Why Waymo Is Paying People to Take Public Transport | Dr. Henriette Cornet

[MUSIC PLAYING] Welcome to autonomy insiders. The show where global industry leaders in autonomous driving unpack their real world insights. We noticed that people speak very differently of what it means to have or not have a human presence while traveling. Instinctively, we would think that being alone is better, having privacy is better, but then in the discussions that we found online, it's not always the case. Humans can be a reassurance or a threat, depending on the situation. They should not wait that private companies develop so many services and take their entire space. I'm like, go at the table, discuss, tell your needs, tell your requirements, tell the vehicles you need, and really create a demand on the market so that private industry knows what transit needs. [MUSIC PLAYING] Welcome back to autonomy insiders. I'm your host, Daniel, and on September 22nd, WAMO did something unusual for a robot taxi company. It started paying riders to take the bus. Lincoln Visa card combined a WAMO ride with a train or bus within two hours, and you get a cashback. So it's just the start of real integration between robot taxis and public transit or a smart way to win over transit riders. And what should cities and transit agencies do about it? My guest today has worked on both sides of this question. Dr. Henriette Corne led automated mobility at UITP, the Global Public Transport Association. She coordinated the largest AV project that you has ever funded with automated vehicles in 20 European cities. Before that, she designed autonomous public transport in Singapore, and today she runs Urban Innovate in San Francisco. She advises cities and transit agencies, teaches at the University of San Francisco, and studies why people choose or avoid transit. So Henriette, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for the invitation, very glad to be here. Maybe let's start on the ground before we get to the big question. So you ride both WAMO and also Muni in San Francisco. Can you walk me through the last time you combined them? What worked and what didn't? That's a good question, a good way to jump into this topic. I usually will always try to use transit first. So that's my European background, probably, that makes me always check first. How can I get to my destination with transit? If it's a place where I usually go, it's very easy, because I know the line's very well. That running in front of my door, and I would just go there. When I don't know, well, yes, that's where the decisions may vary, and I wrote an article recently exactly about this type of decision, going to the airport is a perfect example, where I would then compare and see what's the fastest. Let's say the airport, usually I know it's kind of challenging to go with the train, because the first train station is 20 minutes away from my home, and I have a hill separating my home to this train station. And yeah, if you're familiar with San Francisco, a lot of hills. And if you have a luggage, et cetera, et cetera, that the moment where I would go to take ride-hailing services. And I did not say on purpose, I did not say wemo, because we are talking here really about ride-hailing services, the TNC transportation network companies that offers this on-demand door to door service. And in my decision, it's rarely matter if it's autonomous or not. It's more like this door to door on-demand. For a higher price, usually shorter time, but not always, versus transit, which I enjoy a lot, because I also like sitting in the bus and being with other people. I like the public transport. So yeah, to answer to your question, I rarely actually combine them. So it's true that usually if I decide, okay, I have a higher budget I hand, I would just take the on-demand door, if I know there is no congestion, I will go with that, and if I'm in the hurry, all my cubemouth, all my other trips, which was transit definitely. And I teased already the transit rewards program in the intro, but could you explain in plain terms? So what is the transit rewards program? And also what is actually new compared to Wemo's earlier station credit pilots? Yes, so if I start maybe with the other program that did a while ago, and I think it was end of 2024, if I'm correct, it was if you take a way more to go get dropped at a transit station, you would get a Wemo credit on your next ride. And the thing with this program when they did it originally, it was only depending on the drop off point, and there was no way of knowing if the person, when they were dropped there at the station, if they would actually take the train after. So that's why now they created a corporation with Visa, where if you have the same Visa card in your Wemo app, then the one you get to use to take the train, then you will get $2.85, it's the price of the fare, you will get it back also as a Wemo credit. So now there is a better connection, but a better way to see, did you really take transit after? So that's basically the program. And I think you also told the LA Times that reaching the first transit stop is still hard in parts of the Bay Area. So where exactly is that gap? Can you explain that? - Yeah, it's a bit what I meant with my own experience. I mean, there is a very solid train system in the Bay Area, mainly with the belt and the cargo train is also very nice and efficient in a way, but of course they can't map the entire cities. So you have buses who complete all that and trams, but they don't have always a high frequency of services. For me, that's the struggle with this, what we called the first last mile, meaning how do you get to the trunk lines, to the main train lines? They may run in my neighborhood, for instance, every half an hour, very hard to combine with a train later as a connection. So that's why in many US cities, but we have that in Europe, more in the suburbs from cities in Europe, where you