AI Driving

A mobility operating system cannot be privately built, it

must be open and governed by cities, according to the

Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADoT).

Speaking at the Consumer Electronics Show 2019 in Las

Vegas, LADoT general manager Seleta Reynolds described

how the authority had published specifications to manage

scooters following what she described as an “explosion of

private companies”.

She explained that the first bucket of application programming

interfaces (API) provides consistent ways for companies to

alk to cities and share information with them. The second

bucket of that code puts the LADoT into the product workflow

of those communities.

“We are not tapping them on the shoulders and asking them

for more data sets; instead we are delivering services that

we already deliver today. Eventually, it would be great if we

had a creative set of pricing tools, but we can start at the kerb,”

Reynolds added.

At the same CES session, ‘Creating Seamlessly Integrated,

Connected Mobility Operating Systems’, Scott Corwin, future

of mobility practice leader at Deloitte, warned that a completely

open system where people contribute on their own would attract

small players over big ones - which leaves the question of how

to get to scale.