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Grayson Brulte:
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Hello, I'm your host, Grayson Brulte. Welcome to another episode of SAE Tomorrow Today, a show about emerging technology and trends in mobility with leaders and innovators who make it all happen.
On today's episode, we're absolutely honored to welcome Kelley Coyner, Principal, Innovation for Mobility, and Jason Bittner, Associate Division Manager and Principal, Applied Research Associates.
On today's episode, we'll discuss the importance of better curb management and why the curb is the unsung hero of mobility.
We hope you enjoy this episode.
Kelley, Jason, welcome to the podcast. We've had a lot of interesting topics, conversations offline around curbs and to kick things off, Kelley, why are curbs so important to the future mobility?
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Kelley Coyner:
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I'd like to say that they've been important for a long time. We really don't think about curbs very much, and in reality, they've performed really important roles in our cities for centuries. The first sort of known observation of curbs was in Pompeii, when they were used really for drainage and for sewage collection.
If we skip ahead, more to the pandemic, we really see why they're so important now, which is that curbs are where people park there, where they walk during the pandemic, they were where people had dinner outside. And so they're just really critical, not only to mobility, but also to economic development, people being able to get to a business or get to the food that they want to have, or the entertainment that they want to have.
And then for many of us that are also. Important for accessibility people who use wheelchairs who are visually impaired rely on the curb to let them get off the street and into the city.
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Grayson Brulte:
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I want to go in the Pompeii thing. When Mount Vesuvius erupted, anything in your research that the impact that curbs had on the lava flow from Mount Vesuvius?
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Kelley Coyner:
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No, none, but it's, what's more striking is examples of where people offloaded carcasses into the into the street, we don't, we think of streets as being dirty and messy now, but they were a real train wreck in the last couple of centuries, not only did they have animals and sewage in them, but when horses were there, they were lined with horse manure as well.
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Grayson Brulte:
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I've seen streets similar to that in rural Egypt with dead animals and bodies and sewage and all sorts of things there. So it's not a pretty sight. It's not hygienic, which is streets have to change. Jason, Kelley brought up a really interesting line there that I want to ask you about. She said, we don't think about curbs much. Is that because we just take it for granted? Ah, there's a curb there. Okay, yada yada. Why do you think that is?
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Jason Bittner:
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Yeah. And they're not a real sexy piece of the infrastructure, right? We've been around for a long time. It's not like a highly designed piece. It's not it's a beautiful bridge or something that's going to look out over a Vista and they're engineering feats, but they're simple engineering feats right to manage the separation between the street, the sidewalk and really the reason that we don't think about them is because. They are so ubiquitous. We're used to being able to step off of a transit bus and move on a sidewalk. We're now accustomed to crossing a street at a curb cut where we're now have, we now have, shared mobility, scooters, e bikes other devices that are using those spaces. So we just expect them to be there. And, as Kelley mentioned during the pandemic, a lot of some of the problems emerged when you tried to even cram more uses into the curb space. And that's really what we wanted to talk about a little bit today is some of those emerging uses of the curb and why they're so important.
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Grayson Brulte:
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Jason, how would you define cram more things into the curb? Because we all see in scooters, we have buses that drop individuals off, we have rideshare that drop individuals off, we have AVs drop people off. How would you describe, let's call it that crunch at the curb or that oversaturation at the curb?
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Jason Bittner:
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Yeah, so we have a lot of, we have a lot of modes that are competing for space. So delivery, all of us probably use more e commerce than we really intend to, but all those individual packages, you need to get delivered. So they're, they're competing for space with taxis and passenger pickup and drop off. They're competing for space with people who do want to use scooters or wheelchairs. Who do you deaccess this space? Transit locations, the way that cities developed. Everything that we want to use for entertainment, for shopping, for residential uses, all kind of spill into the same location. And that delivery, that use of mobility options, it all is physically is put into the same space.
