Every Thursday at 12:00pm EST we will post a new “Question of the Week” that will address an important issue regarding Catalyzing the New Mobility in cities. We want to know your opinions on emerging trends, plaguing issues and future possibilities. This weeks question is:

Q. What do you think are the biggest challenges faced by entrepreneurs in the field of sustainable transportation and mobility? What do you think can be done to deal with these challenges?

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 22nd, 2012 at 4:02 pm. It is filed under ? of the week. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

13 Responses to “Week 2 : March 22”

1. Derrick Moennick says:

   March 22, 2012 at 8:43 pm

   Keeping things on an equal playing feild is difficult. With municiplaities involvement and backing companies ie. BIXI, for the tune of 108 million dollars is hard to compete with.

   Answer; Keeping things on a level playing feild when the clints are generally government run.
2. Raul Reynoso Rodriguez says:

   March 22, 2012 at 9:21 pm

   The biggest challenge is to change the idea that the car is the first carrier. The promotion along with education are the best tools to address it. So we worked in the school of urban cycling.
3. Andrew Thabo Russell says:

   March 23, 2012 at 12:24 am

   The challenges cited by entrepreneurs we’ve engaged with have centered around the public sector. The public sector subsidizes a great deal of the transport industry and rightly so. But this creates a crowding out effect, particularly for new entrants to the market. Established companies benefit from the subsidy and new companies cannot compete without it. And occasionally an idea will be so smart that it can work without a subsidy, but then due to permits, permissions or the like, the enterprise cannot even work with the system it hopes to support. There are no easy answers to this problem. Attempts need to be made to make the public sector a better private sector partner and even more, a real partner for small entrepreneurs and new ideas.
4. Ollie Mikosza says:

   March 23, 2012 at 4:08 am

   Any really NEW solution, like MISTER PRT, is ridiculed and if the inventor is a start-up company, then it cannot attract investors. At the same time city authorities will spend $ billions on the deficit ridden, outdated systems which do not solve congestion problems – like buses, metro, monorail and roads, while taxing people even more, because these are “PROVEN” systems. Yet they will not spend even “petty cash” by their standards, like $20 million, to get PRT systems like our certified, because it is “not proven”. Never mind that we can have all the feasibility studies done, scientific and industry experts opinions indicating PRT is sound technologically and financially, that similar systems are being trialed … but untill the 1st system is working somewhere, then citie’s won’t support it. A cicken and egg situation. At the same time all the “high tech funds” and supposed support for new technologies are a media myth. None of the development or technology banks will lend money for “unproven” system. So how can a revolutionary technology emerge, when it cannot be developed “in the garage”, because it requires $20M investment, which a small company does not have ?!
5. Dhanuraj says:

   March 23, 2012 at 5:18 am

   Inconsistent policy making and highly bureaucratic approaches to find solutions to the problem. most of the administrator likes for big ticket projects that need not provide solutions
6. Rod Bishop says:

   March 23, 2012 at 7:14 am

   I believe it’s government’s fear of being seen to fail. This prevents innovation in government transport strategy and leaves it to private enterprise to take the risks and innovate… except without support.

   Recent examples include private companies doing ridesharing and carsharing, yet struggling to access funding and support from government: Car share schemes that cannot find on-street carparking, or rideshare schemes that cannot find promotion by local councils.

   I think all government transportation budgets should have a dedicated “innovation” funding pool. There are so many good ideas out there that just need to get backed!
7. Jonathan McKinney says:

   March 23, 2012 at 3:58 pm

   Inherent in being an entrepreneur is the fact that 9 times out of 10, he/she is resource challenged – be it under-funded, under-manned, under-branded. One of the most defining qualities of a successful entrepreneur is their ability to overcome these challenges by constantly and consistently being able to do more with less.

   Transportation is a large space that is often dominated by only a few players with well established (entrenched) networks and deep pockets. As an entrepreneur, trying to break into this space with a concept that most certainly will challenge some of the fundamental (entrenched) underpinnings of this space, it is simply very difficult to find partners, money or resources on a scale that is necessary to successfully seed a real world pilot program. The barrier to entry is often too costly for an individual to shoulder on his/her own.

