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Management at the Bay Area transportation startup Glydways wants you to be clear about what the company is not: It may plan to move people in futuristic autonomous pods, but its not hyperloop-grade vaporware. And its funding by big-name Silicon Valley investors does not make it a ride for the 1%. Public transit for everyone, everywhere, says founder Mark Seeger.But Glydways is starting smaller than that. Its first green-lit project (after a temporary test track now under construction next to an abandoned mall in Richmond, Calif.) and others under consideration by local governments will have Glydwayss four-seat electric vehicles plying short on-demand routes between existing business and transportation hubs. [Image: Glydways]That debut pilot efforta half-mile route linking a convention center and arena to the last stop on a people mover outside Atlantas Hartsfield-Jackson International Airportis on a small enough scale to evoke the Vegas Loop that Elon Musks Boring Company opened as a shortcut between three of the halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center.We want to see how well the system operates with various fluctuations of riders showing its ability to scale and that it is indeed a viable transit option, says Krystal Harris, program director for ATL Airport Community Improvement Districts.After two years of free-fare service, that agency and the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority will assess how things worked and if the technology merits expansion.Putting a cap on capexThe $18 million in construction and operational costs that Harris cited may seem steep for such a short distance, but not in the context of U.S. transit construction expenses that have made the country exceptional in the wrong way. For example, the $3 billion Silver Line extension that Washingtons Metro system opened to Washington Dulles International Airport and beyond in late 2022 cost $263 million a mile, including a large rail yard built by the airport. That, however, looks like an outright steal next to other U.S. rail projects, topped by the Long Island Rail Roads East Side Access project in New York and its $3.5 billion a mile expense.Glydways, meanwhile, touts a design for simple, narrow guideways that require neither rails nor electric power via overhead wires or third rails that it says will cost 90% less than traditional transit. [Image: Glydways]We can do it for tens of millions, Glydways CEO Gokul Hemmady says, adding that at-grade costs could run still lower at just $2 to $3 million per mile while elevated paths needed to avoid grade crossings could run $15 million a mile. The moment youre in pedestrian-class infrastructure, your costs plummet, he says. The world knows how to build this.Construction costs of some recent U.S. cyclist and pedestrian infrastructure fall roughly into that minor-league ballpark. A trail being built along the SMART commuter-rail line in Sonoma and Marin counties in California has run about $4 million a mile. Two bridges on the Washington & Old Dominion Trail constructed over wide roads in Arlington and Fairfax counties in Virginia had project costs around $30 million a mile.But a veteran transit consultant who has led projects in North America, Europe, and Australia and New Zealand warned against expense extrapolation. Writes Jarrett Walker: They will have to build out a demo project before we know.No human operators, some operating costsThe operational part of the Glydways pitch involves leveraging autonomous-vehicle advances to provide high-frequency, on-demand service around the clock at fares not that far above traditional transitwith the ability to transport 10,000 people an hour. We offer ride-hailing-like experience at a fraction of the cost, says Hemmady. Pressed for an example, he cites the Oakland Airport Connector, an automated, elevated train that runs between that airport and Bay Area Rapid Transits Oakland Coliseum station for a one-way fare of $7.45. But while those fares covered 96% of the connectors operating costs pre-pandemic, Hemmady says Glydwayss lower costs30% of other modes of transit, the company sayswill let it clear a profit: We are the only mass transit system that is revenue positive.A Glydways vehicle shown off at CES 2025 was all shiny modernity, with a streamlined exterior hiding camera, lidar and radar sensors, and large doors that slid open to reveal a clean plastic interior with tap-to-pay terminals by thosedoors. The closest visual parallel: the pod-like Zoox robotaxis now rolling around Vegas in test drives.The lack of human operators or attendants has led some critics to raise safety concerns, but Glydways emphasizes that short waits at stations and the limited number of passengers per vehicle will keep it safe. [Animation: Glydways]Older, almost as small-scale personal rapid transit systems built on older autonomous technologysuch as one that runs between campuses of West Virginia University in Morgantown, W. Va.have operated without incident for decades.Larger automated-train systems rely on a combination of surveillance and patrolling. For example, Vancouvers SkyTrain equips its driverless trains with emergency intercom systems and contact systems while having attendants and transit police at stations.Next stopsAfter the Atlanta pilot, Glydways has advanced to final stages of consideration in a San Jose project to link that citys Caltrain and Amtrak train station with San José Mineta International Airporta 3.4 mile route that Google Maps estimates as a seven-minute drive but a 40-plus-minute transit adventure.Glydways says it can build that mostly elevated route, with its vehicles taking eight minutes between the station and the airport, for under the citys $500 million cost cap but isnt specifying a cost estimate. The city council should be voting on its proposal, which allows for possible extensions to such nearby traffic generators as Apples headquarters, in the coming weeks. [Image: Glydways]This company has a comparable plan not far north of San Jose in Contra Costa County, where its pitched its technology as an automated transit network to provide transportation from train stations to nearby destinations.And in the Los Angeles suburb of Ontario, Glydways has advanced a proposal to use its vehicles in a tunnel to connect Ontario International Airport with the closest Metrolink commuter-rail station. The Boring Company had earlier offered a version of the Vegas Loop concept but abandoned that bid in 2022.Glydwayss proposition of robotic transportation has the advantage of not having to coexist with human-driven traffic like robotaxis like Waymo. And the company has the advantage of funding from such deep-pocketed investors as the VC firm Khosla Ventures and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.But in the realm of transit, self-driving technology isnt something Glydways invented, and many transit agencies outside the U.S. already employ it on higher-capacity subway and light-rail lines. And as autonomous mobility continues to advance on public roads, Walker suggests that established transit operators will be able to make better use of it than any startup that has to pour new concreteeven if the technology goes into something as unfancy as buses.Says Walker: If driverless technology becomes available, debugged, and socially accepted, there will be all kinds of applications, including much bigger-vehicle services that will be a better use of scarce space in dense cities.
