In Episode 19 of the Infrastructure Technology Podcast, the hosts recap the biggest themes and innovations they encountered during the first half of the 2026 conference season, reflecting on how industry events are shaping the future of transportation. Drawing from conferences across the public transit and roads and bridges sectors, the discussion highlights the technologies, policy conversations and operational challenges that generated the most attention.

Listen time

30:13

Here is a transcript from the episode:

Gavin Jenkins (GJ): Welcome to the Infrastructure Technology Podcast. I'm Gavin Jenkins, head of content for Roads and Bridges, and with me, we have Jessica Parks, staff writer at Roads and Bridges, Brandon Lewis, who is the associate editor of Mass Transit and then we also have Noah Kolenda from Mass Transit. We are back. We took a week off because Jessica Parks was on vacation, but we are back. Brandon, tell them what day it is.

Brandon Lewis (BL): Today is Tuesday, which means it's also podcast day.

GJ: Excellent. So Jess, you were a resident of Massachusetts and now you are living in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and you picked up your things, you packed up, and you drove halfway across the country. Tell us about the drive. How was it?

Jessica Park (JP): It was great. So I really enjoyed it. I got to see a lot of states that I never really planned on seeing. And so you actually go through a pretty good amount of states, so I started in Massachusetts, went through New York, hit a little bit of Pennsylvania, drove through the entire state of Ohio, drove through the entire state of Indiana, hit Missouri in Oklahoma. Oh, and Illinois. So it's a good chunk of states.

GJ: So did you hug the top of New York, then hit Buffalo or Rochester, then made your way down to Erie? Then you went into Northeast Ohio, Cleveland area. 

JP: Yes. 

GJ: And then did you do a diagonal across across Ohio towards Cincinnati?

JP: So I think I started heading west around Columbus and then I went pretty much just west across the state of Indiana, a little southwest on the southern side of Illinois. And then on the last day, I drove through the entire state of Missouri, just totally diagonal across the state of Missouri. 

GJ: And then you hit Oklahoma right from there. What was your favorite state?

JP: My favorite state to drive through is Missouri. Missouri is so fun. It is beautiful. You're driving through rock faces. It was just absolutely gorgeous and it has a lot of fun roadside attractions. You have Jesse James's hideout.

GJ: Oh?

JP: Yeah, you have Jesse James's hideout. I stopped at this town called Cuba, Missouri, which is called Mural City on Route 66. They have all these murals of Route 66, the history there. It was dead there. I thought I was going to be able to get breakfast. I was the only person walking around. They had a big birthday cake for Route 66, a little monument birthday cake for Route 66 being 100 years and then it just looked like one of those railroad towns that you picture in your quintessential.

GJ: Back in those days, it was called Missouri.

JP: Yeah, Missouri. I know. I say Missouri. My friends keep... So in Bocahoma, I learned another fun fact is we have a Miami, but it's Miami. I liked Indiana as well. Indiana, they had construction going through the entire state of Indiana, but it moved really smoothly, so I got through Indiana best.

GJ: Indiana DOT is very efficient.

JP: I didn't hit any traffic. The only spot I hit traffic as I've already told you guys is in Brandon's hometown of Cleveland, Ohio. That was the worst traffic I hit.

GJ: Well, we're not going to bash Cleveland, Ohio, on this show.

JP: No, that was the worst traffic I hit. And then I'm not sure if you guys got to do this, but I got to hit a really nice roadside attraction. I went to my first Buc-ee's.

Noah Kolenda (NK): Oh, fun.

JP: Yeah, that is an experience. It's so nice in there. I mean, it's like a full grocery store, but it's a convenience store, and their gas is really cheap, so that was a fun experience. 

GJ: Is Buc-ee's better than Wawa?

JP: Way better.

GJ: Whoa.

JP: It's like 10 Wawas. 

GJ: Whoa. 10 Wawas?

JP: They're the size of a 10 Wawa. 

GJ: So it's a grocery store with a gas pump?

