Translator: Hasmik Sahakyan Reviewer: Peter van de Ven
Just over a hundred years ago,
moving around cities was slow and expensive.
You had to use a horse and carriage.
By the 1920s, there were millions of private automobiles on the road.
And thanks to Henry Ford's mass-produced used model T,
the horse carriage industry basically went bust.
Now, the private automobile had a huge impact on our lives.
It provided the people the freedom to move around cities.
Some studies suggest that it created the middle class.
Fast forward to today, a hundred years later.
Again, we can't move, there is just too much traffic.
There are about 1.2 billion cars on the road today.
70 million new cars are added every year.
When you see a commercial from a new car on TV,
it looks like this.
(Laughter)
Fast car, going on a highway, looks like fun.
Freedom!
But actually, most of the time we spend in cars looks like this.
(Laughter)
We are sitting in a five-seat vehicle using only one seat
with four empty seats, creating massive inefficiency.
What if I told you that in just a few years, you won't buy a car?
The public transportation will win over private car ownership.
I want to show you what the future of public transportation looks like.
By the way,
how many of you came here today using public transportation?
(Mumbling)
Well, not that many, not really surprising.
Public transportation in many cities is not that good.
Mostly due to the high cost of infrastructure.
Digging subway tunnels is in the billions,
new neighborhoods become fashionable, demographics of the city change.
It takes dozens of years, if at all, until the new subway line gets there.
Buses have rigid routes, rigid scheduling.
When is the last time a new bus line was introduced in your city?
Probably a long time ago.
Take it a step further.
Imagine there is a ball game about to end in the local football stadium.
Do buses update their lines, routing and scheduling in a real time
to accommodate the demand of people coming out of the ball game?
The answer is obviously "No."
By the way, who do you think is paying
for all of the infrastructure of public transportation?
It's you guys. Through your taxes!
The infrastructure and the digging of subway tunnels,
the billions of dollars, the bus stops - all that is paid using our taxes.
Even the ongoing operating expenses
of most of the world's public transportation systems
is 50% subsidized by our taxes.
I believe we can put our money to much better use.
A few years ago, I was sitting in a bus in Tel Aviv that made endless stops,
I had to switch lines, walk 20 minutes in the blistering summer heat
until I would finally get home.
I was sitting there, sweating, thinking to myself,
"Why can't the bus adapt to what I need?"
Why the bus can't adapt to what you need?
I right away called my friend Daniel Ramot,
and together we came up with the idea of an on-demand, dynamic bus system;
a dynamic shuttle system.
Imagine a network of vehicles that is constantly optimized in real-time
through a centralized optimization software,
using data-phone traffic, where people want to go,
and the routing and scheduling of the system is always optimized,
in real time.
You book a route on your phone; you tell us where you want to go;
within a few minutes, a van, a shuttle,
will come and will pick you up at a corner nearby;
and take you to a corner near your destination.
On the way, it will pick up and drop off other people, just like a bus.
However, the routing, the pick-up spots, the drop-off spots, the scheduling,
everything is computed in real time.
We right away realized that this is the future of mobility.
We set out to form "Via" -
the world's first on-demand shuttle network.
Instead of a limited set of bus stops, every corner now becomes a bus stop.
Instead of fixed routes, fixed scheduling, everything is dynamic,
computed in a real time.
For example, if there is a traffic jam on the street you're on,
then it would ask you to walk a block
and reroute the vehicles to pick you up at that location.
Nothing is pre-set, everything is dynamic.
We first launched our service in New York city in September of 2013,
very modest: five vans, Upper East Side,
midtown Manhattan, during commute hours only.
Our service caught on right away, and since then we've powered
tens of millions of efficient and affordable rides in New York city,
in Chicago and in Washington, DC.
The main feedback we've been getting from our users
is that it just makes sense.
You share the ride with people headed your way,
very convenient, at a very affordable price point.
By the way, we believe that using a whole car to get from A to B
is the new smoking.
(Laughter)
You take a whole car, four empty seats:
you create emissions, you create congestion,
you create massive inefficiency.
At Via, we're in the business of selling seats,
a seat is all you need to get from A to B.
Now, other seats in that vehicle are physically connected to your seat,
other people are sitting on those seats,
and this is when it starts to be interesting.
You're probably thinking to yourself,
"If I take this, will it take me out of my way?
How how long will it take?"
This is a very challenging problem to solve.
To create an efficient and convenient transportation platform
requires a lot of software engineering,
solving a very challenging algorithmic and mathematical problem.
These are the challenges we had to solve
in order to serve the tens of millions of people
that have enjoyed our service so far.
Our goal is simple, we wanna provide you
with an efficient and affordable way to move around cities.
We are partnering with cities, municipalities,
public transportation operators to help them transition
from a rigid set of lines and schedules, rigid buses,
to a dynamic, on-demand solution.
By the way, our infrastructure is data.
Instead of spending billions on infrastructure,
we're using data to provide you with a very efficient service.
We are doing that in Paris, in the UK, in Austin, Texas.
Consider also taxis, when you use a taxi,
again, you are using a whole vehicle just for yourself.
A few weeks ago, we introduced the ability to book a seat
in New York city's iconic yellow taxis.
You share the ride, you share the cost and you reduce congestion.
So where is this new world of on-demand shared mobility taking us?
Remember a hundred years ago?
You couldn't move; private cars solved that.
Today, the private car is the problem.
Again we can't move.
So I want to leave you with this thought:
Cities will ban the use of private cars
and will allow us to move freely around the city,
using on-demand shuttle networks.
Traffic will be gone,
we will regain the freedom to move around our cities
and that will have a huge impact on our life.
Thank you.
(Applause)