   The best approach to overcoming the resource deficit is to begin with a concept that does not seek to re-invent the wheel. Instead, it should seek to possibly change something about that wheel, maybe the texture, the size, the color, in the beginning, to get a foothold and establish the validity of not only the value of the concept but the social capital of that entrepreneur. In other words, as an entrepreneur who is try to make real changes in sustainable transportation and mobility, it would be wise to begin by addressing an issue that seeks to make the current infrastructure incrementally better, instead of trying to revolutionize the space in one fell swoop. This way, no matter what problem the entrepreneur is trying to tackle, at least she/he is leveraging the value of already previously invested capital and with a tweak here or there, is able to define his/her added value component. Generally, a good place to start when it comes to transportation, would be in the area of communication. Maybe there is a more efficient way to disseminate information, which could directly lead to greater resource efficiences, which in turn would make the future network, to some degree, large or small, more efficient and sustainable than the current network. It would be a relatively inexpensive place to start in order to gain credibility and real world application of one’s idea, which could then lead to plausible future proposals with much larger and costlier scopes.
8. Navdeep Asija says:

   March 26, 2012 at 5:38 pm

   Rapid Urban development keeping car centric development model makes the job of Entrepreneur in the area of Sustainable Transport and Mobility makes job more difficult. First challenge being faced is to undo certain urban design concepts which are being made just to favor individual moving in private car. Right kind of laws and policies are not in place e.g. irrational licensing system and predefined quota to fulfill the need of mobility is restricting the growth of high occupancy vehicles and promoting rather every Individual to use personal motor vehicles. Non availability of right policies and plan to frame demand and supply gap are missing at first place. Mindset of the authorities to move vehicles and not people is one of the biggest challenges being face by entrepreneur in the area of Sustainable Transport.
9. Sundar says:

   March 27, 2012 at 6:55 pm

   Availability of critical data feeds. We’ve faced this hurdle in India.
10. Carlosfelipe Pardo says:

    March 30, 2012 at 3:06 pm

    I think it’s mainly getting good financing to really start-up, since conditions to get financing for projects imply that one has already worked a lot on other projects. We have tried to solve this by doing small projects with the hope of scaling up, but our overhead costs make it difficult to find a “non-subsidized” (i.e. our owner covers most admin costs) solution to working on important issues.
    But in a more “contentwise” topic, I think there are hurdles such as the ones described by others above, mainly related to tunnel-vision and bureaucracy in governments who really don’t see new proposals as solutions but rather as problems. Sometimes these are seen as problems not because they are bad ideas, but because they would imply significant work (from government) to get them moving (i.e. changing regulations, reorganizing budgets, etc). In essence, laziness from those with power is a huge hurdle.
11. Evgeni Makarov says:

    April 5, 2012 at 5:56 pm

    One of the biggest challenges for the entrepreneurs in the field of transportation is conservative methodics that are deployed for a long time ago. Bringing somethnig new to the industry is bound with marketing activities for bring your ideas to the existing companies, developers and users.
12. Paul Minett says:

    April 5, 2012 at 7:09 pm

    It is great to see these comments and realise that our expriences are the same. We need to recognise the enemy, and it sounds as if we have a pretty consistent view of him.

    I think the biggest challenge is the lack of interest in our efforts from those who’s job it is to manage transport systems. And I think this stems from their backgrounds – these organisations are full of people who got there because they could manage infrastructure provision (road building) or traditional transit operations. They play with incredibly large amounts of money, and all their systems are based on the process of spending that money. It is a big ship to turn.

    As to what can be done to turn the ship? I think we have to source resources (money) from outside the sector, and bring those resources to these agencies seeking collaboration. And then we need to keep looking amongst interested agencies until we find some that really want the same outcomes we want (before spending those resources). (Otherwise we may get visible support and invisible barrier building). We have to get over the idea that they manage billions and should spend some of it on our projects – it ain’t gonna happen.
13. Mike Blake says:

    April 5, 2012 at 11:31 pm

    Gaining credibility in order to change belief systems are very rarely done on a large scale and adopted readily. Only extreme urgency qualifies for this advantage. Credibility and corresponding adoption can only begin on a small scale, preferably with notable personalities involved in a pilot project. Pioneers give others courage.