Accelerating Toward Advancement

Marked by unprecedented temperatures in the U.S., July is shaping up to be a month for the history books and a test of communities’ climate preparedness. Our Resiliency and Climate Adaptation Strategies and CleanTech and Zero-Emission Transition practice areas offer a suite of services that equip cities and companies with proactive, long-term solutions to mitigate the very real climate impacts we will face tomorrow and years ahead.

With exciting new business and innovative clients, Cityfi continues to grow and welcome the brightest minds to our team! Last week, Sahar Shirazi joined as the firm’s newest Partner based in Oakland, California. Her passion for and wealth of experience at the intersection of equity, mobility, and land use will support our existing and future clients achieve their desired people-centric and sustainable outcomes.

Between The Mobility Innovation District’s and Circuit’s new partnership and conversations with leaders and officials on AI and autonomous vehicles, Team Cityfi has been hard at work with clients and colleagues, collectively realizing and accelerating toward further advancements in civic innovation, technology and regulation, and mobility. What are you waiting for? Connect with us to explore opportunities for collaboration or simply learn more about our mission and work.

Cityfi Welcomes New Team Member

With our senior leadership team continuing to grow, we are thrilled to introduce you to Sahar!

Sahar Shirazi is passionate about enhancing equity, sustainability, and access in communities through local, regional, and national mobility and land use solutions. Sahar is an experienced problem solver and has spent most of her career tackling complex issues that span multiple stakeholders. From coordinating across fourteen federal agencies at the Office of Management and Budget to engaging with California’s diverse communities and international partners for the Governor’s Office to her daily activities in mobility and land use planning, she works to frame the goals and outcomes, then dig into the nuance to make solutions actionable.

Sahar’s varied background spans across policy and planning arenas—including transportation, land use, climate, housing, economic development, public health, and equity—and focuses on the intersections and connections between goals. She sees technology and emerging mobility as opportunities to rethink the way our cities and towns are formed and address past mistakes that caused direct and indirect harm to communities.

Prior to joining Cityfi, Sahar served as a Principal, practice lead, and research lab director at Nelson\Nygaard Consulting Associates; planning and policy lead for emerging mobility at WSP; senior planning advisor in the Office of California Governor Jerry Brown; policy analyst for the Office of the Secretary at the U.S. Department of Transportation; policy lead at the Office of Management and Budget at the White House during the Obama Administration; and a preschool teacher for ten years.

Her early childhood in Iran during a war, her family’s prolonged escape to the U.S., and the challenges faced through her adolescence helped shape her passion for public service. Sahar received her undergraduate degree from UC Berkeley and her Master’s in Public Policy at Mills College. She currently lives in Oakland, California, where she is the appointed Vice Chair of Oakland’s Planning Commission and Chair of the Zoning Update Committee. Sahar is an adjunct professor at Mills College; serves on several advisory boards; and spends her free time scheming local politics and policy, planning neighborhood benefits and events, cooking feasts for friends and strangers, and taking lazy bike rides.Curb the Chaos: Solutions for Cities at the Curb

The MID x Circuit: Electric Shuttles Come to Southwest DC

By Nicole Davessar and Kyle Ragan

DC’s Mobility Innovation District (MID) is designed to be a living lab and testbed for purpose-driven innovation, located right in the shadow of the U.S. Capital Building. In June, the first pilot demonstration went live thanks to a partnership with zero-emission microtransit provider Circuit. The MID launched the all-electric, on-demand microtransit service to connect people to destinations across Southwest DC, parts of Southeast DC, and DC Central Kitchen’s (DCCK) headquarters! The new service was introduced to community members through a series of kickoff events at L’Enfant Plaza, the DC Department of Public Works’ Truck Touch, and a parade starting at The Wharf. DCCK joined the partnership to provide free fixed-route service from area metro stations to DCCK’s new headquarters in Buzzard Point. The service advances sustainability, equity, and safety goals of The MID by providing employment and advertising opportunities and safe, convenient transportation to and from transit hubs, restaurants, shops, and other destinations for residents and visitors.

Rides can be requested seven days a week via the Ride Circuit app, and a wheelchair-accessible shuttle is available as part of the eight-vehicle electric fleet. The service is free throughout July, with $2 rides starting in August. Qualified residents are eligible for discounts through the Circuit RideWell program to maximize affordability and accessibility for the community. Cityfi has enjoyed supporting the Southwest Business Improvement District, the District’s Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development, and Circuit in launching this innovative and impactful mobility option and looks forward to what is next for The MID. If you are in DC, make sure that you stop down to explore all that Southwest has to offer and to test out the new Circuit service!

