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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 and mobility with leaders and innovators who make it all happen. On today's episode, we're absolutely honored to be joined by Tammy Meehan Russell, President and Chief Catalyst at The Plum Catalyst and Myrna Peterson, founder and co-chair of Mobility Mania.
On this episode, we'll continue the goMARTI conversation, diving into the rider and community experience with a focus on accessibility. We hope you enjoyed this episode. Welcome to the podcast.
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Myrna Peterson:
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Thank you.
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Tammy Meehan Russell:
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Thank you, Grayson.
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Grayson Brulte:
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This has been a long time coming and I'm excited to have you here today because AVs are gonna play an important mix in the future of transportation.
They're gonna compliment transportation and they're not going to replace transportation. And what we're seeing really great success and in strides, what goMARTI's doing, creating value in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, which is really impressive and frankly, It's awesome. Myrna, what motivated you to bring the change to the Transportation Network in Grand Rapids, Minnesota?
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Myrna Peterson:
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I am in a wheelchair myself, and we just don't see people in wheelchairs socially out at any events. And so we don't even have an accessible taxi for evenings and weekends, and it's extremely expensive to hire a medical transport vehicle for a social event. For instance, it can cost $25 and 50 cents to get in the vehicle, $2.25 a mile, $20 an hour wait time while you're at the event for a couple of hours, another $25.50 to get back in, and then $2.25 a mile. So it's about $10 for transportation perhaps, but it's $91 if you're in a wheelchair. And in order to get more people out, we made to find an accessible and affordable way to transport people evenings and weekends when most of the social events happen.
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Grayson Brulte:
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It's a rip off. It's a disgrace. So you're sitting there, you gotta pay $25.50 to start. You gotta pay $2.25 a mile and $20 for wait time. You can start being and fill in the rest there. That's really what it is.
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Myrna Peterson:
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Most of the people in assisted livings or nursing home only get to keep about a $110 a month. So they've used it all for transportation without doing anything. And so it's really a hard. For people in those situations.
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Grayson Brulte:
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Why was this like this? What, what caused this imbalance in this you used the word gouging situation.
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Myrna Peterson:
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It's just because of the liability and the licensing that people with those kind of vehicles have and medical transport. You have insurance that can come or cover some of those. But for social event, that's not covered under any insurances, so that's paid out of pocket to cover the extra training that the driver has to, has the liability and the cost of the vehicle itself is expensive, so it's more than an able-bodied person needs to cover.
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Grayson Brulte:
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It's market imbalance. It's morally and ethically wrong. I repeat that's morally and ethically wrong. Tammy, you have this ridiculous, messed up situation in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, how did the opportunity to improve this transportation to make it equitable to, or if Myrna wants to go out to dinner or to visit a friend it's not gonna break the bank. How did this come on your radar?
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Tammy Meehan Russell:
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Yeah, and I'll just say it's not just Grand Rapids. This is a problem that we see almost everywhere, frankly, nationally in any rural community, if you look at the demographics of a rural community. So what Myrna is explaining is not just something that happens in Grand Rapids, MN, but I can tell you about the opportunity that was put in front of me with Grand Rapids and how we ended up with goMARTI and bringing the project there.
And we can come back to the problem later or all sorts of other fun things associated with the project as well. But in this. It was actually the Minnesota Governor's Council for connected and automated vehicles. So a statewide council that was actually supported by the governor's office, of which Myrna is on the council and is a member of that.
And I happened to be there that at one of those meetings sitting next to the Deputy Commissioner for the Iron Range, and he noted that the Iron Range had an interest in bringing in emerging technologies and supporting research and development in the region. And he said if there's ever a Plum Catalyst partner, a tech partner that would be interested in coming to my region, we would love to do that and support that.
And so when May Mobility had asked me, had asked, The Plum Catalyst and helping them with planning a project --asked if we had a project location in Minnesota. I picked up the phone and called back the commissioner and said, what do you think? Is this something of interest? And Myrna, having have her on that council as well as living there was just the perfect match for everyone. We had automatically two significant champions in the region and we were able to bring together this amazing group of partners very quickly.
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Grayson Brulte:
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Myrna, you're sitting on the Governor's Council. You're doing good work. Did you ever expect this to come out of that council seat?
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Myrna Peterson:
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In my mind, it started for me when I was in eighth grade in 1962 while watching the Jetsons on TV. And would've been a perfect way to take. I had a quadriplegic brother at that time and he loved to go and do things, but back then we were still carrying him in and out of places. And I told my dad, I said, see, look, if I had one of those, I could just get in that and I can take my brother Leon all over South Bend.
