Scott Stanford:

Hey everybody. Welcome to The Infrastructors, the premier podcast for engaging conversations with influential thought leaders in AI, tech, government policy, and smart city innovation. Today's guest, the president and CEO of ITS America, Laura Chace. Laura, thank you so much for coming in.

Laura Chace:

Thank you for having me.

Scott Stanford:

Listen, first thing I need to ask you, how are the kids? How are the twins? How's motherhood? Is everybody still keeping you up at night?

Laura Chace:

Good. Yes. I have twin boys who are 16 with their learners permits, so that keeps me up. And I have a daughter who is 12, who is a whirlwind. So yeah, it's good, and as always, it's important to try to find that balance between work and motherhood. So that's a constant, something that you constantly strive for.

Scott Stanford:

And when they were born back at the time, you took off from the workforce a little bit, right? Did you miss it while you were enjoying motherhood?

Laura Chace:

I did. I did work once my twins were born. I worked part-time, but I did take off when my daughter was born, my third. And I did miss it, but at the time I think the demands on me as a mother were so much that I was able to enjoy being home with kids. But I remember as soon as I went back to the workforce, I was very much invested and realized that working is something that always gave me a lot of purpose and pride, and I was happy to go back.

Scott Stanford:

So, you become president and CEO of Intelligent Transportation Systems of America. I'm always so curious to know how someone ends up, where they are in a certain role or a certain position. As a kid growing up or when you were in college or even after college, was there something that piqued your interest to get you into this type of career?

Laura Chace:

So I have to admit that probably not as a kid, but I had been in the telecom industry for some time before coming to intelligent transportation, and before I was home with my kids. And I was in that industry during a time of significant disruption, when suddenly cable companies started offering voice over IP, phone calls over the internet. And so there became a real change in the industry from being telephone companies, to being content companies.

When I had the opportunity to go into intelligent transportation, it was through a former colleague and former boss. And as soon as I got acclimated to what was happening in the industry, I just loved it because there are a lot of, to me, similarities in the type of disruption and opportunity that was happening in that space. And so, I just fell in love with it when I started to learn about the technology and the opportunities to improve transportation.

Scott Stanford:

Absolutely. All right, so you were unanimously elected president, CEO of ITS America. You've been leading this advocacy group for a little over a year now. What does ITS America mean to you? What's your vision and why is it an advocacy group that people need to care about?

Laura Chace:

That's a great question. So, ITS America really exists to be at the forefront of how technology can be integrated into our transportation system to provide better transportation for everyone. And the reason it's important to me is, again, I'm a mother first and foremost, and transportation is really at its core about access to opportunity. It is about access to jobs and economic opportunity, access to healthcare, access to education.

And so, when you think about it that way, and you think about the impact that you can have on people's lives, if you can improve their mobility, make it safer, create more access, I think that it really changes your view of transportation and what you're actually delivering. ITS America is really at the cusp of all this innovation and the ability to really transform our system and provide those opportunities to people, no matter what community you live in.

Scott Stanford:

When you say access to opportunity, I know I've heard you say in other interviews where females have different access and commutes, if you will, every day than males, even more expensive to be safer than males. Tell me what that means.

Laura Chace:

That's a really important point, so thank you for asking the question. Females travel differently than men. We trip chain a lot more, stringing small trips together. We travel off-peak hours. Perhaps we have to pick up a child at school, perhaps we must run an errand and our systems are not designed for that.

So not only do we pay more for safety, if let's say, for example, we don't feel comfortable taking a certain transit home at night and we want to take a taxi or something where we might feel more secure, we also are really paying more in our time. We're losing more time because we're having to again, travel in off-peak hours, stringing these trips together and the system's just not set up for that.

What I think is important to realize is that the same system that a male might experience in transportation really is very different to many females because what you have to accomplish during the day and the trips you have to take are very different and the services do not necessarily meet our needs.

Scott Stanford:

I know you've been a big advocate for females, more females in the transportation realm. Why is that and why do you feel it would be better to have more female voices in this path?

Laura Chace:

Obviously, we all use transportation. Women are heavier users of public transportation even than men. I truly believe that the only way to create systems that are going to work for everybody is if we have those diverse experiences and diverse viewpoints at the table to make decisions.

