BRENDON HARRINGTON: Hey, everyone.
Thanks for coming.
Thanks for joining us today.
I'm Brendan from the transportation team.
It's my very big privilege and honor
to introduce Stana Katic today.
She's here from LA.
You know her as the TV and film actress.
One of her big hits, of course, is the TV show "Castle."
Beyond that, though, she's a strong advocate
for the environment and for transportation.
Having lived throughout the world,
she's often observed transportation issues
in many different places.
She's very passionate about not accepting this car centric
fate, and so she's dedicated her time
to a new organization called the Alternative Travel Project,
just a few years old now.
She's going to share a little bit more about her experiences,
so join me in welcoming her.
[APPLAUSE]
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
[PIANO MUSIC]
-In the early 1900s, Henry Ford set out
to make an automobile anyone could afford.
The Model T became so affordable that a worker could buy it
in only four months' pay.
By the 1920s, the market had reached saturation.
Those who desired a car already owned one, as 90% of all trips
were made by rail car.
Around the 1950s, things started to change.
"The Street Car Conspiracy" by the author
and former US and antitrust attorney Bradford Snell
refers to the allegations that GM and other companies
like Firestone, through subsidiaries, purchased
and dismantled trams, trolleys, and electric trains
in many cities across the United States in order
to eliminate the car industry's number one competitor.
Others argue that the fall of public transportation
was due to the culmination of other factors,
such as the Depression, labor unrest, market forces,
urban sprawl, and other causes favoring private vehicle
ownership.
One author was quoted as saying, clearly, GM waged
a war on electric traction.
It was, indeed, an all out assault
but by no means the single reason for the failure
of rapid transit.
Also, it is just as clear that the actions and inactions
by government contributed significantly
to the elimination of electric traction.
Americans had a wake up call with the oil crisis of 1973,
and since then, alternative forms of travel have been
on the rise, most notably again in the 2000s with the US
involvement in the Middle East and people's realizations that
we as a country cannot be dependent on fossil fuels.
Then again, for others, it was simply
just an idea one morning.
-You know, one summer day, I just said, you know what?
It's time for me to just find a new way to get to work.
I was just so tired of being in a car,
and literally, within a week, I had my bicycle.
[MUSIC RADIO CITIZEN, "THE HOP"]
[END PLAYBACK]
[APPLAUSE]
STANA KATIC: Hi.
My name is Stana Katic.
I am here to talk with you today about ATP.
Many of you know ATP to be adenosine triphosphate,
the energy carrying shuttle service molecule found
in the cells of all living things.
Not a very big deal, but to me, it's
the acronym for one of my favorite non-profits,
the Alternative Travel Project.
Oddly enough, it also happens to be a nonprofit that I founded.
So what is ATP?
Well, it's a global initiative that
encourages people to go car free for just one day.
We ask people to volunteer days outside
of the bubble of their cars by finding new ways to travel.
And by new ways, I mean the ancient art
of pedestrian travel, cycling, public transit, and new tech.
That being said, I promise you this presentation
isn't going to end with me asking
you to throw away your Teslas.
Cars are great.
They're part of our modern day.
They just don't need to be a part of our every day.
So why bother?
Why does transit-- or what does transit
have to do with your average Joe other than being
a royal nuisance at 8 AM and 5 PM, five days a week?
I have a huge list of stats and stories
that say traveling alternatively has reverberating effects
on so many parts of our lives-- our health, our environment,
and here's the one that really motivates
people-- our pocketbooks.
But we have to start somewhere, so
why don't we just start by looking at our future?
Let's see where we are going globally.
At the current pace of urbanization,
the world's cities will add 65 million inhabitants
every year-- every single year-- for the next 10 years.
So if we break that down, and let's
say we just look at India-- we look at the cities of India--
they're going to have to add as much floor space
as exists in all of Chicago.
China is going to have to add twice that every year.
This means that traffic is not going to get better.
It's going to get more complicated.
I lived in Los Angeles.
Traffic already sucks.
People joke in LA about how dating someone
on the other side of town can be a deal breaker,
because who wants to do long distance?
Can you guys imagine what a population surge in that city
is going to look like?
I just got married.
I'm good.
The love of my life lives in my zip code.
But I'm worried about my single sisters out there.
There is a study that came out this past February, March.
Scientists at California's Office of Environmental Health
Hazard Assessment, the Cancer Prevention
Institute of California, UC Davis,
and other prestigious science centers
linked chronic exposure to ultra fine particles
in vehicle exhaust to deaths from heart disease.
So ultra fine particles, according to the study,
are a key contributor to health problems
amongst people living near traffic.