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Kelley Coyner:
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One of the things that paint a quick picture, think of packages packed, stacked up at the curbside where Amazon has dropped them off, but also think about where people can't get to the curb. And so 2 things that come to mind. 1 is when you think about all the Ubers and all the Lyfts, and someone trying to find their Lyft or their Uber, because they can't get up to the curb and they can't sort that out. Or one of my favorites on my very own street is the Prime delivery van or the FedEx or the UPS truck or the unmarked truck that's just parked in the middle of the street because there's no place to pull up at the curb while they make the delivery. And that's the chaos of the curb that, that we're thinking about.
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Grayson Brulte:
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Kelley, how can curbs achieve their full potential? They're not out there hiring a lobbyist to go out there and say, I want to, I want a better life. I'm a piece of cement. How can they achieve their full potential?
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Kelley Coyner:
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Jason is available for hire to be the representative for curbs. I think that curbs are actually really controversial in lots of ways. And there are lobbyists for curbs, right? So a lot of times people want to park or they want their customers to park at the curbs. And so there's a need to understand how do we, how do we get benefits across those different places?
I actually think that lots of delivery folks don't want to be parked in the middle of the street. They want to be able to pull up to the curb. And so they want an answer. So I think the answer is, how do we come up with balancing those needs at the curb in a way that addresses the concerns of the various people who benefit from curbs and also frankly generate some revenue as we go along. It means being really creative about how we do it. And I would just say that the, those who are most challenged are most concerned about giving up use of the curb are those people who want somebody to park at the curb. And that's the hottest issue.
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Grayson Brulte:
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Jason, what if you eliminated parking at the curb? Does that solve anything? Does it increase efficiency? Does the curb have more rights now? Is it happier? What happens if that scenario were to happen?
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Jason Bittner:
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If you eliminated parking at the curb for any period of time and only, restricted to, allow for deliveries and passenger pickup and drop off, certainly you'd have more throughput.
But I think as Kelley just alluded to as well, you have a huge outcry against that because businesses rely on curbside parking, residences rely on curbside parking those cities that operate Municipal parking systems rely on that revenue from curbside parking. So I think that the elimination of parking wholesale at the curb would it'd be very problematic for our entire ecosystem.
The, there, there are some opportunities to change, time of day restrictions or allow parking, during different periods or peak periods. Pricing kind of environments and dynamic arrangements that can help improve efficiency. So you don't have, vehicles parked in the prime loading zone during the prime hours of delivery, right?
Or you have entertainment districts that can be used in a way during their peak periods that. Make the most sense. And so some of the technologies that are out there to improve upon the management and use of the curb, could get towards that, that that question of, what how do we improve? Prove the efficiency of the curb and the operations at the curb itself.
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Grayson Brulte:
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Is one of those tools, perhaps a digital infrastructure layer or a digital clone or digital twin of the curb that you can run simulations to optimize based on various use cases, delivery, parking, ride share?
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Jason Bittner:
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Certainly, there is a digital infrastructure component to this more information is better information.
The challenge is, of course, getting the sensors, the cameras, the back-end infrastructure in place to be able to actually do that.
Based on the fact that a curb right now is relatively inexpensive to install. We cut them all the time, new building goes in. We don't think about it as a major expense to, to basically redo the curb frequently.
All you gotta do is walk around your city and you can see, places where they're carved out or where there looks like new concrete there that went from. When and multiple installers, those kinds of things, because it is a piece of the infrastructure that is just expected.
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Grayson Brulte:
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Kelley, it's expected, but it has to be optimized. What is the best way to optimize the curb?
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Kelley Coyner:
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I think that it's really important to, as we say, enter in planning to be sensitive to the context and sensitive to the use. So there's not a single answer. It really depends on where you are. For example, in Delray Beach in Florida, they need to move traffic along the street side. And so the issue there is not, they don't really want anybody to stop and block traffic. They need to figure out how to optimize it from the standpoint of moving traffic on the street. And This in other places where you've got much more crowded use, maybe you're in a mixed-use area, or you're even in an area where there's been a proliferation of micro mobility, more scooters, more bikes, maybe even some sidewalk robots, the ways to optimize it in part, or to figure out what the sort of highest uses in that area. For example, highest use is probably not parking it there and not storing it in that spot. And so coming up with another piece of it and another way to optimize it is. And you talked about the digital infrastructure, probably the biggest value that brings is it allows you to have what we call congestion pricing at the curb.
