Nick Perloff-Giles on Translating Innovation into Public Benefit

As Los Angeles prepares to host global mobility leaders for CoMotion Los Angeles, VX News caught up with Nick Perloff-Giles, Program Coordinator at the Shared-Use Mobility Center (SUMC) and co-host of CoMotion’s Fast Forward podcast, to preview the themes shaping this year’s conference. From the post-pandemic realities of shared mobility to the growing urgency of public-private coordination, Perloff-Giles emphasizes that shared mobility’s future depends on aligning private innovation with public purpose and reflects on how CoMotion continues to serve as a vital convening space, bringing together innovators, policymakers, and advocates defining the next decade of transportation.

“CoMotion is one of the few places where a scooter operator, a transit planner, and an electric seaplane engineer can share the same stage…[addressing] the challenges across modes—finance, infrastructure, governance….and what turns experimentation into public benefit.” — Nick Perloff-Giles

Nick, introduce yourself to our readers and share what led you to the Shared-Use Mobility Center?

My name is Nick Perloff-Giles, and I’m a Program Coordinator at the Shared-Use Mobility Center, which is a nonprofit that advocates for and researches the wide world of shared mobility. That includes everything from carsharing, ride-hailing, micromobility, bikesharing—basically, anything that’s not riding in a private vehicle. Our mission is to encourage people to take mobility options that are safe, affordable, and sustainable.

My path to SUMC started when I was in grad school. I was interested in housing policy, specifically in California, because I grew up in San Francisco and later lived in L.A., and I’ve really felt the consequences of the housing crisis here. I became interested in how we could achieve greater affordability in housing. I think, as many people will tell you, once you’re exposed to land use and housing policy, it inevitably leads you toward mobility and transportation more broadly. I realized there’s such a deep, synchronous relationship between the two: you can’t achieve density without adequate transportation, and you can’t really have adequate, especially public, transportation without density.

So I got very interested in the problems of transportation, particularly in a place like Los Angeles. I found that shared mobility offered an intriguing solution: it provides more affordable ways to get around and helps solve a lot of the “last-mile” problems that our existing public transit infrastructure has struggled with. I was connected to SUMC through my professor and mentor at UCLA, Joshua Schank, who used to be at Metro’s Office of Extraordinary Innovation. 

Elaborate on those “last-mile” challenges?

I have an e-bike, and where it’s safe, I try to bike. I also believe, as someone working in transportation policy, in exposing myself to the inadequacies or gaps in the system. So whether that’s biking or taking transit, that’s usually how I try to handle those shorter trips where I really don’t want to drive.

But I will say—it’s consistently a challenge in a place like L.A., where the infrastructure is lacking. For example, my commute is only about ten minutes by bike, but it’s basically street after street of “shared” bike lanes right next to parked cars, which can be pretty daunting.

Regarding Metro’s former Office of Extraordinary Innovation, what explains Metro’s need for a rebranding?

I believe it’s now been rebranded as the Office of Strategic Innovation, which might be suggestive of its new direction. Joshua actually has a book coming out that reflects on his time there, and it’s pretty illuminating about both where the office came from and where it’s headed.

I think what we’re seeing is a shift in tone from what we saw in the 2010s. Back then, there was a lot of techno-enthusiasm—a focus on integrating new technologies and big, bold ideas. My understanding is that going forward, the office is refining its focus around a few core areas, like P3 unsolicited proposals, which were a big innovation of that period.

And, I’ll add, one of their tangible successes has been the “Thrones,” or these astonishingly clean public bathrooms next to Metro stops. Kudos to them for that. They’re also still working on projects like the gondola initiative and other long-term strategic plans, but overall, I think this reflects a move toward aligning the office more closely with Metro’s broader organizational goals.

Beyond SUMC, you also co-host the podcast, Fast Forward by CoMotion. Share its informational goals.

I think it’s been informative in a couple of ways, and it’s been a really fantastic experience. I’d encourage anyone to check out CoMotion’s Fast Forward podcast, which I have the honor of hosting. The first thing I’d say is that CoMotion—as a conference and as a brand—is really a believer in the multimodal nature of urban transportation systems. There aren’t any silver-bullet solutions that work for just one mode. Rather, there’s a kind of mosaic of solutions that have to come together.

And the pleasure of doing the podcast is that I get to talk with a huge diversity of people across different verticals. I’ve talked with folks in trucking policy, people at the Port of Long Beach, at L.A. Metro, and people developing autonomous takeoff-and-landing vehicles.

One thing that really shines through in those conversations is that many of the challenges are shared. For example, across all these modes, self-driving cars, automated aircraft, and even AI-based traffic enforcement, the technology almost always moves faster than the policy. There typically aren’t strong policy frameworks ready to guide or manage these technologies once they mature. I’d say that’s the main theme that emerges from the podcast: there’s still a pretty big gulf between the regulatory environment and what’s actually happening in technology. 

As CoMotion’s John Rossant often describes L.A. as a “laboratory for mobility,” speak to the opportunities for innovation at CoMotion and perhaps, at SUMC?

Yeah, I think this is something both CoMotion and SUMC think about, though in slightly different ways. At the Shared-Use Mobility Center, we’ve relaunched a series of what we’re calling Summits. These bring together practitioners like planners from transit agencies, advocates from nonprofits, and sometimes elected officials or their deputies, to have focused conversations about solving specific problems. We categorize the Summits by city and bring people together to compare experiences. We just held our first one in Chicago this September, and it was fascinating to see how different cities’ challenges are both unique and shared.

