In Episode 18 of the Infrastructure Technology Podcast, Mass Transit magazine Associate Editor Brandon Lewis and Roads and Bridges Staff Writer Jessica Parks play a true or false game based on questions from Mass Transit’s weekly news quiz. Parks then interviews FYLD CEO and Co-founder Shelley Copsey to discuss how artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping emergency response and infrastructure management across the transportation industry. As extreme weather events become more frequent and severe, Shelley explains how AI-powered platforms can help agencies process large volumes of information in real time, prioritize incidents and deploy crews more efficiently. 

Listen time

35:05

About the guest

 Shelley Copsey is the CEO and co-founder of FYLD.

Here is a transcript from the episode:

BL: Welcome to the Infrastructure Technology Podcast. I am Brandon Lewis, the associate editor of Mass Transit magazine. And here with me today, my one and only co-host today from Roads & Bridges, Staff Writer Jessica Parks. Jessica, how's it going?

JP: It's going great. What a small little team we have today. Just the two of us.

BL: We have a small little team today because Noah Kolenda, associate editor of Mass Transit magazine, he's in Baltimore currently at the APTA Rail Conference. And Jess, your boss, our regular host, Gavin Jenkins, the head of content for Roads and Bridges, he's on vacation right now somewhere in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He said he's staying home, relaxing. So Gavin, if you're listening to this, I hope you're enjoying it.

JP: Yes. He needed a much deserved vacation, and if anyone's in Pittsburgh, you'll probably see him looking at the bridges out there so make sure to say hi.

BL: So we have a fun episode today. Jess has a wonderful interview that we're going to get to in a little bit, but first we're going to play a game. We haven't done a lot of games yet here in season three, the ITP. And so I thought I would quiz Jessica on some recent Mass Transit weekly news quiz items. We're going to play a game of true or false. Are you ready?

JP: I am ready. Let's do it. 

BL: Alright, so these questions, four out of the five of them came from Mass Transit's weekly news quizzes that we put together. They go up every Friday on our website, masstransitmag.com, and these came from again, the month of June. So question number one, Pace Suburban bus, which if you don't know Jess, that is in Chicago. So true or false, Pace Suburban Bus has deployed hybrid electric buses rather than moving directly to battery-electric buses as part of its zero-emission transition.

JP: I'm going to say true.

BL: It is true. 

JP: Yay. 

BL: And the reason is that hybrid buses have allowed Pace to advance its sustainability goals now while the agency continues building the infrastructure and securing resources needed for full electrification. So as we talked about a lot here on the ITP, transit agencies, a lot of them have set a goal for 2040. Some of them in California, I believe it's 2042 to have a full zero-emission transition. Some agencies, some states obviously have the infrastructure right now better than others. And so Pace has decided to go with the hybrid electric route instead of the full electric route at this point while they continue to build that infrastructure.

JP: Interesting.

BL: Okay. Question number two. An agency that you are familiar with, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in New York City. They have these new R211A subway cars. True or false? These R211A subway cars feature wider door openings.

JP: Yes, true.

BL: Okay. That is also true.

JP: Yes, I remember those.

BL: And so these new cars, they do feature 58-inch wide door openings, which are eight inches wider than standard door openings on existing cars. And what these are designed for is they speed up boarding and they reduce the amount of time trains sit in the stations.

JP: Are they more accessible? It must be, right? 

BL: Yes. So they are, to my knowledge, a little bit lower to the ground. A lot of these new trains are already built low floor. And so because of the wider door openings, it makes it a lot easier for somebody with a wheelchair or stroller or luggage to enter in. And again, because you can enter in so quickly, the trains are taking less time to stop at the station and spending more time actually traveling.

JP: Awesome. I remember when those were first unveiled, that was a long time ago. So now they're finally on the rails years later.

BL: They're developing a lot of new rail cars there at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Up next, one that is near and dear to my home, Cleveland, Ohio, the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority. True or false? My local regional transportation authority, GCRTA, launched fare capping for the first time on June 1st.

JP: False.

BL: It is true. I am so excited about this. Are you familiar with fare capping?

JP: The fare can't be higher than something else. It's like a cap on the price of the fare.