JP: It's a grocery store. It's essentially a grocery store with gas pumps. This is how I describe it. It's a convenience store that has everything you could imagine. I mean, their fridges are all around the store. They're making hot to - go sandwiches. I mean, this guy pulled out a full brisket and was cutting it right in front of you. The barbecue brisket sandwich was incredible. It tastes like you got to at a barbecue joint, not just at a roadside gas station. So I got to see some cool bridges and saw the Gateway Arch. I mean, that is really a great site.

GJ: Yeah. World of Asphalt was in St. Louis a couple years ago. No, not a couple of years ago. It was last year. It was in March of 2025, and I got to walk around and see the arch. It is very beautiful and breathtaking, which is a great segue into today's conversation. We are halfway through 2026, and we are going to be talking about conferences. We in our industry go to conferences, we go to conventions, we go to meetings, we go to expos. And so we do a lot of traveling to get out there and meet our clients, to meet our readers and also just to learn about the industry to keep our fingers on the pulse. And between the four of us, Noah and I have done the most traveling. Noah, let's bring you in. Tell us what conferences you've been to this year.

NK: Yeah, so this year's been a really interesting run so far. So I've been to two. I've been to the American Public Transportation Association's Mobility Conference in May and then their rail conference in June. Mobility was in Salt Lake City and so that was a really fun experience to go out there and get to ride their system as we learned about our experienced mobility. And then we took to Baltimore for rail, and that was also a really cool place to experience their local regional transit, as we got to learn more about the rail industry and its recent developments.

GJ: Excellent. And so I have been to, let's count them, World of Concrete, and that was in Vegas in January. At the end of February, I went to the AEMA/ARRA/ISSA annual meeting. I was there for ARRA's awards, which Roads and Bridges sponsors two of them, and I handed them out. And from there I went to Houston for the ATSA Traffic Expo. Then of course in March, we went to CONEXPO in Las Vegas. And then in June, I went to the International Bridge Conference in National Harbor, Maryland, just outside of Washington D.C. So I've been to a bunch, and I still have a couple more on the schedule. PWX, the Public Works Expo, that's coming up at the end of August, beginning of September. And then I also am going to the Bentley Year in Infrastructure and Going Digital Awards in October, so I have a lot to share. So let's shape it first off, Noah, tell us what would you say is the overarching theme from the conferences that you've been to? What are the connecting dots?

NK: Yeah, so for Mobility, Mobility is really APTA's more bus-focused conference. And so a lot of the transportation initiatives and projects were shown off there were bus and paratransit related, and this conference had a lot of theming around sports planning and major events planning. So all things World Cup, Olympics in LA 2028 and then Salt Lake in I think 2032 and so there was a lot of talk of mega event planning and logistics for that, and for mobility especially, it was really interesting because a lot of new technologies are coming onto the scene right about now and so we talked about this a couple of weeks ago in another episode, but there was showcasings of software platforms that would help you manage a whole fleet of your bus infrastructure from the bus telemetry to pager complaints to scheduling and scheduling both in route and in drivers and so a lot of new technologies coming onto the scene to help manage those mega events. And then for Rail, it was really a fascinating conference digging into data. This was very, very data heavy in use of data for safety and security metrics and improvements in that area. Also for fair collection, whether it be just better tracking and implementing automated passenger counting into fair collection systems to unify that into one system or just a lot of agencies bringing online new developed fair payment systems, whether it be account-based ticketing or open loop fair payments or just anything that's new and digital as opposed to an old smart card or even paper paths. So for Mobility and Rail, it was really about new technology and new ways to just improve the rider experience.

GJ: That's really interesting. And so with me, very similar. The conferences I've been to, I would say that the overarching theme is that the roads and bridges construction industry is no longer talking about what AI is. Now it's talking about how to use it. And so it's almost as if we're entering a new era of construction in America, and this is the implementation era, and everyone's talking about how do we use this technology to build projects faster, safer, with fewer workers and tighter budgets? And so AI has officially moved from, I would say, a buzzword to a job site tool then, and that's the biggest shift that I've seen from 2025 to 2026. In 2025, it was like this is what AI is and this is how we can use it and now it's more like we're beyond how we can use it. This is how we are using it. This is how it's implemented. And so people are talking about AI for pavement inspections, AI-powered asset management, AI in estimating, AI in fleet management, AI in predictive management, which that is a huge niche that is growing. Well, that's kind of a weird way to say it. It's important, and it's growing, and AI analyzing drone imagery, AI inside work zone management, those issues have become the primary conversation in the industry. So before we go on, we've just thrown a lot at our co-hosts here. Brandon, jump in, ask questions. What do we need to know? What do we need to talk about from here? What are your thoughts? 

