Behavioral Science, Human Centered Design and Rigorous Evaluation to generate innovative solutions to our drive alone problem. In this session, you'll hear from Joseph Sherlock of the Center for Advanced Hindsight about the work Durham are doing and planning.

Joseph Sherlock
Senior Behavioral Researcher
Center for Advanced Hindsight at Duke University

Rural Matters

Rural and small urban areas face unique challenges that complicate transportation planning efforts and new technology deployments. The presentation focuses on why fostering professional networks and supporting professional capacity building efforts is especially critical to successful project implementation in rural areas. Examples are provided of workforce development practices that support rural engagement in improving regional mobility, as well as a model for engaging pre-career students in transportation projects to grow the next generation of thought leaders.

Susan Gallagher
Education and Workforce Program Manager
Western Transportation Institute

Short Break

Stretch your legs, grab a snack, answer an interactive audience poll, or share your favorite transportation joke!

Keynote: Transportation Equity

Equity? What does it mean, what is it, and why does it matter in our industry? Tamika will bring humor and storytelling to help all of us think deeper about what it means to truly center equity in our transportation work. She’ll challenge you to think deeply about your role in integrating equity into your work and leave you with some concrete ways to approach equity in your day-to-day life in and out of the office.

Tamika Butler, Esq.
Director of Planning for California and the Director of Equity and Inclusion
Toole Design

Scale Up! How we can leverage technology to test behavioral concepts at scale

How do we test behavioral concepts at scale? Rolling out and testing behavioral interventions can be a difficult and time intensive endeavor that many organizations across the country do not have the bandwidth to take on. Because of this, good ideas often fall by the wayside or are not investigated. This talk intends to help empower anyone with questions or ideas around commuter behavior to roll-out behavioral experiments by walking through experimental strategies, technology solutions to make experimentation easier, and some examples of experiments either ongoing or in planning.

Corey Tucker
Director of Innovation
RideAmigos

What is Smarter Transportation? UBIT & Local Ordinances Update

In this rapid fire review, Jason will provide the latest in transportation policy including the stats of UBIT legislation, Statewide efforts to promote TDM, Transportation Reauthorization, as well as the latest from DC on COVID-19.

Jason Pavluchuk
Executive Director
The Coalition for Smarter Transportation

Short Break

Stretch your legs, grab a snack, answer an interactive audience poll, or share your favorite transportation joke!

Carpool 2.0

As the sequel to previous carpool programs, Carpool 2.0 aimed to encourage commuters to start carpooling in preparation for the carpool express lanes coming to San Mateo County. This session will cover how Commute.org structured the reward program, measured results, and used lessons learned to improve the program so it could evolve from a one-off incentive into an annual program.

Mary Thomasmeyer
Commuter Programs Specialist
Commute.org

The state of the American commute: its impact, implications, and how you can make a change

The top issue facing executives today is the struggle to attract and retain top talent – and, at the same time, the commute is one of the top three drivers of attrition, second only to pay and overtime. As the densification of both office and urban areas increases, driving higher congestion along commuting corridors, organizations of all types will have to address the commute to give themselves an advantage in an ever-evolving, competitive landscape.

Charlie Knuth
Head of Market Research
Scoop Technologies

Keynote: The Great Transport Transition

The great SEA (shared, electric, automated) change is coming to the transport system. We are at the beginning phases of the sunsetting of our traditional transport system and the dawning of the new active, shared, electric and automated transition. This transition will Impact every part of our daily lives especially commuting. Timothy will provide his unique insights drawing from his private, public and community experience to highlight the trends and the policy and technology focus areas that will ensure safer, more equitable, and more sustainable outcomes than we have today.

Timothy Papandreou
Founder
Emerging Transport Advisors

Wrap Up and Thanks