Transport Futures’ timely (and sold-out!) forum on The Future of the Car focused on the shift from vehicle ownership to vehicle sharing and what “transportation as a service” means for the public and private sectors in the years ahead – especially given emerging technologies and government policies related to roads, transit, parking and urban growth management.

While annual public transit investments of $3 billion are now being made in Ontario, the province and municipalities are allocating over $4 billion to build, widen, extend and maintain road infrastructure each year.  This is important to meet additional growth pressures but recent trends indicate that car ownership and kilometres driven is declining and transit/taxi/car sharing demand is on the rise.  Since these trends will be accelerated when automated vehicles (AVs) penetrate the consumer market, today’s long-term road, parking and transit infrastructure choices should be re-evaluated.  Good policy, planning and decision making is essential when there are billions of dollars at stake.

With this in mind, 12 Canadian and American experts joined with Transportation Minister Steven Del Duca and 110 delegates to collectively discuss a range of questions, including:

  • What is the public’s opinion regarding car ownership, vehicle sharing and AVs? 
  • How is the automotive industry and taxi/car sharing business responding to rapidly changing customer preferences, technological opportunities and government regulations?
  • What are different levels of government doing to encourage innovation in the transportation space and to prepare for the disruptive arrival of AVs?
  • When will AVs be ready for the consumer market?  What are the legal, insurance and privacy issues that must be resolved to accommodate them?
Hon. Steven Del Duca, Ontario Ministry of Transportation
Quitto Maggi, Mainstreet Public Research
Steven Buckley, City of Toronto
Kristine Hubbard, Beck Taxi
Kevin McLaughlin, AutoShare
Kit Krankel McCullogh, University of Michigan
Prem Gururajan, RideCo
Ian Black, Uber
Steven Shladover, University of California
Yvonne Rene de Cotret, Deloitte Canada
Bern Grush, Grush Niles Associates
Karlyn Stanley, RAND Corporation
Antoine Belaeiff, Metrolinx

The Future of the Car event received one of the best evaluations to date: 97% of delegates gave it an excellent rating. Their feedback included these comments:

  • “Excellent presentations, good speakers, good flow to conference. “
  • “The various informative presentations provided me with the knowledge to bring back to my team and apply in future business case work. Fantastic network experience.”
  • “Content was thought stimulating and diverse.”
  • “Detailed insight as to the tech advancement of transportation industry.”
  • “Interesting speakers; good range of topics; presentation and Q&A sessions were engaging and very topical. Good conference organization.”

The media also covered the event:

The Future of the Car was generously sponsored by 407 ETR (Platinum) and the Residential and Civil Construction Alliance of Ontario (Silver). In-kind support was provided by the Ontario Good Roads Association,  ReNew Canada Magazine and e-RegisterNow.

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