Future Forward

Seyi Fabode (00:01.859)
Hello, hello, hello Reza, how are you?

Reza (00:04.546)
I'm good Seyi, how are you doing?

Seyi Fabode (00:06.339)
I am good, I am good. Excited to jump into episode five of Future Forward.

Reza (00:14.018)
Yeah, me too. Today's topic is going to be great. I think we've talked about energy. We talked about electricity last time, but now we're sort of digging into something that I think all of us can relate to, which is transportation. All of us have to get to places. That's like, I think that's part of being human these days is we got to get somewhere. We no longer on villages where we can just sort of stay within the, you know,

Seyi Fabode (00:27.971)
Yes, absolutely. Yes.

Seyi Fabode (00:36.355)
Absolutely.

Reza (00:42.626)
the 150 people tribe that we're in. We now have cities, there's transportation that's needed. So I can't wait to talk about this, Jay. So let's start at the start like we always do.

Seyi Fabode (00:54.691)
Yes, let's do that. And for our new listeners, welcome to Future Forward, which is a conversation that Reza and I have been having for years now. And we're bringing you in. We're talking about the future of cities. And every week, every episode, we take a chunk of the city, the interconnected systems of cities, and we dive deep into one. And as Reza just said,

by diving into the future of transportation today. And in making your intro point, Reza, you highlighted where this whole transportation thing started. We did not have long distances to go. And consequently, transportation was really human energy on your two feet.

walking from one place to another, whether it be within your community or because we lived in more agricultural or hunter -based societies, we walked wherever we had to go. And then we moved to using animals to transport ourselves or to do labor on our farms. But it's always been, and this is why I love the...

In fact, we cover cities. It's always been this tie in. Transportation is literally the use of energy to move people and things from one place to the other.

Reza (02:37.634)
Yeah, yeah, it's amazing. So give us a little bit about like where this all started, Seyi

Seyi Fabode (02:44.547)
Yeah. So the transport systems as we know it now, I'd suggest based on research started with the invention of the steam engine in the late 18th century. I, for some reason, I'd always thought cars came before trains, which is not the case. Trains came before cars because once we figured out steam engines, the first

place we really used it for transportation was in trains. And as we started to, the engineering of our transport systems led us to the automobile, essentially, which is sort of the next phase. And we all think a lot about the Model T Ford. It's kind of the most,

Reza (03:39.778)
Yeah, the classic.

Seyi Fabode (03:42.467)
The classic, yeah. It brought vehicular transportation into the hands of the people. And consequently, it is that critical piece of the transportation systems. Because once cars came in, even the little trolleys that were used in some cities at that point had to make way for cars. We have these images of cities like the...

Reza (04:07.586)
Mm -hmm.

Seyi Fabode (04:12.355)
in California, where you had trolleys going through those old pictures. And the next thing you see is those streets have become designed for cars. So I have some data points I'll share here. So the Model T was introduced in 1908. And by 1927, Ford had produced over 15 million models.

Yeah, it's pretty wild. And between 1913 and 2019, we went from having 181 ,000 miles of paved roads in the US to 4 .1 million miles of paved roads. So we totally changed our landscape.

Reza (04:43.562)
That's crazy.

Seyi Fabode (05:12.483)
by adapting to the car.

Reza (05:16.578)
That's staggering. That's staggering. Yeah.

Seyi Fabode (05:18.063)
Yeah, yeah, it's pretty astonishing. And consequently, obviously, it was the internal combustion engine that led us to the development of the automobile. And we ended up starting what we all now know as the, I'll say a decline into just using petroleum at scale and fossil fuels at scale. And...

Reza (05:44.386)
Very good.

Seyi Fabode (05:47.779)
Petroleum became the dominant form of fuel for transportation, both with trains, but also with vehicle transportation in cities, cars, and the like.

Reza (05:53.314)
Yeah.

Reza (06:02.818)
Yeah. So this interesting, Seyi like I have one thread to pull over there. I know you have one more point to make on, you know, this past, but it seemed like when we started with transportation, we had a form of public transportation with trains, but the moment that cars came about, it sort of atomized it down to like, as an individual, now I can move myself around as opposed to relying on something to move me. And,

Seyi Fabode (06:30.083)
Mm -hmm.