have difficulties just reach out to the first train station. And I think that's where we must notice, okay, if we could operate in these areas where people need actually access to train stations, that could be a good way. And for them, it's also nice to stay compact around an area. It's also a strategic for women who don't have to travel all the way and disperse too much in the region, but stay more compact, concise in a way, in a place. And you already mentioned also that the reward is then paid in way more cash. So you can only spend on way more again. So how do you read that design choice? Yeah, exactly. It's a closed loop, so to say, so it's still encouraging women or writers. So where I see that, another aspect of that is that many, many writers, new needs the name of the agency here in San Francisco. So a agency is called SFMTS in San Francisco, municipal, transit authority, and they are systems, the best birth and trans system is called Muni. Usually you have a clipper card, so it's another name, a clipper card that enables you to pay your ticket. Some companies will pay their employee the monthly ticket, for instance, to be able to take the train as a commuter kind of service. And these people will not be able to use this reward because they have a clipper card already and Muni already on the clipper card. So the way I see this reward is very nice and very advantageous actually for non-regular users, for occasional users, and that's something I focused a lot in my research on really how to bring people into transit in a more regular way. So thinking the regular users are already used to it, they have their way of traveling, they have their payment system in place, but the tourist, for instance, who visits San Francisco, or people who have a multi-modal way of moving around, they will be very interested by this system because they do use WEMO sometimes at night when there is no transit operating. So this credit could be very nice for them to think about instead of going all the way to my final destination with WEMO, I'm gonna cut it and I'm gonna get dropped at bat, get a reward for my next WEMO ride that would be at night in the weekend, but still then use part of transit for the trip. So I really like that, really like this idea of encouraging multi-modal mobility. - That makes sense. And you also mentioned that WEMO has also kind of an interest to have the vehicles closed and to the stations and WEMO is also leasing 40 parking spaces at the culture in station to stage these vehicles. And in the long run, what do you think matters more? Is it the $2.85 or is it more the physical access to these stations? - No, I think the physical access is a big, big, big topic and that's why collaboration with WEMO and Kaltrain is super interesting to have this place where all these vehicles can wait when they are not driving or can charge, can do all the depot activities. I think in the future it's gonna become more and more relevant for these companies where to park their vehicles. I see that as something to follow closely And it's going to be interesting if this type of collaboration can happen more. more. And I do think it can be beneficial for everybody and at the end for the writers for the people. I think now we talked a bit about the mechanics and I want not to get to a question where everyone in the industry keeps circling around. And this is like our robot Texas and public transit partners or all your more like rivals. And I think you actually asked that on your own podcast as well. I think in April. So if it is kill public transit more or less and maybe can you give us your opinion on that and also five months later way more is paying people's transit fair. So has your answer moved with that or what is your opinion? No, no, not at all. And I recommend watching this episode and the title was provocative of course because it's something I hear here in the US. People say you may not need transit in the future and transit can die and everything will become individual mobility on demand dot to door which sounds for me a little bit as a nightmare and also just physically not possible because when you look at the capacity of a train or a tram, it's impossible to imagine all these people in individual vehicles. The streets have dimensions that you can change. So you are going like directly and a huge congestion problem. So I would not see any near future that this could happen. But important when we talk about Robotaxi, you have the technologies that is on the vehicle and it doesn't have to operate Robotaxi or a ride-ailing services. It doesn't have to operate like a Uber and Lyft. This is really up to the decisions that can be taken in collaboration with this company but also at the transport authority level or at the city level. And we could really imagine a ways that these vehicles could be integrated within public transit and our transit authority like in Norway, Oslo and Soruta, one of my favorite transit agency. I say that because I really like their mindset. They have a department called Radical Innovation which I love and I would encourage every transit agency to have such a department doing Radical Innovation at least a little and look at it. And they did integrate on-demand services within suburbs in Norway where people had difficulty reaching out the first train line or the first larger bus line. And I find it very clever to do it this way and to think how can this technology benefit also transit even if it's in the form factor of a small vehicle that could be very nice synergies if partnerships are put in place and I'm happy to dig into that. That's something I'm looking at closely with my clients and even on a research base on how to reach the optimal level of collaboration so to say that the service can be the best for everyone. I think Waymo itself says also that half of its riders in San Francisco, LA and Phoenix also use the transit so that shows that there is