And he just said, oh. You're born way ahead of your time. Flash forward 50 years and the autonomous self-driving vehicles were more than a cartoon. I worked with community members and experts in the field to find solutions to our shortage of evening and weekend, affordable and accessible transportation.
And then, like Tammy said, I was appointed to the 2018 Minnesota for the connected automated vehicle. And also to our Minnesota Governor's Council on Disability. And so I was excited to receive a call from Tammy in November of 2019 to explore the possibilities of bringing a self-driving vehicle project right here to Grand Rapids.
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Grayson Brulte:
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Tammy, you made Myrna's Jetson s dream vision come true as you helped secure the funding for the goMARTI project, getting funding's hard, getting funding from a government's even harder. How did you do it?
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Tammy Meehan Russell:
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Yeah, that is a wonderful question. Thanks Grayson. And I'm trying to figure how you fit that into a quick answer in a podcast.
But I'll just, I'll try to quick summarize it and say it was an entire development strategy that we as a team had to come up with. My approach in the planning, especially for a technology like this, was for the entire program. When you're talking about an emerging tech, the entire program really needs to be community led.
This could not be a tech push. This could not be pushed by the state. This needed to be something the community could get behind and really support and therefore lead. And so as the planner, I was really just helping with the quarterbacking and identifying champions. And then the funding strategy that we used was to keep it community led.
50% of the funding or less was going to come from the. The rest of it was going to come from local funding partners who shared in the remaining 50%. And so with that, we were able to get funding from the City of Grand Rapids, a huge champion, obviously providing the location for the pilot, but also some funding and support.
The Blandin Foundation, which is a wonderful foundation there locally and the Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation as well as the county. We also have a lot of other partners like Myrna, who do a lot of in-kind support to help us. And then as we're doing the pilot, we also pursue other research efforts.
With the University of Minnesota and understanding kind of what's been the history, how did we get here and how do we keep it going forward? And so the Humphrey School has been really supportive in that with our researcher, Frank Douma and some of his graduate students helping us.
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Grayson Brulte:
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You'd said it was very important to be community led, so you have, let's say more or less 50% of funding from the local community, you have a partnership with the University of Minnesota. Are students at the University of Minnesota in the Humphrey School, are they getting involved in doing the research, learning about autonomy in the ways that it's gonna impact society? Tammy?
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Tammy Meehan Russell:
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Yes. They're definitely getting involved in They've been involved from the beginning, I should say. They're not even getting involved. Frank has been instrumental. Frank Douma has been instrumental long before I even entered the project. Frank came into the community and started some community listening sessions with Myrna with the Blandin Foundation to really understand. He did a bit of a statewide effort with the Center for Transportation Studies at the university, and they visited Grand Rapids, Fergus Falls, some other communities throughout the state to understand transportation challenges and Grand Rapids was one of those communities the university went into over 10 years ago.
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Grayson Brulte:
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Myrna, what were those early community listening sessions was like? It was like, this is not the Jetsons, we're not here yet. Or is it, yes, we want this technology. What were those early listening sessions like?
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Myrna Peterson:
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We started back in, I think it was. 2012 when Frank came up with the Blandin Foundation looking for solutions for evening and weekend transportation would seem to be the most. Need, especially accessible transportation, but also for community events. And so we had a number of organizations there attending those meetings.
And then when the self-driving vehicles, when the autonomous came up, once he had that kind of captive audience, he reached out to me and said, could you bring some of the big players like the county, like the law enforcement, like the city, like Bannon Foundation, the Community Foundation, could you bring them and any legislators that might be interested?
And so then he first exposed our community to the idea of autonomous technology, and it was helpful because there happened to be a gentleman there from NPR. He just wanted to find out what I was doing, driving my wheelchair all over town and he wanted to follow me down to meeting that day. And when I told him what it was about, he said, oh, do you mind if I stick around for the meeting?
And pretty soon his interview went from me to Frank Douma on the autonomous vehicles, and it showed up nationally. About speaking about autonomous vehicles, and that was probably around 2017, right before the Governor's Council for Connected and Automated Vehicles position was available, and Frank was the one that said, Myrna, we need you on that council.
And so it just, one thing led to the other. There was a need in the community to be filled and the right people just happened to show up at the right time.
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Grayson Brulte:
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Myrna you're, you're taking a com, a community leadership role. You're doing really great in the community. You mentioned drive your wheelchair over town.
