Reflections on Mobility Innovation with Karina Ricks

Reading Time: 7 minutes

On May 16, 2022, the Shared-Use Mobility Center hosted the first Mobility Innovation Collaborative workshop. At this workshop, we had a chance to discuss transportation with the then Associate Administrator for Research, Demonstration, and Innovation at the Federal Transit Administration, Karina Ricks.

This was a great opportunity to learn about Karina Ricks’ personal journey into transportation and how decisions at the federal level are aiding innovative mobility projects on the ground.

Hear what Karina Ricks, Former Associate Administrator for Research, Demonstration, and Innovation at the Federal Transit Administration had to say about mobility innovation.

Transcript

Please introduce yourself.

Hi, my name is Karina Ricks. I’m the Associate Administrator at the Federal Transit Administration overseeing innovation research and demonstration projects.

What inspired you to join the transportation industry?

My route to the transportation industry was a scenic route. It came by way of exercises in international development, particularly community development and women’s economic development. I worked overseas in Ukraine among other places on democracy-building initiatives, and then came to work at the city of Washington DC in their city planning office during a time when the city was really reinventing itself.

And in trying to revitalize the different neighborhoods of Washington DC, I really quickly came to realize it was all about transportation and connection to opportunity, and that the transportation departments at that time, really were more focused on public works projects, just replacing in kind, keeping the infrastructure in, in relatively good condition, but not really thinking about the operations of the infrastructure or how people moved in it or how it contributed to the character of neighborhoods. So I made the leap from the city planning and neighborhood revitalization side over to this transportation side and really have never looked back.

How does the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law impact opportunities for mobility innovation?

Well, not only under the newly passed Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, but in general, the USDOT just released its innovation principles. Among those principles is the desire that innovation be really purpose-driven and value-driven so that it is in line with the strategic goals that the administration has. That would be safety, equity, climate change, and really address economic growth, and competitiveness for the United States. But it’s also making sure that labor is at the table and that we’re thinking about the workforce issues and how do we transition to a new future together with the workforce.

But one of the ones that I like best of the innovation principles is the freedom to experiment, and really learn from pilots and demonstrations and sometimes failure and, and being able to have that freedom to fail as long as you’re learning from it and iterating. And so with these innovation principles out there at the secretary’s level, it really allows a number of the different programs that have been added to the bipartisan infrastructure law to look at things differently.

And that’s important for transit because transit is the largest investment in public transportation that there’s ever been by the federal government. And so we need to understand that it’s not necessarily going to be continuing to do things the same way we’ve always done them that’s going to bring us to a different place, particularly as we emerge from the pandemic.

But using those resources, using those new investments in a way that helps us iterate and move to really meet people where they’re at, to expand the service that we provide to all Americans. And to really build better systems.

How have FTA’s innovation grants transformed the mobility space?

A lot of times, we need to be able to see these things in practice. You need to be able to have that test bed to run that proof of concept. You need to be able to tweak it and retool it, and go through that process. Innovation generally means trying something that hasn’t been tried before or putting together unusual pieces to see how they work.

And so having that real-world test case, having that real-world experience, being able to hear from the customers, how did it meet their needs? How did they feel about it? What improvements could there be. The demonstrations are really critical because again you’re not just replicating something that has been a tried and true formula. You’re trying to think about something that is different, and in the course of trying, you need to be able to have that space to, um, I feel like I’m repeating myself, but you need to have that space to tweak and to move. That demonstration space is where we can really learn.

How does the Mobility Innovation Collaborative program help the FTA achieve its goals to accelerate mobility innovation?

I hope that the MIC program will help us to share the learnings across the different innovation partners. So that one problem that we have, is we are coming up with some really great new approaches, and great new ideas, and great new partnerships, great new demonstrations. But we then need to broadcast these learnings to a much wider audience.

If this is going to really lead to the kind of transformation for the general populace across the country, we need to be able to build that organizational infrastructure, that social infrastructure, in addition to the physical infrastructure to disseminate this information to support the next generation to pay it forward.