some overlap for sure but it doesn't show that Waymo let's say adds transit trips so what evidence could convince you that Robotex is really fee transit rather than replace it. Yeah well if we have if we get into the data of this the program that is running now in San Francisco that would be super interesting to measure exactly the success of this program and the question I would ask people in that we did the study at the University of San Francisco with the former incentive program that was the end of 2024 and we managed to collect really feedback from people who did use the program and the question the most important question is really if you hadn't used Waymo to go to the transit or to go after for your final destination what else which mode are you replacing by using a combination of Waymo and transit and some people would have used transit all the way so waited maybe 20 minutes bus to go there and they decided oh I'm gonna use Waymo to get to transit some people would have used Waymo all the way so that's for me to like something positive if people decided to to have at least a part of their trip with transit or people would have walked and that's a discussion okay what are you replacing that's the biggest question to evaluate this type of of program and important here I think is to be sure that we don't put too much moral judgment you know because when you say you replace walking you can say no but walking is great and people should walk etc but again it's not for everybody not everybody can walk and even when I say that is like you may have condition you may have an injury or you may have this big luggage or kids that don't walk so fast etc and you would be very happy to have a way to get a bit faster and in a more comfortable way to the train station so I'm always like careful comparing modes and not putting kind of judgment behind it because there is a moment we all appreciate to have on-demand or to-door services and it's more like how can we integrate or that within something functioning and without creating too much congestion and a negative impact on the city maybe let's stay under replacing theme because I think also not all trips are created equal so to speak so can you draw the line for us so in your opinion which trips should a robot taxis never replace so to speak and which trips could transit or transit happily give a waste yeah well it's again well a bit what I mentioned earlier I don't see a no position between robot taxi and transit in a sense of they can really walk together so for me the question is more the fixed line high capacity fixed line that's something that would be almost impossible to replace with a lot of small vehicles because of the capacity and then in area where there is less demand of course you need smaller vehicles so I don't really create an opposition between the two of them because they are both important we need choices so people need choices and it's good that they have access to an on-demand or to-door from time to time but they need a solid mass transit to get to more distance and to carry more people at the same time and be more efficient and not being stuck in congestion nobody like that so I don't really create kind of an opposition and saying oh this trip should be like this or this trip should be like that but it depends on the person on the trip itself on the weather even it can depend on a lot of things and the way I talk and this is really the basis of my work the work I do with my clients with many with transport authority is when we look at the advantage of a ride-hailing service being what I mentioned door to door on demand like this immediacy aspect you know you take your phone and Uber for instance it's the same app all over the world you don't have to insert a new card etc so everything is very smooth how can the transit agency learn from this very like a convenient like how convenient it is to book a Uber how can they learn from that and transpose that to their services and it means it leads to new services being also on demand and also order to draw run by a transit agency it's possible I mean we can think about that maybe disruptive for some of our listeners that hear that but I think there are examples all over the world of authorities that have done that in the past and that's more how I think about it looking at the advantages of each service and see how can they be combined to cover all mobility needs and if we now imagine that robot taxis prices drop significantly over the next let's say I don't know five years or something like that it makes it a lot more attractive for a lot of people so do you think the compliment story still holds or at what price does the robot taxi become more or less the default and the train gets the backup because it's like so cheap and so convenient yeah it's this question comes a lot in the discussions and I think it's a legit question the thing is back to this capacity aspect if you imagine so it will not take long that all the streets are going to be so congested that you're going to think twice before booking again if it is a robot taxi for instance instead of transit because you will say okay last time okay it was cheap same price as transit but I was just taking congestion because everybody wanted also their own little bubble on the road and as a road could not take that many cars so I'm going to take the train with not affected by congestion and be quicker to my destination so it will shift the discussion to the cost will not be the reason why you select a ride-eating services versus transit it will be time I'm convinced with that I mean if you try to cross San Francisco with your car it will take you an hour and if everybody at the same time wants to do the same trip it would be even longer so I think that's a moment where people will jump back in the train for sure yeah that sounds familiar and you also spend a lot of your time measuring something most operators don't so not