Because if you're making a decision about a transportation service offering and you don't understand some of the challenges that a certain population might experience, the decision you make may not actually serve everybody in the way that you intend.

I do think it's really important to have those female perspectives included as we're determining how are we going to offer transportation services for communities.

Scott Stanford:

Okay, I'll switch gears a little bit. Early 20th century when American car culture began to form up until now, many shifts and what is encompassed within the scope of ITS as well as what's the immediate focus. What do you see as the real mission behind ITS America today and how does ITS America evolve in the near future?

Laura Chace:

So just a quick bit of history, ITS America was founded just over 30 years ago as an advisor to the US DOT on road safety. So, to your point, it was created back during the time of highway safety technology and was very car focused, but we've seen so many advances in transportation since then, right? We've seen advances in connectivity, in automation. We've seen transportation as a commodity, as a service, being able to offer on-demand services, all these different advances that we didn't anticipate or experience back when ITS America was created.

And so we've really broadened the scope to address all forms of technology in transportation. And the mission of ITS America is to create safer, greener, smarter transportation for all. I really think that going forward, that is the mission, that is the vision.

In order to do that, you do need to apply technology and integrate it. And it's multimodal in focus, it's not just solely focused on cars or on highways. It's really looking at how do you integrate these evolving technology solutions into all modes to create safer, more equitable transportation.

Scott Stanford:

The world right now is at this inflection point as we cross the threshold of broad, electric vehicle adoption, and the introduction of autonomous vehicles as well, right? At the same time, we're focusing on improving pedestrian safety, reducing traffic incidents, like you say, figuring out how to best design livable cities that provide equitable access to everybody. Where do you see the role of ITS America in enabling this future? And again, I know you touched on it, but how will technology play a role do you think?

Laura Chace:

I think this is what ITS America was made for quite honestly. As you can see in your communities, we're really evolving from a system of paved roads and concrete bridges to a transportation system that has this digital layer of software and algorithms and sensors.

And what that allows us to do is to gain data and to be able to analyze that data, use that data, share that data, to create safer roadways and intersections, to be able to mitigate climate disasters, to reduce emissions, and to distribute services more equitably.

This is this concept of a digital operating system that interfaces with our physical built environment, so the physical roads that we already have and enables us to do more with what we currently have and to be nimbler.

The future of transportation is this digital operating system, which will help enable this future of mobility, all of the connected and automated services and advancements-

Scott Stanford:

It's all crazy, right? It's wild.

Laura Chace:

Right. I mean, you really need this digital layer to help realize all the benefits that can come from these advanced technologies.

Scott Stanford:

And when you say advanced technologies and future, I mean, when we say future in this world, we're talking, it could be six months, a year from now as quickly as things move ahead.

Laura Chace:

Right. I mean, that's the other thing is a lot of these technologies and solutions are out there right now on certain roadways and in certain communities. And what ITS America really focuses on is, how do we scale those deployments? How do we scale those technologies so that every community can benefit?

As a quick aside, in my own community in the late spring, early summer, we had four fatalities, three were pedestrians, one was a teenage cyclist. And as we mentioned at the start of the show, I have two teens and this really rocked our entire community.

And the thing that is both frustrating for me as a mother, but also an opportunity as president and CEO of ITS America, is that we have the tools and the solutions to help save lives, to help make the changes that are needed in our system. We need ITS America's voice, helping to advocate, to break down barriers, to promote good policies and to help scale these deployments so that every community can benefit.

Scott Stanford:

Yeah. No, really, it's incredible. And listen, one lost life is one too many. And when you say you have the technology to prevent this, it needs to all get out there. ITS World Congress 2022, that's coming up later on in the year. What goes on at an ITS World Congress?

Laura Chace:

It's a great event and we're really excited to host. We were supposed to host in 2020 and obviously had to delay because of COVID. This is actually going to be the first time that we're hosting ITS World Congress in the United States since 2014, because in 2017 we hosted it, but it was in Montreal.

So ITS World Congress is the preeminent global gathering for the ITS community. So, we will have attendees from about 60 countries around the world, and then of course a huge domestic presence from the US community. And it is a real gathering that encompasses both advances, very technological and scientific advances in the field in the form of-

Scott Stanford:

Incredible people with incredible minds.