I wanna add some context for our listeners. You don't drive it, Myrna. You basically go halfway across the country. You average 1200 miles a year in your wheelchair. I repeat 1200 miles a year in your wheelchair. How the heck do you do that?
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Myrna Peterson:
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I love my independence. Almost 28 years ago now, I became quadriplegic from the serious auto accident. The 1200 miles one thing I. The expression stupid is as stupid does. It's like that because my independence makes me get, I wanna get there and see what's happening. I tell everyone I have one thumb that works and a mouth that won't quit. So I just find people that will help me with my passion and this one just happened to do that.
goMARTI literally gets me off the street in bad weather. So it was a solution to, I keep well lit up when I'm out at night, but if it's raining or snowing, it's not really safe for me to be out there, but it usually doesn't stop me. Yeah, it just works.
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Grayson Brulte:
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How has, besides the inclimate weather, how has the goMARTI autonomous vehicle service impacted your mobility?
Are you able to go more places now? Are you experiencing more, I'm assuming your miles on your wheelchair are going down because you have a, another form of transportation, but how has it overall impacting your transportation needs?
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Myrna Peterson:
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It's been great because it really is much safer. People like it better when they see me in a closed vehicle rather than out with a park headset and goggles on. So it does allow me to get places more safely. There's some places that it can't go and that's one thing that I would like to features that different stops to different places that, eventually if we get more funding that we can do, or the beauty of a research project is we gotta find out what works and what doesn't, and it's been very successful. Identifying a certain problem and then trying to find solutions. So it's been great that way.
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Grayson Brulte:
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Tammy, what Myrna is describing is independence. She has her independence back again. She doesn't have to suffer in climate weather to get where she wants.
Myrna is one great example of how the community's using it. How are others in the community using and how are they viewing the deployment of goMARTI? Are they excited? Yes. Please add more stops. What is that like?
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Tammy Meehan Russell:
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The community has been so accepting and so excited about this project in general. It's been really fun and positive to watch that we have had, I believe we're at over 1500.
So far since we launched on October 5th through our media day official launch day, those numbers do continue to rise with an average rating of about 4.9 in the service for the Stars in the app and. We have that a lot of that growth in ridership is really due to the grassroots efforts from people like Myrna getting out there talking to the community.
And we have other community members who are helping us with those grassroots efforts including a local call center who's doing so much more than just being a call center. And so a lot of those riders are really just in-person conversations or they hear about it from someone else. Word of mouth. And the community is just in general really supportive.
And I would say when we go talk to the city about anything they hear, including any issues, it's fairly quiet, which is a good thing. The operation is very much just accepted in the community now. People are used to seeing these vehicles driving around and being available if they wanna choose to try it out.
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Grayson Brulte:
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Okay. I gotta ask 1500 rides. How the, who's the power user has the power user emergent. Obviously Myrna is a power user, but are there other, is it perhaps a high school student or an individual working someone that doesn't want to drive to work? Have you seen a usage base of power users that has emerged?
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Myrna Peterson:
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One of the users that I wasn't anticipating ahead of time are middle school and high school kids. And it's to get from school to the Target, to the Y, to the youth centers around, or just to fill that gap of someplace to go between after school and an event that might be happening at night. You know what that does? Many parents have said, wow, has that ever been nice? I don't have to worry about it how my kid is getting somewhere after school or what they're doing because they have a safe and affordable means of transportation. So that's been great. Anyone 12 and over can use it independently. So that's been a using group that, that I wasn't thinking about ahead of time. But yeah, a lot of the older people are still cautious and they see me getting in and I say, why don't you take a ride with me? One said I'll just wait. Crazy.
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Tammy Meehan Russell:
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And I think one of the things to highlight there is, as Myrna said, is they're getting, they're starting to come around, especially as they see Myrna riding it, but we have literally watched the evolution of public perception moving into awareness and trust from some of those riders. Especially those that might be older, differently abled that wouldn't otherwise have had an opportunity to experience the technology ever.
And they see it and they're very leery at first. And then they might be able to try it out or get a little closer, learn a little bit more. Move right into riding it and loving it, and even being an advocate of the project. We've actually literally watched that happen in front of our eyes sometimes with some of these riders.
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Grayson Brulte:
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That's gonna be the fun part, because when it, when we scale that nationally and eventually globally, it starts with, oh, I'm nervous. Oh, this is interesting. Oh, I'm bored. Okay we succeeded. It's boring, and then it's reliable. Mission accomplished. You're getting from to your destination safely. Tammy, Myrna said that the Target, the YMCA, the senior center, what impact did the local community have in, in picking the routes and the stops? Was that all outsourced to the community and say, we really wanna go here, we really wanna go here. Perhaps there's a great bakery in town. Everybody wants to go there. Was that a community led effort?
