Like many of you out there, I consider myself an Uber “super user” – although I am lucky to live within walking distance of the Deloitte Rosslyn office, depending on how the morning goes with my young twins, my morning walk often turns into a quick Uber ride across Key Bridge. Additionally, when I travel for client work, I rely heavily on being able to almost instantly transport myself from place to place. This near-instant access to a variety of transportation options, paired with the decreased necessity for advanced planning, has been a game-changer for me and many other urban dwellers. Though I more often reach for my smartphone instead of my keys when planning my day, I am still stuck in the middle and haven’t yet given up the cars in the garage.
The shift away from more traditional transportation means (think: individual vehicle ownership and Metro) will continue to change individual lives and impact the way we – as users and consumers of mobility and transportation products – choose to move around our cities, country, and world. Some of these changes have already emerged, as we’re seeing more commuters on bikes and others seeking to live within walking distance of work.
The future of our individual and collective mobility is top-of-mind for leaders across industries and the public sector. As I discussed in a previous post, our Deloitte teams are leading the charge to help our Federal and Commercial clients determine the role they will play in shaping the future of mobility for their organization, employees, mission, and the American people. We are starting by honing in on client needs along a retail to regulator spectrum.
We begin the spectrum by identifying clients that will play a leading role in using, developing, and regulating autonomous vehicles and the shared mobility economy. We use this spectrum to better understand the role each organization will play in the autonomous transportation landscape.
We start by identifying the “super users” of vehicles, from trucks to light-weight automobiles. These are the clients whose business practices will be highly impacted by the shift in mobility options. According to the General Services Administration’s (GSA) most recently-published fleet data set (available in an easy-to-use web-enabled Tableau format) the Federal Government has an inventory of over 630,000 vehicles which travel 4.6 billion miles a year at a cost of over $4 billion. It will come as no surprise that the Federal Government’s “super user” is the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), which alone has over 200,000 vehicles in its fleet. This makes USPS the largest civilian vehicle fleet in the world.
An additional “super user” – who provides services across the government and will need to consider new technologies and customer needs – is GSA, whose fleet provides over 200,000 vehicles to other Federal Government agencies on a on a fee-for-service basis. Think of it as the government’s first step in being part of the sharing economy, like an internal government version of Zipcar.
There are some key areas that we encourage the Federal Government and “super users” to consider when updating their strategy to address the future of mobility. These include the availability of relevant technology, business and operations support needs, supplier relationships, service delivery implications, and short- and long-term funding and labor implications.
This is just the beginning of our thinking and work to keep our clients on top of these trends, while focusing on the core of their mission to provide services to the American people. So, as I seek that 5.0 rating as an Uber user and continue to change my family’s behavior (we are hoping to be a one car household soon), I am striving to help our clients address similar issues, but on a much larger scale. Stay tuned for more insight into how we are tackling these issues, on our commute to work and in the board room.