When it comes to making urban mobility initiatives successful, public-private partnerships have proved to be a crucial ingredient.
Participants say suspending some traditional boundaries between government and business entities is important to avoid initial stumbles.
"These partnerships are inevitable and absolutely indispensable to the future of transportation," said Rick Walawender, leader of the autonomous vehicle practice at Miller Canfield law firm in Detroit.
Among the public-private partnerships in the sector are:
Project Kinetic in Detroit, in which the city and companies including General Motors and Bedrock Detroit are launching mobility pilots for transportation in underserved communities.
An autonomous shuttle system being tested in Hamburg, Germany, by governments and a unit of auto supplier Siemens.
The Smart Mobility Ecosystem in Dublin, Ohio, which joins auto supplier Denso with Ohio officials to gather traffic data, test mobility concepts and implement AV-infrastructure pilots.
In each of these partnerships, and in dozens of others forming around the world, participants are grappling with important and complex new technologies, resource constraints, an array of expectations by shareholders and by public constituencies, the limitations of existing municipal services and infrastructures, differing benchmarks for success — and prospects for failure.
Here are 10 strategies they're using to make the partnerships effective.