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Tammy Meehan Russell:
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Absolutely, yes. As a part of creating the goMARTI operation zone or the operating zone where the shuttles operate, as well as the hours of operation.
We wanted to listen to the community to see how they would use. Something like this. So we held, prior to finalizing the map and the hours we held a couple of, or actually three community listening sessions where we went out to three different locations in the community. Three different types of rider groups.
That were touched on in those. And so we worked with the business community. We went to a senior living community and we went to the county to, does a lot of support services. And so we listened to them and how they would use this goMARTI service or the operation. And they shared with us their request for hours as well as the stops that they would most use.
And so that's really how we got to where we are today. And we continue to evaluate the usage of the stops and the usage of the operation cuz we will have an opportunity for one. Shift iteration, and I don't wanna say even hours, probably will stay the same, but one shift in how the stops are placed, where they're located, how we're using it.
Nothing of significance can change just because we don't have the funding to do that. But we do have agreement that we could make some minor changes here. One time.
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Grayson Brulte:
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I hope you have a stop at Myrna's house already, cause that should be your number one stop right across.
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Myrna Peterson:
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It's very close. I just had full cross. It's really close.
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Grayson Brulte:
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There you go. Tammy, from an accessibility standpoint, was accessibility built into the project on day one, or how did you go about incorporating accessibility? So Myrna and other individuals had no problem using this service, and they're not like it didn't have to go lobby or advocate for it. You built it in from day one.
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Tammy Meehan Russell:
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A hundred percent. It was absolutely one of the primary goals of the project from day one or making sure goMARTI is accessible for all, is one of our four goals of the project. And so we knew we needed to bring accessibility requirements to the forefront from day one to truly make an impact in the community.
As we've said, Myrna has been such a huge champion on this, so we wanted to make sure that we work with alongside Myrna and other community members who otherwise wouldn't have access to transportation and really figure out how we can make something of value for them and create learnings for the industry in general on how you create an accessible operation.
So we made sure goMARTI was accessible by putting a few requirements in place up front. The first one was it needed to be free to ride. So our funding needed to be able to offer free rides, so the financial requirement was removed. Making that accessible. We wanted to make sure that differently abled or people with physical challenges could, I would say most notably, those in wheelchairs could access the shuttles. So that required that our operation had at least a majority of shuttles with wheelchair accessibility or ADA wheelchair compliance. And the main mobility team really delivered on that. We have three of the five shuttles being ADA wheelchair accessible, and then, It needed to be accessible for those who might not have access to be able to use a smartphone.
And so with that, we've hired a local call center. First Call 211 is a nonprofit call center, and they really have stepped up to ride the call center as well as engagement in the community. And then finally, the route itself has over 70 stops approximately 70. The operating zone is over 17 square miles. It is not a circulator, so the shuttles don't stop at all 70 of those. But the number of stops is, are pre-programmed and we've installed signs at those stops. So people who use the call center or who are specifically looking for where the shuttle will be preprogrammed to stop, they know exactly where that is when they arrive.
And we created so many of those as a part of this to make it more accessible so people don't have to travel as far to get to where the shuttle will stop and drop them off or pick them up. We're also continuing to gather data on the accessibility in snow and winter for those stop locations, those on and off points, so hopefully we can learn and even improve for next winter. Being an 18-month pilot, that was one of the goals was we'd have two winters, so we could gather a lot of data and improve on the accessibility for next winter.
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Grayson Brulte:
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You operated in the snow, you're operating in 17 square miles, 70 stops. That's a very ambitious deployment. Myrna, if I'm sitting here. If I'm a resident of Grand Rapids, either I'm a father of a student in the school or I'm a teacher in the school, I say, okay, learning opportunity, let's take advantage of this learning opportunity will take STEM to a whole different level. You said mentioned middle school students and high school students 12 and over are riding in the vehicles. It's the local education community, the board of education, the local school community. Seeing, okay, goMARTI's a major learning tool here.
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Myrna Peterson:
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Absolutely, yes. I'm in education. I'm an educator. Retired from that field now, but that's a strong focus of my passion for this because it does allow opportunities for workforce development, career development, career pathways for our kids. We've had students involved in designing the fixtures that are placed along rural roads that do not have an identifiable image for the vehicle to, it operates on the technology that it needs to locate. Vehicles through their cameras and our students in the high school industrial tech classes helped design those. There are opportunities in this summer for our kids for camps that came to last summer, and Tammy has bunch more planned for this summer, but just opening the door for some of our engineers.