how the people travel but also why and maybe let's look at that also and look at what that tells us pulsar analyzes social media to understand why people choose or avoid transit and when people talk about Waymo and the Muni or Bart in the same breath so what themes comes up? yeah so thanks for for mentioning this product as a product of Urban Innovate we are quite proud off. And indeed, it collects narratives online from various forum and social media, et cetera, to convert these narratives into like insights for the clients. So it could be why are they using transit or not, but it could be other reasons of understanding how people perceive a reliability or like we can select. What we did recently, we had a study founded by the USDA team and administrative by the Mineta Transportation Institute in Saint-Rose. And the study was about comparing the safety perception of people in autonomous vehicles and in ride-hailing services and in public transit. So really, how you feel safe, not related to crash and accidents and statistics, but really more a feeling of safety. And we were interested to look at how people speak about it online. And it was fascinating to compare. And we have a framework. So we have it's an academic project where we have a framework distinguishing the event. Did something happen when the people speak about it? What was the perception, the lens with which they look at that? And I insist on this because you can see, most of the people would be very pragmatic saying, "Oh, the way more stopped here. Do you know why it stopped at this intersection? I don't understand." So very pragmatic questions, but you will have people directly elevating the debate to what we call this category. This persona is called the civic advocate. Really, all the city should do this or we more should do this and elevating directly what they discuss. Some people are very interested in the impact of everything. It's like, where the what if, if we do this, what would happen if etc. And then we have the tech skeptics people and you will not believe it, but they are very numerous tech skeptical people here at the Bay Area. Maybe we are overloaded by AI and tech and there is a reaction to that. And depending on this persona, people react very differently to the technology and to the transit. What it means to take transit. And we also look at emotions. We have a way to classify emotions. And we want to look at if people mention a change of behavior. We don't know if people will change our behavior because they're just narratives from from social media, etc. But sometimes they would say, "Oh, I would not recommend anybody to use this mode or I'm going to change mode next time." So when we when we look at the result of the study, we notice that people speak very differently of what it means to have or not have a human presence while traveling. Instinctively, we would think that everybody what being alone is better, having privacy is better and everybody would think no being surrounded by strangers and transit is worse. But then in the discussions that we found online, it's not always the case. When something happened, people felt better, more safe being with other people. So to say and also have access to help quicker. Well, sometimes in a way more, there could be a situation where it takes a little bit of time to get in touch with the person online or like several situations. I don't want to list them there. But where there was a need for human presence that came. And I think that will come more and more in the autonomous mobility discussion is that we can't just remove the driver. And with buses, if buses get automated or shuttles, that will become more important, more and more important. To keep a human touch, I like to call it that way, with good systems where intercom can do. And so the same way, when you can click on the screen and have been put in touch with someone that can explain to you at least the situation. Having something similar in autonomous shuttles or autonomous buses, I think will be very important. So that's what we found out in this study was really humans can be a reassurance or a threat depending of the situation. And transit operators, because the study for me was really meant to inform transit authority and transit operator how to improve their services. There is a lot to learn from the robot taxi and the convenience and the privacy. But can be some learning for the transit services as well. I'm sure. It's also the thing I hear the most when they say, okay, I just love Waymoos because you're alone. It's private and it's quiet. I don't have a driver that is on the phone while driving me or something like that. But yeah, some people also like to be around other people's or need maybe help. I don't know to get into the vehicle or something like that. And there's another discussion for sure. Absolutely. No, no, that's an important point. And we are back a bit to the depends when. So the day you are tired, you don't want to see anybody, you don't want to talk to anybody. And there they were, I really enjoyed to be surrounded by people and I think sense of beauty also of living in cities and yeah, all together. Yeah. And what is the most common mistake transit agencies make when they read this writer's sentiment about robot texting for some thoughts about that? Yeah, it will be to think of this mode as opposition and to think that every citizen or every person living in a city will have one mode and you will decide for one mode and be done with it. You know what I mean? That will be for me is a mistake. For me, it's more like, okay, there is this technology that open a kind of new doors and new possibilities. How can we make use of that? So that's really the work I'm doing with my clients is say, the technology could really change your operation. Not only there is a potential of optimizing your cost of operations and the topic of cost is big topic, very big, big topic. But there