It basically allows for a market-based approach that when there's a high demand, it costs more to stop at the curb. And, it also aids in enforcement that people don't park, that they unload and leave. So there's multiple tools. Likelihood that we would use something like a digital twin right now to figure out how to optimize on the curve is pretty low, but as we digitize and automate mobility. That becomes a much more useful tool.
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Grayson Brulte:
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Congestion pricing, controversial, any way to slice it. We saw what happened in New York city with the outrage zone and they see it in Paris. I'm not getting into the congestion debate. I don't know enough about the debate. I merely just read the headlines on that one.
But I was speaking to an international parking executive based out of Scandinavia the other day, and he was telling me about the amount of revenue. This is globally, not just United States, the amount of revenue that cities around the world generate from parking. In some cases, there's number two right behind taxes.
Congestion pricing aside, how can cities turn the curb into revenue generation for cities so they can maintain the infrastructure, perhaps put in, as Jason said, put in sensors. How could they generate revenue from the curb?
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Kelley Coyner:
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They could generate revenue directly from the curb by, by putting in more higher turnover on the curb so that they're, Pricing is more aligned with that.
What happens right now, though, in cities for the most part is that the people who have an interest in optimizing the curb are split off from the people who are in charge of parking. And they're also running structured parking or parking garages. And so they're generating from that. I don't think that congestion pricing or pricing the curb is ever Really going to be a new source of revenue to make transportation work better.
It's more of a way to manage, and the interesting thing about it is that people always hate it when it happens, and then they figure out that it might work and it might be more convenient and businesses in particular, figure out that there's an economic value to managing the curve better.
Thinking about that in terms of people who are building housing, people who are looking to maximize their retail usage. Paying for parking, which is what they essentially have to do in building parking because there's not enough on the curb, is really expensive. So there's a better way to use the curb and a better way to get people to business than That is the economic driver on optimizing the curb.
In other words it takes them back and forth, seen this with, yeah, I think maybe this is a good point to say that the curb is not just that raised thing that you walk over when you pull your car up, the curb really managing the curb is managing the sidewalk on one side of it and the street on the other side of it.
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Grayson Brulte:
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Jason, when do we get to a point where a city says, you know what, you're going to run these sidewalk bots on here, you're going to pay me a usage fee. Is that going to come at some point, a sidewalk bot scale in certain environments, especially environments we're seeing an exodus of traditional tax revenue?
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Jason Bittner:
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Yeah. And we already see that in, in certain areas where you have a permit to operate, right? There is a fee associated with that.
There's liability insurance. There are other elements of it. And that, that, that use of the sidewalk for shared bicycles, for scooter parking, for anything has, already has been some permitting processes built into them typically.
Now it's not across the board, a lot of the outrage and pushback on scooters, and shared bikes that are just left all over the curb or all over the sidewalk, certainly there's some challenges there, but for the most part, corralled. Locations designated areas for delivery robots to rest and store.
Those are typically permitted locations. Even some of the off-street parking or on street parking that has been dedicated to either a shared bicycle corral or a parking area for scooters. Those are typically paid a fee to the city to offset the lost revenue from the parking.
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Grayson Brulte:
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Jason, staying on the permitting aspect. We'll get into autonomy here, robotaxis, do you see at a point where the robotaxi doesn't have to have a permit to access the curb to drop a passenger off and that potentially becomes another revenue stream or just where does that fit?
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Jason Bittner:
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Yeah, and that's a good that's a good A good point some of the work that Kelley and I had done on our edge report in this area focused on looking at how even short term delivery drop off, fees might be in place.
You see that already and, most airports will have a surcharge on a shared mobility option. I would expect that would be extended to any automated robotaxi environment that you'd have a similar location based surcharge, and I could certainly see that. Being part of it, if you're going to a congested area, it's like a surge price extra costs to be dropped off at this particular location versus another location.
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Kelley Coyner:
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A flip piece of that, though, is that there are places that do not allow robotaxis now to drop off at the curb. 1 of 1 of them being San Francisco, the city of San Francisco and so that is, that is an issue for robotaxis. If they can't pull up to the curb and safely drop someone off or drop someone off is using a wheelchair or Walker and have to drop them in the middle of the street.