Austin Carson: SeedAI

By Karla Peralta

Cityfi Senior Principal Brandon Pollak sat down with Austin Carson, Founder and CEO of SeedAI. The conversation revolved around several exciting topics: SeedAI's mission and ecosystem, the booming integration of AI into mainstream industries, preventive measures against potential risks, ensuring fair and equitable use of AI, the policy and political landscape surrounding AI, education efforts among policymakers, the regulatory environment, and the growing corporate interest in AI's future. Watch the full interview here!

Advancing Climate & Mobility Policy at Asilomar

By Brandon Pollak

We convened this week with policy leaders, OEMs, mobility innovators, and academics at UC Davis’s 19th Biannual ITS Asilomar Conference. This year’s session encompassed deep dives on “Navigating to Net-Zero Carbon and a Secure, Equitable Transportation Future,” addressing the challenges of climate change in the context of environmental and mobility justice, how they influence transportation investments and choices, and the policies for accomplishing these changes in a sustainable manner. When not test driving BMW’s Hydrogen fuel cell vehicle, the Ford F-150 Lightning, or revving up Rivian’s SUV, we spent time engaging with leaders around the role innovation hubs, such as The Mobility Innovation District can play in advancing sustainable transportation as both a living lab for entrepreneurs and policy R&D.

Radical Collaboration and Codesign at AV ARTS

By Karina Ricks

Hundreds of researchers, industry representatives, state and federal officials and even a few cities descended on San Francisco this week to talk about a technology that has also swarmed the city: autonomous vehicles (AVs). While I was delighted to take a ride in a car seemingly operated by an apparition from Disney’s Haunted Mansion, San Francisco leaders shared observed horrors of AVs trundling into work zones, tangling with downed electrical wires and halting before an active house fire.

Beyond regulations and research, this year’s Transportation Research Board’s Automated Roadway Symposium (aka AV ARTS) highlighted the experience of cities–a traditionally underrepresented, but increasingly vocal voice in the AV space.

Cityfi and Urbanism Next brought together cities and industry representatives to discuss “Radical Innovation”–identifying common concerns, collaborative strategies and co-creation performance measures to strengthen trust, and thereby accelerate innovation in addressing key concerns.

Cities are compact, complex places. AVs that easily avoid conflict and confusion in lower density contexts have much more to contend with in high density centers. And while safety is the preeminent concern of state and federal regulators, in cities it is a foundational, but not exclusive, concern. Also key are mobility innovations that improve transportation options for historically marginalized communities, promote space-efficient travel (like transit!), and reduce climate impact. While AV industry representatives promise positive impacts on roadway safety, traffic operations, and affordable and inclusive mobility, cities at the conference voiced both skepticism and cautious optimism; “trust, but verify” that AVs are addressing, and not aggravating, urban problems that need solving.

Collaboration and trust are key. The session heard from both cities and AV developers and operators as to how and why they could work together using a common data language to cocreate definitions and measures of successful deployments. The session identified scores of strategies, tactics and practices that can promote trust and with it, accelerate innovation, expand markets and serve and protect the public good.

Cities need tools to help establish a positive and predictable relationship for the beginning–one with both empathy and respect for all stakeholders. The forthcoming Autonomous Playbook for Cities, funded through the Knight Foundation AV Initiative, will capture many of the collaboration tactics generated at the AV ARTS gathering.

Confident Mobility for the 21st Century

By Andrew Wishnia

A key moment of this electrification decade occurred close to one year ago, when in September 2022, all fifty States, plus D.C. and Puerto Rico greenlit National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) plans on time.

It's perhaps easy to forget that nearly the entire transportation mobility ecosystem was convinced that the quilt of States needed to stitch together a national network wouldn't come to pass. At least a State or two, if not a larger patch, was bound to refuse to obligate federal aid funds to install charging infrastructure and would refuse to create plans to do so.

But in arguably the most stunning development of the implementation of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to date, every last State–including States like Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Alaska–submitted an approved plan from the Federal Highway Administration to install electric vehicle charging infrastructure. If that wasn't enough, all 52 jurisdictions did so on time. And if that wasn't enough, all 52 jurisdictions created plans that aligned with the Biden-Harris vision and values associated with charging infrastructure installations, that federally-funded electric vehicle charging infrastructure must be convenient, accessible, reliable, and equitable. 52 plans.

To be clear, the plans were imperfect but are being improved year over year, and the market signalization and floor for that vision was realized and ready to be built upon. As such, the electrification decade began in earnest and continues unabated today, and it turns out that all States want to support investments that boost tourism, increase our workforce, make us more energy and nationally secure, and lead to cleaner air for our kids and grandkids. It's common sense.

