Podcast 58: ITS America's Laura Chace on Detroit 2026 and innovation across the industry

Tom Stone Detroit was my first ever ITS World Congress. when I first started in this job, were you at that one? Laura Chace I was not I that was 2014. I actually joined, mid year in 2015.

But I, I will tell you, I hear from a lot of people the exact same sentence that you just said, which was Detroit was my first world Congress. A lot of people, and that was their first kind of exposure to our event. And, the sort of newer iterations of this technology, a lot of people talk about being on Belle Isle and getting in an automated vehicle for the very first time in Detroit. Tom Stone Yeah, that happened to me, I think.

Yeah, I was a Honda, had a great sort of on highway, demonstration of, of some early autonomous vehicle technology, at that event. But yeah, yeah, we've moved, we've moved on a bit since then. So yeah, there's a few different strands we can pick up there. firstly, Detroit as a venue, returning to Detroit, having been, a very successful world Congress there, I think in 2014, like you say, a lot of people that was there first.

And I guess that's no surprise in that it attracted a lot of people. There were a lot of people there. And it's, traditionally the center of automotive in the USA. Laura Chace So first of all, Detroit is always, a great city, for us to host, our event in, we actually went there in 2018 as well for our annual.

So we were there in 2014 for the world Congress and then 2018 for the annual. And now, coming back in 2026, to your point, it really is the home of automotive. And, ultimately ITS technologies are technologies that need to work in concert with automotive and infrastructure. And so it really is, a city that sort of exemplifies how these technologies can work in a system.

and right in the backyard of the, the US based automaker. So, and I feel like the folks in Detroit are very up on transportation on what's new in transportation. they care about it. It's these, these automakers are huge employers, in their city and they're very proud of it.

And so it's a great city for us to go to, and to bring our, community, our national community and even international community, of ITS practitioners to. So we're super excited to go to Detroit. But since you mentioned, the past, I do want to just put a plug. So we're celebrating ITS America's 35th anniversary this year.

And so, and as part of that, I think what you're going to see in Detroit, kind of to my, from my perspective, ties into that. So when ITS systems started, they were really focused on, localized hardware driven solutions and tools. this is back in, early 1990s, here we are in 2026 and we're really in more of this like hyper connected, AI powered software based ecosystem. And so we're really seeing so many more new tools and new ways to, bring solutions into the transportation system to make things safer and smarter and more efficient.

and so I think you'll see that in Detroit. one of the things I want to highlight for you is which I think is different to your point, is we're creating what we're calling these integrated demonstration experiences. So if you think back to probably what you recall from an ITS America conference. You have an exhibit floor.

You have tech tours where you go out to a facility and you see, maybe it's a TMC, maybe it's some other kind of technology in action. And then you have demonstrations. And typically we've had a demonstration, a lot where you have stationary demonstrations. You might, you'll have some mobile demonstrations.

And you've seen those in the past, whether it be an automated shuttle driving around or, maybe you've had the experience of being able to, be on a bike and get, see a notification or on a vehicle and see a notification of a cyclist, that kind of thing. Right? What we're doing this time, and we started this in Atlanta is we're saying these solutions and technologies have evolved to a point where they need to be shown live in the system. So not a demonstration as we've typically thought of them in the past.

So we're calling them these integrated experiences. And so we're going to have four of these in Detroit. We're working very closely with Michigan DOT on these. they're a fantastic partner.

They are of course, as very forward thinking, right when it comes to technology deployment. so these experiences are going to showcase multiple different technologies from multiple different vendors in one, let's say drive or one vehicle. So, and then, in the past it would be like, okay, you'd go to see, the technology from X company and you'd see that. Kind of, in isolation.

And then you'd go to another vendor, you'd see the technology from that company, and you'd see it kind of in isolation. What we're doing here is we're saying you need to be able to integrate with MDOT's network. And if your solution can integrate, then we're going to show various different solutions from various different vendors all within one ride. So so we have a freeway experience.