So it's not just about permitting and it's not just about surcharges. It's also about how do you establish a way to have pickups and drop offs that are safe and accessible.
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Grayson Brulte:
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I'm going to throw another thing in here cause we're going to have fun on this. If you look at consumer behavior and let's look at airports, some of the highest landing fees in the world are London Heathrow.
It's astronomical average is $249 USD per person to land at London Heathrow. I know people that, and I'm avoid it like the plague as they're going into Europe because the fees are so astronomically high and obviously you have a strong, a very strong British pound that's now at a dollar a 30 on a way to a dollar 40 potentially as we devalue the US currency in this presidential election.
So if you have a curb and there's a landing fee or a drop off fee Then the people start gaming the system like they do when we go from the United States across the pond I'm not going to Heathrow. I'm not paying that 249 fee. I'll go to Amsterdam 49 fee score.
I'm up 200 Because in the city then that becomes whack a mole, I don't want to get dropped off here because if I get dropped off here, it's cheaper. Where does this go?
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Jason Bittner:
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Yeah, I mean we already do that if you park at a sporting event there's the 50 parking ring that are close by. And then, if you want to walk more blocks pay five bucks, and if you find a street spot even further out then you pay nothing, but it's all about what the consumer wants to do at the other end now with mobility, we're talking door to door options. If people want to pay for the peak location, they'll be able to pay for the peak location.
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Grayson Brulte:
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Jason, from a policy perspective, there's a lot of ingredients. We're making a really interesting pie here. There's a lot of ingredients going into it. How does Citi's manage for all these what if scenarios when they go through the policy planning, it's around the curve because you have the what ifs, but then you have the new technologies emerging and then we have the technology we haven't even thought of yet. And when you set the policy, It's there for decades. It's not hi, here we go.
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Jason Bittner:
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Yeah. Now, fortunately, signs and designated parking zones and things like that are not high-cost items. It's not, it's, it doesn't take a substantial redesign of the curb as we know it today to accommodate some of the future usage.
And in fact, any of the tech, most of the technologies that are being developed would not require any changes to the physical infrastructure that exists, at the curbside right there. They're expecting to unload and load passengers and goods with the existing curb and gutter that is in place.
So a city can manage, on case by case basis or on demand, like entertainment district could have, very different rules at night than it does during the day. With. Simple signage and enforcement, so those options are out there for cities to pursue.
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Grayson Brulte:
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Kelley, some of the infrastructure from a curb has to be updated to accommodate accessibility. How should cities think about that investment and how do the cities determine where to make that investment in the city versus not where to make that investment in the city?
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Kelley Coyner:
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Most of the accessibility issues with the curb are actually on the sidewalk and not the curb itself. Because if a vehicle can pull up to the curb and you can align and move out, it's not, for pedestrians, or for people who are moving across streets, curb cuts are an issue.
But bigger, the bigger, more expensive infrastructure items are accessing transit centers places where there are only stairs and they're not elevators. You think about, New York City and MTA, which has made a 1Billion dollar commitment over 25 years. To make those station areas accessible. So it's not really a curbside issue, it's more of the station entrance issue.
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Grayson Brulte:
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So the sidewalks, interesting. Is it a design perspective of you want to call it the right of way for an individual that really determines where the infrastructure goes? Is there a certain standard where it has to be six feet from a bus stop? Are there certain standards when it goes to developing the infrastructure to ensure those individuals can properly move around the curb?
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Kelley Coyner:
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Most of it is the condition of the sidewalk and the existence of the sidewalk as opposed to design specifications of it so that your ability to get to a vehicle Whether it's a personal vehicle, or it is a bus, or a robotaxi is really, is there a sidewall that gets you all the way there?
And what condition is it in? And it's often roadways, where we just put, we've just adopted billions and billions of dollars of assistance to improve the quality of the roadways is the same thing with sidewalks and the issue outside the city is often there is no sidewalk and it's a matter of moving, actually in the right of way to, to get to a pickup and drop off point.