Laura Chace:

Incredible minds in the form of papers and whatnot. And then impactful media sessions where you bring together public sector, private sector and academic and research organizations really talking about certain technologies, how they're being deployed, what results are they seeing, are there barriers, are there challenges, are there successes, and sharing that information.

And there's always risk to investing in and deploying technology, and one of the real benefits of this conference is it's a great opportunity to hear from others, from peers in the industry who have taken a risk and deployed a technology and seen great results and understand how that might be able to benefit your own community.

It's also a wonderful opportunity to network. And although I think everyone who has an event right now says that we really mean it because again, what happens is you're bringing together those different sectors, the public sector and the private sector to really network and make partnerships because the other reality about technology is no one can do this alone.

In order to integrate technology into transportation in a way that is going to benefit people, you need a real marriage of the public sector and the private sector working together. You can create those relationships and potentially create those partnerships at ITS World Congress.

Scott Stanford:

I could imagine. I don't think I'd understand anything anybody was saying at that World Congress. But where do you see policy playing a role in the future of mobility? How can policy be made future proof and built in a lasting way as we see change in administrations and then in turn, change in priorities?

Laura Chace:

Policy is key to pair up with technology because you want to make sure that these technologies are being delivered in a way that is going to benefit communities. And so this ties right into earlier this summer when ITS America released guiding principles for inclusive mobility.

So, for example, one of the first policy premises of that is to focus on the user, so using human-centered design elements to really focus on the user and figure out, are the solutions that you are considering going to help all users of the system? And it might sound shocking, but that has not always been the first tenant when you're looking at transportation projects.

We have all types of users, users might be in a vehicle, users might be walking, users might be cycling, users are using the system in all different ways. And so how can we make sure that the technology that we're deploying or investing in is actually going to help those communities and those actual users of the system? So I think that's one key area.

And then the other area is to really make sure that policy is there to help affect the goals that you want to accomplish. If your goals are improving safety, providing cleaner air, or providing more equitable access, policy can help you make sure that the way that you're deploying technology is really centered around that goal.

Scott Stanford:

You talked about the public and the private sector before, how are some of your members leveraging public-private partnerships? And are there groundbreaking projects in place right now?

Laura Chace:

There's quite a few interesting examples, but I will say one really interesting example to us is a public-private partnership through a member called Cavnue. What they have done is brought in a wide range of partners from the private sector and the public sector, so city, state communities, and they're developing smart roads of the future.

And this even required new legislation passed in Michigan to allow for public-private partnerships to be able to utilize the right of way. And so it's required a totally different way of thinking about how we deliver advanced transportation services and it's a new model that is being tested out in Michigan, but we're seeing others who are looking at engaging. And so SANDAG actually out in Southern California is now engaging with Cavnue.

That's an interesting example of a new public-private partnership that's bringing everyone together and also bringing the community in. You really must bring in the community into these discussions to make sure that the interventions that you're thinking about are going to solve their transportation needs.

Scott Stanford:

I know I heard you talk about something that you're very excited about, the Mobility XX pledge. What is that? Tell me why. I know you're very pumped up about that.

Laura Chace:

The Mobility XX pledge was something that we created about a year and a half ago. Essentially, it is a request for companies in the transportation space to take some concrete actions to increase or elevate the number of women in their organizations.

And again, this ties back to what we talked about at the very beginning, which is that transportation needs to be designed for everyone. And to design for everyone, you need more diverse voices at the table. Only about 15% of the transportation workforce is women. So that's-

Scott Stanford:

That's it, 15%?

Laura Chace:

15%.

Scott Stanford:

Wow.

Laura Chace:

And fewer at decision making levels. That really was the impetus for this pledge was we need to do something concrete. We need to galvanize the industry around taking some concrete actions.

And there's a list of actions you can take, whether it's pledging to add more females to your board of directors, or to put more females on panels, younger women in the industry will actually see female role models speaking. There's a whole list of actions and we encourage companies in the industry to take the pledge and really commit to increasing the number of females in their organizations.

Scott Stanford:

Yeah, no, 15%, that's very low.

Laura Chace:

It's low.

Scott Stanford:

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act just passed earlier this year, a big deal. How does ITS as an organization work to address how this federal money's going to be spent?

