The National Resource Defense Council (NRDC) has partnered with several local and national nonprofit organizations, including the Urban Land Institute (ULI) and Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG), for Live.Ride.Share, Southern California's first ever shared-use mobility conference on February 23.
The conference, which will be held in Downtown Los Angeles, will focus on the shared transportation and how technology is impacting how we get around.
"With increasing technology, we are finding more creative ways to move around - from peer-to-peer ridesharing to on-demand transit. Never before has the sharing economy been so dynamic, and new forms of transportation mobility are playing a major role," writes Fernando Cázares, L.A. Regional Coordinator for Urban Solutions & Policy Advocate at NRDC.
"The event will bring together transportation thought leaders, shared use mobility providers such as Lyft and Car2go, stakeholders and decision-makers to focus on how technology-driven mobility and service platforms can reduce congestion, cut household transportation expenses, and open up new approaches to reducing air pollution from the transportation sector, the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in California," he writes.
The conference will feature break out discussions on topics, such as what shared-use mobility -- and the reduction of parking requirements -- could mean for the future of housing construction costs and whether or not Measure R2 should include money for "mobility hubs."
Some of the other topics on the agenda include:
- Getting Car and Bike Sharing Off the Ground in SoCal: "What will it take to build a seamless and affordable transportation system that makes car ownership a choice and not a necessity? Car and bike share providers and government representatives will talk about the challenges and opportunities in ramping up new mobility options: What do providers need from the public sector, and what does government need from providers in order to successfully integrate the new choices into the existing system? The goal of the panel is to identify specific near-term policy changes that will accelerate implementation."
- Moving Beyond Private Car Ownership By Creating More and Better Integrated Next Generation Transportation Choices, feat. Ben Plowden, Transport for London, and Sonja Heikkila of Tekes, the Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation: "Ben Plowden is Director of Strategy and Planning, Surface Transport, at Transport for London, the agency responsible for that city’s very multi-modal transportation system, and for making everything from placemaking to goods movement work -- with metrics to prove it. Sonja Heikkila is a Finnish transportation engineer whose master’s thesis inspired Helsinki’s government to commit to making private car ownership obsolete in 10 years with an array of options so cheap and well-coordinated they will be competitive with car ownership."
- Shared Mobility Past, Present and Future: Making Sense of SoCal’s Emerging Mobility Marketplace: "What’s the difference between ride sharing and ride sourcing, and between point-to-point, peer-to-peer and traditional carsharing? And what do all these new choices – plus bike sharing – mean for the status quo? Panelists will explain the new services becoming available and the systemic challenges that must be addressed to reach the tipping point for broad public acceptance and use. Hear brand new research commissioned for this conference about the potential to reduce GHG emissions, traffic, and the cost of the commute."
For more information, including a full schedule, click here.