Students at the community college are operators and. It's just beginning to open up a whole nother world of curiosity and vision for other ways to get kids to become involved in an industry that's new and progressive. And also what the hope of bringing other industries here to Grand Rapids. So that our kids can stay here and not have to move away for future careers.
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Grayson Brulte:
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They can have their Jetsons moment, you had your Jetsons moment in 1962. They can have their Jetsons moment here in 2023 because of what you're doing.
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Myrna Peterson:
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Absolutely. It's just a real eye-opener in the interest of my own grandkids who are younger than 12 living here is just wow. How did those work, grandma?
The whole experience of AI is so alive right now and so intriguing for even me at my age. But I would love to be back in the classroom and be able to explore the creativity behind AI and the goMARTI's of the world and what it does for my accessibility just to my own wheelchair.
All of the intriguing things and creativity out there for young learners.
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Grayson Brulte:
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The young learner gets in the vehicle. We're not in Kansas anymore. They're sitting there in the future. And then Tammy, so you look at what Myrna was talking about with the local schools and the community, it opens up the workforce development pipeline.
Perhaps it's a, they can go onto a vocational education where they can learn to develop these new technologies because we need a workforce for the future technology. We're seeing the struggles that Intel's having in Ohio with their foundries. They're building these multi-billion dollar foundries to onshore semiconductors, but they can't hire the talent.
And that's gonna play a big issue. What is The Plum Catalyst doing around workforce to develop it? So as the goMARTI project scales, perhaps you scale to other parts of the state or to other states that there's talent there from a workforce standpoint.
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Tammy Meehan Russell:
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Yes, definitely agree, Grayson. Workforce development is a huge topic in this industry and it needs to be, honestly. So my team provides partners and others with strategy and training, supporting, like how do you break this down? How do you approach workforce development? Because it is such a huge topic and it is a long term effort for all of us to get on board with.
So we define it in a framework that's three pillars. And so we are really rolling out a couple of exciting things under this framework. One of them is officially called our Plum Mobility Labs, and I'll explain a little bit more about one of that, one of those things, but that really gets into inspiring Next Generation, as you said.
How do you get to these students? K-12 while they're middle school, high school, or maybe even elementary school. And so we strive to inspire the next generation of transportation technology leaders and those who will get really excited, as Myrna said on this, have their Jetsons moment.
And so we wanna do that through innovative programming work we call Mobility 101. So we introduced, just what is the future of mobility, a 101 session, and we did that last summer with some of the campers at Minnesota's north, which has an Itasca campus right there in Grand Rapids. So we were able to give the campers an overview of goMARTI, show them some really interesting technology, as well as just the industry in general.
And then we also sponsored student competitions. And in the case of goMARTI, we also hired the students to do the fixtures project where they were able, as Myrna said, to build those fixtures along the. For the shuttles to be able to localize on rural roads, it's a big deal that you need some localization.
And so students were able to learn about the tech while they delivered us the fixtures on the route. I think the next area is upskilling and re-skilling, so looking at our current workforce that are out there and so we can create strategy overviews and even new college programming and opportunities for people to experience jobs who are already outside of school and they look to get into this industry. So there are customized training programs and partnerships. And so in this case, goMARTI has hired over 20 autonomous vehicle operators right there from Grand Rapids. Those are generally part-time roles as well as a few full-time roles working for May Mobility, and there's just a lot of great opportunity for upskilling, reskilling in this industry when you can introduce a project like goMARTI in a community.
And finally, just like we saw with goMARTI in the early days, introducing innovative partnerships, you have to bring together the people who are providing the training, those training partner. The people who are the employers, the tech companies. And then guess what, we also have to identify funding to create these programs. So identifying those funding sources who are interested in doing that, bringing everyone together is really, the magic.
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Grayson Brulte:
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Tammy, you created 20 local jobs and Grand Rapids, Minnesota in the autonomous vehicle industry. That's success. It's basically changed Myrna's life. You've got 1500 rides since you launched. Are there plans to scale goMARTI to other parts of the state of Minnesota?
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Tammy Meehan Russell:
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I would say unknown right now, but we do have plans to share a lot of what we've learned and we are launching what are called smart rural seminars this fall. And so smart rural, it'll include two seminars this year.