CoMotion’s approach, meanwhile, is more tech-forward and equally enthusiastic about multimodality. The notion of L.A. as a “laboratory” stems partly from California’s legacy as a hub of technological innovation—especially aerospace in Southern California—and partly from what I’d call the “blank-slate” nature of L.A. itself. Because L.A. has lagged in some aspects of urban innovation, that very fact can be motivating. 

People think: if you can solve it in L.A., you can solve it anywhere. That’s part of what drives the energy, calling Los Angeles a mobility laboratory.

Shared-use mobility—rideshare, micromobility, carshare—has been for a decade the next big thing. What’s changed today in the market since we heard from leaders like Lilly Shoup and others at Comotion years ago?

The story of shared mobility over the last decade is pretty analogous to other tech innovations over the same period. From the early 2010s through maybe 2018 or so, you saw a wave of companies that, thanks to very enthusiastic venture capital markets and extremely low interest rates, expanded rapidly and pursued scale, often at the expense of financial sustainability, and sometimes even environmental sustainability.

So, whether you look at Uber and Lyft, or Bird and Lime, or even earlier examples like Zipcar and other carshare models, you see a consistent story. There was massive growth, driven by almost bottomless venture capital appetite, followed over the last five or six years by consolidation. Especially in micromobility, we’ve seen that consolidation play out.

Now, in this new rate environment, the focus has shifted to true financial sustainability. The market has matured. Prices have gone up, ridership has leveled out, and many of these companies have gone public or are preparing to. The model has shifted toward fiscal discipline, which has affected the consumer side. Prices are higher, and many companies have pulled back from smaller markets. I’m talking here mainly about scooters and bikeshare.

With the emergence of companies like Waymo and others in the autonomous-vehicle space, the lesson learned from Bird, Lime, Uber, and Lyft is clear: new entrants are much more hesitant to “move fast and break things.” The newer generation of mobility companies is taking a much more regulator-first approach, rather than just running over local rules to achieve scale.

Would you agree that shared mobility remains the ‘next big thing’?

I’m still a firm believer that shared mobility holds real economic and social promise. What we’re seeing now is the maturation of the industry. It’s shrinking its horizons a bit, but becoming more realistic. That’s also why organizations like SUMC are working to make sure it remains affordable and accessible.

Ultimately, the fundamentals of shared mobility are great. But when it’s left entirely to market forces, it tends to exclude people who can’t pay premium prices. That’s where public participation and ultimately, public buy-in, become essential to ensure it continues serving everyone.

Following up, in 2016, Seleta Reynolds warned our readers that autonomous vehicles could actually increase car use. Are AVs still likely to complement shared-ride and public transit?

I think that’s still an open question, and I wouldn’t want to take too strong a stand either way, because I don’t think we have enough data yet. There’s research showing that when you lower the cost of something like ride-hail for users, people take more trips. These include more extraneous trips, things they might not have done otherwise. That increases vehicle miles traveled, or VMT.

On the other hand, one of the best predictors of whether people take transit or shared modes is whether they own a car in the first place. So if autonomous vehicles scale to the point that people can realistically give up car ownership, it could make it easier to connect them to other shared modes like transit, bikeshare, carshare, etc. It’s really an open question, but I hope that folks like Seleta at Metro, and others in leadership, are taking seriously the possibility that if we just let these technologies evolve on their own, we could end up with more VMT, not less.

What’s your assessment of programs like Metro Micro or the One Car Challenge? Are these pilots true innovations in first- and last-mile connectivity, or subsidized experiments struggling to scale?

I don’t think they’re struggling, necessarily, but I do know the cost structures have given some people pause. Folks are rethinking their long-term financial sustainability. In general, I’m enthusiastic about pilots, especially those around shared mobility. Identifying where they succeed is just as important as launching them. Too often, people treat pilots as the first phase of a permanent program instead of an experiment meant to test and refine ideas.

So what I’d encourage, whether it’s Metro Micro or the One Car Challenge or similar efforts, is to iterate based on what we learn—rather than just deploying and hoping for the best, or canceling them outright if they don’t immediately meet initial goals.

Having long supported partnerships between local governments and private operators, when should the public sector lead, and when should it simply enable?

In general, I’d love to see the public sector lead a bit more than it sometimes does at present, particularly in the context of shared mobility. That said, there are real benefits to the market dynamics of many shared mobility services. The competition they create can often yield better prices and faster innovation. On the other hand, if a program is exclusively contracted out or if public participation is minimal, it becomes much harder to iterate and adapt.

Starting from a place of strong public participation, especially in shared mobility, is the approach I’d lean toward. The public sector should set the vision and parameters, even when private partners are delivering the service.

Lastly, as CoMotion LA convenes this week, frame its importance for Los Angeles and the mobility field more broadly. What are you most looking forward to advancing or spotlighting through that platform and panel dialogue?

A quick plug for a conversation I’ll be having at CoMotion with Joshua Schank, who was the founding director of Metro’s Office of Extraordinary Innovation, and is a real thought leader in the transit space.

The special thing about CoMotion—whether it’s in Los Angeles, Miami, or now Riyadh in December—is the sheer breadth of people it brings together. Many mobility or transportation conferences focus narrowly on bikeshare, or on transit, but CoMotion identifies how the challenges overlap. The problems someone faces designing an electric seaplane might not be that different from those faced by someone building batteries for freight trucks. The challenges a bikeshare operator faces can resemble those of a public transit agency. That’s what I really like about CoMotion—the variety of perspectives and the recognition that these problems are interconnected.

Beyond that, it’s just exciting to see what’s new in the emerging technologies, pilot ideas, and prototypes. There aren’t many forums that showcase that kind of innovation in urban mobility. CoMotion is one of the few that truly does.