Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Tamlyn Shimizu: Where we bring together top actors in the smart city arena, sparking dialogues and interactions around the stakeholders and themes most prevalent for today's citizens and tomorrow's generations. I am your host, Tamlyn Shimizu, and I hope you'll enjoy this episode and gain knowledge and connections to accelerate the change for a better urban life.
So welcome back, everyone. I think you all know probably by now, if you've been listening for a while, that mobility is definitely a favorite topic of mine and one that I'm also involved myself in with. Yeah, many interesting initiatives, events, networks and more. So the topic today that we will be discussing is around public transport and more. So if you're interested in that topic, definitely stick around. I'm about to introduce you to our amazing guest today. His name is Mohamed Mezghani. He's the Secretary General of the International association of Public Transport, otherwise known as uitp. Welcome, Mohamed.
Yeah, absolutely, my pleasure.
[00:00:58] Mohamed Mezghani: Thank you very much for the invitation.
[00:00:59] Tamlyn Shimizy: I'm excited to understand more about how you view mobility and public transport and your work within the field. But before we get into all that, I like to start with a little bit of a warm up question to get us going.
That warm up question for you today is can you describe UITP's mission using just three emojis?
[00:01:25] Mohamed Mezghani: So I would.
[00:01:28] Tamlyn Shimizu: Easy. One, right.
[00:01:28] Mohamed Mezghani: Public transport vehicle. Of course. Maybe a bus. A bus. Let's. Yeah, let's say a bus, which is the, the common one.
Then two shaking hands.
Yeah, to illustrate collaboration and sharing and result and the happy person, you know.
[00:01:48] Tamlyn Shimizu: Because it's very good. Yeah, well done. It's hard to describe things in just emojis, but I think you did brilliantly. So now I want to get a little bit more into who are you? What is your background? Where did you come from? What led you into your role today?
[00:02:08] Mohamed Mezghani: So I grew up in Tunisia.
I studied. I was born there and I studied there in Tunisia. And I studied engineering. First industrial engineering and then I moved to France to study transportation.
Because when I was a student in Tunisia, I had a visiting professor from Switzerland from the Polytechnical School of Lausanne who taught us about mobility.
And then I felt that I wanted to really study more that field and I moved to Paris for that. I studied urban mobility.
Then I started working in a consulting company, especially on transport projects, but not only so on a diversity of projects and topics. At a certain time I.
I felt the need to focus on one topic, I would say to be more consistent on the different projects I work on. And I decided to focus on public transport.
And So I joined UITP. It was more than 25 years ago, joined UITP as a manager in a newly established knowledge department.
So I was one of the first. Let's say expert, I don't want to use this word because we. Yeah, I'm far from being an expert, but at least someone who works on the topic itself, on the public transport topics.
And then I became the head of the department. Then I moved to Dubai to launch the UITP office in Dubai. Then I came back, I was appointed Deputy Secretary General of UITP and then secretary general since 2018.
And yeah, so, yeah, quite the journey.
[00:04:10] Tamlyn Shimizu: I also have to mention that I've spent like a month in Tunis at some point and I love Tunisia and I think it has the best bread in the world, Malawi.
[00:04:24] Mohamed Mezghani: Do you agree?
[00:04:25] Tamlyn Shimizu: You weren't.
[00:04:28] Mohamed Mezghani: Okay, I agree.
I. I know, I know. But when I go there, it's this kind of food.
[00:04:35] Tamlyn Shimizu: But so really interesting background. You have over 30 plus years of experience in public transport, urban mobility.
How have you seen everything evolve over this time? Urban mobility policies evolving, especially when you're thinking of terms of integrating sustainable transport solutions into city planning. Tell us about kind of this evolution that you've seen over these.
A lot has happened.
[00:05:06] Mohamed Mezghani: Yeah, indeed a lot has happened during this years, I would say.
So if I look back 30 years ago, urban mobility was considered as a technical issue, as a problem to be tackled by engineering solutions.
So urban mobility used to be led by road and civil engineers, maybe mostly. Sorry.
Their main focus was to build infrastructure mainly to accommodate the traffic growth without necessarily considering the demand management.
And it was the same in the public transport sector where planning department were mainly composed of engineers. So most of the public transport companies didn't have proper marketing department in charge of analyzing the needs, so in charge of studying the demand.
So it was the supply which was driving the system definition.
So the situation has evolved since then. We realized that it's essential to know the demand, to analyze the expectations.