BL: Correct, so what fare capping does is it automatically tracks trips. And again, you can do this if you have an online account, what you do is you sign up for an account with the transit agency or the fare payment method system, whether it's through another individual app like a Masabi, and what it allows you to do is if you register, a rider will never pay more than the cost of a daily, weekly or monthly unlimited pass, even if they do not purchase one in advance.

JP: Interesting. Okay, that's interesting. I would've loved that in New York City because I get monthly because I would take the train and then anything pretty much anything over, if you bought a monthly, anything over two trips was free, essentially, if you think about it. Anything over two trips a day was free and so I'd have to put the money upfront, and it was worth it in the end, except when I had just bought a monthly and the world shut down for COVID, and I couldn't take the train anymore, and I had just bought a monthly.

BL: So a little bit off topic, but I'm curious because you brought it up. To my knowledge, the train was always running in New York City. Was it during COVID or no?

JP: It was always running. I just wasn't taking it.

BL: I got you. Okay. Yeah. I'll tell you what, in a city like New York to go from all those people to no people must have been the most eeriest. It was eerie here in Cleveland.

JP: When I finally started taking the train again, I'd be the only person on their train. I still liked taking the train, and I was like, ‘Hey, if I'm the only person on it, I'm not going to get COVID’.

BL: Did you like it?

JP: It was awesome. So I covered Coney Island, which was a blast in Brooklyn. So I would take the train to Coney Island. They'd have the beach alongside me, and I'd be the only person on the train. I'd be like, ‘This is like a vacation’. It's nice.

BL: And what I love about fare capping is, so for an example, let's say a monthly pass is $30. If you take the train enough times to where, and you don't have a monthly pass, but you would pay what would be in essence $40, let's say per month for train trips, you're really going to only pay 30, so what it really does is, first of all, it encourages people to buy the passes and encourages people to pay their fare and it encourages people to take public transit.

JP: Definitely because people just don't plan ahead all the time, so they're like a monthly, or they can't put the money upfront, too.

BL: And it also helps for tourists. If you're only staying for a couple days or whatever the case may be, and you don't want to buy the full pass, well, you're only going to be charged a certain amount.

JP: Yeah, exactly, so it encourages tourists to take public transit for sure.

BL: Yeah. And GCRTA isn't the only agency. There's a lot of agencies that started implementing this. This has just started taking place here in Cleveland. 

JP: Awesome. 

BL: And it's something that I am very excited about personally.

JP: We'll have to hear your review once you experience it a little more.

BL: 100%. So last week we talked about the Build America 250 Act. It was a wonderful episode here on the ITP. In case you did not listen to it, go back and listen on all audio podcasts and platforms. So true or false, the Build America 250 Act does not include a new program to support planning, capital and operating needs for major international sporting events.

JP: True.

BL: The answer is false. The Build America 250 Act, obviously as we talked about last week, approved by the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure. And by the way, shout out to Gavin Jenkins, who did a wonderful job breaking down exactly where we are in this seven-step process of the Build America 250 Act. Again, if you want to listen to that podcast, go back and listen to it on all audio podcasting platforms. But the Build America 250 Act, it does establish a new program to support planning capital and operating needs for major international sporting events, including Olympic, Paralympic and FIFA World Cup events.

JP: Great. That's a good thing that they include in there.

BL: And finally, the last question, this one was not part of our news quiz, but I wanted to throw it in there because we've talked about the FIFA World Cup a lot. We just did a part one and part two breakdown of infrastructure, technology, public transit, everything about the FIFA World Cup. Again, if you want to listen to those episodes, go back on all audio podcasting platforms. So the question is, at this point, and again, we are recording today on June 30th, 2026. So we are, give or take, about 19 days, almost three weeks into the World Cup. The question is, true or false, have multiple different transit modes broken records so far during the 2026 FEFA World Cup? 

JP: True. 

BL: Correct. It is true, and I'm glad that you did not get stumped by the word ‘mode’ because that's the difference as opposed to agency. Mode would be your bus, your rail, instead of an agency itself. But pretty much every system that has done any sort of World Cup ridership has broken a record. But just to give you a few that have been officially announced in press releases, the Kansas City Streetcar in Kansas City broke a single rider day record. Shared bike and scooter records in Seattle have been broken. In Metro Vancouver, their transit system reached a six-year high. Also in the first two weeks of the World Cup, the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority in Atlanta moved over 1.5 million people.