Laura Chace:

Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is, as you said, it is a big deal.

Scott Stanford:

We'll call it IIJA for now.

Laura Chace:

IIJA for ease.

Scott Stanford:

There you go.

Laura Chace:

First of all, during the process of getting this act together, we were successful in making sure that technology was eligible for funding under the act.

Now, this is where the hard work has come in, after the act was passed. Now we're really trying to make sure that technology can be funded and we're trying to make sure that digital infrastructure technology solutions are as fundable as concrete and steel, and that requires a mindset change.

And we're also trying to make sure that both the US DOT and companies within our industry, both public sector and private sector, understand the benefit that investing in technology can produce for communities, everything I talked about before.

So being able to take your dollars and invest in digital layer and technology is going to give you more return on investment than laying down concrete and expanding a roadway. Whether you're solving for safety, whether you're solving for emissions reduction, whether you're solving for equity and access in your community, there are many technology solutions that are now eligible for funding, and that we encourage agencies to consider as they're making decisions about what to invest in.

Scott Stanford:

Okay, so when it comes to the US DOT, how do you guys help educate and inform them regarding technology?

Laura Chace:

So we meet with them. We actually invite them to participate on calls with our members and hear directly from our members so that they can really hear about what are the technologies that are out there today, like we said, that are being deployed in states and cities, and how are they producing results that are beneficial to the communities?

So we do it through meetings and events. We hosted an event on digital infrastructure earlier this summer and Rekor was present. We appreciate their participation. And through that event, we brought in a lot of public sector and private sector voices to talk about some of their own experiences and successes, and then challenges.

Like I said before, one of the challenges that we all have to address is this mindset shift, that digital infrastructure is a form of infrastructure. And not only is it a form of infrastructure that we need to be investing in, but it truly is going to create that operating system for the future of mobility.

Scott Stanford:

We spoke about this earlier, you mentioned the unfortunate traffic accidents that had happened by you. New figures from the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, almost 43,000 people died in motor vehicle crashes last year, the biggest number since 2005. It means that an average of 117 people are being killed on US roads every day.

Can technology help address what we already said is really unacceptable? And again, how long might it take to see a remediation in traffic deaths once that technology is fully implemented?

Laura Chace:

To answer your first question, yes, technology can address these traffic deaths. We know we have proven technologies that can help immediately. We have connected vehicle technologies. We have automated technologies that can address these challenges. But a couple things that we need, and this is where ITS America has been working and where it's really critical to have the industry, the public sector, private sector, and research and academia come together, we need a national roadmap for connected vehicle deployment. We need a national roadmap for automated vehicle deployment so that the private industry can plan, and so that the states can have harmonized policy and regulations.

We have a lot of technology that can solve these challenges. We heard very recently from one of our members who produces a LiDAR solution, those fixed LiDAR solutions can be put up at intersections and they have a software interface that can detect pedestrians and cyclists and can save lives.

There's a lot of connected vehicle data and other data out there that companies like Rekor and others are using to provide to states and cities to identify here are your high crash corridors, here's areas where people are speeding.

Scott Stanford:‍

Speeding up.

Laura Chace:

That data, again, allows the agency to understand their safety problem, number one, and then secondly, determine their intervention. And the intervention may or may not be the use of technology, but you need that digital layer of technology and that data to tell you where your problems lie, so you can make an informed decision, so you can improve safety.

Scott Stanford:

Recently at the beginning of the summer, my daughter took an internship where she must take a bus every day. So we did a test run together. And just in its simplest form, I was amazed. The bus stop we were sitting in, there's a digital screen that tells you what bus is where. It's almost like a little GPS up on the screen. It tells you when this bus is arriving, what time, how many people are on the bus with you. And I was just astonished to see, because it's been a long time since I've been at a bus stop.

It just made our lives sitting there, instead of stressing about, “Did we miss the bus, do we have the right …" Everything is laid out for you right in the bus stop. And then the bus shows up, you get to stick to clean emissions buses, everything is done with the phones and you're off and running. And I just think aside from everything that we have in our lives, technology will just continue to make things simple for us at the snap of our fingers.

Laura Chace:

Yeah, exactly. And I think we've seen, especially during all the disruption during the COVID pandemic, disruption to transportation services. We saw on-demand transportation options rising.