Reza (06:32.162)
I think there was, I mean, there's the good and bad of that, like of two sides of the same coin, gave us freedom, but at the same time, like created all this situation with fossil fuels and transportation, just transforming our landscape, our lives, the climate, but at the same time, giving us all this freedom to move and make cities thrive in the way that they do now. So.

interesting how that always seems to play out with every introduction of new technology.

Seyi Fabode (07:05.507)
of new technology, you are so correct. So there's this fantastic book that I'll recommend to our listeners. It's called Crossings, How Road Ecology is Shaping the Future of Our Planet by an author called Ben Goldfarb. And in that book, he talks about how we've literally changed the fabric of our cities.

Reza (07:14.562)
And the real.

Reza (07:25.09)
Yeah.

Seyi Fabode (07:34.499)
because we moved from rail to the point you're making, rail to individual transportation in cars. And we had to build the roads to enable that movement. And in some cases, we literally built those roads right next to the rail we put down. So we went from.

Reza (07:50.082)
Yeah.

Reza (08:00.738)
Yeah.

Seyi Fabode (08:04.515)
moving a lot of people in one vehicle, which is what a train is, to individualized transportation modes, which I guess it goes back to this independence thing of maybe, I'll say America more than most, other countries obviously have cars, but I lived in London and.

Reza (08:09.25)
Yeah.

Reza (08:19.682)
Hmm.

Seyi Fabode (08:30.611)
For a good chunk of my time in London, I did not own a car. For years, I did not own a car. And it was possible. And I lived what was considered a fairly decent life, because I could go places, meet friends, walk to places. And moving to the US was such a shock for me.

Reza (08:39.202)
that was possible. That was possible. Yeah.

Reza (08:52.578)
Yeah.

Reza (08:57.474)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I can imagine.

Seyi Fabode (09:00.803)
Even in a place like Chicago where the train system is fairly decent, I was still having to drive so much and then you can't even imagine. I'm still recovering having moved to Texas now and I have to drive everywhere. So you're correct. Yeah.

Reza (09:05.57)
Yeah.

Reza (09:13.186)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think you have one more thing about the past and then let's bring us into the present. I think this is an interesting point that you're gonna bring up, like where the past was with transportation.

Seyi Fabode (09:32.323)
Yes, yes. So we. Again, just last point on on how much how much road we've had to build 48000 miles of interstate US highway, which was launched in 1956 to start to move us between cities. So, yes, it's kind of wild. And around around the late 19th century, we started to

Reza (09:52.866)
Oof, wow.

Yeah.

Seyi Fabode (10:01.923)
push, people started to push again, we find this overlap between other systems in our cities where it became this push towards electrifying everything. Because last episode we were talking about Edison, Volta and the move towards electric power to

Reza (10:22.562)
Right, right.

Reza (10:30.082)
Yeah.

Seyi Fabode (10:31.235)
convert to energy for all the activities that also touched the transportation sector. But where it landed, where it really took off was more trains and trolleys in cities. Again, those mass movement options started to adopt electrification well before what now feels like a lot of

move towards electric vehicles. And we couldn't get that move in electric vehicles because the infrastructure wasn't there. The battery technology wasn't quite there yet. And consequently, it kept stalling. The move towards electric vehicles kept stalling. And we find ourselves here today. Yeah.

Reza (11:04.706)
Yeah.

Reza (11:14.37)
Yeah.

Reza (11:20.098)
Yeah.

Reza (11:23.458)
Yeah.

Yeah, so take us into the present. What's going on in transportation today? Especially, I'm curious about why is electrification now beginning to work?

Seyi Fabode (11:40.547)
starting to pick up. Yeah, so as we keep finding with all these conversations, Reza, none of these other systems and the changes that were happening in these other systems, it wasn't just in that one system. The changes that we were seeing in our buildings, in our cities, and electrification of our buildings through light and it's...

obviously started to touch on vehicles as well. But the transportation sector has lagged behind immensely. It's still today, 90 % of the energy used in the US, consumed in the US, is for transportation. So not just the movement of people, but the movement of things. And...

as we start to move away from internal combustion engines because of, again, those same movements that started to have people raising their hands and saying, why are we burning fossil fuels again? We're essentially burning the future of our kids. Let's move things around.