JP: Wow, that's insane. It's like a golden age for transit right now in the United States because of the World Cup. I love that, and I wonder if that's also because Europeans are more used to taking transit than Americans are and a lot of Europeans are coming over for the matches and that's just their kind of default transit method.

BL: That's a good point, 100%, and I also believe that, and as I talked about during our World Cup podcast, the car bans near the stadium and pretty much making it mandatory for you to take public transit was not only a good decision, but I think it's helping expose. Maybe those from other countries that, again, are not familiar with America's public transit system because as we've talked about a lot, our system runs different to say a system in England or Paris.

JP: Definitely, and it's interesting. I'm in Boston for the World Cup, and I have met people who are going to the games and everything. They're like, ‘How do I get there’? And I'm like, ‘There's a train that goes $80 each train that goes that will take you right to the train station.’, and it's been really interesting to see the way transit has changed, how cities have really become way more vibrant for the World Cup. It's had a myriad of benefits for the cities that are hosting.

BL: We need that boots on the ground interview from Jessica Parks in Boston asking people on the street what trains they're taking.

JP: Yes. I will try to get on that.

BL: And I bring this up too because it's so funny. Since I've been here, and I've been here, my first day was Halloween of 2022, and my two favorite stories that we've ever done that cover transit for massive sporting events for me would definitely be the World Cup. But the other one, and I will never forget this, when we ran a story in June of 2023 for our May/June issue, it was our editor's notebook by our former editor in chief at Mass Transit magazine who wrote a whole column about how Taylor Swift's Eras Tour has helped public transit.

JP: I love that. It's so funny how... Well, Taylor Swift has some serious star power because I guess she's not only helped public transit, but she's brought back American football. We got to get her out on the roads and bridges. We got to get her in a construction hat and working on our roads, promoting worker safety.

BL: Well, as she would say, for us that covers the industry, public transit and roads and bridges is indeed a love story.

JP: Yes, it is. It is. We get along great together.

BL: And with that, Jessica, let's go ahead and kick it over to you. Who do we have on the show today?

JP: So for this episode, I spoke with Shelley Copsey. She's the CEO and co-founder of FYLD, which is an AI-powered operating system built for high risk field work. So we talked about how emergency response management and connected systems can help keep transportation networks running safely during extreme weather events, which is really important as we are seeing more extreme weather events as each year goes by. 

BL: So I'm going to have you take it away, Maz. 

JP: I hope you guys enjoy.

BL: Maz, do your thing.

JP: Hi Shelly. Welcome to the ITP. We're excited to have you.

SC: Thanks for having me on, Jessica. Excited to be here.

JP: Thank you. So Shelly, you're with FYLD and you're the co-founder and CEO. It's a company that helps with extreme weather response management and supports transportation agencies to get roads back open faster or not close at all. So tell me, so from the work you've done during extreme weather events, what are some of the biggest weaknesses in the way that transportation agencies and infrastructure operators have traditionally managed response efforts?

SC: So when you have an extreme weather event, obviously the number of sites on the transportation network that can be impacted is vastly larger than on any usual running day, but the problem that we have is the way that we get the information in about where the impacts are, how we dispatch crews to fix it and how we ensure the systems are operational. Those systems haven't usually been geared up to change much. It's just can we have some more human effort? The things that I've seen in the technology sector and how we're working with the transportation division is things like how can we better crowdsource accurate information about what's taking place? We work with a number of our customers to be able to push video links out to the general public, get them to do a survey for us. You immediately cut down the amount of time it takes to find out where the impacts are, and you can use AI at a point in time where you've got a mass amount of spots that are going to need restoration.

You can use AI to triage what's wrong. What's the priority? What order do I dispatch my crews in? When the crews actually arrive out, again, you've frequently got more people out on sites at a particular point in time than your operations usually know. As they begin to share information, which you can do far more easily with technology than with an old phone call, if you're getting them to take some videos of site, again, as they're doing the work, can you use an AI coach, an AI buddy to help them? Can you actually scale up spans of control if you do that so you get more people out in the field and less people sitting behind phones trying to help field workers? I think you can fund it, mentally reimagine those workflows.

