KOJO NNAMDIYou're tuned in to The Kojo Nnamdi Show on WAMU 88.5, welcome. As part of my 20th Anniversary on WAMU we are focusing on key issues facing the Washington region. And this month we've been playing special attention to transportation. In recent weeks we've covered highway widening and our region's bus systems.

KOJO NNAMDIToday it's alternative transit. In the past decade we've seen a boom in ride hailing, as well as dockless bike and scooter shares designed to disrupt traditional transportation systems and get cars off the roads. D.C. in particular has been ahead of the curve in integrating these options, but what's the long term effect of integrating these newer transit systems into our everyday lives? How have they shaped us in the way we approach getting from point A to point B. We've invited David Alpert. He is the Founder and President of Greater Greater Washington. David Alpert, good to see you again.

DAVID ALPERTThank you for having me Kojo.

NNAMDIAlso in studio with us is Kalai Kandasamy, is the creator of the Sluglines app. Kalai, good to see you.

KALAI KANDASAMYThank you, Kojo.

NNAMDIDavid, in late 2011 D.C. was one of the early adopters of Uber. The ride hailing service was met with resistance from the local taxi cab commission, but at the time Uber's CEO called D.C.'s demand for Uber unprecedented. Is that how you remember it aside from cab drivers? Why do you think Washingtonians were so receptive to ride-hailing?

ALPERTWe've seen a real rise of Uber, Lyft, Via these kinds of services. And I think people in D.C. and all around the nation and globe have found them to be convenient in many ways. Of course, there have been some up sides and some down sides. As far as reasons that they're convenient in D.C. one factor was that taxis were hard to get access to. There would be a small number -- there were a lot of taxis, but mostly they would be around the downtown area, around the Capital. And especially if you were somewhere farther away, you couldn't expect to call one and have it come to your neighborhood.

ALPERTYou know, I once had a taxi refuse to take me to the car impound lot, which is near Buzzard Point. Now right by the baseball stadium, but at the time, you know, a taxi driver would refuse to go there. And people found that the ride hailing services gave people more flexibility.

NNAMDIAt the time you were not very sympathetic to the concerns taxi drivers were raising. But given the scale that Uber and other ride hailing services have grown into and seemingly surpassed the taxi cab industry, how do you feel now?

ALPERTWe've seen there be a lot of benefits and some potential challenges with the rise of ride hailing services. The competition with taxis is one factor. Many taxi drivers have actually chosen to switch over to driving for Uber, Lyft, Via, etcetera. One of the big issues that we need to be looking at going forward is how to encourage people to be using them in a car pooling way. If there's one person in an Uber that's just one person getting where they're going, but taking up a car's worth of space on the roads. But can we create incentives for there to be three people. Some services have even looked at having larger vans. And while that's not moving as many people as a bus or a train or even maybe a bike lane it is moving a lot more people than an individual car.

NNAMDIYou mentioned some of the taxi drivers choosing to ride for ride hailing services, but at the same time taxis had to evolve and quickly. How has the industry -- the taxi cab industry adapted? And has it done enough to stay competitive?

ALPERTD.C. has rolled out a number of innovations for the taxis. For example -- also back in those days a lot of taxis didn't even take credit cards. That was something else that the D.C. Council started to require. So it made the taxis much more convenient in that way. There was some experimentation with creating an app that could actually let you request a taxi and hail them in a similar way you can with Uber, Lyft, or Via. That didn't really take off. Certainly, you know, there's still lots of valuable roles that taxis play and I think everyone sees them as being continuing to be a part of the transportation mix as well.

NNAMDITaxis are not exactly extinct, but the industry won't ever have the near monopoly it once did. Was this survival of the fittest? What tech disruption looks like when it's well done, David?

ALPERTWhen we see -- I think yes. I mean, people just -- the experience can be so much faster in a way with -- you know, with taxis the value has always been, you know, you could stand there on the corner and raise your hand and a taxi would come or, you know, at certain places, at the airport, you know there are going to be some taxis there. Yes, you can take other services and sometimes they're good to do. Sometimes they're competitive pricewise. Sometimes they're convenient. But often if people go to a city they're not familiar with, you know, there's going to be a taxi stand there and standing downtown you can have them.

ALPERTBut there is a real convenience that people are finding to simply being able to open up your app wherever you are. I was just in Mexico City for a week. And, you know, when we had to take somewhere that wasn't going to be well served by transit or we couldn't walk more, you know, having a service like Uber that's available in country after country is a value.

ALPERTAnd that's something that transit is now trying to explore how to copy some of these same innovations. How do we make it so that this convenience of an app is not just for taking cars, but can be for taking transit as well.