Reza (12:56.194)
you

Seyi Fabode (13:05.187)
some of the technology, because electric vehicle technology has been around since I believe the 1970s or so. Today, we now have a lot more adoption. And I'd say to pull on the thread you pulled last week, it boiled down to touching the emotions and the minds of people to make them either desire electric vehicles or

Reza (13:30.946)
Thank you.

Seyi Fabode (13:35.107)
desire a better future through the reduction in the use of fossil fuels. So it all really boils down to how can we get people to think differently about the technologies we use. Yeah.

Reza (13:46.722)
Yeah. Yeah. Do you remember when, like when the Toyota Prius came out and it was kind of a status symbol to drive a Prius because it was hybrid and, you know, less energy use. I clearly remember that.

Seyi Fabode (14:00.899)
I do too. And it was celebrities who were making it cool to drive the Prius. I distinctly remember everyone seemed to have a conversation, anyone in the space anyway, had a conversation about Gwyneth Paltrow driving a Prius. I'm like, what is this? Yeah, it was her. I'm like, really? This is what will move us in this direction?

Reza (14:05.826)
That's it. Yes. Yes.

Reza (14:17.634)
I was trying to remember. I was trying to remember. Yeah, yeah

Reza (14:28.322)
But it boils down to like, we're so human in how we adopt new things. And so, one way is through this social proof of this celebrity adopting it, and then you feel like, this must be a good thing. And the flip side, like as we have begun this drive for electrification,

Seyi Fabode (14:41.891)
Yes.

Seyi Fabode (14:46.979)
Hahaha!

Reza (14:56.642)
one of the factors that's hindering it is this thing about range anxiety. And I think it might be only a US thing because there's such great distances. I don't know enough about other countries, maybe countries in Europe where this might not. it is? Okay. So this is... Okay.

Seyi Fabode (15:01.315)
Yes.

Seyi Fabode (15:07.619)
It's the same. It's the same. Yeah. It's the same because range anxiety is tied to this perception that there are not enough charging stations, regardless of the distance you're going. We see gas stations on the side of almost every other road. And you're like, you know what, if I have a problem, I can just, exactly, exactly. And, and.

Reza (15:22.21)
yeah. Weather, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Yes, yes, that is just like, it's ubiquitous. Yeah, it's ubiquitous, yeah.

Seyi Fabode (15:35.779)
Range anxiety in the US is, yes, tied to long distances. In other places like in Nigeria, for example, it is more an anxiety around, will I be able to charge when I need to charge, regardless of the distance? Yeah, yeah.

Reza (15:41.474)
Hmm.

Reza (15:52.226)
Yes.

Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it makes sense. I can't imagine in Mumbai we'd have enough chargers for all the crazy amount of cars there. I try to imagine like, what's gonna happen in Mumbai when we have all those electric cars everywhere? I'm sure they'll solve that problem, but it just blows my mind when I think about it. Yeah, yeah.

Seyi Fabode (16:03.267)
Exactly.

Seyi Fabode (16:11.971)
They'll figure it out, I hope. And along those lines, we've seen a lot more adoption than at any point. So some stats. In 2023, EV sales in the US passed a million units for the first time. And as of the first half of 2024, we're in June 2024 now.

EVs now represent just under 9%, 8 .6 % of new vehicles sold. So there's still a ways to go, but, we've seen a lot more interest and modes and variations of electric vehicles. And I'll make another quick point about, about this. Some companies, Toyota being chief amongst them, we're trying to push.

Reza (16:49.314)
Yeah.

Seyi Fabode (17:10.083)
the hydrogen version of electric vehicles. So they did the hybrid, obviously the Prius, but they also started to go down this route of hydrogen -fueled vehicles. And that stalled and continues to stall because to your point, you're so spot on with your insights about people and anxieties.

Reza (17:12.034)
Okay.

Reza (17:25.442)
Yeah.

Reza (17:31.554)
Yeah.

Seyi Fabode (17:39.491)
The real concern most had with that version of a more sustainable vehicle was that the explosion of hydrogen in a tank in your car is something we all absolutely have no desire to experience.

Reza (18:03.554)
So here's the thing, one of the most popular rock albums of all time, Led Zeppelin IV, is this big zeppelin blowing up that indelibly is in my head when I think about hydrogen. So I can imagine that feeling of like, this thing will explode. I don't know if I want it in my car. Yeah.

