#transport-connectivity

#transport-connectivity

Joby Aviation and Air Space Intelligence announced a partnership to integrate AI-driven airspace management into U.S. electric air taxi operations, using ASI's Flyways AI platform to model high-density eVTOL traffic before commercial flights begin later this year.

AIDA's approach to IT infrastructure prioritizes availability through redundancy, with each vessel operating two physically separated data centers in different fire zones to ensure critical services remain operational.

Out of the company's first 80,000 deliveries the bots finished on campus, about 1,600 involved incidents of vandalism. At a cost of $2,500 per Kiwibot, the damage adds up quick.

"This project is symbolic of what we've done over the last 12 years, reshaping the streets and the city," Christophe Najovski, the city's deputy mayor in charge of green spaces, stated during the opening ceremony.

"Car-Free Earth Day is a reminder that we only have one planet-and that our streets play a critical role in our fight against climate change," said NYC DOT Commissioner Mike Flynn in an official statement.

The first three months of 2026 were among the three safest first-three-month periods since records started being kept at the dawn of the Automobile Age, with only 42 fatalities from car crashes in New York City.

It's tempting to frame autonomous driving as a single leap. In public transport, adoption tends to be incremental - because the system is built for reliability, and new capabilities have to fit into daily operations without disrupting service. That is why a practical strategy is evolution, not revolution: introduce autonomy in a defined domain, learn safely in real operations, and expand capability step-by-step.

For more than a decade, autonomous buses have been "almost ready." Demonstrations with safety drivers began around 2015, and ten years later, this is still largely what we see. The reason is not a lack of ambition - it is physics, safety, and economics. Autonomous buses on city streets are inherently difficult. They carry dozens of passengers, operate as heavy vehicles, and move through a chaotic urban environment.

Urban logistics is entering a new era where practical technology drives meaningful results. Today, more than 55% of people live in cities, and urbanization is expected to rise to 68% by 2050, placing intense pressure on delivery networks to keep up with growing demand. U.S. e-commerce is projected to reach $1.1 trillion in sales by 2026, heightening expectations for faster and more reliable last-mile service.

Every city contains two transportation systems. One is the visible network of roads, rail lines, sidewalks, and bus routes mapped in planning documents. The other is the invisible geography of privilege and exclusion embedded within it: the neighborhoods that received highways instead of parks, the communities whose bus routes were cut, the sidewalks that abruptly end at the edge of a district.