JP: Definitely. I agree. So I mean you kind of touched upon this, but when response is happening across radios, phone calls, text threads and other disconnected channels, what kind of operational risks does that create for crews in the field and decision makers in the control room?

SC: The first thing that I see is safety, which is obviously the most important thing to think about. When there's vast amounts of jobs, when our field crews know that communities are dependent on them to get networks operational, they might self-assess a safety risk as being high, but choose to go ahead and do the job. The organizations they work for don't want them to do that. The first thing that you can think differently about with technology is how do I independently assess the site risk of every single job at once and shut down sites that are not safe or get more eyes on those sites so that work can progress? I think that that's incredibly important. I think the next thing is, again, is that sheer volume of work that's going on. How can I supervise that effectively to see jobs that are progressing well, jobs that are not? If I know where to focus my time because I'm getting an AI triage of data coming in, the volume of work that you can get through is just so much higher.

JP: Definitely, and so as extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and more unpredictable, how is that changing what agencies, contractors and operators need from their emergency response systems?

SC: I think there's the, how do I rapidly scale up when something does take place? But it's also how do I get my networks into a state if I see some form of incident or weather event coming so that when it hits, the impact can actually be minimal. So some of the things that we see is can I do some level of truck roles in advance of the event taking place? Can I get trucks near crucial points? Often the emergency response is operating across a vast state. If you know that part of the state is going to be impacted, how do you get the right people there ahead of the event? But I think one of the things that's always been missing is maybe data around the types of skillsets that might be needed post these events to get networks operational. Again, what we're seeing is transportation authorities that are embracing data, embracing technology and collecting a lot of information from each of these weather events about what it takes to get operational again. They're better prepared, whereas if you see people who continue to use pen and paper, they're really lacking the insight about what does it really take? What skills do I need? What equipment am I going to need? What parts, etc., will I need to get that network operational again? I think we're going to see that divide intensify between people who are using data to run operations and people that in 2026 are holding dear to that pen and paper.

JP: Definitely. You will notice very quickly those differences, I'm sure. Okay. And so real-time visibility has been mentioned, and that's between the control room and the field. Now tell me, what does that actually look like in practice during a storm, a wildfire, flood or other major event?

SC: Yeah, so customers that have FYLD deployed will typically be in their command center, big TV screens that we're all quite used to the infrastructure sitting there. We think about a geospatial interface, something like Google Maps. How do we in the first instance help those command centers understand in real time where their crews are dispersed? The next thing that we help them understand in real time is the types of operational risk that those different crews are facing. If you've got a flashing red dot from FYLD, it probably means you've got someone in a very high risk safety environment flashing orange. It probably means you've got a crew that has stopped, and that job's not progressing, so you kind of get that geospatial. At the same time, you should be able to click in and instantly see what's going on on site, and we do that by getting our FYLD workers to take short videos for us and tell us what's going on. It's amazing. I'm going to pop AI aside for a moment. Just visibility. If I'm a span of control, free field, lots of our customers are running maybe six crews to one person. Post-field, we see them get to 20, 30, sometimes higher per one person, but what I want to do, I don't want to wait for my phone to ring and think, ‘Oh, I kind of know’. You can see it. The video tells, what's that statement we'll say? A video's like a thousand pictures. It's probably pictures to words, but I think that needs to evolve in the modern world. But when you can drop in on a site, when you can see what's going on through the operator's eyes, when you can hear them, you can hear your tone of voice. Again, this is an industry where managers know their crews. I often think just listening to the person talk and hearing their voice, you can hear if there's a stress inflection of stuff, you know this, but to me, 10,000 jobs, I can hop in on anyone, I can get a video, I can see what's going on through the worker's eyes. It's very powerful.

JP: That is amazing. That is really cool. It's so important in these split second decisions you have to make during an emergency response, so you kind of mentioned this. I guess I'll ask you a little bit more specifically. Where does AI fit into response management? How can it help with risk assessment, decision-making, documentation or getting infrastructure reopened more quickly?

