A five-year plan to improve mobility throughout Austin was announced Sept. 14 at City Hall.
Rocky Mountain Institute, a Colorado-based nonprofit that promotes environmental-friendly energy use throughout the world, picked Austin as its lead city to implement short- and long-term transportation solutions. The “transformative” partnership will rely on emerging technology and other innovations to reduce congestion, commute times and carbon emissions, Mayor Steve Adler said during a press conference.
“This partnership will help Austin to lead the world in transportation innovation,” Adler said.
Many of these solutions anticipated to emerge from this partnership will come from businesses as well as industry leaders and entrepreneurs, said Jeruld Weiland, managing director of RMI’s Mobility Transformation program.
“We need to leverage Austin’s best and brightest. It’s going to take all of us,” Weiland said. “We can’t do this for you, but we can do it with you.”
RMI will have six to eight staff members come to Austin to begin assessing the city’s transportation needs before proposing or implementing any solutions, he said.
“It’s not going to happen overnight—I should set some expectations upfront,” Weiland said. “There isn’t any silver bullet.”
RMI also picked the city of Denver as a secondary partner to see if ideas that work in Austin can be scaled elsewhere, according to Weiland.
Council Member Ann Kitchen, District 5 representative and Mobility Council Committee chairperson, said the city can immediately begin thinking about ways to streamline public transit information as well as enable the use of more electric and self-driving vehicles.
“If we’re going to have an effective transportation system, it’s more about choice than infrastructure,” Kitchen said.
City officials in follow-up questions emphasized that any ideas to emerge from the partnership will keep the environment in mind when considering mobility solutions.
For more information about RMI, visit the nonprofit’s website at
https://www.rmi.org.
Joe Lanane’s career is rooted in community journalism, having worked for a variety of Midwest-area publications before landing south of the Mason-Dixon line in 2011 as the Stillwater News-Press news editor. He arrived at Community Impact Newspaper in 2012, gaining experience as editor of the company’s second-oldest publication in Leander/Cedar Park. He eventually became Central Austin editor, covering City Hall and the urban core of the city.
Lanane leveraged that experience to become Austin managing editor in 2016. He managed eight Central Texas editions from Georgetown to San Marcos. Working from company headquarters, Lanane also became heavily involved in enacting corporate-wide editorial improvements. In 2017, Lanane was promoted to executive editor, overseeing editorial operations throughout the company. The Illinois native received his bachelor’s degree from Western Illinois University and his journalism master’s degree from Ball State University.