is actually a vision of becoming it more flexible that the agency will have more flexibility with the cost of operations. But mostly the quality of service and the safety can be improved is this technology. So they should not wait that private companies develop so many services and like take their entire space. You know, I'm like, go at the table, discuss tell your needs, tell your requirements, tell the vehicles you need and really create like a demand on the market so that the private industry knows what transit needs and that's the most important for me. So not an opposition but more getting inspired by this by the technology. Makes sense and let's look at one year from now and go back to the Waymo program. So how should we judge whether this program has really worked? So can you name two or three numbers? You would like to see from Waymo and also the agencies to be published? Yeah, I'd like to see this mode choice, mode choices. So I would love it to be run by a university actually. I like the concept being an academic myself. I think that's a perfect, that would be a perfect project for university. Having the data on which mode people really like kind of how often do they use the reward and the distance covered. I mean, there's a lot of indicators you can look at. Many of them also you will need to talk to the person. That's where tools like like per second be useful or interviews to ask the reason why people selected this more over the other one. And if we manage to get less people into the private cars because we did not mention that but for me actually that the beginning of everything is getting less private cars on the road and more like a very convenient service and more efficiency of transportation at least within cities and suburbs. If we manage to reduce the number of private cars on the road, that would be fantastic. Another indicator I hear in the US and I think that's a good one is maybe some households can not buy a second or a third car. That would be also great. So it's not saying you don't need ever again a car, a private car, but you can say, oh, maybe for the teenager and we're going to do research with the University of San Francisco on teenager mobility. If the teenager instead of having a car at 16, you know we get their driving license at 16 here saying maybe in the first years they're going to use a mix of a ride chair and transit, that would be a success. Now let's move to the people who have to make the decisions in the end. So the transit agencies and Waymo now works with the public sector in at least three different ways. So that gives us also kind of a menu to compare. So they have a rider a reward in the Bay Area, a spot in L.A., a metro mobility wallet and in Chandler, Arizona, the cars run inside the city's own micro transit service through VIA. And if a transit CO would ask you where to start, so which model would you pick and also why? Yeah, that's a hard one. I don't think there is one model that suits all of them. It's a bit the one where you collaborate with directly, for example with Uber and a system where you would have a player an intermediate player takes away some of the risk, let's say. So you don't have the risk of managing the fleet and taking care of the vehicles, et cetera. You just subcontract that and it's not even subcontract, but you can create incentives that Uber get paid if they go in certain area. And yeah, the responsibility are limited on your side and you ask for at least an area coverage. And that's it. The problem I see with this model is like the contract may stop. Uber may decide to not go there anymore. That is not viable for them and it stopped abruptly where the public mandate of transit agency is to operate no matter what. So that's where I would shift towards more operations in house operations and more control and maybe partnership with companies like VIA that are so much into transit are a way to get more into the operation. There are other companies like BIP in the US that are already doing a lot of autonomous transit services that are interesting to look at where the transit agency have a bigger say in the type of operation that run. But it means more investment because then they have also to evolve in terms of work for development, et cetera, skills in house skills. So it's another type of endeavor or like project where you are going in. What I like about that is like you are really building what I call institutional readiness. Where you are learning to go with the technology. There is this say that and I hear that in Europe a lot, oh, we should stop pilots and now we should scale and we should do a commercial, et cetera. Sure, but many transit agencies still need pilot to understand the technology. So I'm also encouraging that with my clients is to get few shuttles and really building competencies skills in house around the technology because if you just subtract all time, they will never get there. And then the power, so to say, will be put at the moment on the private side of things which can work well, but which is more like fluctuating and they will have more control about their fleet, about who is covered, like which areas cover, et cetera. So it really depends. There is no right or wrong here. At least I wouldn't encourage to do something and to experience and to get to know the technology better. That's always great. Even if it means through a third-party player, it's a very good way. Population can get used to it. There's a lot of advantage doing any of these programs that you mentioned. And before an agency signs such a partnership, what should they ask for in return? I think you mentioned right now already the area coverage and stuff like that. But are there more things like trip data or commitments surprising or something like that? Yeah, nothing fancy. I mean, I would say they are used, transit agencies are used to work with a bus operator where they have also like, you know, time tables