NNAMDIHow are jurisdictions adapting to ride hailing services? I know that there are some drop-off zones that you can find in D.C. now if you go to the Wharf, if you go a National's game, and some places. Any other ways that jurisdictions are adapting?

ALPERTYou mentioned the pick-up, drop-off zones. That has been a major project for D.C. and I think a very exciting one. We have people taking ride hailing and taxis as well and also trucks needing to drop-off deliveries, but often they have to pull up in the middle of the road. They have to pull up in bike lanes. They're maybe blocking traffic and creating congestion or they're creating unsafe situations. A great solution for that, because we know that people need the deliveries, they want to take the taxis, they're going to keep taking ride hailing services, so let's allocate some space along the curb for these services to pick-up and drop-off.

ALPERTIn D.C. there was one that was started a little over a year ago on Connecticut Avenue where there are a lot of nightclubs. Now there are ones in Georgetown, at the Wharf, Union Market. There's going to be one or there is on K Street in the Mount Vernon triangle and a few other places and D.C. Sustainable Transportation, the organization that I lead is working with DDOT to find additional locations and expand that program.

NNAMDINo longer an emerging startup, Uber plans to go public. And recent paperwork shows it views public transportation systems as its competition. Is what happened with taxis a cautionary tale? To what extent should public transportation be protected, if you will, from companies that would seek to profit off its vulnerabilities?

ALPERTThere's certainly been a certain amount of evidence that in cities where ride hailing has launched, ridership in public transit has declined. And that's something that cities really have to work out going forward. I think it doesn't have to be an either or. And talking to a lot of people at these companies -- despite the sorts of things like that that are written in public offering documents, those often have to say kind of the worst case scenario to comply with securities laws. But ride hailing services -- many people see opportunities for them to coexist well with transit. There are places we run buses that the buses maybe not an efficient way to do it, because the density is so low. People are so spread out and the amount of riders is so low. Maybe there's an opportunity to work with some other services that can provide on demand vehicles. But on the other hand, we have to give opportunities for buses and make sure that they continue to move well and are a desirable option.

NNAMDIMetro is looking to partner with ride shares or ride hailing services for late night services. Is there a way the different systems can support one another and fill in gaps? You seem to be implying that.

ALPERTI think that's right. I don't think the way Metro has structured this particular proposal that they have made is very -- is the best way to do it. They're simply suggesting giving people a few dollars off a ride that's not going to really lead to the co-existence that you're talking about. But on the other hand, you know, maybe there are ways to work with some of these services to fill gaps in particular locations or to move larger numbers of people. So if the train is going to be shut down, maybe a service can provide a vehicle that can move a lot of people all in one vehicle instead of individual people one by one just taking, you know, one Uber, one Lyft ride. That might cost $20. Three dollars off doesn't save a lot for a late night service worker. But I think there are good ways to do it.

NNAMDIDavid Alpert is the Founder and President of Greater Greater Washington. He joins us in studio along with Kalai Kandasamy, Creator of the Sluglines app. Kalai, ridesharing is not new to our region. What is slugging and how is it unique to the Washington region?

KANDASAMYSo slugging is basically hitchhiking in a more modern and an organized way. So in 1970s the I-395 Shirley Highway that's where it started and when -- to me it is always infrastructure policy. In this case the Pentagon and the media helped to create the sluglines. It organically formed. Early stages of I-395 was only bus only lane and then it kind of more morphed into -- mid-70s, it morphed into HOV 4. When people did not have more riders in their car, they just picked up people from the bus stop and dropped off them at the Pentagon. Mostly it's uniformed officers seeing other people in the uniform. They had a security in place. So it's not strangers getting in someone's car.

KANDASAMYSo that's how it started. And right now there are about 40 locations and nine in D.C., Arlington, and other areas along 395 corridor. Slugging had been the most efficient Arlington transportation partners how then the slugging sequel and for the last two or three years we had been in the second or third place.

NNAMDIIs there a way to tell how big the slugging system is here?

KANDASAMYSo rough estimate is about 10,000 commuters about 6,000 riders and 3,000 drivers. Pretty much spread across three counties, Fairfax, Prince William, and Stafford. All three counties kind of have an equal share of number of people.

NNAMDIHow much of a difference have additions and changes to toll lanes made to slugging over the years?

KANDASAMYI-395 did not make major change to slugging, but we tried the mobile app, Sluglines mobile app during the safe track and we were able to catch the riders, but drivers didn't show up, because it was the clean fuel vehicles were allowed and that didn't impact at all. But last 2017 is when 66 became toll lanes, drivers started showing up to pick up slugs, because the clean fuel vehicle exemption expired. So toll lanes helped. But still for HOV 2, it is not helping, because the security by number. When it becomes HOV 3, in 2021 or '22, I can expect another 10,000 people slugging from 66 corridor.