BL: So Noah, I have a question for you on the account-based ticketing, the open loop payments, because here at Mass Transit, as we know, transit has a lot of people involved that are either seniors or people with disabilities or people in rural areas who may not have a lot of ability or the capability to use devices or have the knowledge to do so. So from your perspective, I guess, is the push on that to eliminate, as you mentioned, physical cards and are they taking that into account?

NK: I think there's definitely nuance to this situation. I think some systems, like you said, in more metropolitan areas where it's advancing a lot further, the options are a lot wider. And so here in New York, for instance, we've got the ability to tap to pay with your regular debit or credit card with your phone or with a OMNY Card, and throughout the conference, it was becoming apparent that that's going to be a solution in a lot of places where they're going to have a heavy mobile component, but then some type of smart trip card or OMNY Card or just some type of physical RFID Card that you can load at a vending machine in a station and still use as a fair collection method. It's interesting though, because in their marketing of all of these new upgrades, it's definitely one of the last line items. It's one of the like, ‘Oh yep, it's still here’. So it's there, but it's definitely not as main of a focus anymore. There is definitely a general assumption across the industry that most transit riders are going to have a smartphone, and I mean, that's pretty evident, too, by just the advent of all of these, the Transit app and all of these various mapping apps that combine fair collection and your map and routing all into one app. They're kind of assuming that you're going to have a smartphone to be able to navigate this whole system, but smart cards are still a thing that are existing and persisting in these systems, and some vendors are creating other unique solutions. If the experience is a lot more touchless, like one implementation we saw just had you pre-purchase your fare and then if you walked through a fair zone with your phone in your pocket with your purchased fare, you didn't have to pull it out, you didn't have to tap it on anything.

BL: Interesting.

NK: Yeah. And so implementations like that, I think they're going to have to work a little bit harder to make sure that if they have RFID Cards, that those are going to be as readily readable as a smartphone is and stuff like that. And so there are still options, but it's not as readily available or maybe that's not the right word. It's not as heavily marketed as the mobile options.

GJ: So you guys are in the implementation era too then?

NK: Oh, for sure. Yeah. And to your earlier point, the AI is moving in the same way over here in the transit industry. Last year it was largely like these are things that we're exploring and ideas that we have, and this year it's very much turned into, alright, this is what we're doing with AI. This is how we're implementing it. This is how we're using it to track trends and monitor statuses and programs, and it's definitely in the implementation phase, yes.

GJ: What is the conversation around integration?

NK: It's a nuanced one as well. It's definitely dependent on the agency, too. I feel like a lot of these smaller agencies are a bit more apprehensive, and also too, they just may not see as big of a need if they don't have as large of a service area or aren't covering as many vehicles or just don't have as complex of a transit system to run. They may not be as rushing to implement these systems as other agencies that have issues that they're trying to target with these systems.

JP: I have a question. So in our industry, I think obviously just besides efficiency and maximizing resources, the driver behind AI I see in the roads and bridges industry is safety, being able to keep people at their desks instead of sending them into these tricky situations, risky situations. And then also the labor shortage, maximizing the amount of output that fewer employees can do. What do you see as a driver behind the shift to AI in public transit? Is it something similar or?