And oddly enough, it's coming to Grand Rapids, Minnesota first, so we can highlight, goMARTI for the attendees of those seminars. And it really is a workforce development effort in and of itself where we're training other community leaders from not only Minnesota, but we're gonna allow, we're gonna open it up nationally.
So it could be regional community leaders, it could be even others from outside the region. And they can come and learn about how we approach, goMARTI, how you identify the right technology for their community, how do you identify funding and look at policies, all sorts of exciting stuff coming as well as high highlighting the stories of the community members who are most impacted by a project like goMARTI. We are launching those to hopefully to help educate and train other community leaders to be able to do projects like this.
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Grayson Brulte:
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Storytelling is a gift. Storytelling. What's gonna allow you to get more funding storytelling is what's gonna allow you to scale. Myrna, goMARTI has been a huge success. The demand is there. It's having a positive impact on the community. It's creating jobs. It's inspiring the next generation. In your opinion, what is the future of the goMARTI project?
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Myrna Peterson:
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For me, it answers the question why, and my dad taught me early on. Before you do anything, you need to figure out your why, you know why you're doing this.
For me, able-bodied people can get a driver's license. I cannot. There's many people who cannot. So for me, goMARTI answers the question, why? Why are we spending this money on the technology? It's because I can't drive like the majority of the population can. So for me, goMARTI is a great option for people of all abilities and all ages to experience affordable and accessible transportation to places which will provide them a better quality of life. To me, everyone deserves that quality of life and the future is in things like goMARTI.
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Grayson Brulte:
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goMARTI. Tammy, what's your opinion on the future of goMARTI?
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Tammy Meehan Russell:
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I am the eternal optimist. The sky is limit in my world, right? I think my opinion is, in the future is we will identify, continue to identify opportunities for future funding sources to be able to keep it going and be able to continue to expand and learn.
We did apply for federal funding and are optimistic that we will get some federal funding to keep it going and keep expanding and learning. I will say that you. I think the biggest thing for me in the future of goMARTI is taking the learnings and showing the industry and other community leaders how you can bring an emerging technology in for good.
And not just being like for good as in the long term, but for an impact, a huge social impact, as Myrna said improving people's life is really how we need to address emerging technologies. It's not just technology for the sake of a fun new tech, but it's bringing it in to improve a quality of life.
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Grayson Brulte:
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And you always have to stay positive. Cause if you're positive, really good things will happen. And we're seeing this, a loss of positivity coming outta the goMARTI project. And Tammy, as we look to wrap up this insightful conversation, what would you like the listeners to take away with them today?
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Tammy Meehan Russell:
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I think I would love to just make sure to share that the goMARTI project provides such a huge opportunity for everyone to learn, but it really takes a village.
It’s really a number of champions, both grassroots champions like Myrna and a number of others that I wish we could, get in front of you, Grayson, and you could talk to all of 'em. But it really takes a village at the community level, at the regional level, at the state level. And so I think that's the biggest thing for people to understand about a project like goMARTI. This did not happen overnight. It's a village.
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Grayson Brulte:
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It takes a village, but when you have a village behind you, really great things happen. Myrna, what would you like our listeners to take away with them today?
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Myrna Peterson:
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I would echo that definitely about the village. We are so fortunate, Grand Rapids is a progressive thinking community that wants to make things happen.
We are a growing aging population. People wanna come here for the lakes and the trees, but also for the arts and the hockey and basketball and all of the sports. So it's a wonderful blend in our community that allows a great quality of life. And I just think that there's no end to the future. Of course, we're looking at funding to expand, but first you need that village that cooperatively works together for fun, new adventure.
Dream big and then you just wait for the right people to fall in the right timeline, and then you make a plan and get her done. And that's what we, that's what's working here.
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Grayson Brulte:
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I'll summarize what Myrna said, dream big and make things happen. Today is tomorrow. Tomorrow is today. The future is goMARTI. Tammy, Myrna, thank you so much for coming on SAE Tomorrow Today.
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Myrna Peterson:
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Thank you so much, Grayson, this has been great.
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Tammy Meehan Russell:
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Thanks Grayson.
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Grayson Brulte:
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Thank you for listening to SAE Tomorrow Today. If you've enjoyed this episode and would like to hear more, please kindly rate review and let us know what topics you'd like for us to explore next. Be sure to join us next week as we speak with Cipia's Tal Krzypow, who will discuss their innovative driver and occupancy monitoring systems.
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, process, service, or organization presented or mentioned in this podcast.
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