Investigating the Future of Transportation

The pandemic brought a strategic inflection point (SIP) to the world and eco-system of transportation. Before the Covid pandemic, the transportation industry was in a state of upheaval due to the entrance of new tech-driven on-demand mobility services such as Uber, Doordash, and Lime. Long-standing travel habits such as driving to the store were starting to change and be replaced by ride-hailing, home delivery, and using shared bikes or e-scooters instead of a car. During the Covid crisis, people had to adapt their travel behavior even more, abandoning their commute under shelter-in-place orders and starting to bike and walk more around their local neighborhood. New high-tech mobility options like flying taxis and space tourism were making headlines during the pandemic, yet people were actually buying traditional reliable options like used cars and bicycles in unprecedented numbers. Public transit ridership plummeted to historic lows, calling its survival into question, while fixed routes began to be replaced by on-demand services.