Infrastructure Technology Podcast dives deep into UAS Drones, data and Cincinnati’s transit transformation

• By using unmanned aerial systems (UAS), the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT) significantly reduces the need for crews and equipment on busy roadways, minimizing worker exposure to traffic and improving safety conditions.
• Drone-collected data is processed and delivered to engineers within 24 to 48 hours, allowing for rapid decision-making, real-time project monitoring and quicker responses to infrastructure needs.
• Cincinnati’s new bus rapid transit corridors will feature level boarding, transit signal priority, queue jumps and articulated buses—designed to provide faster, more accessible service while reflecting the character of each neighborhood.
• Cincinnati Metro uses fare data and origin-destination analysis to plan routes more effectively while also investing in alternative-fuel vehicles and infrastructure with long-term flexibility in mind.

In Episode nine of the Infrastructure Technology Podcast, the team explores innovation on the ground and in the air. First, Roads and Bridges’ Gavin Jenkins speaks with Dr. Sinan Abood from MassDOT Aeronautics Division about how drones (UAS technology) are transforming highway inspections, increasing safety and reducing costs.

Then, Mass Transit’s Brandon Lewis sits down with Khaled Shammout, newly promoted deputy innovation and vision officer at Cincinnati Metro, to explore the city's ambitious plans for bus rapid transit, the challenges of transitioning to zero-emission vehicles and how data and advanced modeling are driving smarter public transit systems.

Below is a transcript from the episode.

BL: Infrastructure Technology Podcast fans. Welcome to episode nine of the ITP and happy early Mother's Day to all the mothers out there. This is Brandon Lewis, associate editor, Mass Transit magazine here, and I wanted to let you know that when this interview was conducted for Khaled Shammout from Cincinnati Metro, he was the chief strategic planning development and innovation officer at the agency. Since then, he has been promoted to the deputy innovation and vision officer, so I do want to let you guys know about that updated title for Khaled Shammout is once again the deputy innovation and vision officer. And with that, once again, happy Mother's Day, and let's get into today's episode nine of the ITP.

GJ: And welcome to the ITP, Infrastructure Technology Podcast, brought to you by Endeavor Business Media. I'm Gavin Jenkins, senior managing editor of Roads and Bridges. And with me as always Brandon Lewis, the associate editor of Mass Transit, and Harlee Hewitt, the associate editor on Roads and Bridges. How are you two doing today?    

BL: For the ninth time, it's a Tuesday and it’s podcast day.

HH: And that's a great day. It's a great day If it's podcast day guys.

GJ: It's podcast day. Okay, that's great. Alright, well it is the Tuesday before Mother's Day, and since I am the oldest, that means I have the oldest mother. My mother is 80-years-old, and she is not with the technology. She has not heard of this podcast. She doesn't even know how to access podcasts. She has a smartphone. She got it two years ago for the first time. Before that, she had a burner phone, and she had the number taped. Her phone number was printed out and taped to the back of that burner phone. And she does not know how to send text messages, and she doesn't understand caller ID, so whenever she calls me, she will say, ‘Hey, this is mom’, and then leave the message, which is adorable.

HH: It is. It's absolutely adorable.

GJ: So to all the mothers out there, before we begin this episode, all the mothers out there are getting ready for Mother's Day, happy Mother's Day in advance. And Harlee, tell us about the interview we have coming up.

HH: Sure. So you're talking to Sinan Abood, and so he's going to talk about something that's pretty futuristic, or at least to me it seems pretty futuristic, but it is here, it's now it's UAS, so unmanned aerial systems technology, which in short are drones. And so these are pretty much manned by someone, but they're flown on the ground basically by someone, and they are helping with all sorts of things in the Massachusetts DOT Aeronautics Division. So that's to do with safety and efficiency, and for them, cost reduction, but I think a specific topic that I really enjoyed hearing the benefits of and that I think can really be expanded here is the need for this to reduce crews on the ground. Everyone, of course, but to help with safety because maybe there doesn't need to be as many people's spotting as there currently are in line of heavy traffic, especially on highways, which are where these are being employed. So that's the gist. Really interesting interview with a really impressive guy.

GJ: And he also wrote an article for Roads and Bridges back in our August of 2024 issue, our mobility issue, and that article is called Optimizing Infrastructure Management, and it is an excellent article. Please check it out, and without further ado, let's now turn it over to my interview with Sinan Abood.