NNAMDIWow. Slugging is one of those things you would think started off with a tech component and yet it grew without the assistance of apps. You created a slugging app after you'd been riding for years. What is it like trying to digitize the system and convince sluggers to use it at this point?

KANDASAMYSo I started getting involved in slugging, when we lost the Potomac Mall. One thousand spaces we lost it, because we were not able to renew the contract or something happened there. But that whole slugline kind of disappeared and that's when I created the website and morphed into more a mobile app. I just moved into the different technology. The reason we started the mobile app is because people try to go to Pentagon always not to other locations where it is less populated or less traffic, because they are not sure whether the people are there or not. So what we try to do is kind of crowd source the data saying how many people are waiting there and that is being populated in the application by the users. And users basically -- the drivers see that and go there and pick-up rather than going to the centralized Pentagon or something.

NNAMDIWe got a tweet from Alana, who says, "I mainly use Metro and Metro bus to get around D.C. I'm frugal and eco-minded. I was a late adaptor to Uber or Lyft. Sometimes I still prefer taxis in D.C. They often know their way around the city much better and are better drivers. I also dislike being rated by Uber, Lyft." Alana, thank you for your tweet. And here is what Ali in Washington has to say. Ali, you are on the air. Go ahead, please.

ALIOh, thank you. Well, first I am an Uber user, and I'm grateful for this service. At the same time I think that really there's a need for driver training. And with all the money that Uber is making they should make it a requirement, because it really is bothersome to drive in the streets of D.C. and be behind an Uber driver, who is not a professional driver, and it stops, makes U-turns, really brings hell to the traffic and it's really annoying.

NNAMDIDavid Alpert, one of the differences people like to cite between ride hailing drivers and taxi drivers is that taxi drivers have to -- at least they used to have to pass a test showing how well they understood the city or whatever jurisdiction they were driving. And the ride hailing drivers do not. And for some people that's an annoyance, because even though they're depending on GPS, a lot of times they're not quite sure.

ALPERTThat's right. GPS has gotten really good. It's not 100 percent great. You know, sometimes it definitely sends people in what seems like a strange way. The other things that's starting to happen as the services are moving to these pooled systems, which I talked about before where it encourages people to share their rides. Then the driver actually has to follow exactly what the GPS says, because maybe it needs to go out of the way in order to pick up the next person. And so usually that works very well. Though, every once in a while you say, "Wait, why the heck did that happen?" I live in a one way street. Sometimes they end up circling a few times to find the right turn. That sort of thing.

NNAMDISlugging is one of those things that seem to grow organically. Kalai, David, do you think there are ways that city governments, jurisdictions, and app developers can improve on systems that can -- that have kind of come up naturally like slugging did?

KANDASAMYSo it organically grew. That is one thing, but giving us curve space like the (word?) we are working with DDOT as well to get the pick-up drop-off locations for nine slugging locations in D.C. Arlington has acknowledged that how in early stages Pentagon is one of the biggest supporters of slugging. They have five -- seven base now. Arlington and Rosslyn they have a couple of spots where slugging happens. That is one big thing the government can do is provide us some curb space or a safe space for four or five cars to wait and pick up riders.

KANDASAMYThat helps, like sometimes we had to kind of struggle with food trucks or government vehicles parked in curb and be out in the center lane picking up riders. Things are not safe in that situation. So (word?) is something we are working with D.C. government and the same thing with VDOT. We are trying to make it more official. If you don't like to call it slugging, call it carpool. Call it anything you want, just give us some space and some acknowledgement.

NNAMDIKalai Kandasamy is the Creator of the Sluglines app. Thank you so much for joining us.

KANDASAMYThank you.

NNAMDIWe're going to take a short break, when we come back after the break, car sharing and autonomous vehicles. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.

NNAMDIWelcome back, we're talking about alternative transit with David Alpert, Founder and President of Greater Greater Washington. And we've been talking about Washingtonians openness to alternative forms of transit and what happens when they become more a part of our life here. Let's hear now from an executive at a company that's used D.C. as a testing ground and its home base for the American South and Mid-Atlantic. Sabrina Sussman is the Senior Manager of Public Partnerships and Policy at Zipcar. She joins us in studio. Sabrina, thank you for joining us.

SABRINA SUSSMANThanks so much for having me today.

NNAMDIIt doesn't seem like it, but Zipcar has been around for 20 years.

SUSSMANI know. We just don't look our age, do we?

NNAMDIBut remind us, how does it work and how long has it been available in D.C.?