And I think the MIC program, the Collaborative is one that really allows us to do that. To take the lessons that are being learned by these current participants, to think about them in broader applications, to share that information through convenings like the Shared-Use Mobility conference that happens every year, and to have that network so that other places who are trying to replicate it or trying to use these case studies actually can phone a friend and say, you know, what, what happened? How did you do it? How did you overcome this? What did your elected leaders say when you first brought this program forward? Who are the grassroots partners? Who are the stakeholders that need to come to the table with us?

But really, it’s not enough to just have some really successful localized demonstrations. That’s not where the investment in federal aid really pays off. It’s to do that proof of concept in different localities, but then to really broadcast successful practices that work so that the whole of the country can benefit from these investments that were made in the finite number of demonstrations that we’ve been able to do through the MIC program.

Where do you see the future of mobility innovation headed?

Well, I think we’re gonna continue to see different service models. We’re going to see the further integration of the different mobility services that are out there. I hope that we’ll start to see better integration in our regions with the changing demographic patterns that happen during the pandemic.

And with the changing economics in land economics, in cities, and other urban areas, we’re seeing some people choosing to move again out of the city center to smaller towns to places further out. Unfortunately, we’re seeing lower-income people being pushed out away from where the density of conventional transit resources are, and with that, we’re seeing more limitations on the number of jobs and opportunities that they can access. So ways that we can really use the entire family of services all the way from, you know, airplanes and inner-city rail, all the way down to the last, not only last mile connections, but last block connections of accessible sidewalks and accessible doorways.

We need to really work to integrate all of these different systems together into one. We need to get the information together for seamless platforms. We really need to make it effortless almost to move between the different services that are there so that we can optimize, and so that riders and travelers can choose which service really works best for them to get to the destinations that they’re going to.

So I think, you know, what we think of as public transportation, we really need to push beyond it just being conventional buses and trains and maybe van pools and shuttles here and there to really be this much more encompassing public mobility that provides for the needs of the traveling public.

What are experiences that have influenced you or made you rethink how we should address mobility?

I love listening to people and just having those different stories. Unfortunately, and many, many of them are somewhat depressing, but they’re the things that really motivate me and always have through my career. You know, oftentimes I’ll tell the story of a gentleman that I met at a bus stop out in Columbus, Ohio. It was out in the outer edges of the city; he rode up on his bicycle. Talking with him about, you know, what is the big idea that we could do for transportation in that city? Where, you know, when we were talking to the business people downtown, it was things like we need a subway or we need, you know, high-speed rail to Chicago. This guy was just saying, you know, we, we need more bike racks on the buses because I need my bike to get to my landscaping job at the other end of this, and if the bike racks are full, I either have to wait for another bus or I have to go downtown and transfer, and either way, I’m 30 minutes late for my job. And you know, my boss is getting ready to fire me, you know?

Or talking with a single mom in Washington DC a long time ago when she said she has to leave for work more than 90 minutes early, every day. 90 minutes before her bus is scheduled to come just in case the bus gets caught up in congestion or just in case the bus doesn’t show up, so that she can build in 90 minutes of extra time to make sure she gets to her job on time because she can’t afford to lose her job. But that’s 90 minutes that her elementary school kids are left unattended and need to get themselves out the door and to school by themselves, and might be exposed to, to who knows what because we haven’t been able to fix our transportation system in a way that she can both be a supportive parent and be successful in her employment. Because we haven’t worked out the reliability and the resiliency to meet her needs. So, you know, these are the stories and it’s just, there’s, there’s so many of them, if you just listen to people at the grocery store.

My parents who live in somewhat rural Michigan who are really fearful as my mom’s eyesight is starting to go. What will become of them at the point when she can’t drive anymore? Will they just become shut-ins in their house because they’re not going to leave their house?

So, you know, these are the real world, real human-centered cases that we need to think about. What do we need to do to really provide public transportation using all means that are available – through public and private partnerships, through mobility as a service, through conventional transit, through infrastructure and safety improvements. We need to tackle it kind of taking all of the above, throwing out the old conventions, and really keeping focused on the end outcomes that we want to focus on, which is vibrant, healthy, sustainable lives for all people.

Any final thoughts?

I am glad for the work that SUMC does. It really feels like an important space and has really contributed so much to the dialogue.