So it's not about asking people to adapt to the offer, but to define the offer based on the people's needs.
This is the main challenge.
And by people, I mean the different categories of people, I mean the different travel purposes, etc. So this is one important evolution, I would say.
And also the growing concern about climate change, air pollution, road safety, social inclusion, they all have redefined the way urban mobility policies are defined. These are relatively new topics that emerged during the last 20 years.
And then we have the emergence of new technologies such as digitalization, electrification, automation, now which is more and more important. So this new technology, they have created many opportunities to be more customer centric, to develop tailor made solutions to improve the integration between modes and services, to reduce the cost of maintenance, to make operations more efficient. So they came with many benefits I would say for mobility.
And so the combination of the emergence of technologies, the growing concern about climate change, about social inclusion, for example, the focus on managing demand rather than just growing the supply.
So this made the priority now is to make the most, I would say of the most out of this innovative technologies for the benefit of people, for the benefit of the economy and the environment. So it's the multi criteria approach that we have now that is becoming very, very important and making good.
[00:08:28] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, you always trade one problem for another problem and then somehow make it more complex. I think one of your talking about complexity, one of your also main areas of expertise is also around regulatory frameworks.
What do you think from your perspective are the biggest challenges that cities are facing when creating efficient governance structures for public transportation?
[00:08:55] Mohamed Mezghani: Yeah, so governance is key for public transport.
As I said, it's not just a technical issue. Public transport is really a political issue, a social issue. And of course governance is important.
And the good governance system is a system where responsibilities are clearly defined and distributed between the different stakeholders in order to create a fair market conditions. So this transparency and this clear distribution is important.
And in public transport, I would say in urban affairs, maybe generally speaking there are three levels of responsibilities.
The strategic level, the tactical level and the operational level. So the strategic level is, is about the, is controlled by the policymakers.
It's the formulation of the general goals or and targets. For example, in public transport is what are the, what is the territory served? Do we want to serve the city? Do we want to serve the region, the metropolitan area?
What are the general accessibility goals? For example, we want 80% of our population to be at less than 15 minutes from any bus stop, for example. So this what kind of subsidy levels we want for public transport. So these are have to be defined by the policymakers at political level. So this is what we call the strategic level. And then these strategic objectives are translated into the tactical level which is controlled by the administrative authority, by public transport authority. So there we will define which tariffs we want, the routes, the modes, the timetable, the type of service, so what kind of products at the end we are offering to our, to our population.
And then the operational level, which is under the responsibility of the operator, the public transport company. And there of course we'll define the needs of staff of vehicles, of maintenance policies, etc, etc. The human resource management and so on. So the main challenge in this structure is that in many cities the strategic and the tactical levels are merged. Sometimes it's like we tend to merge the political decision with the administrative decision, or that the tactical and the operational levels are merged. That means that sometimes the authority will interfere in what the operator has to do.
So it means that the distribution of responsibility is not done properly and therefore the decision making process is not clear, may not be clear anyway.
So to avoid this confusion, we need public transport authorities to cover the tactical level.
So really if we want to distinguish between the three levels, it's important to have public transport authorities.
We, it's of course we have more and more authorities, but it's still very limited to some few cities, mainly in Europe, but in other, on other continents of course as well, but their numbers is limited. So. So the role is to organize public transport or mobility, considering the political priorities, then to delegate the operations to an operator who could be public or private. So this is the role of the tactical level of the public transport authority is to be really the transition, transitioning, helping the transition between the political decisions and the operation on the ground.
And also it's important that the political level doesn't interfere in the tactical level. Sometimes we see for example, a mayor saying we are going to develop a metro.
But the decision to develop the decision may belong to the mayor, of course, but we cannot decide to implement the metro and then start studying the feasibility of a metro. We should first study which is the optimal mode for the city. And then if it's a metro, okay, it's to the mayor to announce it.
But you know, and this interference, sometimes it's not good for a structured approach.
And one last aspect is that sometimes we see also the way the national level, the regional level, the local level interact is very important. And we see in some countries decisions are taken at national level, which should be taken at local level. Or sometimes we see in Europe we have the supranational level, even because we have the European Union, who also takes decision, who could have an impact at local level. So this interaction is important to be well coordinated, to make sure we have the right approach. So I would say to summarize, an efficient governance structure can only be achieved by making sure responsibilities are clearly assigned and by really well explained.