SUSSMANAbsolutely. So Zipcar is around trip car sharing service, which means each of our cars has both a name and a home location. So when you reserve a car either on our website or on our app or by the phone, you go to its home location. You pick up your car. Sometimes they're named something fun like Chow Mein. You pick it up. You use it for a minimum of an hour up to a couple of days. And then at the end of the time you're done it. You bring it back to its home location. You can join for a year at a time or a month at a time. And our members actively rejoin to be a part of the community. So Zipcar was founded in the year 2000. Seven years before the iPhone. And we've been in D.C. since 2001.

NNAMDIHow has Zipcar grown in D.C.? Can you describe its reach here and now in numbers?

SUSSMANAbsolutely. The D.C. market is one of our top six markets across North America. And what we've seen is really a deep fascination with the ability to have a service that allows you to feel like you own a car without the actual hassle of owning a car. So this means that Washingtonians can continue to use transit, walk, bike, all forms of alternative mobility throughout their daily life. And then for those unique trips where they have to be in a car, they can then rely on Zipcar. So we've seen massive growth in our membership base, in our vehicle count. Now we've over 500 vehicles at 300 locations in the D.C. area. That doesn't include our reach into the Baltimore or southern Virginia markets.

NNAMDILike many companies Zipcar used D.C. as a staging ground in its early years. What makes Washington an ideal city? What makes this region ideal for new transportation companies to test their models?

SUSSMANAbsolutely, I think there's a couple of key factors. Number one the geographic foundations here, you're somewhat limited in size and scope. D.C. is small, but mighty. You have a river on one side and if you want to do a full city wide deployment, the square mileage is smaller than some of the other big cities that you hear about. The other thing is you have two distinct population groups. One that is native and local and very consistent to who makes the city what it is. The other is a very transient population that often comes in waves of two, four, seven, even ten years that's often willing to change up their transportation mode is looking for the next big thing.

SUSSMANThe other thing is the government structure of D.C., while sometimes complicated, of course, does allow DDOT, our agency here over transportation to work more seamlessly with companies, because it doesn't also have a state agency like many other big cities do.

NNAMDIYou should know that there are a whole number of people around here, who would like D.C. to be a state.

SUSSMANWell, and as a longtime resident, I am one of them very fiercely. So I stand among them.

NNAMDIHow did Zipcar go about acquiring parking spots for its vehicles? Did the company work with DDOT to make that happen?

SUSSMANWe did. And it's an interesting story, because, you know, we now have over 1500 on street parking spots across North America in partnership with cities across the board. And D.C. was one of our first markets. Arlington County was our first partner actually. We went to the city and said this is a good use of public right of way. This is a good allocation of public space. We'd like to try this. The reason we felt that way is every one Zipcar reduces the need for up to 13 privately owned vehicles. In partnership with Arlington County and then subsequently DDOT we started small pilot programs just a couple of vehicles in select neighborhoods to test the theory and see how residents would react. Over time we formalized those programs and now you can find more and more vehicles in all eight wards in partnership with DDOT.

NNAMDIZipcar is able to market itself to local governments by making the argument that it gets privately owned cars off the roads. What do we know about how many trips are taken in Zipcars from our local jurisdictions? And how has Zipcar grown in that regard?

SUSSMANAbsolutely. So there's a couple of sources of research where we see that, UC Berkeley, Dr. Susan Shaheen, whose really the godmother of car sharing research did some of that external research to show that car's shed numbers is what we talk about. But then we also ask our members -- we say, how many of you didn't buy a car, because of your Zipcar membership? Last year 49 percent of D.C. members said, that was me, I postponed buying a car.

SUSSMANWe heard that 57 percent of our members last year didn't own a car. Whereas before joining, that number was only 43 percent. We hear things like that our trips the average length is actually 44 miles.

SUSSMANSo, what we know is Washingtonians, those District residents, they're not taking a Zipcar just to bop around town. They're taking a Zipcar when they really, truly need vehicular access. Those are the kind of trips we want to see.

NNAMDICan you give me numbers on how many trips Zipcar has here per day, per week, per month?

SUSSMANSo, I can tell you that every six seconds, a Zipcar reservation is made. We don't share down into the details of how many trips in DC, specifically. What I can tell you is that because our fleet count is high, we actually track those numbers, and every month, modify how many cars we keep, just to make sure we never have one extra car here in the city. It's a commitment we make to DDOT, that we never have too many cars here. Our goal is actually to reduce the number of vehicles in any market, ever, based off the demand patterns we see.