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Grayson Brulte:
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Jason, we saw, this is mostly pre pandemic, but we saw the rise of scooters where individuals want a designated scooter parking area. And then that merged into mobility hubs. And obviously we use the term real estate. They take up real estate on the sidewalk. How can you design a curb, a sidewalk for new forms of mobility, but then while also taking into account accessibility, but just based purely on the amount of real estate that you're going to use to put those hubs.
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Jason Bittner:
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Yeah. And it's a. It's the key question about trying to figure out how, how we want cities to look right. People want to typically go to the same places they, so we have congestion just built in by the number of people that are there at the times of day that, people are moving, in, in throughout the city.
So entertainment districts, and we have had a massive change in, in, works schedules, there are fewer people working a nine to five than ever before. So we have a lot of what we would have traditionally viewed as the peak commute periods are changing in some of those locations as well.
But still understanding that you have. You have certain areas that are going to continue to be congested, and it's just now another part of the urban design where you do have to take these things into consideration. Transit will continue to be a big, important part of the city. So you want to provide for, bus access to areas and where you have typical stops for a bus. You're going to want to have those scooters and shared bikes and other connections That are available to it. So providing for that, it does take some real estate. And unfortunately, we do have a fair amount of right away in most places. We maybe Fort more fortunate in most us cities that they were designed after a period that already had automobiles as an important component of that. So we have much, much more preserved right away for moving people in and out of locations than maybe some other European counterparts or other parts of the world.
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Grayson Brulte:
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When do we get to the point where sidewalks become oversaturated? We saw this during the pandemic when seemingly every restaurant around the world: Permits? Oh, the hell with permits. We're gonna put our tables out there. And it was just this overflowing and then from then they went into the street. And it just kept expanding and expanding where I was in New York City at that time during that you couldn't even walk around. It was just me as a mobile guy walking. I can just imagine, which was like this is oversaturated. How do we avoid that in the future? Obviously, that was a global pandemic, so that's an outlier. But how do we avoid that? Sidewalks in the curb becoming oversaturated?
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Jason Bittner:
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It's a good question because I believe that we can have oversaturation and that's a good thing because people are, out and about and we don't necessarily need to worry about that much.
Now I think there are safety concerns about, scooters and bikes zipping in and out of pedestrian areas. But personally, I think people adjust to that sort of vibrancy of a city is part of the reason that you want to be there. I would push back a little bit that oversaturation isn’t a bad thing.
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Grayson Brulte:
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Okay. I accept the pushback because it's right. Kelley, I want your opinion now. Do I get pushback from Kelley as well? Or do I get curiosity?
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Kelley Coyner:
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I think it depends on where you are right and what you're trying to accomplish. And so I think one of the, as we move forward and thinking about managing the curb and managing these new forms of transportation is that we need to find ways that we're really organizing the transportation, both people walking around and also people who are using whatever form of motorized vehicle that they're using. And so that sort of brings some order to the madness through the use of mobility hubs and mobility hubs exist already. If you think about going to, a parking lot and it's got bus stops in the middle of it and it's got places where people are doing deliveries and they're also coming to park and go to the movies or whatever in a crowded congestion environment, they might look different from that and they might but, and they might bring other sort of amenities that let us move forward.
So the amenities might be, lockers for Amazon deliveries, or they might be electric vehicle charging and may also maybe just building in those places to sit and eat, drink a drink, drink a sandwich, but eat a sandwich and have a drink as you're going forward. And that doesn't have to be new construction.
It can be retrofitted into the city. And just to think about. Places where we maybe are being much more imaginative about that Los Angeles, as it gets ready for the Olympics in four years, not the ones that are going on right now are investing in mobility hubs at a thousand bus stops.
And those are wired for sound as it were. They're very heavy on their digital infrastructure, but they also allow for this sort of management of the curbside, management of parking, management of which modes are using. And so I think that's, that's where we can meet the future now in terms of managing that better.
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Grayson Brulte:
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Los Angeles is going to have 2028. David Wolper led the last Olympics there in the seventies. And although Mr. Wolper is no longer with us, but he produced Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. So he was a Hollywood producer that helped produce the games and Mr. Wolper, I had the honor of meeting him several times.