[00:14:09] Tamlyn Shimizu: I really like your way of looking at this and structuring this. It's really clear on how we. Because as we said, it's very complex issues and when we talk about governance.
It's sometimes not concrete enough for us to grasp at times. So thank you for explaining that so well.
Uitp.
Can you tell us more about what UITP does, the background for today's discussion, and also just anything else in your work that really maybe inspires your thoughts that you already were sharing today?
[00:14:53] Mohamed Mezghani: No, I mean what UITP does.
First, UITP was established initially as an association of tramways, actually European Tramways Operators association. It was 140 years ago, in 1885. We are celebrating this year 140th anniversary of UITP.
UITP.
There are maybe three or four main aspects that I would like to highlight regarding UITP.
First, it's a multimodal association, means we cover all modes, metros and buses and water transport and shared modes and on demand mode, taxis, ride hailing, etc. And in urban areas mainly, then it's a multi stakeholders association, means we have the authorities, the operators, the supplying industry, the consultants, I would say anyone who has an interest in public transport or who is involved in public transport. And we have now about 1,900 companies, organization member of UITP.
And the third dimension is the global dimension of UITP. So it's an international association. We are present in about 100 countries and our objective is to grow the number of members outside of Europe.
Now we have about 62% of our members from Europe.
Our objective is to have by 2028, 50. 50, of course, by growing the numbers outside the numbers outside of Europe. And then the fourth aspect is that we are independent from. From any industrial or financial interest. UITP belongs to the members.
The members are at the same time the shareholders and those who benefit from the services that UITP offer them or develop for them. So, and our mission in general is to put public transport on the political agenda and promote the benefits of public transport, showing that public transport is an investment and not cost.
This is the first mission, or the first element of the mission. The second one is to generate and share knowledge on public transport and urban mobility. So we want to be the center of knowledge.
We carry out research, we develop training programs, we of course have a number of committees, working groups, etc. So this is important. The knowledge dimension. And the third dimension is to provide the platform for the public transport professionals, for public transport leaders and others to meet, to develop relations and to learn from each other. So the advocacy, knowledge and networking are the three pillars.
[00:17:55] Tamlyn Shimizu: Well explained on your mission.
And you have a summit coming up, I believe. Right.
And you do these annual events as well?
[00:18:07] Mohamed Mezghani: Indeed. So the summit is the flagship event of uitp. So the next edition is very soon in Hamburg from the 15th to the 18th of June. And starting this year the summit will be an annual event.
So after Hamburg we'll go to Dubai next year and so on. So every year we'll have one event in Europe and the year after outside of Europe and it's there where we gather the, the public, the community of public transport. So Hamburg will be like the world public transport capital city for one week, you know, where we have a big exhibition. We expect thousands of participants. Some ministers have already also confirmed their participation, other officials and really we want to, yeah, during that period of time, attract the attention about public transport, the benefits of public transport.
[00:19:02] Tamlyn Shimizu: Exciting. I'm actually not able to attend this year and I'm quite disappointed because I have other conflicts. But my colleague will be there also on the ground with the podcast.
So we're excited to be there and get to explore with a lot more of your speakers and visitors, et cetera.
And thank you for the invite also to you and your team for doing that.
Want to ask you also, what are you seeing as we go into this summit? What are the most kind of promising trends that you're seeing? I don't know if trends is the really the right word, but really how are you seeing this evolution going into say 2030?
[00:19:46] Mohamed Mezghani: Yeah, I think the, if we talk about the most promising trends, I think is the, the increasing awareness about the, the need to have a holistic approach to mobility, door to door approach. I think this is.
And maybe the COVID times has accelerated this trend.
We are realizing more and more that we need to define mobility from the perspective of, of people who don't have a car, you know, and not, not try to give priority to cars.
I said earlier that in the past the supply was leading the way we manage transport and now we have to focus more and more on the demand side and the demand is coming from the people, from their, their mobility needs.
So it's that we, we need to think now transport or mobility? We need to think about moving people instead of trying to find a solution for cars or moving people instead of, of moving cars. And once we adopt the principle, it looks obvious that we should redefine the mobility first by making walking safer and in good conditions. Of course, I mean walking is the natural movement. So this should be the priority. Then by encouraging cycling means by providing the needed infrastructure, a safe infrastructure for cycling, and then by developing mass transit as the backbone complemented by shared and on demand Mobility.
So this is for me the most promising trend.