NNAMDIDavid Alpert, we do not know the details of Zipcar's trips, and that is not unique to Zipcar. Uber and Lyft don't share data about their trips, either. Should cities have access to this data? What would it help us understand and plan for?

ALPERTAbsolutely. DC passed a law last year that required Uber, Lyft and similar services to give DDOT information about trips that was similar to what it had already been collecting about taxis. So, it didn't necessarily have your address. It didn't know who you are, but it could say that from this general area, you know, to within a block or so, a trip was taken from, you know, that general block region to this other one, or something like that.

ALPERTWhat's valuable about that kind of data is that it lets the government plan where it needs to maybe add transit service, where it needs to look at creating new pick-up/drop-off zones, where there are people that are trying to get around that could be better served by facilitating ride hailing, and where there are ways that people are trying to get around that could be served in other ways.

NNAMDISabrina, if companies are partnering with the cities to get cars off the road, what's the future of making at least some of that company data public?

SUSSMANI'm so glad you asked, because actually, just yesterday, I sat down with the DDOT leadership and Director Marootian for over an hour and shared so much of this data directly with them. So, for us, that's been a deep culture at Zipcar, which is when we're in a partnership, we're always going to share so much of our data directly with the city. You know, I would offer, it's a little different than sharing it here on the show with over a million listeners than sharing it with Director Marootian and his team. One of the things...

NNAMDI(overlapping) Or with your competitors, but go ahead.

SUSSMANWell, you know, of course. Them, as well. Um, but one of the things that we did in our conversation yesterday with the DDOT leadership is show how the data we're sharing with them actually impacts so many of their transportation planning projects that are on the docket. So, when we look at the revitalization and complete overhaul of K Street, when we think about the sidewalk projects in Ward 7 and 8, Zipcar usage data tells us a story about where our members and how often our members are reserving cars in those neighborhoods. And then we can help DDOT think through perhaps where they're seeing a transit desert, or even a food desert, in ways that perhaps they wouldn't have thought of before.

NNAMDIDavid, there are other companies like Getaround that are gaining popularity in DC. These allow users to drive their neighbors' cars or to share their own cars. How common is that, and does that model make sense for Washingtonians?

ALPERTThese models have been starting to grow. They're very much at the early stage, but that idea that, if I were driving my own car somewhere and I should just give someone a ride, has actually been around longer than, you know, maybe Uber and Lyft, for instance. At least it's been talked about for so long, because after all, if you're driving your car, you have some extra seats there in your car. Other models have really caught on more.

ALPERTYou know, we originally called these Uber-type services ridesharing, and ended up switching more to ride hailing, because it's being done by people who are doing that as their job. I think that there's promise to the real sharing, but on the other hand, you know, as came up earlier, you know, maybe people are going to be nervous about who's going to be in the car. There are questions about, you know, if you need to have certain insurance and sometimes certain licensing in order to drive other people commercially. And so, it's not quite so easy.

ALPERTBut all of these services -- including Zipcar and the ride hailing and others -- do give people ways to not have to own a car. Or maybe if they do, to make better use of it, so that they're not taking up so much space in the city just for themselves. And I think it's very promising to see more innovation in that direction.

NNAMDIOkay. Let's move on to autonomous vehicles. Public opinion polls show that most people are skeptical of autonomous vehicles, also known as self-driving cars. But industry experts have flagged them as the future of vehicular transportation. And ride-hailing companies and car manufacturers are already testing them in Washington. Ford is testing its fleet of autonomous vehicles in DC, with an eye on launching commercially in 2021. That's two years away. David, what does a future with autonomous vehicles on the streets look like, considering how Washingtonians have welcomed previous transportation disruptions in the past?

ALPERTGreat question. There are a few ways that autonomous vehicle technology -- which we don't know how long in the future that is. Experts don't agree. But I do believe it's going to happen sooner or later. So, there are a few ways that it could manifest itself. One, which is, uh, sort of the model that Tesla's been pushing, is maybe for people who live maybe in the suburbs, they get on the freeway. The car can drive itself, just on the freeway. That's an easier place to have computers drive, because the freeway is so much simpler.

ALPERTThere aren't, you know, people crossing. There aren't traffic lights. There usually aren't, you know, police blocking off some, you know, area, except in unusual circumstances. And then maybe the car would stop operating autonomously when you get off the freeway. That's one way it could start. Another is that we could get these fully autonomous cars, and services like Uber or Lyft and Via and others might actually start offering essentially the same thing that they're offering now, except without a human driver. Therefore, it would be cheaper. And it wouldn't create as many jobs. That's another way that it can manifest itself.