Was a very nice gentleman who would see what's happening from an infrastructure perspective in Paris. A lot's going on. And they clean up the river. The mayor of Paris actually went for a swim in the Seine today. The question is, does Macron go for a swim as he promised? There's a lot of questions along with Paris, along with the infrastructure. Hopefully they have a very successful Olympic games. Kelley, in your opinion, what is the future of the curb?
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Kelley Coyner:
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I think the future of the curb is that we convert it into a mobility hub along with other spaces, and that we move away from it being a place where we store vehicles, and we stop vehicles as we go forward.
And that we, that we're going to become much more agile and how we use digital infrastructure right now. We think about well, we need to have sensors. So we know when someone is parked there or not. Instead of we basically need a traffic air traffic control system for. parking vehicles or stopping vehicles so that you know where to go.
So I think it may not be quite a Jetson Lake scenario, but I think that it's a much more organized usage of it. And that in some cases, we're just going to make decisions that we're going to route traffic to another area. And we're going to keep it in a particular area. And so we're going to, we're not going to worry about managing the curb in a place where we're trying to have a lot of free parking.
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Grayson Brulte:
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Jason, as a follow up to Kelley 's statement, in your opinion, what does the future of the curb look like?
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Jason Bittner:
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I think the key part of it is that better management of the curb that's going to be essential for managing all the variety of uses. I think the expectation that everyone will have from the city owners and officials to the businesses in that area is that there will be multiple uses allowed. There could be restrictions on time of day or on some other elements, how long you can be in a location, might vary during the day, but I think there'll be more dynamic management of the curbs in the future. A lot of the technology the monitoring the use of sensors, the camera-based technologies, parking enforcement via, mobile apps and those kinds of things will be a bigger part of the curbside management process.
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Grayson Brulte:
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I like that Jason, better curb management We all want things to work. We want it to work better and I’ll give you another one of that we want to be efficient.
We want it to be better. We want it to be efficient because it's efficient It can scale. Jason, Kelley, this has been an insightful conversation all about the curb. I learned a lot as we look to wrap up our insightful conversation for today. What would you like our listeners take away with them? Jason, we'll start with you, please.
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Jason Bittner:
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Yeah, I guess the thing that I would want to communicate most is that while this curb is an unsung hero, of the mobility system it's something that, that is, is very important and the regulation, the management of that, that curbside uses is a key part that makes, makes e commerce function. It makes food delivery function. It makes passenger pickup and drop off function. It'll make better shared mobility. It makes micro mobility better. So it's a vital component of the infrastructure and maybe deserves it's time in the sun a little bit.
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Grayson Brulte:
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It's a time in the sun. Wonderful. Does it deserve it? You can have a martini out there. Why not? It deserves a break because it's used an awful lot. It has stressful days and there's no great way to wind down for the really good. Good stiff martini. Kelley, what would you like our listeners to take away with them?
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Kelley Coyner:
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The curbs are fun and they're fantastic and that we should take, a lot of our really cool thinking where we think about shooting off into space and instead apply it to the curb because it really makes or breaks our experience every single day when we move in our environment, and they're just some really cool and interesting ways that we can make it a safer environment, make it a more efficient environment and really make it. So that it's not just the place where we dump things, whether it's animals or other stuff. Instead, it's a place where we bring our community alive.
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Grayson Brulte:
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To summarize this conversation, I'm going to paraphrase Jason here. The curb is the unsung hero of mobility. Today is tomorrow, tomorrow is today. The future is better curb management. Kelley, Jason, thank you so much for coming on SAE Tomorrow Today.
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Jason Bittner:
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Thank you. Thanks for having us.
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Grayson Brulte:
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Thank you for listening to SAE Tomorrow Today. If you've enjoyed this episode, please kindly rate and review on your favorite podcast platform. Your feedback is invaluable to us as we work to produce world class content.
Be sure to tune in next week when we explore value-based logistics for a data driven future in autonomous trucking.
SAE International makes no representations as to the accuracy of the information presented in this podcast. The information and opinions are for general information only. SAE International does not endorse, approve, recommend, or certify any information, product, process, service, or organization presented or mentioned in this podcast.
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