This will make possible to develop door to door solutions by combining different modes according to the purpose of the trip, according to the profile of the travelers, according to the day of the week. So it means that the same person could be on Monday using public transport, but on Tuesday evening taking a cab the day after bicycling. So we need to take this into consideration and to offer a transport system that will make it possible to be, to have these different profiles of users every day without the need to own a car, I would say, or to use a car. So, and of course this is only possible because we have now the right technology, the right apps, the right payment systems, information systems and so on. So the promising trend is the possibility to use the benefits of innovative technologies to answer people's mobility needs. So that's for me, if we succeed to make this combination, we really can.
[00:22:59] Tamlyn Shimizu: See any bad trends. Let's say those are really good, promising trends that we're moving towards. Are there, are there things that are going in the wrong way, do you think?
[00:23:13] Mohamed Mezghani: No. What is going in the wrong way is that this kind of approach is still questioned by, by people who of course want cars to have the priority in our cities and they don't see that it is creating a lot of, a lot of nuisances, a lot of externalities. I mean road accidents is one of them. Pollution, space occupancy, I mean the, the urban space is scarce so we need to distribute it according to the number of people, not according to the number of vehicles.
So, and, and, and, and of course it's not easy to make people change their habits.
So these are the people who are questioning this, this trend.
And that's why we need, we need to convince them. We need to, of course the objective is not to ban cars, is not to, but to have rational use, of course, but to have to, to, to consider that cars are only one part of the mobility system and not the most important one. What is important are the people for me and how to develop a system.
[00:24:30] Tamlyn Shimizu: I also want to touch the fact that of course there's a big, you know, we're in somewhat of an energy crisis. We were using a lot more energy. We need to come up with more innovative energy solutions.
How do you think cities can better integrate energy efficient solutions within their public transport or multimodal networks? Especially in the context of, you know, increasing urbanization, climate change, all of the above.
[00:25:03] Mohamed Mezghani: You know, when I started working more than 30 years ago, even more, I started working on Energy efficiency in transportation.
So how to make urban transport more energy efficient.
And I worked on a report at that time which is called Guidelines on energy in Transport.
[00:25:35] Tamlyn Shimizu: Thirty years later I read this report.
[00:25:37] Mohamed Mezghani: You know, a few weeks ago.
Yes.
And I would say and to answer your question, we have to go back to basics. You know, what was valid at that time is still valid now of course, but considering new technologies and considering, you know, the evolution of our cities, etc. But we have to go back to basics. And there is this approach of avoid, shift, improve, which is still valid more than ever means that if we want to make more energy efficient solutions in our transport network, first we have to start to avoid and reduce the need for motorized travel.
So it means better integrating city city city planning with the transport planning to encourage.
Yeah. Or to make mobility on shorter distances and not to travel for on long distances. To try to work from home when possible.
So to.
To. To have a transport oriented development in. In our city. So this is how we can avoid. Then if we cannot avoid, we should try to shift to more environmentally friendly modes of transport. As I said, walking first. You know, we. We don't encourage working enough. And in some cities they don't even have the right infrastructure. Or sometimes you see motorway crossing the city and people they cannot cross, they cannot do it. So first we need to make sure we can easily move working then using as I said, public transport, cycling, shared mobility. So shift to more environmental friendly modes. And then if we, we can't do that because in some conditions there is no other possibility than using a car. Of course, then let's try to improve the energy efficiency of our cars. Of course, electric cars, that's a very good trend.
And if this electricity is. Is green electricity is even better. If it comes from solar energy or water hydro energy is. Is even better. So avoid, shift, improve. And in this order, of course this is the challenge because often we when we speak about energy efficiency people they will or policymaker they will speak immediately about electrification.
About the third, the third, the third priority which is about improving energy efficiency. But electrification alone will not help. I mean clean traffic jam is still a traffic jam. I mean having a traffic jam of electric cars. You will not be. Feel happier in your car if your traffic jam is not is with electric cars. On having. Having a bus stuck in traffic. But this bus is electric. I mean it doesn't help. People will not be. Will not take it. Because if. If it is electric and and stuck in traffic, we need bus lanes. We need you know, giving the priority Et cetera. So this what makes the system complex and technology is here to help, but not.
[00:28:58] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, very clear policy. So I like to play devil's advocate a little bit and say that some people might argue that public transport requires a massive amount of investment to maintain the infrastructure, say for the train lines. We're seeing lots of issues around that. I'm based in Germany and there's massive investments needed for the infrastructure here, for the train system.