ALPERTThe third that's interesting to think about is a lot of this could be about deliveries. There have already been sidewalk robots helping deliver food. Ford, in Miami, what they piloted was actually more of a pizza delivery, where the autonomous vehicle would come, and it would pull up outside. You'd go down to the curb, press a button, get your pizza or whatever it would be, and then it would drive off.

NNAMDISabrina, what do you know about how Washingtonians use Zipcar currently? Would the advent of autonomous vehicles impact Zipcar's model?

SUSSMANWell, I think the biggest thing that would change is, right now, you go to your Zipcar, right, to their home location. What we see in the future of Zipcar is that your Zipcar may come to you. And so Zipcar's at an advantage in the market to actually operate what we believe to be the right way to have autonomous vehicles in urban cores, shared autonomous fleets. We have that advantage, because we have 12,000 vehicles across the globe that we own, we manage, we operate and we care for. We're one of the only folks who do that in a fleet size of that scale, and then also operate the service.

SUSSMANThe other piece of autonomous fleet management isn't just about the cars. It's about the people. It's about the real sharing, which means you have to curate a membership. You have to set community standards. Frankly, adults aren't very good at sharing. We kind of hit that peak in kindergarten. Since then, it's all been downhill.

SUSSMANAnd so one of the things Zipcar has really, over 20 years, honed an expertise on is: how do you get adults to share well? How do you remind them that if they leave the gas tank almost empty, the next person's inconvenienced? And that the time you have to return it really does matter, because the doctor's appointment that the next person has isn't going to change. We plan on taking those two big streams of expertise and using that to accelerate our place in managing autonomous fleets in the future.

NNAMDIWhether it's autonomous vehicles, Zipcar, Uber or something else, sometimes disrupters come into our local market with an idea of who their market is. Washingtonians in wealthy neighborhoods with a little extra money to spend on getting from point A to point B. Starting with you, David: how can new companies be more mindful of the disparities that exist within Washington and provide transit solutions to all residents?

ALPERTGreat question. It's really very important for all of these services to serve all parts of at least the District, if they're serving the District, and all parts of the region. DDOT has been very strong in asking that any services that are launching need to serve the whole area. For example, car2go, another car...

NNAMDISharing.

ALPERT...sharing, in a sense, I guess, service, there was a discussion, I remember when it launched, that said, you need to have your zone, the zone that people can drive in, must be the entire District. You're going to talk later about the dockless bikes and scooters, but DDOT has required that those need to serve all the wards of DC. That, of course, doesn't get you the whole region. There are parts of this region that also are less well served by things like delivery services. And there were some high-profile issues about some of these services that provide food delivery, not going east of the Anacostia, not going to Prince Georges County. And so it's important for policymakers to make that a priority.

NNAMDIFinally, for you, Sabrina, can companies like Zipcar work on solving transit desert that exists in communities east of the river here?

SUSSMANAbsolutely. I mean, I think, David, you're absolutely right. That's an obligation, serving the entire community that Zipcar takes very seriously. We share all of that data with who we serve with DDOT, willingly and freely. For us, we're in all eight wards. For us, 43 percent of our members have an annual household income of less than $75,000. For us, 53 percent of our members are non-white in DC. We track things like education level, income level, how often these folks take transit, how they get to work. Whether they're using us to go grocery shopping or to go on dates, because for us, at Zipcar, it's really critical to understand how we fit into a lifestyle.

SUSSMANWe then share all that data with DDOT, because as they're thinking about where their sidewalk deserts might be, their transit deserts, their bus deserts, their circulator deserts, they want to know how folks are choosing to move around. And if they can supplement things and change things so that people can shed their cars, they'll see a transformation of land use, which really, at the end of the day, is a holistic goal for all of DC government.

NNAMDISabrina Sussman is the senior manager of public partnerships and policy at Zipcar. Thank you for joining us.

SUSSMANThank you.

NNAMDIDavid Alpert is the founder and president of Greater Greater Washington. David, thank you for joining us.

ALPERTThanks so much, Kojo.

NNAMDIGoing to take a short break. When we come back, bikeshares, dockless scooters and more. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.

NNAMDIWe've been talking about disruption and innovation in transportation. But we've been mostly talking about cars, when some of the most visible changes to our landscape have to do with the colorful takeover of bikeshare, dockless bikes and scooters. So, let's first dive into bikes. Sabrina Sussman is still with us. She's the senior manager of public partnerships and policy at Zipcar. Joining us in studio now is David Cranor. He is the founder of TheWashCycle, a local cycling blog. David, thank you for joining us.

DAVID CRANOROh, thank you for having me.

NNAMDIBiking is very popular in the Washington region. Can you help us visualize the cycling community today, in terms of numbers?