and they have what's the deviation from the time table, for example. If it's on demand, of course, it will be different metrics. But there are plenty of metrics that exist for public transit with KPIs. They don't need to be different. It would be really the operation time. The area that is covered, the frequency of services in terms of when someone wants to book a ride, how long the person has to wait. All these normal customer experience type of metrics. And of course, the performance needs to be measured. I don't think the performance of autonomous vehicles, I don't think it should be public. In that very situation of a partnership, I think that something that should happen between the ADS provider and the transit agency. But they would need to know, you know, if you still have a safety driver, how often does the safety driver take back control of the vehicle? This is a data that is important to understand the technology. It doesn't need to be out out there. But yeah, there is a list of data that agencies should ask and I'd be happy to, if anybody that listens to us is interested, be happy to provide the information. That sounds good. And we also touched earlier a bit on the curb space and also station parking, maybe also Lapland. These are what like public assets that Robotex is also need. And what do you think how should cities charge for them, trade them for data or something like that, or also keep them for transit only? I think transit on need depends the frequency of transit. If you have transit every two minutes, yeah, there is no, it's better to keep it for transit only. If your transit is every 15, 20 minutes, I think there is a good opportunity to use it for other purposes. And yeah, monetization of the space, I think it's a great idea. It's a bit tedious, you need systems, but there are more and more companies doing this type of work on how to monetize the curbs. They should definitely use it to their advantage. Also, a topic we haven't touched upon is logistics. You have more and more like delivery, people buying stuff online needs to be delivered. Autonomous or not, this curb space is very valuable for them. And if it's used in a good way, it's better for other users of the road for sure. But Lapland, not least when we speak about the curb, so I hear a lot of complaints. We can say complaints coming criticizing the way autonomous vehicles are using kind of the space of the road. But in this discussion, I would love to have a broader vision of every users of the road, being these delivery trucks, being private users, like you and me, when we drop off someone or we wait for someone somewhere we should not be parked and wait, I would like to have really a global vision of the city rather than really focusing only on EVs to see how can we make a better use of it for everybody. And if the city can make money with it, I think that's a good idea, they should. Absolutely. And I'm sitting here in Europe and you also have seen this from the European side as well, not only the US side. And I also mentioned the show pilots earlier and research on the show pilots found that many shuttles ran too slowly to offer a viable service. If you're looking back now, so what did the European pilots get right? Maybe also the robot tax industry still gets wrong and also what did they get wrong? Yeah, well, you know this type of project, so it's funded by the European Commission. It's like, it was called Horizon 2020. It's really made for research in in a very beautiful way that's unique. I don't know any other mechanisms in the world that works like that, putting together industry, academic entities and NGOs to work together into something into whatever the research question may be. And in our case, with the show project, it was this idea of really demonstrating in 15 European cities, something like that. And every city's had to try at least a few vehicles that they can deploy into open road and a viable service in a sense that it had to have a public. So that was early to do all that with the technology that was not really there yet. And so in a sense, I don't think with this type of project that you can do anything wrong, basically, because you're learning. It's they are made for learning, for creating the connection between the industry and academia. They are made for the cities. What was fascinating about this project is many of some cities, like in Italy, Turin in Italy and in Czech Republic. It was the first time in the entire country that they had autonomous vehicles deployed there. So we had to discover all the permit, all the discussion with the local authority that did not have the tools yet for that. So in these 15 European cities, we unlocked the discussions and say we need to talk about it now and find path to be able to to deploy this vehicle in the longer term. So the work that is ongoing now at the European level with the testbed initiatives with these various projects, they are all the results of these various demonstration projects. So nothing nothing wrong there. Of course, we had the limitation, as you mentioned, of the technologies that was not not ready yet. The shutters got too slow. And they were breaking too abruptly. But these are more like engineering aspects that get resolved as a technology evolves. I don't want to say irrelevant. But for me, it's never like when I test a shuttle operation somewhere, I'm not really interested in this aspect because I know it's going to get better over time. And the challenges are elsewhere more into how are they deployed, which services are covered. Do people have access to the vehicle? It's more the type of questions I'm interested in. And we did cover all of this question in the show project. So things that was really an incredible project that we can be people that participate there can be proud of. And you also describe that trust differs a lot. So between countries. So Singapore, trust government, Europe is very of big