Seyi Fabode (18:12.099)
I'm

Seyi Fabode (18:17.539)
And so, yeah, yeah.

Seyi Fabode (18:26.595)
That is not what you want. And so we've seen that sort of branch of sustainability in the fuels that power our vehicles, our cars. We've seen that branch sort of fizzle out a lot more, but we're still seeing a lot of adoption of electric vehicles, especially in Europe, yes.

Reza (18:47.074)
Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Seyi Fabode (18:56.195)
but also in the US. I see more electric vehicles around me here in Austin than at any point in just under 10 years that I've lived here.

Reza (19:01.282)
Yes.

Yes. Yes.

Reza (19:09.666)
Yeah, yeah, and anywhere you go, you know, it didn't used to be sort of see one or two a day, but now it's like you get out of the house, you go, you're just gonna run into, or see, not run into, let's not say that, but you're gonna see, you know, a Tesla or, you know, one of the newer, you know, one of the, yeah, exactly. So I'll have to admit, you know, that my kids have told me, you know,

Seyi Fabode (19:21.251)
Yeah. Yes.

Seyi Fabode (19:30.05)
Electric vehicles, yeah.

Reza (19:37.154)
both Ollie and Zal told me that, you know, dad, your next car, you need to get an electric car. But I'm such a diehard, I love cars and I love, you know, the internal combustion engine. I, cause I've always, every car that I've had since I was, you know, 16 has been a manual stick shift. I've always had that. And even the car that I have right now. And I always want that same, you know, feeling of driving and.

Seyi Fabode (19:46.995)
Yes.

Seyi Fabode (19:57.667)
I love that. I love that.

Seyi Fabode (20:06.051)
feeling. Yeah.

Reza (20:07.074)
I've driven electric cars and they just feel like, I don't know, like toys or something. They don't feel like a car. I think I'll be the last diehard with an internal combustion engine. They'll have to pry it out of my dying hands. But I really enjoy driving. And so, you know, I'll be a late adopter. I'll be a late adopter.

Seyi Fabode (20:11.811)
Jack.

Seyi Fabode (20:30.927)
But, but you could also just, cause I know how you feel about sort of cities with public transport and the community that you can, sort of tap into in cities. Public transit systems are at a faster adoption rate for the electric vehicle, future than individual cars. So even if you don't own one.

Reza (20:54.69)
Hmm. Interesting. Interesting.

Seyi Fabode (21:00.611)
for a while, you might jump on a train or a bus in the city that is fully electric vehicle charged. Some of your deliveries are now coming in electric vehicles too. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly.

Reza (21:05.378)
I would love to. I would love to. Yeah. Yeah.

Reza (21:13.954)
Yeah, yeah, the Rivian Amazon truck just came up a few hours ago. But yeah, I think, yes, I would love if there were, like, I would love in Austin for there to be more public transportation. I couldn't imagine a better way of getting around, at least for, you know, many things that wouldn't require a car. Because I think transportation in some ways have had a huge impact in communities. And maybe we can sort of segue into talking about that, Seyi, because,

Seyi Fabode (21:20.035)
Exactly.

Seyi Fabode (21:27.779)
Absolutely.

Seyi Fabode (21:42.595)
Please, please.

Reza (21:43.97)
I think there's, you know, with this, you know, with this freedom and with everything that came with transportation, there's also been, you know, because you touched on like how many roads we've built, you know, the big, the big thing, and you see this in Austin, you see this in other cities is that it has displaced communities. Roads have torn up places that used to be together. They have, you know, sort of decimated,

Seyi Fabode (22:04.227)
Yes.

Seyi Fabode (22:09.827)
Yes.

Reza (22:13.73)
neighborhoods that used to be contiguous. And so, and also it feels like cars disconnect you from your neighbors because you get in your car, pull out of your garage and then go somewhere. You don't really interact as much as you would if you didn't have to do that. So that's like a thing that niggles at me. Like if I was going on public transportation, I would just be with people and I would

Seyi Fabode (22:26.915)
Yes.

Seyi Fabode (22:39.939)
Yes.