NK: I would definitely agree on the workforce aspect, especially in the scheduling and planning department, having an AI in there to help you manage and track trends and be able to spot issues in your service before a planner may see that. Or honestly, taking paper planning out of your equation and being able to move it over to a computer, that is definitely a big one, but I think one of the biggest ones that I'm noticing in the industry comes down to service reliability. I was talking about earlier with the vehicle telemetry and stuff like that, being able to monitor those systems and turn maintenance into more of an active job instead of just a pre-scheduled situation where like, ‘Oh, it's been three months, time for an oil change’ or time for new tires or whatever. Instead, you're like, ‘Okay, the bus just reported to me that it's reached oil quality below 70%. It's time for an oil change’ even though it's not on schedule. And that leads to a bus staying in service more reliably. It doesn't break down on the route or it does not start in the morning at the depot and that throws a wrench into the whole day's plans.

GJ: That's really fascinating. Across CONEXPO, World of Concrete and the International Bridge Conference, what I saw was an enormous emphasis on telematics, machine connectivity, cloud platforms, digital workflows, remote monitoring. And instead of selling one machine, what manufacturers are doing now is they're selling ecosystems to customers. Everyone wants equipment that talks to the project management software, scheduling, maintenance, fleet management, BIM models, and so that's why I asked about integration because you want one ecosystem where everything's in communication with one another. And also digital twins are becoming real. This showed up a lot in bridge engineering in the past couple of years that people are talking about the lifecycle management, inspection data, sensor integration and structural health monitoring. Bridge owners, they're really increasingly talking about maintaining digital models throughout the life of a bridge instead of simply creating one during the design.

NK: That's something we're definitely dealing with over here in the transit industry, too, and I think beyond just creating an ecosystem from one company, there's been a push across the broader industry for standards to just allow products from multiple companies to work together, so I believe it's ITXIP and it's a standard that's in effect trying to make it so all of these devices, whether you have a telemetry device from one company attached to a bus from a legacy manufacturer that didn't necessarily come programmed to talk to those things. Well, an ITXIP upgrade is in essence hoping to make it so that all these pieces, even though they're from different vendors, will eventually be on some type of similar protocol so they can share information and talk to each other. And then that's also been a conversation at the conception of devices where like, okay, these new devices, all right, now let's implement the standard at time of creation, so they're able to interface with all these devices going forward, too.

GJ: So Jess, back to you for a second. So you did some traveling this year. You started here at Roads and Bridges late last summer, correct? 

JP: Yes. 

NK: And so then you got to go to World of Concrete for the first time, which was your primer for the big show, CONEXPO. Tell us what you thought, what you saw, what you heard.

JP: So there was a lot of equipment, but it was really interesting how technology really just took center stage. These are largely construction shows where you're seeing excavators, rollers, all these different things. However, there was just a lot of boosts that showed software, how it worked in there and how their systems worked and connectivity and everything like that. As I said before, I think in the past, AI, we didn't know how to use it, how to harness it in the best way, how to use it most efficiently in a way that actually is helpful as opposed to just a way around doing work that's just as easy as just you completing it yourself. I think that this year, I don't know from past years, but I think now that we really know how to use AI, we have specific uses for it. We know how to specifically use it in applications that expand our resources, expand our reach. So I saw a lot of that. I mean, it is interesting how in an industry where you think of these big equipment, big trucks, big machines and all that, AI is playing such a central role. I just thought it was really cool to see that in real time.

GJ: Yeah. And so what happened to us, Brandon, is the plan was to have Jess walk around with me at World of Concrete, and I was going to take her under my wing and show her the industry, and we wouldn't have been around equipment that much. We would've been in the lectures talking about the implementation of AI. And what happened was I fell very ill with the flu on the first day of World of Concrete. And Jess then walked around with Michael Roth, who is the head of content at RER, Rental Equipment Register. And so Jess did get a lot of knowledge, a crash course, if you will, on the equipment industry and the rental equipment industry particular side of things. Brandon, do you have any questions for us on the Roads and Bridges side?

BL: Yeah, I think the question that sort of popped it into my head as you guys were talking is about the bridge sort of lifespan. As AI is being developed and as these bridges are being developed and maintained, what's the conversation like in terms of how much longer can these bridges last with this new technology?