companies. The US trusts private firms. So this does probably also mean that cities need different digital structures per region. And for example, for Europe, it could be more trended. Maybe with the robot tech, the operator as a subcontractor as you elaborate earlier. So what's your opinion on that? Yes, it's, I'm happy you mentioned that. It was a study we did when I was living in Singapore. We did, it was like workshops, focus group, thing all in all together. We had like 2000 respondents. For focus group, it's very big. In US, in Singapore, in civil cities, in Europe. And indeed, exactly as you said, the trust was really somewhere else where in Singapore, they would say, if there is a vehicle on the road, the government has approved it. So it should be fine. And that's really picturing the way Singapore works. Where in the US, there was a lowest trust towards the government. But rather to the private companies, they say, okay, if the private companies are doing this, they have invested billions of dollars in the technology. So the trust was higher. And Europe was more mixed. Europe and particularly Germany. And you're German. You're based in Germany, right? And in Austria, I think that was the two countries where there's a big concern with the topic of privacy, like data. Where is my data going? Who is managing that, et cetera? And I'm sure it sounds familiar when I'm saying that it's a conversation you are seeing in Europe a lot. People want to know basically where is my data? And if it goes to the government or private industries, they want to know and they want to have more control. So, yes, to answer your question, you will need to adapt to this type of mentality. But at the end, same as earlier, and I'm sorry if I'm so compliant in a way, I don't think there is right or wrong, I think it's good, it's important and this is maybe a European mindset to have a good public service, basically for transportation, I think it should be like really a right for people to have access to mobility and services, et cetera. But after a private industry are doing fantastic things in terms of technology and progress and how quick they can move, we definitely need them as well. So, this collaboration is so essential in this field. And the data needs to be regulated or transparent for the users, at least we know what's happening with our data. But I think the conversations are going the right direction right now. And I would say now let's zoom out to close. So, you said earlier your main goal is that you have fewer private cars and 10 years from now in a city like San Francisco. So what does a healthy split between transit, robot Texas and private cars look like for you? So, first in San Francisco, what I want to say is transit, the share of transit is quite high and you have still something, the last time I checked the statistic is 30% of the household don't have a car, so it's very surprising for a U.S. city. But it will be to weave in the city center to keep kind of a high transit. And right share, I think, have absolutely their place as well in the city. As long as you don't have so many cars parked on the street, that would be the thing I would like to see reduced in every city in the world. I think these cars are hideous and take so much space. We could do so many better things with this space rather than having them parked there. And yeah, less dependence on the car. Like that people feel they have to buy a car because there is no other way that they can go to access health, access their jobs. So that's more this way, I think about it. I think cars are great for maybe for hobbies, maybe if you go hiking somewhere, there is no access. You can go with your car perfectly fine with that. When you move a flat, of course, when you transport things, transport your kids, you will still need a car, but that the first thought would be really to say, okay, is it accessible with transit? If not, rideshare, and then the car is the last solution. That would be this type of cascade I would like to see in the decision process and to find a good way, I think less congestion, less parking on the street and more livable cities. And what I heard lately from Lucas Neckermann is speaking now about lovable city and I think I'm going to I'm going to steal this expression. I love it. So it's good, yeah. And maybe a less one and a really open and broad one, let's see if you have an answer to that. So if you could ride one rule into every robot taxi permit in the US or in the EU to protect public transit, what would it be? One rule? I don't, I actually don't think like that. I don't think of like, I mean, there are incentives. I know for example, also in Germany, I know you can influence maybe the fair of the robot taxi and say it should be a minimum fair so that it doesn't compete with transit. But I haven't made my mind fully about that. I'm not sure that the right direction to go because I see myself as a transit person. You always act with push and pull measures. If you forbid something, you really have to provide something else in the other direction to make it to have always alternatives. So my wish would be just that transit agency see the competition that the robot tax are doing to them as something healthy and that will really encourage them to get better in their services. And that all that matter for me, I don't really want to forbid too much or I think it's a little bit too early for that and maybe when when it's settled and when the behaviors of people and the expectations etc are clearer that may come in place, but I think it's a bit too early too early to tell and now it's more we should get inspired by this incredible technology. Sounds good, so Henriette, we're now at the end and I want to thank you so much for taking the time today and also sharing all your insights and knowledge with us was really great conversation with you and thank you so much for your time again. Yeah, thanks for having me.