I think there are certain technologies that consumers do see and do feel, and those types of on-demand options are certainly one of them, when they realize that they can access an option from their phone.

And technology is also helping to make it more seamless on the backend for payments. You see a lot of what we call mobility wallet pilots happening now where you can integrate different modes, so the customer can have one interface to pay for those modes. And those are things, to your point, that just make it easier. It just makes it simpler for people.

Scott Stanford:

What is the immediate vision for ITS America one, two ... And when I say two, three years out, again, in this technological world, that's like 15 years out in dog years. But what's the immediate vision for the future for you guys?

Laura Chace:

At the end of the day, ITS America was founded on safety and safety is our number one priority. The immediate vision is getting scale for technologies that we know can improve safety while also reducing emissions and providing better transportation options to people. I would say a connected vehicle, a national deployment plan for connected vehicle technology is a core focus.

Scott Stanford:

When you say connected vehicle technology, for the lay person, what are we talking about?

Laura Chace:

That's a great question. So we collectively talk about these technologies as V2X, which means vehicle to everything. So there's different layers of this technology. Vehicles can talk to vehicles if you have the right technology deployed. Currently that is not deployed in vehicles right now. And so that has this huge safety impact. If we can get that technology deployed in vehicles and vehicles can speak to each other and give safety warnings to each other that will reduce crashes.

There's also vehicle to infrastructure communication, where the vehicle then can communicate with the infrastructure. And then there's also vehicle to pedestrian. So you have all different ways where all road users can communicate with each other.

Scott Stanford:

Wow.

Laura Chace:

Just like any system where you have seamless real time communication, you're going to have less friction, so less crashes and you're going to have more efficiency, but the real benefit here is in reducing crashes and reducing fatalities.

We need a national deployment plan so that we can get this technology deployed both in infrastructure and in vehicles so that we can realize the benefits. So that would be one core item that ITS America would want to see in the next few years.

Another is a roadmap for automated vehicle deployment because right now we don't have a national framework for automated vehicle deployment. Every state has to create their own rules and regulations. And so that at the end of the day is not going to help industry scale that technology. It's also not going to help the public sector be able to scale pilots of the technology.

And when you think about automated vehicles, obviously they have safety benefits. Automated vehicles don't get drowsy, they don't get drunk, they obey the traffic rules. So, there are safety benefits, but also there's huge benefits for people who have limited mobility or a disability.

My grandfather was blind and he did not live during a time when we had any of these technologies that could have given him some independence. When you really think about how some of these technologies can improve lives, automated vehicle technology is one of those that can measurably improve people's lives, but we need a national roadmap for that.

We need a standardized, phased approach for investing in digital infrastructure so that we really do see those benefits across the country and communities across the nation, and we don't just see pockets of innovation in certain areas.

At the end of the day, ITS America is a national organization, and we truly believe that to get to a goal of zero deaths and to accomplish our vision of safer, greener, smarter mobility for everyone, we need to be able to deploy these technologies and deploy them at scale.

Scott Stanford:

The one thing I wanted to ask you before we leave is the ITS World Congress that's coming up, as the president and CEO of ITS America, do you personally have a lot on your plate during that ... Are you a big presenter? Do people look to you? Are you the host of that?

Laura Chace:

Yeah. I am the host. I will have a lot on my plate. It will be very busy, but it will be wonderful. I'm excited to see our global colleagues and our domestic colleagues, but really it's a great opportunity.

We showcase voices of, again, federal government leaders, our members, our international colleagues, international leaders from governments across the globe. We do showcase a lot of the people who are out there actually doing this work.

Scott Stanford:

Incredible minds, right?

Laura Chace:

Exactly.

Scott Stanford:

Like we said. Wow.

Laura Chace:

So I will have a host role and it will be quite busy, but it will be good.

Scott Stanford:

Laura Chace, ITS America President and CEO, really, thank you for stopping by. This really has been highly informative even for a guy like me. I learned a lot here today and thank you. I appreciate the time.

Laura Chace:

Thank you for having me.

Scott Stanford:

That's all the time we have today here on The Infrastructors. Join us next time for our conversation with the former mayor of Baltimore and current president of the University of Baltimore, Kurt Schmoke.