GJ: That's such a great question, and there's no one answer for it. So many of our bridges were designed to last 50 to 75 years and so many of the bridges in the country are well beyond that because our maintenance keeps improving and our rehabilitation tactics keep improving. And so right now a huge conversation, especially at IBC, was around inspection technology and how it keeps just expanding. I mean really the market for inspection technology is exploding right now. And so people are talking about drones and LiDAR and robotics and AI-assisted crack detection and non-destructive evaluations and the question is becoming how do we inspect more infrastructure with fewer inspectors? And so it goes right back to what Jess said about the workforce and so much of the underlying theme around everything that we talk about is the workforce. There's a labor crisis. We also have a shortage of engineers that it doesn't get talked about enough, so yeah, to answer your question, it depends. Hopefully you can make a bridge last 100 years, but it all depends on the traffic and how much weight it can handle on its deck. 

BL: Makes sense.

JP: It kind of ties back to an article you wrote, Gavin, where you interviewed an engineer with Majeski, a masters. The CEO. 

GJ: Yeah.

JP: And I thought that was interesting where it's like not so much as now bridge construction isn't as much about building these revolutionary structures like the Brooklyn Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge. It's more about turning towards maintenance. How do we keep these structures running? All this infrastructure's already built. So how do we maximize its lifespan? I thought that was kind of an interesting point he made about that shift in the industry.

GJ: Yeah. And that CEO's name is Michael Britt. He is the CEO of Majeski & Masters, which is the engineering firm that was started by Ralph Majeski, who is one of the legendary bridge designers in American history, and he designed the Ben Franklin Bridge, which opened to traffic on July 2nd, 1926. So yes.

JP: We’ll share a link in that podcast description to that article.

GJ: It's a great Q&A. So that is an overview of some of the conferences that we have experienced and gone to in 2026. The conference season for our industry, as many of our listeners will know, is at the beginning of the year, the first quarter. And so right now everyone in our industry is outside hard at work. And then the conference season will kick back up again in a few months, and we'll be at it again. So before we wrap up, I think that we might want to just share our thoughts on America 250. Brandon, how was your Fourth of July and how did you celebrate America turning 250 years old?

BL: My Fourth of July was pretty relaxing, pretty chill, didn't do anything too crazy. And just celebrated the fact that as I mentioned before in our Build America 250 episode, that we are the land of the free, the home of the brave.

GJ: That's right, and I've been watching the World Cup, and I've talked to some people who are in those cities, and from what I have heard, the traffic there, well, in some of them cities. I've spoken to people in Atlanta and Kansas City, if I'm being honest. No traffic issues here from what those friends of mine experienced, especially Kansas City. Kansas City’s doing a good job.

BL: Let me add to that as well because I am actually currently working on a feature that you guys will se on Mass Transit on September 1st, and I am diving into not every city because it would almost be impossible to do with our timeframe, but I'm looking at some of the major cities of the World Cup and how they implemented technology and transit and safety and looking into how they did before, what riders actually saw on match days and then anything that they implemented that could continue after the World Cup ends.

GJ: Excellent. Noah, any final thoughts before we wrap it up on your conferences? Any conferences you're looking forward to?

NK: Oh man, conferences I'm looking forward to is definitely the APTA Expo & Transform, the triennial conference they have every three years. It's a huge deal. It's going to be my first one, and I'm so excited. It's just going to be a massive event. It's by far their biggest conference, and it's just going to be such an experience. I know it's going to be crazy, but I can't wait. 

GJ: Excellent. Jess, was that Moose barking? Is Moose trying to get on the pod?

JP: Yeah, Moose wants to get on the pod. He's one of the guests today.

GJ: Oh, that is excellent. Alright, well, we are out of time, and we just want to say we're happy and grateful that Jess drove across the country and settled and happy in her new home in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We'll be back next week with a new episode. We're going to be back to every week again after a week off. We have to thank our parent company, Endeavor B2B, and we also have to thank our editor and producer, Karina Mazukina, The Maz. For Roads and Bridges, I'm Gavin Jenkins. 

BL: I’m Brandon Lewis.

JP: I'm Jessica Parks.

NK: And I'm Noah Kolenda.

GJ: We'll see you next time. Until then, goodbye.