We're calling it the I-94 freeway experience. where you're going to be able to, so you're going to get, in a shuttle and drive out on the freeway and you're able to see some connected. and ITS technology solutions in action. We're going to have an intelligent, corridor experience called the Woodward Corridor, which is sort of right outside the convention center.

And you're going to see that in more of an urban environment. So you'll be able to see, and a lot of this is going to be applications, that are showing how we can do, connected messages without relying on roadside units. Applications that are pulling data from both, both direct and networked sources and displaying that in traditional navigation formats. so you'll see multiple different, solution providers in each.

And then we also have two experiences with automated shuttles. Artistic is providing automated shuttles that will take you over to, so we'll have a smart parking lab, experience where they're going to be able to see integrated parking and charging systems, leader informed parking stackers, wireless and robotic EV charging, ground based robots, drone cargo delivery. ET cetera. ET cetera.

ET cetera. And then at new lab, we also will have automated shuttle that will take you over to new lab. they're, a space that is a venture platform for critical technology startups and, and so they have, a lot of different technology, on display, that, that are basically these startups that are trying to commercialize, in new lab. And so, so we're doing those integrated experiences, which is different because what we heard in Atlanta was when we did this in Atlanta, we did this with, connected vehicle technology through Georgia DOT's network.

And what people said was that made it very real and it was very helpful to see how this technology is integrated into a live operating system. As opposed to, something kind of off to the side. that is being set up for a demonstration. So I think that is definitely going to be different from what we've seen and done in the past.

And then we will have a couple of separate technical tours. Just kind of in that vein of, of technical tours where you just go and do that separately, we'll have a couple of those. So I want to at least start with that and just let that that's something we're excited about and excited for people to experience. Tom Stone That is exciting.

And I'm more like, you say, a more real world, you're getting an idea of how these things, will be or already in some cases already are being deployed in the real world. Laura Chace Yeah. And I think, I think we're at a point right now where obviously you've been around this industry, you've seen there's been a lot of pilots. A lot of great work and pilots that have happened.

I think the real challenge is how do you scale these technologies into your networks, and how do you integrate multiple technologies and get that interoperability between vendors, between solutions? And that's what we're going to be showing. And I think that is the path, one of the, the paths to scalability. and, there is no one size fits all solution.

Depending on what your, conditions are, whether it's a freeway environment, whether it's an urban environment, whether it's a rural environment, you might need different ITS solutions to help you. to help solve your challenges. And so that's why being able to show different solutions that are integrating into the network to all work together, I think is, is the future and is, is impactful. I think what you're also seeing is that, so if you think about, the cars coming off the assembly line now, some order of ninety percent or higher are connected, Sort of depends on what stat you look at.

Right. But ninety percent plus right of, of cars coming off the assembly line are connected. And you're seeing that, with, Hoss alert and Stellantis, they have a partnership where they're pulling in information, network based information into the vehicle to warn drivers of work zones. To warn drivers of emergency vehicle stopped on the side of the road.

to wrong-way driving alerts, things like that. So they're, they're already using data and information and pulling into the vehicle interface. in certain scenarios. that that's exciting.

We hope that, that uptake, increases, And that ultimately we want to be able to have the standardized environment to allow for that information to be coming into all vehicles eventually. Right. And to be able to, to give alerts and warnings to all drivers. Tom Stone That's one of the challenges, isn't it?

Getting, cooperation between, different OEMs, particularly OEMs. I think maybe dots perhaps are a little bit better at cooperating, but but the OEMs are maybe a little bit more protective sometimes of their data. Yeah. But that but that's perhaps where, where ITS America.

And events like this can help to sort of try to break down those silos. Laura Chace Right. Exactly. And I think, I think everybody wants they want to have common interfaces.

They obviously need common data standards. They want to, I think the OEMs, right, are very close to their customers. They want to understand what is it going to look like? What is it, how is it going to show up right in our in our interface?