The study ran from 2001 to 2007.
It took a look at 100,000 middle-aged women
across California.
These women were teachers and administrators, so people
that we need and that we want to stick around.
So let's think about it again.
What happens when we have a population surge in our cities?
Traffic isn't just a health hazard.
There's a financial cost to getting people
around a city inefficiently.
According to recent research, congestions cost,
partly from wasting time and the patience of commuters,
equals anywhere from 1.5% to 4% of gross domestic product.
So getting people from one part of the city
to another efficiently and stress free has monetary value.
So as our cities' populations grow, what's the plan?
Where are we going?
Leaving the roadways as they are has an economic cost,
but data also suggests that building more roadways
isn't the answer, as well, because that has human health
costs.
This is where we come in.
The city of Los Angeles is one of the media capitals
of the world, as is the city of Google.
We export lifestyle through our stories,
through film, television, internet content, et cetera.
And at ATP, we believe that places like Google and Los
Angeles or Hollywood-- we believe
we're unique on the global stage because we have
an unparalleled potential to effect
the vision of what an ideal lifestyle would and could be.
Our media, our film and television tales,
reach even the most remote international villages
and yurts.
What kind of tales and lifestyles
are we going to be able to export
when the majority of storytellers
are bound to driving as a main mode of transit?
Transit is a secondary thought when
it comes to much of entertainment media content,
but driving storytellers lead to driving scenes in movies.
I know.
I have to do them all the time.
Our lives affect our inspiration and imagination,
and that has reverberating effects.
That has global effects.
The messages that we plant in global consciousness
now will dictate where we all go.
With the extraordinary amount of creative talent
and financial power that circulates
through this part of the US, we can
be at the forefront of technological breakthroughs
and municipal services in an unprecedented way.
And if we took a quick moment to improve something
as simple as the way we get around,
the benefits to health, the benefits to business
and the environment would be astronomical.
So I figure a city that draws some
of the most creative people on the planet
would be a fertile ground for problem solving
the next generation's ideas of what metropolitan travel has
to look like.
There is a way to make it fun, inspiring, and safe.
And at ATP, we are trying to be a part
of disseminating that vision.
Our first year, we asked people across the globe
to volunteer days car free, and the response was overwhelming.
Stories came in from everywhere, from France, Belgium, South
Africa, Argentina, Minnesota.
I mean, everywhere.
I have shared this one often.
It's a good story, so bear with me if you've heard it before.
There was a school in Romania that,
as a result of this initiative, decided
to take on the challenge and create car free Fridays.
What happened was that people that
were connected to the school started
meeting each other on buses, on sidewalks, and so on.
And a little over a year and a half
later, there were two weddings as a direct result
of the Alternative Travel Project initiative.
Here's a photo.
They now have children.
So ATP isn't just about making a love connection.
The other benefits of engaging in an ATP lifestyle
extend beyond health and economics.
There's something called agglomeration.
Agglomeration essentially means a heap or cluster
of usually disparate elements.
There is monetary value to agglomerating people
through expanded transit.
Planning scholars from UC Berkeley and Rutgers
believe the numbers run anywhere from $1.5 million to $1.8
billion, depending on a city's size.
And at Google, you guys are doing a fantastic job
of re-envisioning transit.
I know, because I read your Bike Vision Statement,
and if anyone here hasn't seen it, you should.
It's very, very impressive.
In Google's vision plan, you're part
of creating new infrastructure in which residents
of all abilities, from ages 8 to 80,
will feel safe and comfortable doing things like riding around
on a bicycle here.
For a company that is at the forefront of making
the imagined manifest, how many more moments
of eureka, how many more ideas will you foster into reality
by building the transit infrastructure that
allows for agglomeration?
ATP is working to inform and empower individuals
to choose alternative means of transit.
We see a future where, as cities all over the world grow,
pedestrian travel, cyclists, cars, and public transit
hold equal value for those building infrastructure.
We are working to arm businesses and governments
with the data necessary to comfortably justify
building those facilities for the betterment
of their economies and for the health and happiness
of their citizens.
That's where we want to go.
And if we can-- or if I can convince one of you
in this room to use your molecular energy ATP
to do some alternative travel ATP, and if,
therefore, a part of a reverberating effect
that reduces a person's risk of heart disease or results
in you saving money so you can take your loved one out
to dinner, or spurs a chance meeting on a bike trail that
figures out a way to save the polar bear,
cure cancer, protect the Galapagos,
or build that high speed electric party train that gets
us from San Francisco to LA, in no time, then the places
that we are going is going to be where everyone wants to be.
So thank you.
[APPLAUSE]