Reza (22:40.578)
feel like I'm part of a community and just be courteous to others, at least I hope so. Being on a subway in New York City doesn't feel as good, but I don't know. There's something about feeling like, okay, well, I'm part of something bigger than just myself in my car, atomized driving and being angry at the other person that's not going fast enough. So what do you think of that, Shea?

Seyi Fabode (22:44.483)
Yes.

Seyi Fabode (22:51.139)
Hahaha!

Seyi Fabode (22:56.963)
Absolutely.

Seyi Fabode (23:04.419)
It's a really good point. It's a really good point. And before the conversation here, before we started recording, you'd mentioned a thing that I am quite keen for you to touch on, which is the economic impact of cars or not having cars. It's such a big part of...

Reza (23:28.098)
Yeah.

Seyi Fabode (23:31.075)
why I think our societies are fractured right now, if you want to dive into it a little bit.

Reza (23:34.754)
Yeah, yeah, I think that's the second aspect. And I believe this is sort of more true in the US maybe than other places. I haven't experienced it in other places. But as cities grew and as transportation became important, we displaced communities that were closer to city centers that were maybe not as economically well off further out.

And the fact that they're further out and have to travel into places where they have to work, but they spend the most of their time transporting themselves there and needing a car to do it just, you know, makes the stark difference between the haves and the have nots even more. And especially like I know in a city like Austin, our public transportation is shit. I mean, it's not that good. And so,

Seyi Fabode (24:17.539)
Yes.

Seyi Fabode (24:23.075)
Yes. Yes.

Reza (24:26.69)
It is so hard, like I know in the western parts of the city, they don't even want public transport out there. Well, how are people going to get out there to work at the HEB or to, I don't know, mow your lawn or, you know, of course they'll have trucks and stuff like that. But it just makes it even harder for, you know, the service economy to operate when transportation and public transportation is such a stark difference between like what people can do.

Seyi Fabode (24:53.219)
Yeah, you're correct. I'll use an example. Back when we would drive to Dallas when we first moved to Austin, we would go past some parts of the city that you would see close to downtown and you would see people sort of on the side of the main road waiting to jump on.

Reza (25:06.274)
Yeah.

Seyi Fabode (25:22.915)
buses. And then a few years later, we'd be driving more recently, we'd be driving along those same roads. And those communities have literally been walled off from downtown Dallas. And consequently, if you don't have a car, or on those buses, are the routes have been reduced, essentially. So if you don't have a car, whatever your job is downtown,

you're not getting there in a good time or it's going to cost you more. And so I'll make that one point. Second point I'll make, a good friend of mine, Mike Duffy runs a company and one of the, used to run a company. And one of the stats he shared with me was that the decline in a low income worker,

ability to earn and their lifestyle could be tracked or traced to the first vehicle of fine they get. I'll explain. If you take your car downtown, you barely get by. You take your car downtown, if you get a fine for either speeding or parking in the wrong place,

Reza (26:32.322)
Whoa.

Reza (26:39.778)
Yes.

Seyi Fabode (26:49.091)
you have to pay it by a certain time. As I mentioned, these are low -income workers in low -paid jobs. He told me that if they couldn't pay that fine, so let's say it's a $100 fine, and they have to wait for payday, well, payday was never enough. So they defer the fine.

Reza (27:12.066)
Yeah.

Seyi Fabode (27:16.963)
to pay for electricity or food. And the next action is to increase the fine, which worsens their ability to pay. And then the next action is your vehicle gets impounded, which means they can no longer get to the job to earn the pay to pay those fines.

Reza (27:25.314)
Ugh.

Reza (27:39.33)
That's a spiral downwards. I mean, that's just...

Seyi Fabode (27:41.059)
It is. It is. And in cities where, because he was working with cities across the US, in cities where the public transport systems were suboptimal, this story played out time and time and time again. And the innovation he came up with in one of his was to enable people to either challenge the

the fines based on their income levels and consequently do something else, maybe community service or something to, so that it's not a cash fine, it's an act of service to your community or defer it in some way, shape or form, but it all ties back to access, economic access and cars in our cities.

Reza (28:32.93)
Mm.

What's up? So yeah, you know, I feel like we could go on about this, but I'm, you know, Seyi, I'm now curious about the future. This is the favorite part of my episode. I'm curious to see like, can we solve some of these problems? What's happening with transportation? Where are we going?