And so I think that those are all conversations where we're helping to convene the national community around a national strategic approach to all of these digital technologies. So even beyond sort of just the tech side, we call it digital infrastructure, but it is what is that national strategic approach that is going to allow for all the private sector vendors, all of the, public sector entities, state cities, to all be plugging into a national approach. A seamless national approach that's interoperable.

And that's, that's what we're working on. And there's a lot of interest in that. There's a lot of interest and a lot of engagement because everyone understands that is the future and they understand we do need a common interoperable approach. Tom Stone thinking about local area.

Michigan DOT of course, and the and the and the OEMs and the other big one being University of Michigan, which has always done a lot of work in terms of like mobility research and city, I think was their test test facility. Are they going to be involved in this event in some way? Laura Chace Yeah, absolutely. They definitely are.

In fact, we're going to be doing a technical tour to Em City, where you can, see their, their test environment. Right. And as you pointed out, they do, they have this, this real world city test environment. They have a couple of newish things, which I think are really interesting.

So, about maybe a year and a half ago, they actually created, I think they call it em city 2.0, but they created a virtual environment. It's essentially a digital twin of their physical environment. And so, researchers from around the world can actually, through their digital twin access and control, vehicles and such and stoplights on the ground in Mcity through this digital twin environment.

So it's really interesting because it basically took what is a localized testing environment and made it accessible globally. and so that's been really interesting and, and partner with a lot of different universities and researchers to test stuff on their, in, within their city environment. The other thing that they just launched, maybe in the last six months is Em air. So they're basically launching essentially a test facility for, advanced air mobility, drones.

and, and that sort of third dimension, of transportation at em City. And so that's new and exciting. I think the people who go on the tour will be able to, to get a sense of what they're doing in that realm. And I know I'll just say this, I know there's a, there's a, a drone route between em city and the, I believe it's the, new lab in downtown Detroit, where they're testing some of this, uncrewed, drones, and UAS systems.

So I think that's really exciting. and new. Tom Stone That certainly is. Yeah.

Keep, keep, keep an eye on all that sort of thing. And the, even like, urban air mobility with some of these sort of evtols actually taking people around people around by, by the, by these methods. That's, another thing that's, well, it's one of those future technologies that we wonder if, how, how, whether that will ever, ever come to pass. But, I know maybe it will.

Laura Chace Well, and on the, on the, yes, on the people side. Right. I think, it'll, it'll take, they're, they're working on it right in certain cities and it'll take a little time. But actually we're seeing so much more use of drones by departments of transportation for different purposes, whether that be traffic management, purposes, whether that be emergency response, bridge inspections, infrastructure inspections, you sometimes using them for support around large events.

there are just, there are a lot of use cases that are, just evolving with the use of drones. So even on that side of things, right on the sort of, you've got the, you've got the sort of drone, let's call it intelligence, side where you might be able to fly a drone and then get your intelligence, your, your vision intelligence back. you've got the cargo delivery side of, aircraft. And then you've got the people delivery side and all of that is moving forward.

But we're seeing a lot of new use cases in the, with the drones. Tom Stone Yeah. I was just reading about this morning about the first responder case. I think of like, actually getting out there to, to, to, to help first responders get to sites quicker.

And even within the same company, they were talking about doing, even being able to do license plate reads from drones. so that a sort of law enforcement aspect to it there as well. So, yeah, it's something, in fact, it's a subject that we're probably overdue a, a deep dive into in the magazines. And that's, yeah, that's, that's for another day.

But it's a good, it's a good unifying theme. back to the, conference itself. Do you, can you, can you tell me about any, that you have, planned yet for the event? Laura Chace our theme is empowering innovation.

and as I mentioned at the very beginning of this, right, it's our, it's our 35th anniversary. So, our plenaries are going to, talk a little bit about, the first one, we'll talk a little bit about sort of how far we've come. So, how far has this technology come and, and where are we today and how are we, how are we poised to move forward? And then the, the second plenary is really going to talk about, the future.