GJ: How are you doing today sir?

SA: I'm good, thank you.

GJ: Alright, and you wrote a really great article for Roads and Bridges in an earlier issue of ours called Optimizing Infrastructure Management, and that's what we're going to be focusing on today. First, give us an overview of UAS drone technology and provide also an overview of the tech its capabilities and previous applications.

SA: Yeah, so UAS is unmanned aerial systems, which means the whole system, but it consists of the UAV, which is the unmanned aerial vehicle, which is the actual flying platform. It could be a quadcopter, a fixed wind aircraft or a combination of multirotor and fixed wind wings combination. Also, we have the ground control station, which is basically the drone is remotely controlled or monitored by a pilot and observer or it can't fly autonomously using a preplanned route. The technology, I mean the drones can carry different of sensors. There is spectral sensors, which can give you three band imagery, like the regular images that we take with our phones consist of red, green and blue bands, or it can have a multi-spectral sensors, which can provide you with more information, more bands like infrared, shortwave, infrared bands, which is more than three bands. It can have more applications, especially for vegetation applications, and those sensors are passive sensors, so they just capture their reflective light from the earth surface. We have active sensors. In this case, the lidar and the radar. The lidar is basically a laser beaming to the surface and just we record the reflection of the surface, so you'll have a reflection from the ground, you'll have a reflection maybe from a car and another fraction from the three canopy.

GJ: Okay. That gives us a good overview. Now talk about your role with MassDOT, Massachusetts Department of Transportation Aeronautics. At MassDOT Aeronautics, you use drones to collect and analyze data on the commonwealth highways and bridges, as well as its UAS drone data and analytics and cybersecurity program for surface transportation with the FHWA support. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

SA: Yeah, so our aeronautics division, we have two active teams, the UAS ops and the data analytics teams. The UAS ops, they are responsible for planning the missions, flying and collecting the data, and the data team, which I'm supervising, takes the raw data processes it, makes it ready to an analysis level and push it to the stakeholder to leverage the UAS technology. Our process starts by receiving a request from our stakeholders, in this case highway, for example, to go over a section of highways. It could be like a mile, two miles, five miles of a highway. We plan the mission according to the stakeholder need. We fly, we collect the data and then the data gets pushed to our cloud environment. Then, the data team takes over, processes the data, and basically, for example, if we are collecting, using a spectral sensor, so it will be like images, we take those images, we stitch them together, and we produce one seamless ortho mosaics of the project. Then it gets pushed to the highway engineers to take a look at the whole project areas, do measurements, annotations, count assets, look at the pavement conditions, look at any vegetation and with more applications too.

GJ: Okay, so how do you go about implementing it and tell me a little bit more about the process, what it entails.

SA: You mean the UAS technology?

GJ: Yeah.

SA: So the implementation, well first started by an idea from our aeronautics administrator and our cybersecurity expert. They put together a proposal for a grant by the Federal Highway Administration. We received a grant and then we started working in a close collaboration with our Highway MassDOT highway partner to set the objective and put the work plan on how we can integrate UAS technology within highway operations and management, and we went through multiple attractions of the technology. We tested it on several cases and pilot projects until we got to the point that we are more efficient and operational and we can plan, fly, collect and process data within 24 to 48 hours.

GJ: That's fascinating. It just really sounds like MassDOT is just leading the way in innovation. I'm really impressed.

SA: I think we are, yes.

GJ: Yeah. For state transportation departments that had integrated UAS growing data collection, how have they shown improvements in three key areas? There's safety, efficiency and cost reduction. I imagine that MassDOT is leading the way on those three areas as well.

SA: Yeah, so I mean UAS technology provides you with lots of tools that you can leverage. It will improve safety because it will lower the number of crews on the ground, will lower the equipments that you need on the ground to inspect a specific segment off the road. You'll not have any impact to traffic. There will be no road closures because we just fly that segments and all we need is a pilot and an observer. We do need to collect some ground controlled points that's just for our accuracy analysis, but again, that would not affect the traffic and will not put any crews in jeopardy, and it will of course improve efficiency by faster data collection and faster processing and faster accessibility to the data, and it will introduce cost reduction. Again, because we are not having any equipment on the ground, we don't need to deploy a large crew to the ground to do the job. All we need is just a pilot and an observer to fly, collect the data, process the data and make it ready within hours, and by the way, we can do that for multiple projects per day so at the end highway engineers can inspect and look at multiple projects at the same time, within the same time without the need to go to the field and spend lots of time on one construction project or one highway project and maybe lack other time for other projects.