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E-Commerce
Over the past year, a growing number of corporate employers have shown signs of backing away from diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in the workplace, amid mounting social pressures and the risk of litigation from right-wing activists. President Trumps recent executive orderswhich explicitly threaten legal action against the private sector over illegal DEI practiceshave only exacerbated those concerns, leading companies to take more forceful action or, at a minimum, reevaluate their diversity programs. In a report released today by the research insights firm Gravity Research, nearly three-quarters of corporate executives claim that potential federal investigations into corporate DEI have been keeping them up at night. This sentiment was nearly universal across the finance sector, with 95% of leaders expressing those concernsin line with reports that Wall Street firms have pared back their DEI initiatives over the last year. When we actually talk to our clients, there’s a lot of question marks around: I thought we were legally compliant, says Gravity Research president Luke Hartig, noting that the group of employers surveyed includes Fortune 500 companies. We don’t have a clear answer to that question just yet. However, the fact that 74% said that they fear federal investigations tells us that its at least creating a sense of fear and anxiety among these large companies, even if we’re still uncertain as to exactly how far this can go. The report also captures how many companies have responded to the executive orders and anti-DEI movement, with 64% saying they were redefining or rebranding their DEI functionsa common shift among employers that have altered their DEI programs recently. Many companies reported altering their public messaging on DEI: In 2025 alone, 66% of companies say they have cut back on the use of DEI terminology in their external communications. That can mean curtailing mentions of equity or the acronym DEI, opting instead for terms like inclusion and belonging, which might be less loaded. We know terminology matters, but the work is more important, one executive explained as part of the survey. We are striving to communicate in a way that won’t attract undue attention so we can protect the work versus having to defend the work with external actors.” And yet, many companies are still worried about how their workers may react to these changes, with 60% of respondents saying they expected to see employees mobilize on political or social issues. In fact, the majority of respondents said they were feeling pressure to make an internal statement reaffirming their commitment to inclusion and belonging, according to Hartig, though only 28% have actually done so. Despite all the pushback to corporate DEIand the changes that have already been made at a number of companiesmost of them are still not entirely culling their ranks. Gravity Research found that most employers were not eliminating C-suite DEI roles, though certain sectors were more likely to do so; this shift was especially evident in the consumer staples sector, where 20% of employers had made changes to C-suite DEI positions. Even prior to Trumps executive orders, however, consumer companies and retailers have been particularly vulnerable to the DEI backlash, as evidenced by the response to conservative activist Robby Starbucks social media campaigns over the last year. When [we] talk to the chief diversity officer community, we definitely hear a lot of anxiety about the future of DEI-dedicated functions within companies, Hartig says. But certainly the research shows that they are not getting rid of it all together. As Fast Company has reported, plenty of companies have continued to stand their ground on DEI or have made minimal changes to protect against potential legal risks. That much is also clear from the report, which indicates that 80% of companies are actively monitoring anti-DEI laws and legal challenges, rather than taking immediate action. While a good share of employers have adopted semantic changes, their approach has been more conservative as it relates to cutting DEI programs. About half of respondents have revised DEI trainings, but few have taken more significant steps like cutting employee resource groups. That said, a sizable portion of employers (34%) are now reconsidering their participation in the Human Rights Campaigns annual survey measuring workplace inclusion for LGBTQ+ workers, which can be traced back to the anti-DEI campaign that Starbuck has waged across social media. Several major companiesincluding McDonalds, Target, and Walmarthave already pulled out of the HRC survey in recent months. As Hartig points out, moves like this appear to be motivated more by social pressure than by legal consequences. Gravity Research has found that even companies that have yet to bow out of the survey are now more reticent to advertise their scores publiclywhich many employers have long used to send a signal to LGBTQ+ workers. At least from major companies, we’ve seen virtually no publicization of their HRC scores, Hartig says. This was something that companies previously touted and used as a sign of being an inclusive employer. Will that change as we get closer to Pride month? Will companies start to talk about that? Maybe. But it certainly reflects a broader movement from the corporate community.