Seyi Fabode (28:38.531)
It is, yeah.

Seyi Fabode (28:44.355)
The future, yes.

Seyi Fabode (28:53.763)
Yeah, so I think we started touching on it. I believe, based on research, based on just looking at history and how we got to where we are, the two trends that I believe are driving the future are public transportation systems and the electrification of those public transportation systems. So we have...

I'll geek out a little on something my son, my oldest son, absolutely loves. He was the first one who brought to my attention the Maglev train in China that goes from the Shanghai International Airport to, I think Longjiang road station, which is a 30 kilometer distance that is achieved in eight minutes. Yes.

Reza (29:50.21)
What? My god.

Seyi Fabode (29:52.035)
Max speed, max speed of 431 kilometers per hour, which is like 268 miles per hour.

Reza (30:02.082)
That's crazy.

Seyi Fabode (30:02.147)
eight minutes and you, if you imagine those sort of systems in transfer real systems in cities across the U S because the problems we just identified is the sprawl that we've ended up with and the distance between where we live, the distances between where we live and where we work. I think combining.

Reza (30:15.874)
Very good.

Seyi Fabode (30:32.515)
transportation, mass transportation through rail and electrified public transit, we could totally address these problems. Even the build out would be jobs.

Reza (30:43.33)
Yeah.

Reza (30:49.122)
Yeah.

Seyi Fabode (30:50.531)
We can power them through some of the renewable energy options we talked about last week. And we can start to bring people together.

Reza (30:55.618)
Yeah. Yep.

Seyi Fabode (31:04.611)
to rebuild our communities, even as we all go from work to home. Instead of one of the things that I'm struggling with is Austin expanding I -35. For those of you who don't know, I -35 is the through line that connects several cities in Texas. And there's some expansion going on in downtown Austin. I was really hoping we would get a rail system.

Reza (31:35.042)
Mm -hmm. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I love your optimism, Seyi, but here's like my, here's the, here are two things that I'm grappling with. One is, you know, Austin's been through sort of this light rail, you know, light rail train type of stuff. You know, we just barely didn't pass the light rail, you know, vote.

Seyi Fabode (31:37.635)
We still can. Yeah.

Hahaha!

Seyi Fabode (31:48.003)
Yeah.

Reza (32:05.442)
I think more than a decade ago, that was such a miss and now it's too late. And I think with public transport in the US, it's a question of who pays for it. Like there, no one wants to pay for it. And so that becomes a real challenge. What I'm most curious about is like, I am thinking about, okay, how can, how, are there solutions where there is less individual need for my car?

Seyi Fabode (32:13.827)
Yes.

Seyi Fabode (32:18.563)
Yes.

Reza (32:34.434)
But there's a multiple ways of creating mobility that is a combination of sort of mass mobility and individual mobility, but I wouldn't have to own the car. I know that we have like, you know, Ubers and things like that. But, you know, I don't know at what point where we get to where, yeah, that's kind of a middle point, but we get to a point where I just need to go somewhere. I get into something and go and there are multiple modes of doing it.

Seyi Fabode (32:53.315)
What is the middle point?

Reza (33:03.074)
I don't know if it's a fully formed thought, but I'm curious if we have a much more flexible way of using this transportation system, which right now, it's never enough for the peak and it's too available for everyone to misuse it.

Seyi Fabode (33:03.363)
Yeah.

Seyi Fabode (33:25.059)
Yes, so there are cities. I think what you're alluding to is like multimodal transportation systems in cities. And the US has never, maybe New York, maybe New York's, because you can get on a bus. The route or the size of the bus is based on the density and.

Reza (33:32.962)
Yeah. Yeah.

Reza (33:38.626)
Yeah. Yeah.

Reza (33:47.458)
Yeah.

Seyi Fabode (33:51.459)
the number of people that the planners have figured out will get on that bus. But your bus is really just to take you to the train station, which gets you a five minute walk from where you're trying to get to. So the combination of this unwillingness to accept things like there's this idea called.

Reza (34:07.01)
Right.

Seyi Fabode (34:20.323)
I hope I'm pronouncing it correctly, Braess's paradox, which America always seems to ignore, which is this idea that we think, there's so many cars on the road. Let's add more roads as if that will reduce the number of cars. That's kind of not how it works.