GJ: So I was going to ask and my next question would be how does this improve the construction process, but I think you just answered it with that answer. It makes everything streamlined, and it makes you able to multitask and be in multiple path.

SA: And actually it will introduce more control for the highway construction engineers on the project and will give them the tools to monitor progress. So, we did a project for Highway Park and Ride. We were able to fly at the beginning of the project, so we can measure the baseline of the project before everything, before the construction starts. Then we start flying every week to monitor the progress of the project, and we push the data 24 hours after we fly to a custom made application for highway engineers that they can view the data, make measurements, annotations, look at the data in 2D and in the 3D, so it's more realistic and do calculation like area calculation, volumetric calculations, all from their desk. So that gives them more control on the projects and more flexibility to monitor the project construction and do something else, too.

GJ: Yeah, that's awesome. That's really great. Back to your article for a second. In your article, you made a note that said the integration of UAS technology does not replace MassDOT highway's methods for operations and management. Tell me a little bit about what that entails and how does it fit into everything we just talked about in how it improves construction?

SA: Yeah, so UAS technology has been around for a while and started on the military side and now there's lots of civilian applications. Our role here is to support MassDOT highway and help them to introduce more streamline and more efficiency in their workflow and simple words make their life easier. So we are not planning to replace their workflows or their management tools. We are planning to support them and take those to the next level and make them more efficient and make the work that they can do within one or two days. They can do that maybe within an hour or two, so I can give you a simple example. If you are a highway engineer, we'd like to inspect several locations on different highways across the state. Then you need to decide where you should deploy your crew and your equipment to do what is necessary. The UAS technology give you the tools to fly all these locations and process data and push it to the highway engineer, so he can do the pre-inspection and decide where he can focus his resources and time instead of doing it on all those location, which this will help you to save time and save money and will increase your work efficiency.

GJ: Okay, that sounds really great. So my final question, we'll get you out of here on this. How does MassDOT plan to expand the use of UAS drone data into its processes in the future?

SA: So we are trying to, of course, work closely with our highway partners to establish clear objective and use cases. Also try to develop a drawn integration roadmap as, I don't know if you follow the technology, but it's rapidly changing, so we need to be flexible to introduce more and invest in advanced technology and data analytics. We need to invest in our workforce and up our training and capabilities building and attract more expertise in this field and also expand our regulatory and compliance framework, and I think on top of that, leverage our partnerships and collaborations with the MassDOT highway.

GJ: Okay. Alright. Dr. Sinan Abood, aeronautics data and analytics team leader at Massachusetts Department of Transportation Aeronautics Division. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for joining us on the ITP and thank you also for writing that excellent article for Rhodes and Bridges.

SA: Thank you for having me.

GJ: Alright, welcome back. That was my interview with Sinan Abood, and now, we are going to turn it over to Brandon Lewis. Who do we have up next, Brandon?

BL: So we have Khaled Shammout, who serves as chief strategic planning development and innovative officer for Cincinnati Metro. He is responsible for overseeing strategic planning, transit network planning and scheduling right away and transit centers, design and construction. Shammout, he does have 30 years of transit experience in both the public and private sectors, both nationally and internationally. He has a ton of experience. He's also an adjunct professor at the University of Cincinnati and is the author of the “Implosion of Public Transit and the Case for an Infinite Game”, and we talk a lot about that book and what it means to public transit and what he means by the case for the infinite game. We also talk about Hamilton Avenue and Reading Road in Cincinnati and how that is the region where the agency will be getting its first BRT services. We talk about the transition to zero-emission buses, as well as road congestion and the technology that comes with making all these changes as the agency tries to better its public transit network in Cincinnati.

GJ: Wow. First off, what an introduction for this and great job with that, Brandon. Cincinnati is an excellent city. Have you ever been there? You guys are both in Cleveland. You ever made the trip down?

BL: We cover this in the interview. I have not. My brother has been there a couple times. He went to the amusement park there, Kings Island, a few times, and we talked about this a little bit, like Cincinnati is different than Cleveland because it is very hilly and so the infrastructure there and what they need to do to build this BRT because of the hills that are there in Cincinnati, we dive into the nook and crannies, if you will of that.