SC: I think the first thing is resources are always limited. As soon as you have an emergency, you see people are calling other states to come and help them. They're pooling resources across their own state. The first thing you want is more people in the field and less people behind the desk. The only way that you can do that is if you scale your span of control appropriately. I would do it pre-emergency and not try and change my operations during, but during, you do want more and more people. You then know, let's just presume we've got a 100 jobs going on. The scale will be far higher, but for simplicity, probably 70, 80 of those jobs are running perfectly fine. You don't need to be highly focused on those, but there's probably 20 to 30 that you do and it might because they're in a high risk environment. There's live wires on the ground. It might be because the particular dig and fix operation they're doing is very complex technically. How does an environment that's operating on pen, paper, phone calls and WhatsApps understand the 30 jobs that need eyes on versus the 70 that don't? To my mind, they simply don't. So how does AI help you? Take those short videos and have them all come into your command center and analyze which jobs look great. What does the machine say? Which jobs look like there could be a lead indicator of something going wrong? And there's stuff that the machine will see that the human eye doesn't see. One of the most common things that we see that our customers don't is overhead cables. Our FYLD workers are in these environments day in, day out. They sometimes just forget to look up, But machines can spot trends, etc., and they'll say, ‘In the last emergency, here are the 30 jobs that didn't go to plan. Here's your pool of 30 jobs today that look like those 30’. There's many ways the machine can spot risk ahead of it, risk turning into eventuate a risk that humans simply won't do, and I think that that's the biggest piece. Which sites do we need eyes on? Can we give some digital coaching if we don't have enough humans? And how can we get humans to coach in real time? But let them focus their attention where it counts. That's how you get networks operational more quickly.

JP: Definitely. That's really interesting about the overhead cables, too, so that gets into my next question. After an event is over, how can better documentation audit trails and field data help agencies improve accountability, compliance and planning for the next emergency?

SC: Well, let's just even start with when there is an emergency, you're going to make trade-offs on quality versus getting your network back and operational. One thing that I don't see in traditional operations run pen and paper or digital forms is really great documentation of what were the trade-offs and what do they mean? If you've got that documentation, the first thing that you can do is in the coming weeks, months, say, ‘Well, where do we make a trade-off that either in normal operations or in a next extreme weather event is going to be problematic? Let's get back there and fix it’. Just that simple audit trail, what were the decisions? What rectifications needed as a result? The next thing I think that you can begin to see is if you can begin to correlate weather patterns precisely what happened and the operational outcomes through data, how does that let you do simulations of the next extreme weather event and identify points of vulnerability? When you're running on pen and paper, and you don't have that fidelity of understanding, a proper fully-fledged simulation becomes near impossible, and I think it's doing a lot of this simulation that lets you then begin to understand where you should focus. There's the trend that we see across the Nordics, for instance, different to America, but the same theme will apply, of understanding where do we bury assets now versus where do we bury assets later because it's getting colder, warmer, change, but how do I do that planning? We've only got so much money from the taxpayer to run these networks. How do we make sure if we've got that data, we understand what weather impacts are having, how do we use that money in the most productive way so that when we get to the next event, we continue to manage our risk in our networks?

JP: Definitely. Spread the dollar further is so important with agencies. It's the number one, so I'll ask you this. As agencies look ahead to future extreme weather seasons, what steps should they be taking now to modernize their response management strategies?

SC: I think that when you are not in an extreme weather event, so seasonality plays a big part. I think people need to begin saying where are the vulnerabilities that I know of, but where could there be vulnerabilities that I don't know of? I think with a more open mind to look at the technologies that could help them. There's sensing on networks that can understand if there is a problem if a road's looking vulnerable versus needing the human eye so much. There's technologies like FYLD where if you get them in, and you get them working during calm environments, then when you actually hit an extreme weather event, you're not looking within that moment to change your operational model. You've already put it in, and you just learn how to flex it, so I think there's definitely when you're not in the event, how do you experiment? But one of the biggest failings that I guess we see across the infrastructure sector is an overemphasis on experimentation and an underemphasis on saying, ‘I need to scale two, three, four things, but I need to scale them across the org’. Because it's only once you scale it, and you make it a mainstream part of how you work that you're going to have the impact that you need when that event occurs.

JP: Definitely, So let me ask you this. I'll leave you with this question. Is there anything I didn't ask you that you think is important to mention about emergency weather response management and FYLD?