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E-Commerce
Healthcare.gov, the government health insurance marketplace website, launched in October 2013 only to buckle under the weight of just 2,000 simultaneous users. As millions of Americans stared at error messages and frozen screens, a political crisis unfolded, but so did a new era of government technology. The result was 18F, an in-house digital services consulting agency that brought Silicon Valley expertise to government, challenging decades of outdated procurement practices and introducing a radical new approach to building digital public services. Founded on March 19, 2014, by Presidential Innovation Fellows, 18F was housed within the Technology Transformation Services department of the General Services Administration, or GSA. The name 18F was derived from the address of GSA headquarters: 1800 F Street. On March 1, 2025, just a few weeks shy of 18Fs 11th anniversary, the Trump administration eliminated the agency and laid off its staff. As a researcher who studies public administration and technology, I have observed the transformational role 18F played in government digital services. The units elimination raises the question of what the future of those services will look like. Impact of 18F 18F served a unique role as an in-house digital consultancy for the U.S. government, drawing on innovative strategies to improve public service through technology. Within 18F, teams consisting of designers, software engineers, strategists, and product managers worked together with federal, state, and local agencies to not only fix technical problems but to build, buy, and share technology that helped to modernize and improve the publics experience with government services. Over nearly 11 years, 18F built an impressive portfolio of successful digital projects that transformed how people interact with the U.S. government. Even if the average person is unfamiliar with 18F, the odds are quite high that they have at least encountered one of its many products or services. For example, 18F supported the Internal Revenue Service in creating IRS Direct File, a free online tax filing tool that provides taxpayers with a simplified filing process. As of today, IRS Direct File is available in 25 states and is expected to serve 30 million eligible taxpayers during the 2025 tax filing season. 18F has been pivotal in modernizing and securing digital systems to help create more streamlined and secure user experiences for the public. For instance, Login.gov is a secure single sign-on platform that simplifies access to multiple government services for users. Perhaps the most notable of 18Fs modernization efforts that touches nearly every aspect of government today is the U.S. Web Design System. The comprehensive design system was developed in collaboration with the U.S. Digital Service in 2015. It helps support dozens of agencies and makes nearly 200 websites more accessible and responsive to user needs. How 18F worked What set 18F apart was its approach. Rather than spending years on giant information technology contracts that often failed to deliver, 18F championed agile development. Agile and lean methodologies have been popular in Silicon Valley startups and software companies for decades due to their flexibility and focus on rapid iteration. By applying agile development principles, 18F focused on breaking down large projects into manageable pieces with incremental improvements based on frequent user feedback. This approach allowed continuous adaptation spurred by user feedback and changing requirements while reducing risk. Another cornerstone of 18Fs innovative approach was its focus on user-centered design. By focusing on the needs of the people who actually used government services, 18F was able to go beyond merely satisfying technical requirements to design digital products that were more accessible and user-friendly. The idea was to understand the end users and the problems they encountered in order to effectively design products and solutions that addressed their needs. It also aimed to provide a consistent user experience and earn the users trust in the services. By prioritizing open-source development and collaboration, 18F also helped to make government IT more affordable. Making project code transparent meant that agencies could reuse the code and reduce the cost of duplicate development efforts across agencies and levels of government. 18F also had a hand in helping agencies develop their own technology capacity, whether by teaching them how to build software using open-source development and agile methodologies or by teaching agencies how to hire and oversee technology vendors themselves. This model was especially beneficial for state and local agencies following 18Fs expansion in 2016 to provide services to state and local government agencies that receive federal funding. End of an era The elimination of 18F marks the end of an era, raising concerns about both current and future technology projects. As of now, there does not appear to be a succession plan, leaving many federal agencies without ongoing support for their digital transformation efforts. Critics also argue that the loss of 18F means the loss of significant technical expertise within the government. These changes come at a time when agencies are experiencing substantial personnel shifts, rendering digital services potentially even more critical. As agencies brace for more personnel cuts, the public may need to rely more on digital services to fill the gap amid growing staffing shortages. Since the news was announced, current and former 18F team members as well as advocates of the unit have taken to social media platforms, including X, Bluesky, and LinkedIn, to share stories of its successes, honor its legacy, and share 18F resources. Kayla Schwoerer is an assistant professor of public administration & policy at the University at Albany, State University of New York. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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E-Commerce
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