GJ: Nook and Crannies.

BL: I'm breaking out that old school term.

GJ: Cincinnati in its look and its feel is a lot like Pittsburgh. A lot of people compare Pittsburgh and Cleveland and understandably so because of their proximity, but I think in terms of infrastructure, Cincinnati is a lot closer to Pittsburgh than Cleveland. I appreciate that. I love them both. I think they're both great American cities. One has hills, the other one has heights, but they're both great. They're both great cities and the infrastructure in Cincinnati is definitely worth this examination. So let's now go to Brandon's interview, take it away.

BL: Welcome back to the Infrastructure Technology Podcast. I am here today with Khaled Shammout. He is the chief strategic planning development and innovation officer at Cincinnati Metro. I am Brandon Lewis, associate editor at Mass Transit magazine. Khaled, welcome to the Infrastructure Technology Podcast.

KS: Thank you, Brandon, and thank you for having me on.

BL: Thank you. So we are here today to talk about all of the technology, all of the innovation that is going on at Cincinnati Metro. Let's start by talking about the incoming bus rapid transit, aka BRT services, Hamilton Avenue and Reading Road. They're going to be the first in the Cincinnati region to get these services so when will that be completed and what has that sort of BRT service process looked like in terms of planning and getting boots off the ground for that project?

KS: Yes, thank you for that question Brandon, and indeed, the bus rapid transit, or the BRT project, is indeed one of our main projects, and it's of high importance, not only to us as a transit agency, but to our entire community. We did start the planning for the BRT about just over two years ago. About two and a half years ago, we did the planning study. We were considering four corridors for the BRT service, and we selected two of those four to receive the BRT in phase one. Those two corridors are the ones that you mentioned, Hamilton Avenue and Reading Road. Right now, we are in the middle of the design phase of both corridors with our consultants. We have the two corridors, really they extend about 20 miles in length, with about 20 some stations along both corridors and BRT. And in a nutshell, just to make sure that we're all on the same page here, what a BRT service, it's really, it's all about providing faster service and getting people to their destinations in less time than on local service, and to do that, we space the stations about three quarter miles apart or so, so there's less stoppage along the route, which means the service will be faster. Stations are designed and built to provide level boarding with the buses. So you just kind of roll in, roll out if you're in a wheelchair or have a stroller or a bike or just walk in, walk out. Again, that's to expedite the boarding process so that buses are stopped for less time at these stations. We also employ planning to also employ the transit signal priority and queue jump technologies at intersections along these BRT corridors and what that means is as buses are approaching at intersection where the light is green and is about to turn red, the signal system will extend the green by few seconds to allow the buses to clear the intersection and reduce the delay at the intersection. Conversely, if the buses are approaching an intersection where the light is already red, then it will give a shorter red overall, so it turns green much faster than planned. Of course, there are safety measures to allow enough time for pedestrians to clear the intersection if there are pedestrians crossing the intersection, ect. The queue jump really gives the buses early green than the rest of the traffic, so buses can get ahead of the traffic and keep going. The beauty of this system is the other public vehicles such as fire engines, ambulances and police cars, they can also tap into this system and get priority at all of these intersections. Other important features of BRT just to make the ride more comfortable and more productive for passengers. All buses will be equipped with Wi-Fi, as well as charging ports for their phones. There will be bike racks on onboard the buses, so you can just bring your bike on board, and there'd be a rack to put it in there. The stations will be designed to provide an exciting feel of the station and the environment around it and to fit within that area and neighborhood and to reflect the spirit of that area. And of course, typically for BRT services, we use the larger buses, which we call articulated buses, kind of like the accordion type of buses for greater capacity, so we can move more people faster along the corridor. So this is kind of in a nutshell what the BRT system is.

BL: You mentioned the phases of the project and that right now it's in the design phase. How many phases are there and then when are these phases expected to be complete?

KS: Yes, so following the FTA, the Federal Transit Administrations process, as I said, we finished the first phase, which was the planning and the locally preferred alternative that was complete. Right now, we are in the design phase. Once the design phase is complete, and we expect the design phase to be completed by end of next year, 2025, then we will enter into the construction phase sometime early 2026, and we expect the design phase for Reading Road to be complete before the end of 2027 and for service on Reading Road to start by the end of 2027. Hamilton Avenue Construction will be complete by around middle of 2028 and the service on Hamilton Avenue will start around middle of 2028.

