All content tagged with: Public Transit and Micromobility

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  • Infrastructure Finance for the Public Good: How Asset Recycling Can Untangle the New York MTA’s $50 Billion Debt Load

    Abstract Systematic infrastructure underinvestment – a $2.6 trillion ‘gap’ – and accelerating climate change have become facts of life in the United States. Though typically attributed to politics, this Article posits the circumstances as a market disequilibrium rooted in an interplay between unique dimensions of infrastructure and distinctive features of…
  • Setting the Agenda: The Legal and Historical Context to Best Understand How Transportation Technology Might Be Regulated to Combat Forced Labor

    Transportation is a piece of all human activity. As individuals and as a society, the logistics of getting people and goods from one place to another is a question we answer countless times a day. Just today, billions of people drove to work, took the bus to school, used a rideshare to get to the store, or took the train into the city to enjoy an evening out on the town. This list does not even consider all the items people have ordered online which will be shipped and delivered to homes. Even more exciting is the innovation that inspired all the aforementioned modes of transportation; transportation technology has the amazing potential to make our lives easier, more efficient, and more equitable. But implementing all this technology requires labor, and the technology can only benefit those who have access to it. Most of us have never truly considered whose labor makes mobility possible. Relatedly, it is hard to imagine life without access to transportation if you are a person who has always known how they will get to work. This article will provide a framework to better understand one type of labor within the industry, exploited labor, also known as forced labor. Forced labor is part of the transportation industry and is also impacted by a lack of transportation. Without reliable and safe transportation individuals are at a higher risk of forced labor in other industries. The bottom line is twofold: considering the impacts that an increased demand for new technology will have on people who work in mines, in the supply chain, and in transportation as a service, as well as considering legal tools to maximize access to transportation for historically underserved communities in light of new technology. All this to say that this article will consider how society might reimagine the regulation of emerging transportation technology in a way that combats the systemic vulnerability that leaves people at risk of forced labor. This will include both the labor being performed to manufacture and operate the technology, as well as the impact on access to transportation of the user and nonuser. Though this article will largely analyze the role of automated vehicles, other innovations including reconfigured public transportation and electrification will also be considered. Transportation is at the heart of everything humanity does and yet this article will only scratch the surface of these issues.
  • Promoting Micromobility Usage Through the Internal Revenue Code

    Micromobility services like scooter and bikeshares provide numerous benefits to riders, local governments, and the public at large. A 2021 CBInsights report summarizes micromobility’s many upsides: “micromobility services increase access to public transportation, reduce the amount of cars on the road, lower our environmental footprint, and provide convenient methods…
  • Will New Electric Buses Need a Mini Bar?

    Let’s talk about the stigma of the bus. Public transit in the United States is not particularly robust or well-funded compared to its European or Asian counterparts. The American bus system in particular is stigmatized; Americans associate the bus with poverty, crime, and filth. This stigma is not entirely unwarranted,…
  • 2021 Conference Panel 2: Transportation Equity and Emerging Technologies

    By Christopher Chorzepa and Phillip Washburn Week 2 of the 2021 Law and Mobility Conference opened with a discussion, moderated by C. Ndu Ozor, focusing on a variety of topics: inequalities and equity issues in our transportation system, how to…
  • The Environmental Impacts of E-Scooters

    Several articles have been written over the past two years regarding shared micromobility electric scooters’ environmental impact. Some of the more phenomenal headlines were hyper-critical of electric scooters:             Electric Scooters Aren’t Quite As Climate-Friendly As We Thought;             Sorry, Scooters Aren’t So Climate-Friendly After All;            …
  • What Will Biden’s Transportation Priorities Be? A Preliminary Analysis

    The first week and a half of the Biden administration has seen a flurry of activity: thirty executive orders and actions were taken in the first three days alone, with new announcements every day this week as well. Three of the earliest orders touched transportation and energy issues:…
  • Mass Transit Continues to Struggle as the COVID Crisis Drags On

    In a New York Times article published this past Sunday, Ben Fried, a spokesman for TransitCenter, a transportation advocacy group, described mass transit systems across the country as being in “existential peril” due to continued financial issues caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the pandemic exploded into American cities…
  • Equity in Micromobility

    Micromobility usage was at an all-time high before March 2020. The culmination of decades of growth and industry involvement in the United States resulted in nearly 350 million rides taken on shared bikes and scooters since 2010. The National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) reported this astounding statistic…
  • Innovation in a Legal Vacuum: The Uncertain Legal Landscape for Shared Micro-mobility

    By David Pimentel, Michael B. Lowry, Timothy W. Koglin, and Ronald W. Pimentel The last few years have seen an explosion in the number and size shared micro-mobility systems (“SMMS”) across the United States. Some of these systems have seen extraordinary success and the potential benefit of these systems to communities is considerable. However, SMMS have repeatedly ran into legal barriers that either prevent their implementation entirely, confuse and dissuade potential users, or otherwise limit SMMS’s potential positive impact.