That effort, amongst thousands of efforts in implementing the $1.2 trillion legislation, was a startling and seminal moment, and took remarkable coordination amongst the federal interagency–and within agencies–to come to fruition. In the midst of repeated and endless fire drills, a colleague would ask me at that time whether it was worth going to the mat to ensure that every plan was approved on time. The answer was always without question.

As Secretary Granholm reminded an EV National Charging Conference just yesterday, a 28-year-old General in 1919 by the name of Dwight Eisenhower set out in a convoy to travel America from coast to coast and experienced impassable roads and the difficulties in traveling long distances in that America. As the report from the convoy noted, the United States at the time was "absolutely incapable of meeting the present day traffic requirements." But the convoy demonstrated to the American people what was possible, and thereafter, the interstate highway system was born.

Elsewhere around the country this week, Governor Mike DeWine announced that the State of Ohio is the first State in the country to announce charging station sites to be developed as part of NEVI. And the U.S. Department of Transportation earlier this week held a symposium where it was announced that Tritium became the first supplier in the U.S. to win a NEVI fast charge order, where Tritium will supply all DC fast chargers for the State of Hawaii's first phase of NEVI formula program funding.

Whether it's the timing of state-approved plans, the uncertainty of being able to traverse the country coast to coast, or knowing where charging stations will be located, each are examples of confidence, which is a key determinant of whether a transportation system is successful or not. Both yesteryear's network and our future system are dependent on a network built on confidence, that you're going to get to where you need to get, each and every time.

My sense is we don't have time to waste. Our adversaries would prefer that we take our time in building confident mobility for the 21st century. A key finding from a recent National Renewable Energy Laboratory study is that we need 1.2 million charging ports by 2030, and 85% of those ports will be for Level 2 charging. We can do hard in this country. We have done hard time and again. We remembered those hard moments in the transportation sector this week, and hard work continues apace. We have to do this, and undoubtedly we will.

Behind the Curtain of Electrification

By Andrew Wishnia

As the electrification world is now aware, news continues to drip out that first Ford and GM and now Rivian, Volvo, ChargePoint, and ABB (to name a few), as well as the States of Texas and Washington, intend to use Tesla’s charging connector. SAE has also now announced that it intends to standardize what Tesla calls the “North American Charging Standard.” News reports and beltway punditry suggest this shift has been somewhat startling to industry and the broader public. That sentiment is beyond fair for a public–and even sector–that hasn’t hung on every last bit of legislative minutiae.

However, to name it, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) requires that federal dollars are obligated only on charging infrastructure that is “publicly accessible” and “interoperable” in legislative language that has been in the base bill for electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure of what became the BIL since 2018. Moreover, Tesla made clear over the years that it is moving toward public charging infrastructure on their terms. That finality, and the details of these terms, is certainly worth the ink, but it’s merely worth recalling how this movie started to reconcile what we as a community will continue to resolve: what it means to have infrastructure that is publicly accessible and convenient for all, to mirror and surpass the experience of current customers on our national highway system.

As we wrote in our last newsletter, the announcement was also an opportunity to clear up misinformation regarding the Federal Highway Administration’s (FHWA) minimum standards rulemaking for charging infrastructure. One lingering perception was that the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program may only fund the “Combined Charging System,” or CCS standard. In fact, as we stated, eligible entities can do more. We wrote then that, “The final rule was amended to specifically allow for this announcement scenario to play out if industry decided to move in a direction beyond CCS. Those entities will need guidance as to what this means for them and how to build for the future.” Recently, FHWA included new Q&As on this very point.

E-Bike Reflections

By Story Bellows

I’m probably in the middle of the pack when it comes to taking advantage of Cityfi’s new e-bike subsidy program but wanted to share a few reflections now that I’ve got my trusty steed kitted out and ready for the 12 mile round-trip ride to school/daycare dropoff. The rain finally slowed enough this week to get in three round-trip rides to the next town over.

Cycling infrastructure is just as important in rural communities as in cities. I would not be able to do this ride without the trails and roads that I can use to avoid the 55 mph road between my town and the next one over, where the daycare, post office, and some other useful amenities are located. I’d probably do it myself, but would not feel great getting passed by eighteen-wheelers with my three-year-old on the back, and she DEFINITELY wouldn’t like that setup. More trails please. Everywhere.
I didn’t drive 36 miles that I would have otherwise. That feels like an easy target for us to hit on a weekly basis when the weather is decent and certainly isn’t nothing. I’m hoping for more.
It made me feel so connected to where I live. Birds, butterflies, streams, and mountains…not a bad ride, but sometimes I take where I am for granted.
It is SO MUCH FUN. There are few things more joyful than sharing my love of cycling and landscapes with my three year old.