BL: Okay. Now, outside of the BRT, one of the other things the agency has been doing along with almost every other transit agency throughout North America is the transition to zero-emissions. Cincinnati Metro has started that process. Do you want to talk a little bit about starting that process and worrying about the difference between a zero-emission bus or a van or whatever vehicle versus a natural gas or CNG vehicle?

KS: Yes, thank you for that question. Again, I mean here at Cincinnati Metro, we do take these matters seriously, especially we know when it comes to the environment and the population health and so on. So we did commission study about two years ago to look at alternative fuel strategy for our fleet moving forward, and the three kind of main, and we call them technologies really, but they're different types of fuel. The three main technologies that we were looking at is the existing technology that we're using right now, which is diesel for our buses, and then we also looked at battery-electric buses as well as fuel cell, which is a fancy name for hydrogen fuel buses. So we looked at all three, and we came up with a strategy so that in 15 or so years, we would transition to zero-emission for our entire fleet. So that's our goal is eventually at some point in time in the future to transition and become a zero-emission agency. However, we're bound by what's really available in the U.S. market. Unfortunately, a couple of the providers have in the past year and a half or so filed for bankruptcy, so they're struggling in a way, but we're watching the market, we're making investments in that direction. Case in point is we have six battery-electric buses on order, and those will be delivered by the end of next year. Nine more battery- electric buses will be delivered in 2026. In the meantime, because we're not ready for electric buses yet, we've invested in 10 hybrid buses and those are called Engine Flex buses and those, we already receive these buses, and we're preparing them for service, and they will enter service pretty soon. So, as I said, these are hybrid buses like diesel/electric-battery, and one of the nice features about these Engine Flex buses is they can be programmed so that when they enter certain geographic area such as hospitals area or near schools campuses, they will automatically switch to electric motors to reduce the noise around these facilities and definitely once this enter service, hopefully the next few weeks, we'll be collecting data and see how they're working for us, as well as for our fleet and services, but in a nutshell, our goal is to get to zero-emission alternative as soon as possible.

BL: Yeah, that's interesting. I never really have heard of a bus switching modes based off where it's at in its location.

KS: We're excited about those buses.

BL: So you talked about the data, and you have to obviously gather more data when it comes to these zero-emission buses. What kind of data? Is it ridership feedback? Is it from the community? Is it from drivers? Is it from Cincinnati Metro employees? What data are you looking for and how are you gathering the data?

KS: Pretty much all of the above, so you kind of hit it right on the nail. All of that data is important to us. We definitely want to hear back from the customers who are riding these buses to get their input, but also from the community at large where these buses are going to serve, so we want to get that feedback. So that's one side of the data and feedback we want to hear, we want to get. But the other side is the technical data, the buses performing as they should. Are we getting the savings as we should? Because in Cincinnati, we are kind of like a challenging geography. It's too hilly sometimes. We get quite a bit of snow, the cold weather that impacts how much power we have on these buses, so the battery-electric buses perform differently from one environment to another, so we'll be assessing all of that.

BL: And trust me, I know all about that Cincinnati bad weather. I am from the Cleveland, Ohio, area, so about four hours away from Cincinnati Metro. I had family down in Cincinnati at certain points a while ago, so it's been a while, but I have not been down to the area.

KS: We would love to have you here. I will show you around.

BL: So along with the BRT, along with the zero-emission transition, so in February of this year, Cincinnati Metro, you guys invested $27.8 million in the transit infrastructure projects. It's spread across 20 municipalities within the county. Is there any other projects besides zero-emission, besides BRT?

KS: Yeah, let me just expand on that. $27.8 million transit infrastructure fund point. So what we call the Metro Transit Infrastructure Fund is a program where we award money to local jurisdictions within Hamilton County to improve the local roadway infrastructure and to date, meaning over the past four years since we started this program, since we passed the levy, so to date, we have awarded a total of $300 million to 104 projects and 34 different municipalities and townships in Hamilton County, and that's something we are absolutely proud of. To your point, in the last round, we were awarded 27.8, but as a total award so far is $300 million, and these projects include roadway repairs, reconstruction, adding sidewalks, signal systems, fiber optics, as well as we are funding $205 million that goes to the Western Hills bio duct. So aside from this Metro Transit Infrastructure fund program and the BRT project, and by the way the BRT, both corridors will cost about 340 million to complete, so in addition to these mega projects, we are really in the planning phases of building three transit centers in the uptown area, Walnut Hills as well as North College Hill. We're also expanding our Bond Held garage. We have two garages. Our fleet operates out of two garages, Bond Hill and Queensgate, so we are expanding our Bond Hill garage so it can accommodate the zero-emission buses, and we are also making significant investments in upgrading our other garage, which is the Queensgate garage.