CRANORWell, about 5 percent of commuters in DC are cyclists, which is pretty high on a national level. Biking is growing. Bikeshare, obviously, is expanding even in Prince Georges County. Now we've got new kinds of bikes, electric bikes hitting the roads and that's really expanding the number of people who are biking and the kinds of people that can bike. We have mothers who can put three kids on the back of their bike now, with an e-bike. We've got the Capital Trails Coalition, that we have 400 miles of trails in the District, and they're trying to expand that by another 300 miles. So, we've got a lot of projects in the pipeline that are making it easier to bike, and more people are taking advantage of them.

NNAMDIWhen did bicycling grow from being a thing that individuals did for fun and exercise to something that cities offered in the form of bikeshares, dockless bikes, and most recently, electric bikes?

CRANORWell, bike meeting has been going on, you know, as long as there have been bikes, pretty much. But the real boom has kind of happened, you know, since 2000. The District made a real investment in creating new bike lanes. They hired bike coordinators and teams of people within DDOT who added bikes and bike facilities to roads. And we definitely saw a huge amount of growth since 2000 in the amount of people who are biking for transportation in the city.

NNAMDIHere now is Debra, in Washington, DC. Debra, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

DEBORAHHi, Kojo. Thank you for taking my call. My name is Deborah Royster. I'm the chief executive officer of Seabury Resources for Aging. Seabury operates a transportation service for older adults in partnership with the District's Department of Aging and Community Living. And I've been listening with interest to the guests that this is such an important topic for older adults. And I wanted to ask the guests, in the context of existing and new transportation services that are being provided in our community, how are the needs and specialized concerns of older adults and people with disabilities being taken into account?

NNAMDIDavid?

CRANORWell, within biking, I can definitely say the one advantage of e-bikes is that they do open up biking to older cyclists, because it doesn't take as much strength. You can let the motor help you. And we're definitely pushing for roads that allow for adult tricycles. A lot of older cyclists like to ride those. And the AARP actually has become a big supporter of safer streets for both pedestrians and for cyclists, because they recognize that this is going to be a way that older people get around more than they used to.

NNAMDIThank you very much for your call. DC's one of the top cities for daily bicycle commuters. It was the first city in North America with a bike sharing program. Does that make the Washington region a good place to be a bicyclist?

CRANORThe Washington region is really actually a very good place to ride bikes. They have a large trail network. We have streets that are very conducive to cycling, and we have good weather. And we're one of the safest cities for bicycling. Largely, that's because of transit. Metro makes the streets very safe. But we could become a safer city, and we could become better. And bike advocates are really pushing for that right now.

NNAMDIThat's right, a prevailing issue on the minds of many bicyclists is safety. Prominent cycling advocate David Salovesh was killed earlier this month when he was hit by a van near Florida Avenue and 12th Street Northeast. Activists are calling for safer streets. What exactly are their demands?

CRANORWell, in 2015, Mayor Bowser set a goal for Vision Zero, which is the idea of zero deaths by 2024. And they put together an action plan, and it was modest, but it was like a short-term plan building up to more changes in the future. And what we've seen is that DC has continued to miss their goals, both on the number of fatalities that they were shooting for, and the projects they were going to complete. By now, we should be down to ten fatalities per year, for example, and we hit a higher number than we did the year she set the goal.

CRANORSo, what cyclists are actively pushing for is for DDOT to try to achieve its actual goals of lowering fatalities every year, which means more changes to the environment. We need more bike lanes, more protected bike lanes, more curb bulb-outs for pedestrians. We need more enforcement of lower speeds, and we need cars to go slower and drive safer.

NNAMDIStreet safety isn't just an issue for bicyclists. Sabrina, you were a victim of a hit-and-run in the District. How did that experience impact how you viewed safety on DC streets?

SUSSMANAbsolutely. So...

NNAMDIYou were a pedestrian?

SUSSMANI was a pedestrian. I had gone for a run on an early Monday morning. It'll be five years, actually, next week. And what I will say is I had very serious injuries that took several years of surgeries and physical therapy to overcome. My learnings really came over that course of several years, because the reality is, our streets are not always ready for all users. And all of us are all kinds of users. Sometimes we're on a bike. Sometimes we're taking a morning run. Sometimes we're in a car, and sometimes we're in a wheelchair.

SUSSMANAs I found in the days I was in a wheelchair or on crutches, that experience is incredibly different from the day-to-day experience I have now. And we need to be cognizant of the fact that at each stage of our life we'll need different things from our streetscape. We'll need different things from our land use. That experience reminds me every day that the way that we engage with other road users is as critically important to our safety as anything else.