So taking all of the, the great tools and technologies we have now into the future. And this is all right within the backdrop of, we've got automated vehicles now, that you can call in the US in ten different cities. You can, call a Waymo. We've got.

And then and then about ten more cities have been announced for future deployment. Right. So this is not like go to a test track and test this out. This is live deployed in cities.

like I said, we're going to be showing, how, these connected applications can work from various different providers, using data without having to rely on necessarily, roadside units or other hardware that can be done through cloud based and network services. and so, you're in this environment where you have so many more sensors and data and information that we're able to capture. and so that's what we're going to be showcasing, talking about, obviously AI is going to be a big topic of conversation.

It always is these days. Avs as we mentioned. Because it's not just on the robotaxi side. You've got automated freight, being hauled in Texas.

You've got, public transit systems that are deploying automated vehicles. So you're seeing automation being deployed across different form factors. and so we're going to be talking about, all of these different advances, and how we're moving forward to scale these technologies. Tom Stone on the automated vehicle robotaxi side of things.

It's interesting in that like, we're only just starting pilots. They've not even started yet in London. and I think there's some sort of suspicion as to, oh, well, in the US they have good weather all the time and like, these, then they have a grid, grid layout of their streets. And these, all these taxis are actually all being overseen remotely.

And like, then then they're not, they're not truly autonomous and they're hugely expensive. And like, are they ever really going to become a thing? But it's in about ten different cities. what?

Do you have a sense on that? I know you're not a particular expert in this, but what's what's your what's your sense on that? Is it is it a real thing or is it just a it, is it still a way off, becoming an everyday reality? Laura Chace So I would say it's definitely a real thing here.

And it's growing and expanding. And I've ridden in, in, in Waymo, Waymo is the biggest, vendor here. And I think they're, they're launching in, in, London or they're, they. Speaker 4 They are.

Tom Stone Launching their pilots this year. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Laura Chace And Zoox also is starting to launch here there in Vegas and a couple cities. so I've ridden them and I've ridden in Waymo's in San Francisco and Phoenix in Atlanta.

And I will say this, yes, they started in, cities where you have better weather. And, and all the companies do that. right, that makes sense. But they are expanding to cities that aren't known for great weather all the time.

Right. and I think that's because the technology has, has gotten better and better, And that they feel, that they have more confidence in the system to be able to handle different conditions now. I have no insight into, how Waymo determines whether whatnot, but, perhaps they will have, sort of gating for if it is very snowy or the weather is really terrible. are they going to operate?

I don't know those details, but what I do know is like, Atlanta gets pretty torrential rainstorms and I have not heard of, the company like shutting down their service or something because of weather. So from what I understand, they're able to operate through different weather, weather patterns. and then I will say, I think, again, not being in the, not being in the back end of their systems, what, what I do know is that, the companies will tell you that they're not people are not remote driving the vehicles.

There is a remote assistance network. So when something happens and the vehicle, for whatever reason, either needs support or, can't function as normal for, for various reasons. There is a remote assistance, operator. Right.

Who can intervene, but they're not remotely driving the vehicle. They might be giving the vehicle a command to do something, but they're not like taking over and driving the vehicle. And I think that's, that's for both safety issues. That's for some latency issues.

Right. And so these vehicles are, driving based on their, their own systems. they do, Waymo does pre map. They, they, they map the cities.

and I will say, like, I think the technology has been pretty good. Like when I've ridden in them, it's actually been much better than, I'd say previous iterations of, of Avs that I've driven in much smoother and more human like. So I do think it's real. I do think it's growing.

I do think that certain environments are going to be more challenging or less challenging for automated vehicles. but I think that the companies are kind of evaluating those as they, as they start to deploy. Tom Stone Yeah. It's interesting.

like, because obviously the technology has been sort of developing for a while. And like, as you say, many people had their first ride, as I did at the 2014, event in, in Detroit. but now it's quite different. And now it's sort of like, I suppose it, it ties in with, with AI, doesn't it?