BL: So in terms of the roadway investments, is it just streets, is it sidewalks, is it highways? What kind of road investments are you making?

KS: Yeah, so basically the way the program works is every, in March 1st of every year, we ask the jurisdictions within Hamilton County townships, municipalities to submit proposals to us, so we receive their proposals, and we have consultants who will help us review them, score them, etc., and then based on the merits of these projects, we give money. So let's say one jurisdiction wants to improve their sidewalks or resurface the street at a million bucks, so we give them the million dollars and that municipality is responsible for everything, from putting the bids out, to doing the procurement and then managing the construction. We just reimburse them for that cost, and I mean it is really heartwarming to see all of these pictures, the before and after and what impact these projects have on these communities. There are certain communities that never had sidewalks and now they have hundreds and hundreds of yards of sidewalks.Not only is it making it safer for people to walk on or for parents to walk on with their kids and people with disabilities who are in wheelchair to really get from place to another, but also it's safer and easier to get to our bus stops as well. Now, the catch for these projects to be eligible for funding through our program is annual. These projects, they have to be within three quarter mile of a bus route, so they have to be within our service area because definitely we want to help these communities, but we also want to make sure that our services, our customers and our buses are also benefiting from these projects.

BL: So we talk about all these projects, right?! Roadways, zero-emissions, there's a lot of projects going on. However, as these projects are going on every day, the technology is changing, and we are in an ever changing world, so how difficult is it? Have you had to make adjustments to many of these projects, especially I would think with the zero-emission transmission as we are learning more about the technology in its ever changing world that we're in in 2024?

KS: Excellent question, Brandon, and it is an important question really. I guess really when it comes to these kind of projects, the biggest challenge really is doing the design and the construction of the infrastructure pieces first. So for the BRT, and I know the question is about the technologies, and I'll get there. So for example, with the BRT or even local service, the challenge and what takes time is the design and then the construction of these stations. The alignments procuring the buses because buses take almost two years to be delivered and so on. The technologies in terms of real-time information, tracking the vehicles, the fair payment systems, the cameras and so on, these are kind of add-ons, and to your point, these technologies change maybe every couple years or so, but they still have a good useful life for at least many years, and we do frequent upgrades to these systems, whether it's the software or hardware. So just to maintain them, make sure that they're performing as they should. To your point, it's the other type of technology, which is the fuel one, the alternative fuel. That is the biggest challenge that we have because as I said earlier, at some 2 years ago, we thought things are heading in the right direction. We had the plans in place and so on and then two of the major manufacturers of alternative fuel electric buses, as well as hydrogen buses filed for bankruptcy, so that kind of shook the entire market and industry. So now, not only us, Cincinnati Metro, but all other transit agencies are being a bit careful in terms of where to put our eggs. We don't want to put them all in one basket, so we're still testing the market, we're still making certain investments. As you saw, we're already investing in electric buses that we will receive in the next year and two, but we're turning it more carefully, and we're taking our time to test the market and see how things are. That indeed is the biggest challenge. Just we don't know how things are going to evolve in the short term in the next year or two, but we're confident because the federal government has been heavily investing in alternative fuel on the long term, we know things are going to move in the right direction and that's our goal is we will get to zero-emission eventually.

BL: So I want to talk to you a little bit about your book that you wrote in 2021 titled, “The Implosion of Public Transit and the Case for an Infinite Game”. In that book, you explain how expanded technologies can save the nation to mass transportation systems, so if you could give the audience a preview of what you say in that book and how transit agencies can better use technology than the way it's being used now.

