Janera hosts a Conversation with Robin Chase, Founder of Zipcar and C.E.O. of GoLoco, and Vijay Vaitheeswaran, award-winning correspondent for The Economist and an authority on the future of energy.
The future of transportation touches on some of today's most pressing issues: How do we balance long-term and short-term priorities? Should the environment take a backseat to the recession?
What will future forms of ride-sharing, car-sharing, and public transportation look like? How can you be a Global Nomad without leaving a gigantic carbon footprint?
Bio
Robin Chase
Robin Chase is founder and CEO of GoLoco, an online ridesharing community. GoLoco helps people quickly arrange to share car trips of all lengths between trusted friends, neighbors, and colleagues, and handles online payments from passengers to drivers for their share of the trip costs.
Robin is also founder and former CEO of Zipcar, the largest carsharing company in the world. Zipcar's use of the Internet and wireless technology enables rental cars to emulate personal cars. Zipcar's disruptive technology gives its members on-demand access to cars by-the-hour, revolutionizing people's relationship to their cars and improving the quality of urban life for all.
Robin is frequently consulted by transportation and planning departments, city and state government agencies, and NGOs about wireless and mesh networking applications in the transportation sector, innovation and economic development. She served on the Boston Mayor's Wireless Task Force, and the Governor-elect's Transportation Transition Working Committee.
Robin lectures widely and has been frequently featured in the major media including the Today Show, The New York Times, National Public Radio, Fast Company, Wired, and Time magazines, as well as several books on entrepreneurship.
She has received many awards, including the Massachusetts Governor's Award for Entrepreneurial Spirit, Start-up Woman of the Year, Fast Company's Fast 50 Champions of Innovation, technology and innovation awards from Fortune, CIO, and Info World Magazines, and numerous environmental awards from national, state, and local governments and organizations.
Robin graduated from Wellesley College and MIT's Sloan School of Management, and was a Harvard University Loeb Fellow
Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran
Vijay Vaitheeswaran is an award-winning correspondent for The Economist. In his 19 years at the Economist, he has covered energy and the environment, innovation, health, and biotechnology. In fall of this year, he'll open the magazine's first Shanghai bureau and become its China business editor. He is the author of several acclaimed books, including Zoom: The Global Race to Fuel the Car of the Future, with Iain Carson, and Power to the People. His next book, Need, Greed, and Speed, on the future of global innovation, will be previewed at the World Economic Forum's meeting in Davos and released in March 2012. Vaitheeswaran is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, an adviser to the Clinton Global Initiative, and chairman of the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on Sustainable Energy. He teaches at NYU's Stern Business School and serves as chairman of The Economist's conference series on innovation, the Ideas Economy.
I , myself, prefer citycarshare. It's about $5/hr + refueling of gas. That's a pretty sweet deal.
As for the future of transportation, let's hope the government focuses even more on better public transportation aka buses, subways and bike lanes. In San Francisco, there is an event called Critical Mass where hundreds of people forgo fuel powered transportation and ride bikes to and from work instead. And because this is in San Francisco, everyone dresses up in flashy outfits and pedal to boombastic music.
I would like cars to become obsolete. New York has the best public transportation system in the US. The subways run all over the place in addition to running frequently and all night long. Everyone in NY either walks everywhere or they take the subway system and they will all agree that it is absurd to own a car in the city when local transportation is so reliable. This is how public transportation should be in all large cities.
Cities should also become more bike friendly. San Francisco lacks necessary bike lanes, which makes it scary for most of the biking population and I am sure there are other cities that could use some remodeling.
member. 
