Multimodal mobility is fast becoming the biggest opportunity for us (as service providers and operators) to design seamless-interconnected journeys and to reimagine movement within urban cities. Multimodal mobility is the term used to describe integrated transport – seamless connectivity between different modes of transportation, such as buses, ferries, trains, trams, ridehailing, bikes, e-scooters and even walking.
Welcome to movmi’s Multimodal Mondays micro-webinar series. Every other month, we will be inviting an exceptional panel of experts within the industry, including researchers, operators and planners to come and join us for a discussion on all things ‘multimodal.’ Kicking off our Multimodal Monday series, we are joined by Melika Jahangiri from Wunder Mobility, Tatiana Peralta-Quirós from Kinto and Laercio Avila from HP Transportes Group.
Watch the micro-webinar below! Keep reading to learn more about each guest panelist and for a brief summary of our multimodal discussion.
Multimodal Monday: Melika Jahangiri, Tati Peralta-Quirós & Laercio Avila
THE multimodal monday PANEL
Melika Jahangiri
Vice President of Global Key Accounts & Head of Americas at Wunder Mobility
This LA-based female disrupter is passionate about all things shared mobility: Melika, a real mobility space veteran, joined $70 million funded Wunder Mobility, which is accelerating the global transition to sustainable mobility, as Vice President in 2019. Before Melika worked for Ridecell and has held positions at Ford Motor Company as well as car-sharing companies Envoy and Borrow. Additionally, Melika doesn’t own a car and uses mobility every day so she has a unique perspective as both a consumer and previous operator in this space.
Tatiana peralta-quirós
Co-Founder Kinto, Costa Rica | World Bank Technology & Transport Specialist
Tatiana Peralta-Quirós is a mobility, transport and technology specialist, with experience working across the private and public sector in US, LatAm and Asia, including technology start-ups, development finance institutions, and governments. She is the co-founder of Kinto-Costa Rica, Latin America’s first subscription-based Mobility as a Service (MaaS) company. Previously, she served as Senior Advisor for Urban Mobility and Technology to the President of Costa Rica. As a transport specialist at the World Bank, she leads the adoption of digital data and innovative technologies in transport and land-use projects. Tati has over 10 years of experience designing, monitoring and evaluating urban transport systems, as well as adapting the use of technology and digital innovation in the sector.
She holds a Master’s degree in Transport Engineering from MIT, where she also worked as a researcher, and a BA in Applied Mathematics and Urban Planning from Harvard University.
Laercio Avila
Director of Strategy and Innovation at the HP Transportes Group
Laercio Avila is the Director of Strategy and Innovation at the HP Transportes Group, President of the Board of ABSC (Brazilian Association of Shared Services), Business Administrator at PUC Goiás, Post-MBA in Business Intelligence at FGV, Postgraduate in Business and Marketing at Faculdade Ávila, Specialist in Strategic Management, Specialist in Governance for New Economy, Process Management, Innovation Management, Shared Services Center Management, Risk Management, Budget Management, Agile Project Management, StartUps Mentor, Has experience in Business Consulting and implementation of high complexity projects, he also acts as a Post-Graduation Professor, being Former President of the Coopera + Group of CSCs.
In this week’s multimodal monday webinar:
Tati is the Co-founder of Kinto which is Purdy’s venture into new mobility. Purdy Motors is an established traditional automotive company in Costa Rica. Very recently the company was restructured to focus more on mobility services and that is when Kinto was founded – a multimodal provider. Kinto launched with carshare, car rental, car subscription and micromobility and are in the process of integrating micro buses and more demand/responsive transit. It’s becoming the one stop shop for mobility services in Costa Rica.
Adding micromobility to Kinto’s multimodal program, seemed like unusual path for a company like Purdy Motors to take, with its strong traditional background in car manufacturing, but as Tatiana explains, if you look at the journey of the mobility industry as a whole, adding micromobility vehicles in the most natural evolution. The mindset of the consumer is changing. Instead of thinking about which vehicle they need to buy to cover the next four years, they are thinking about the vehicle they need for the next twenty minutes. As a company Purdy Motors has adapted, like many more leaders within the industry. Finding the right partners to make that journey with, like Wunder Mobility, gave the company the confidence it needed to make the risky change.
Laercio Avila lives in Goiás, Brazile and is part of HP group that launched the first on-demand public transit services in Latin America, CityBus 2.0. HP – a client of movmi’s – is a traditional public transit operator with a big ambition: they want to create a multimodal eco-system with public transit as the backbone. They want to scale such a service across the country always focusing on the needs of the individual markets and using technology to serve it.
The main goal of CityBus 2.0 was to change how public transit works. Instead of people adapting to the service, CityBus 2.0 adapted its service to the people – it’s customers. Now they even have a mascot – ‘Happy’ – check it out on their Instagram page. The mascot has it’s own following, people who call themselves ‘Happy Lovers!’ This started a process to establish trust and communication with their clients and the leverage social media to do this.
Melika works for Wunder Mobility, which is the technology provider for many mobility vendors including Purdy Motors – Kinto! They see themselves an an extension of each of their client’s team. If they hear or read something new and interesting they let their clients know and work in a collaborative way.
There are a lot of decisions that go into what we do everyday and how we move around effectively the decision becomes part of the price we pay. It feels like society is moving into a ‘life as a service’ model – not just with our vacations and our mobility options. Instead of making purchases in the future, perhaps everything will be at an on-demand level. Behaviour is changing rapidly, especially in the wake of the pandemic.
Collaboration has become more prominent and public/private partnerships are starting to develop, particularly during/post Covid19. An important part of what makes a good partnership is having people who understand the market and technology cannot do that alone. Although, having the right technology is vital, if people can’t trust the technology, people just won’t use your service. GM’s Maven had a great service with many cars available, but the technology was so unreliable, they went out of service.
Partnerships with cities is also very important and working together to compliment services instead of compete with current ones. This also becomes a problem when a city has too many micromobilty and carshare options. This is where technology plays a key role, because if you have to open up five different apps, to check out five different prices at five different locations, it becomes more of a hindrance than a help. An app that has all the operators public and private, in the one place, is a truly multimodal app.
What’s Your Wish For 2021
Melika – That cities are more open and accommodating of multimodal services and technology – having a great public/private partnership.
Tatiana – Getting to a point where we can actually create true multimodal mobility of larger scale with full integration.
Laercio – A collective way of thinking, just like we did throughout the pandemic. Being more collaborative and less competitive with more sharing between different and new mobility solutions.
If you would like to watch more of our other webinar series’ check out our ‘Women in Shared Mobility’ here and ‘Covid19 Taskforce’ here.