KS: Yeah, thank you for that, and it's the technology and it's the data that comes with the technology as well, right?! Because we don't invest in technology just for the sake of investing in technology after the data, and it's really like, ‘Where do I begin with answering that question’? I think in a nutshell, really as an industry, we as public transit industry, we collect tons of data. I don't think there's any other industry that collects as much data as we do on a daily and hourly basis, such as people boarding, lighting at every stop, fair payment being made type of payment, the location where it's being done, location of the buses by the minute on-time, performance, dwell time maintenance, I mean, all of that. However, as an industry, we're only scratching the surface when it comes to using this data and analysis. I mean, yeah, we'll use it to figure out your ridership on time, performance, productivity and so on, but there's a wealth of other information that we're not using as an industry. So for example, shouldn't we look at geographically speaking where people are not using daily passes or monthly passes? But instead, they're paying the more expensive single ride. And looking at that, figure out why is it a language barrier. Is it a lack of access to these passes? And then do targeted marketing to bring them into using these passes, so they can save money, and they can write more and provide better service for everybody. Most agencies collect boarding data from their fare apps. Every time when you ride a bus, you scan your phone, it verifies that you have a valid pass and you ride, but typically, we don't scan getting off, so we know where people are getting on or an individual is getting on, but we don't know where he or she are getting off. Almost nobody in the country is using this data in a meaningful way to figure out origin destinations where individuals are getting on and off because this provides to us as planners a wealth of information, so we can better plan our networks. Well, here in Cincinnati Metro actually, and I really have a great team that we use this information, just the tapping, getting on, and with some triggery and some programming and intelligence, we're able to figure out where people are getting off as well. And if there's transfer involved, we know exactly where they're transferring from, what bus to what bus. And this has given us a wealth of origin destination data that we're using in our planning exercises, and that's why our network is becoming more and more efficient. That's why more and more people are riding our service, and we are proud to say that we're at the top of the nation in terms of pre COVID  ridership recovery. Another really critical area where it comes to technology and data is the spatial optimization modeling. I mean, this is kind of like a more advanced statistical modeling and so on, but there are consultants who can help with that, and that special optimization modeling really provide an optimal or close to solutions, whether it's in network planning, operations, maintenance, even the process of cleaning and fueling buses to make it more efficient and faster and saving time and money, but really transit agencies don't take advantage of such tools. Again, case in point here, when we did about two and a half years ago, when we did the study for our microtransit service, trying to identify the zones that would benefit from such a service, we did employ the spatial optimization modeling to define these zones and what those stones, the optimal locations for our service would be, so we are really trying to implement these kind of advanced technologies and use of data, but still as an industry, we still have a long way to go.

BL: Well, and to your point too, I think it doesn't matter if you're in a huge city or a small town or the size of your agency, a lot of these agencies are trying to collect the same types of data.

KS: Exactly.

BL: Khaled Shammout, the chief strategic planning development and innovation officer at Cincinnati Metro. He is also an adjunct professor at the University of Cincinnati. Khaled, thank you so much for joining me today on the Infrastructure Technology Podcast.

KS: Oh, thank you very much, Brandon. I really appreciate this opportunity.

GJ: Alright, welcome back to the ITP. That was Brandon Lewis's interview with Khaled Shammout from Cincinnati, and we have a question for you, our audience. We want to hear from you, and we want to hear what you think. We want to hear your opinions. We want to hear if you have any ideas for episodes, and we also want to hear the answer to this question: What is your favorite form of public transportation? We'll ask this on our social media channels, but regardless, we would like to hear from you and tell us what you think. What's your favorite form of public transportation? I even consider sidewalks to count because you always hear a city is walkable, a walkable city like Cincinnati, for example, a very walkable city. And yeah. Anything else? Brandon, what do you think? What do you want to hear from the listeners?

BL: I agree with you on sidewalks, and yeah, I'm really looking forward to hearing your guys' feedback. At Mass Transit, we do a survey every year with our audience, asking them what their favorite mode of public transportation is, but I'm really interested to see what the Roads and Bridges side of the audience has to say.

GJ: Harlee, who should we thank?

HH: So we should thank the people who bring this to every single two weeks, and that is Endeavor Business Media.

GJ: Our parent company, excellent people at EBM. Great folks. We have great leadership. We have a great team. We have great sales people. We're really happy to be working with them, and thank you to the listener. Please like us on social media and download, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and we'll be back next two Tuesdays from now. We'll be back in two Tuesdays with another great episode of the Infrastructure Technology Podcast. For Brandon Lewis and Harlee Hewitt, I'm Gavin Jenkins. See you next time.