Reza (34:36.514)
Mm -hmm. Yes. No, just just yeah, it just increases demand. That's all it does.

Seyi Fabode (34:42.531)
It just increases demand when what we should do is increase those modes. I totally agree with you. Increase the mode so that the car is not the first option. And I believe the future when we can get leaders who are both, who are not worried about getting into office based on, on platitudes to certain groups, but

Reza (34:48.482)
Yes, yes.

Reza (34:53.346)
Yes.

Reza (35:10.306)
Mm -hmm.

Seyi Fabode (35:11.043)
actually planning our cities to serve all of us. I think we will get there. I'm an, I'm an optimist. You said it. I'm an optimistic realist. And part of it is because I've lived in places where this work was the case. It was the case. I lived on the East end of London. And at some point I got a job on the West end of London and I would walk to the bus stop.

Reza (35:15.362)
Yeah.

Reza (35:19.106)
Yeah. Yeah.

Reza (35:27.938)
Yes. Yeah.

Seyi Fabode (35:41.603)
The bus would take me a few stops to the train station. I'd get on the train and I distinctly remember watching Samurai Jack on my iPod and a bunch of movies as well. And I started to know and meet the people who had the same routine as I did. It was amazing. I got to know my neighbors.

Reza (35:55.586)
Hahaha!

Reza (36:09.442)
What a great story. Yeah.

Seyi Fabode (36:12.163)
because we were all getting to the bus stop around the same time, even if we took different trains. And if we want to build our communities back in the U .S., I truly think the electrification of public transportation and increased public transportation have to be more of an action plan than more roads.

Reza (36:15.618)
Yeah. Yeah.

Reza (36:36.002)
Yeah, yeah. I love that. I love that call to action. Love your optimism as always, Seyi

Seyi Fabode (36:43.363)
Yes. I'll touch on one thing and then we can sort of wrap it up. But the there's this movement again, which I kind of find a bit silly towards these electric vehicle takeoff and landing like single person aircraft for city travel.

Reza (37:08.738)
Mm -hmm.

Seyi Fabode (37:10.627)
I think it's dumb. I genuinely think it's dumb, but we won't touch on that this week because it falls under some of these, this movement, a third trend, which is around smart mobility and autonomy in cities that I think we've decided will make its own full episode.

Reza (37:25.666)
Hmm.

Reza (37:31.426)
Yeah, yeah. Well, my one comment about these electric lift -off vehicles is I guess it's just our fantasy of being Iron Man and being able to fly around. I too agree. It is a dumb idea. Like, moving one person around in this flying vehicle. You know, yeah, that sounds like really attractive, but also just so wasteful. So, yeah, so I'm curious. I think that's a great topic for us.

Seyi Fabode (37:41.607)
You

Seyi Fabode (37:54.083)
It is, it is.

Reza (37:59.458)
next time because I think there's more there. I feel like every time that we talk, we sort of uncover a topic that we need to dig into in our next episode. So yeah, I can't wait to do that, Seyi.

Seyi Fabode (38:02.371)
Yes.

Seyi Fabode (38:06.147)
Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. That's awesome. So yeah, that brings us to the end of this episode on transportation. And we now know what our next episode will be. Do we have a mailbag this week, Reza?

Reza (38:27.042)
I don't have a mailbag this week. But I had a couple of colleagues and a couple of friends that I sent that shared the podcast with, they're gonna listen this weekend and send in some mailbag. So, hey, all friends that are listening, send a mailbag in. We'd love to learn from you. Yeah.

Seyi Fabode (38:28.995)
Yeah, neither do I.

Seyi Fabode (38:48.322)
Send the mail bags in. Yeah. I'll share a stat. We hit three figures in terms of subscribers across the platforms after last week's episode. So we're slowly getting up there. It is. It is. Thanks so much for listening. Yes. Like and subscribe. And so on that note, we'll say thanks for listening. Please reach out.

Reza (38:59.906)
Woohoo! Yeah, man, this is great! Three figures, boy! Yes, that's awesome! Like and subscribe!

Reza (39:17.442)
Yes.

Seyi Fabode (39:18.435)
share with one person and we'll see you next week.

Reza (39:23.65)
Thanks everyone, see ya.