And that might often, you know, these massive investments may often fail to deliver the expected shift away from private cars as well.
How do you respond to that argument that maybe instead of pouring so much money into public transport systems, maybe cities should focus maybe on micro mobility or autonomous vehicles or maybe some other solutions?
[00:29:47] Mohamed Mezghani: Yes, yeah, you're right, is a complex issue, of course.
And, but I would say if public transport investments fail to deliver the expected model shift, it's because they are not supported by the right governance framework or by the relevant accompanying measures. You know, as I said earlier, the bus, an electric bus, if it is stuck in traffic, it will not attract more people.
So what we should do in this case, so we need to provide the right infrastructure for these buses. So it means to come back to your question, we are investing massive investment to buy this electric bus which costs two times more and sometimes three times more than diesel bus. But we are not leveraging on this investment by giving this electric bus the right conditions to be more efficient and to attract more people.
So this is, that's why this accompanying measures means we invest in an electric bus, but we make sure it has the dedicated corridor, for example is very important. Or sometimes we invest in public transport, but we don't manage properly parking.
So people, they can continue to park wherever they want and sometimes at very low cost. And this will not encourage model shift from cars to public transport, for example. So this is important to have to have a consistency and, and the coherence in our policies.
And you mentioned the micromobility solutions. Yes, of course it's important to integrate my micro mobility solutions into public transport. I, I mean, as I said, I mean micromobility solutions should be even part of public transport, should be integrated with public transport because they will offer this last mile option to which will make the door to door movement possible. Or they will offer an alternative to public transport because public transport cannot be anywhere and everywhere and cannot answer all demand anyway.
And autonomous vehicles, yes, of course they are part of the solution, but they must be deployed in shared fleets complementing mass transit because an autonomous car is still a car. So if it is owned and used individually, it won't change anything in the traffic conditions. So it will not reduce traffic congestion. It could be even worse because we may have empty cars in the traffic. You know, imagine you, you go, you go with your car, you forgot something at home and you send the car at home and some to, you know, to bring something from, from home. So, so I don't, I don't think this is what we want.
I don't think we want autonomous car to have them running free in the traffic. So that's why it's important that autonomous cars are shared, are complementing public transport and are on demand. Maybe, but not individual. Individual, individually used, because otherwise we are creating more traffic.
[00:33:19] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, really good points.
[00:33:20] Mohamed Mezghani: The city could quite.
[00:33:21] Tamlyn Shimizu: Now we come to the end of our main interview. We're gonna still do a fun segment and go to our recurring question. But before we get to that, I'd like to ask you if there's any topic that you feel like we didn't cover today.
This is the part that I like to call the open floor.
In case I didn't ask one of the right questions or there's a topic that you think is really important for listeners to know.
Any such topic that you'd like to talk about?
[00:33:47] Mohamed Mezghani: Yes.
Yeah, I realize there is a. There is a topic which is close to my heart, but also I think important, not just I don't mention it, only because it's close to my heart, is that we must involve more women in the mobility and in public transport. More women to design, build, operate transport systems.
You know, women represent the majority of public transport passengers, but only 20% of the employees of public transport, of the workers of public transport.
And if we want to better define, better take into consideration the needs of women and especially to make sure they travel in safe conditions, that in comfortable conditions. So we need to involve more women in the public transport sector. And I would say, you know, if it's good for women, then it will be good for everyone.
People, they think when we speak about women in public transport or in mobility, that we are speaking about the niche market.
No, it's not the niche market. First is the biggest market because they represent the majority of public transport users. But also if we do it with them, then for them and with them, then it's good for the others as well.
And especially I wanted to mention this, especially in this context where DEI policies, diversity, equity and inclusion, these policies are being questioned by some governments or some businesses. So it's important to keep pushing Forward the gender equity priorities because it's very important. And thank you for offering me the opportunity.
[00:35:37] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, I'm glad that you added that because of course this is an ever increasingly important topic that gets more and more attention, but still there's this divide, right, between what you mentioned, the passengers, the demand and what they need versus who's actually responding to that. So thank you for mentioning that. I think it's really important.
With that, we get to move to our fun segment.
It's actually my favorite segment that I brought for you today. It's called Roll with the punches. It's answering this or that questions with your first instinct. So we'll just roll through it really fast.
You have to answer.
Yeah. You have to go one way or another. You have to choose at the end. You can explain, explain if you, if you want, which one, why you chose one over the other. Okay, so ready?