NNAMDIDavid, safety is also a concern, given the rise of dockless scooters over the past two years. People describe electric scooters as, quoting here, "too fast for the sidewalk, too slow for the road." So, can you clarify when scooters are supposed to be ridden on the street and when they should be ridden on the sidewalk?

CRANORWell, they're considered personal mobility devices, and they have a lot of the same rules as for cyclists. So, they're allowed on the street in almost every case, and they're allowed on the sidewalk everywhere but the Central Business District. So, pretty much as long as they're not with the CBD, they're allowed on the sidewalk. But they should always be ridden at a pedestrian pace on a sidewalk.

NNAMDILet's talk to Rudy in Washington, DC. Rudy, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

RUDYHi, Kojo. Thanks for taking my call. Kind of dovetailing onto what David was speaking about and to what Sabrina's talking about, a big pillar of getting to Vision Zero is education. We see so many new types of mode share on the roads. We see bikes. We see scooters. We see a lot of people walking. I'm downtown on Constitution Avenue right now, and there are tons of people walking down here.

RUDYWhat I want to know is what are the companies like Zipcar, like Lyft, like car2go, like all of the freight and delivery services that impeach on our bike lanes and safe street surfaces, what are they going to do to educate the public and educate their operators and users to safe streets? Because we need that. I mean, that's how a lot of people are injured and killed every year. I think it'd be great for us to push the education element a little bit more, so that people are clear that the Central Business District isn't a place where you can ride a bike.

NNAMDISabrina?

SUSSMANAbsolutely. So, at Zipcar, we do a couple of things. One, this is part of the membership curation. Right? So, we make sure we're tracking how members drive. And unsafe drivers are actually removed from our membership, because we want to make sure we're not responsible for those types of crashes. The other thing is simple things, like reminding our members to do things like the Dutch reach, which is to always open your car door using your right hand if you're the driver. This enables you to always look out the window over your shoulder to ensure you're not going to hit a pedestrian or a bicyclist, or frankly even another car.

SUSSMANSimple things like member education directly, or reminding folks not to speed, things like that change the driving discourse of our membership. I think more broadly than that, 83 percent of Zip trips start with a walk. We know our members have to walk to get to their cars, and so they're pedestrians themselves. Road users are multimodal by nature. And so protecting our members starts with protecting pedestrians.

NNAMDIDavid, some jurisdictions are more bike-, scooter- and pedestrian-friendly than others. What does it take to change culture and to prioritize safety while introducing new forms of transportation?

CRANORWell, it takes planning. You know, Montgomery County and Arlington County just came out with new bike plans that are very ambitious, as far as change in a built environment, so that they'll be more bicycle-friendly. So, that's one big part of it. It also takes a commitment from, you know, all of the leadership, the police department, the political leadership and the road development people, so that we are all pushing towards the same goal of making roads bike-friendly.

NNAMDIMontgomery County's launching its own dockless scooter program with Lime. What can they learn from the past two years or so of scooters in DC?

CRANORWell, there's going to be pushback within the community, especially among pedestrians and senior citizens. They seem to really have a lot of trouble with them, and so they're going to need to try and address those concerns, safety concerns of pedestrians and such. And they're going to find that they're going to have issues with where the scooters end up. One thing that other communities have done that DC has not picked up yet is setting aside places on the sidewalk for scooters to be parked. And so if they can learn from those kinds of things, I think they'll find a better transition.

NNAMDISteve writes: with the expansion of scooters, why not have a scooter rider safety course, perhaps offered by the city, similar to the motorcycle riders' courses that have existed for a long time? Good idea?

CRANORI mean, I think education is always a good idea. I don't know if we need a licensing process, but it's not a bad idea to have more education. WABA sponsors bicycle education. It certainly would be possible to have a group do scooter education.

NNAMDISabrina.

SUSSMANAbsolutely. I mean, I think we should do more, as David said, of all types.

NNAMDISabrina Sussman is the senior manager of public partnerships and policy at Zipcar. Sabrina, thank you so much for joining us in studio.

SUSSMANKojo, thanks so much for having me today.

NNAMDIDavid Cranor is the founder of TheWashCycle. That's a local cycling blog. David, thank you so much for joining us in studio.

CRANORThank you.

NNAMDIToday's show is part of our series on local transportation. It's part of our 20th anniversary coverage, highlighting topics Washingtonians care about. There's always more of the show online. Check out a video of the time I tagged along with a Lyft driver for a day. You can find that at our website, KojoShow.org/blog. Coming up tomorrow, we'll discuss how DC's patchwork of pot laws have led to a spike in cannabis tourism. Plus, we'll meet two local chefs who are both James Beard Award finalists. That all starts tomorrow, at noon. Until then, thank you for listening. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.