And the sort of learning capability that it has to actually understand in a way, its, its surroundings in a way that's not sort of having to pre pre-program every single possible eventuality which, which it might have been like, twelve years ago. so it does, does open that up and, and so, just, just, just as a, as a final point on the technology, AI, we, we mentioned already, of course, and, and that, but that is now coming beyond autonomous vehicles. We're seeing that it's been around for a while in terms of like license plate recognition and, deep learning and all that sort of stuff.

But, now, the thing I was at, Intertraffic Amsterdam, a couple of weeks ago. And, one of the big things there was, natural language query a lot of the vendors doing like, natural language query of all these things and being able to cut and slice data in so many different ways. what's, what's your, what's your take on, on sort of AI usage, now and in the future in ITS. Laura Chace Yeah.

So I think a couple of things. I think you're right, AI has been around for a really long time. And that's sort of what we said at the start of the, let's call it the ChatGPT, kind of craze. I think that the difference is, to your point, the new large language models and the new forms of AI allow you to interact with data in a very different way.

So it used to be that you had to like know your stuff, you had to be a software engineer, you had to really understand. the AI systems to effectively kind of interact with these tools. Now you can talk to it. So you can all of a sudden talk to and query your data.

You don't have to have a degree in anything to do that. Right. And so, a traffic engineer can do that. In fact, there's one company in our space who's creating these systems.

So a traffic engineer can really query their system and, and then be able to, get the data that they need and the insights that they need. by querying their system and understanding what's happening within my environment and how can I maybe adjust, things to, to fix it that's totally different than, than how we're used to interacting with data. So I think it makes it more accessible to a whole host of people. so I think that's one, so I think that these tools are just making this much more accessible.

I think also there's so much more data out there, as right? Like, everything is a data source, right from your phones to your sensors to the vehicles. And there's so much more data out there. So you have this rich environment to actually pull information from.

so we're seeing a lot of different use cases of AI across a whole host of different, areas. I think that, that, what we're focused on right now though, and I think the real challenge is that, AI is only as good as the data. That, that it's pulling from. And so data, so data governance, security, privacy, those are real core issues.

If you're going to be using these AI systems. And that's what our. So we have an AI, committee and they're really focused on those issues. Like how do public agencies create the data governance needed, right, for these AI systems to ensure that they have the right sort of back end?

You know what I mean on the data side to be able to leverage these tools and get the outputs that they really need. And so I think that's, that's really where we're focused, is really understanding how to structure and govern data in a way that it's going to allow for the outputs that are going to be the most helpful. but, and we've created a couple of resources on AI over the past like two years but I do think it's transforming everything from traffic management to infrastructure inspection to asset management, to planning.

to design and build. Right. there's, it's, it's really transforming every aspect of transportation. just because there are so many use cases for AI.

But having said that, I'll say it again, it's all dependent on having good data and good systems that are feeding that AI. Tom Stone Yeah. You still need those experts to, to get the data in. It may open up new job opportunities for people who maybe wouldn't have been able to get into traffic management before, but now can because, you can query.

So naturally what the what your problem is and get an answer. But yeah, the point about data is, is, is an excellent one. And it's, and it's, and it's true for whatever you use AI for, I think, isn't it? If you, if you don't have good input, then you don't get good output and.

But the risk being, of course, that AI is quite good at pretending that what it's saying is, is, is genuinely true. But if it's starting off with bad data, then it's probably not. Laura Chace Yeah. Having all those, I call it like the infrastructure, having all that infrastructure for your AI systems and the good data governance and, and, and, back end system is part of what's going to allow you to, to really trust and rely on the AI output.

Because to your point, you could query data and you could get an output, but if you don't trust that, or if you don't really know that that's accurate, it's not going to be all that helpful. And so, you have to be able to, put the time and resources in to ensure that your, your data governance and your systems are, in the right place. So you can trust those outputs.