SC: I think at FYLD, the reason that we're successful and our customers are successful is that we always think about the FYLD worker. It's really easy to think about that command center and giving remote managers a view in on what's happening. Super important. It's really important to think about how we toughen up our infrastructure. Really important. Definitely. But actually the FYLD workers are the ones that walk out of their houses in the morning. They get on the road in the middle of these extreme events. They leave their families, and they want to get back to them, so we always think about how do we make their life easier? My number one takeaway for everybody when they're looking at these types of technologies is start with the FYLD worker. What would make their life easier? What would let them feel safer at work? How could I coach them to be better on the job in real time? I think if you start by putting yourself into the shoes of the FYLD worker, the outcomes typically are far higher than if you approach this. It has to stack up for the CFO, but you shouldn't be approaching it from a penny and dime perspective. If the best operations leaders are people, and they know that it has to work for the FYLD worker, that's always what I think about.

JP: Definitely. Safety is so important for us at the ITP covering construction, highway safety, everything. It is very important and making sure that our construction workers make it home and our FYLD workers make it home. So perfect place to leave it off at. Shelley, we're so happy to have had you on the podcast. Thank you so much for joining us today. It has been such a pleasure speaking with you.

SC: Brilliant. Thanks for having me, Jessica. I appreciate it.

BL: And welcome back. That was Jessica's interview. Jess, tell us what were your big key takeaways?

JP: It was really fun speaking to Shelley. I really appreciate her coming on amid the European heat waves that they are experiencing, so that was really great of her. I thought it was really interesting, our conversation. I mean, emergency response systems are just so important to keeping our transportation networks running, and I think that the ability to collect data in these events because you are just working so quickly on your feet that you are not maybe manually you're not able to collect this information that can help you inform future events like this and work faster and smarter, so I think that having AI to be able to collect that data for you, put those together into insights to be able to work more efficiently in the next emergency weather event, I think is a really huge benefit to agencies and contractors and everyone involved in keeping our roads running during a natural weather disaster.

BL: For sure, and Shelley talked about the fact that these machines can see things that the human eye can’t and being able to get more boots on the ground. AI is able to collect the data so that a person doesn't have to do that, so that the person can be on site, and that's what she talked about is we need more people on site at these emergency locations.

JP: Yeah, definitely, and I think having more people on site makes each worker safer because you have more eyes on the project itself. So just turning some of that office work over to AI, you have those extra eyes from AI that are able to maybe see things that the human eye can't see, but also you have more people in the field that are watching each other's backs, that are able to get people getting the work done faster to be able to get them out of there sooner.

BL: 100%, and it all goes back to safety. Whatever technology we can use to get not only the emergency responders safe, but the people out there safe as well is better for everyone.

JP: Definitely. Yeah, so she was great. I really appreciate Shelley coming on all the way from Europe. It was an overseas call. It was very fun.

BL: As always, fantastic interview. And by the way, shout out to technology because if it wasn't for Teams and Zoom and everything that we learned in COVID, this interview you did today wouldn't even be possible.

JP: Exactly. Thank you, COVID.

BL: Thank you, COVID. With that, there is a noise in my headphones. It's coming from the one and only Maz that says it is time to wrap things up. So Jess, who should we thank?

JP: I would like to thank the listeners. I would like to thank our parent company, EndeavorB2B, who sponsors our podcast. I would like to thank Shelley for taking the time to speak with me for our interview, and I'd like to thank you, Brandon, for filling in for joining me on the podcast. We're a great duo.

BL: Great duo. And I would also like to thank our friends, Noah Kolenda, who is currently at this time hanging out in Baltimore at the APTA Rail Conference. And I'd also like to thank the one and the only traditional host of this podcast, Gavin Jenkins, who has thankfully, and I'm very proud to say, given me the opportunity and given me the seat to try to fill in his wonderful shoes this week and host this week's edition of the ITP, but with that, if you have any questions for us, you can always email us at [email protected]. Make sure you check us out. We are on all the socials, Mass Transit, Roads and Bridges. X, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, all that good stuff. For Brandon Lewis, I am the associate editor of Mass Transit magazine.

JP: I'm Jessica Parks. Thank you for listening.

BL: And goodbye.