Okay, let's go. Metro or tram?
[00:36:31] Mohamed Mezghani: Okay, let's go.
[00:36:35] Tamlyn Shimizu: Early morning commute or late night city tram?
Mobility as a service or traditional public transport networks?
You can't choose.
[00:36:50] Mohamed Mezghani: Both. Both. We should not, we should not oppose them because. One, one.
[00:36:56] Tamlyn Shimizu: Okay, okay.
Center or congestion pricing?
Public sector leadership or public private partnership?
Citizen led planning or expert driven design?
Citizen led planning or expert driven design?
Integrated ticketing for free public transport.
[00:37:34] Mohamed Mezghani: In.
[00:37:35] Tamlyn Shimizu: Transport without any hesitation, book in hand or podcast in ears. So how do you prefer to ride?
Ah, good. Good answer for the podcast. You felt pressured into that, I'm sure.
[00:37:53] Mohamed Mezghani: But no, no, I didn't think that I am now recording a pod podcast. But yeah, yeah, but I, I am just realizing that I am evolving. I used to read books and now I am more and more to put.
[00:38:12] Tamlyn Shimizu: I mean, both are obviously totally fine answers. Do you want to explain any of your other answers?
You said, without a doubt, integrated ticketing over free public transport. Do you want to explain that one?
[00:38:29] Mohamed Mezghani: Yes, sure.
You know when you ask people why they, they don't use public transport.
[00:38:37] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah.
[00:38:38] Mohamed Mezghani: They will never tell you because I have to pay.
You know, they'll tell you because it's not available enough, it's not punctual, it's not reliable, or I cannot move from one mode to the other, or I don't understand the ticketing system or things like that. So that's why integrating ticketing is what makes one of the elements which makes public transport easier to use and very convenient.
[00:39:03] Tamlyn Shimizu: So do you think that the three public transport models don't work or, or do you think that they could work or are working for some places right Like Luxembourg and other places.
What do you think?
Curious?
No, that's the question.
[00:39:21] Mohamed Mezghani: Are you sure it is working?
I mean.
Okay, so depends on the objectives we are pursuing with free public transport. Is the objective is to encourage people to leave their car to use public transport. It's not by offering public transport for free that we will achieve this objective. And we had experiences, you know, if I take the nine euro ticket in Germany, for example, during two years ago, you know, the impact on transferring people from cars to public transport was negligible. You know, I see that the city of Tallinn, who was one of the first to introduce public transport at free public transport at a large scale, they are now, after 10 years, they decided to stop this free public transport because they see that, you know, the impact the use of cars has, has increased during 3, 10 years and the, the ridership for public transport didn't grow as expected.
So, so, so that's why, you know, if, if the objective is more as social objective because we want to support those who cannot afford public transport, tariffs, etc. Of course, then we should offer them free public transport, but only to this segment of the population, not to everyone. I mean, I don't need, I can afford public transport. I don't need. Why, why should I travel for free? I mean, and there are many people in there.
[00:40:48] Tamlyn Shimizu: Okay, so yeah, now we come to our final question. It's the question we ask every single guest and it's to you, what is a smart city?
[00:41:00] Mohamed Mezghani: Okay.
Okay.
You know, I have been talking a lot about people during this, this interview and for me, smart cities is a place designed around people's needs and for their well being with the help of technology. Because you know, since we are talking about smart, I think technology could be smart and could help. So really first, how can we make people feel better? How can we improve their quality of life?
And let's do it with the right technology.
So it's about using technology to promote sustainability, equity, resilience.
So yeah, this is for me a smart city or a smart place.
And it's not just about sensors and apps and you know, I don't know, artificial intelligence, etc. Etc. But it's about using the social and digital intelligence to make cities more livable, inclusive and sustainable and future ready.
[00:42:20] Tamlyn Shimizu: Very good definition. As you can imagine, I get all different types of perspectives, so it's interesting to integrate them all.
And with that I just have to say thank you so much for your time coming on and speaking to me. I know you said you're not an expert, but you definitely showed a lot of expertise and taught me a lot about public transport and all of these topics. So thank you so much for coming on.
[00:42:45] Mohamed Mezghani: Thank you. Thank you very much.
[00:42:47] Tamlyn Shimizu: Yeah, I enjoyed it as well.
Thank you very much. Of course, to all of our listeners, don't forget, you can always create a free account on BABLESmartCities EU. You can find out more about projects, solutions, implementations and more. Thank you very much
