Grush Niles Strategic works with private and public sector interests preparing for automated mobility services. We help plan, develop, market, and grow vehicle fleets including autonomous road vehicle systems for high quality, on-demand public mobility. We help organizations to:

  • Rebalance transit planning for ridership and coverage growth given the disruption of vehicle automation (robotic taxis and shuttles);
  • Plan for sustainable vehicle automation by breaking through the constraints of what is feasible for transit given today’s technology;
  • Develop plans to increase ridership by provisioning and managing first/last mile solutions using automated vehicles;
  • Preserve community values, social equity and access as transit systems move toward a new mixture of automated shuttles and traditional buses;
  • Develop plans for parking management (pricing, attrition, re-location, re-purposing) as automated vehicles begin to erode private vehicle use;
  • Revitalize traditional bus and existing rail for continued deployment with commercial, automated fleets;
  • Minimize job loss and encourage job growth by focusing on service growth;
  • Plan ways to migrate to new job descriptions and job growth based on the potential of increased ridership on automated shuttles;
  • Develop plans for P3 operation and ownership of massive fleets;
  • Achieve sooner and tighter coordination of robotic travel areas and related parking attrition;
  • Use behavioral economics methods to accelerate abandonment of private car ownership.

Our overriding goal is to find ways to design, fund, and build automated transportation networks so that our cities and regions stay livable and productive.

Strategy for Autonomous Transit

Contact us:
USA:         John Niles      jniles@endofdriving.org
Canada:  Bern Grush   bgrush@endofdriving.org


Bern Grush (@TransitLeap) is a founder of Grush Niles Strategic & Harmonize Mobility Inc.

[one-page profile]

Bern is an innovator, speaker, and author on automated and autonomous vehicles as well as parking reform and road pricing. Since 2000, he has published hundreds of papers and articles on transportation demand management issues, most recently detailing opportunities to re-think and re-deploy urban transit in the lead-up to vehicle automation and to advance preparation for fleets of self-driving taxis and buses.  His current project (with GNS partner John Niles) involves developing a governance framework, called Harmonization Manager, needed to coordinate massive fleets of autonomous transit shuttles, taxis, trucks, and private vehicles while preserving the preferred social equity values now offered by urban transit such as mobility access, availability and affordability, inclusive of populations physically, economically or geographically challenged.

Bern has developed telemetrics patents and technologies for autonomous road tolling, autonomous parking, HOT tolling and usage-based insurance. His work with ISO standards included the innovation and launch of the charging-performance standard for autonomous road and parking tolling systems (ISO-TS-17444). Bern holds degrees in Human Factors and Systems Design Engineering from the Universities of Toronto and Waterloo. He lives in Toronto.

John Niles (@EndofDriving) is the co-founder of Grush Niles Strategic. He earlier started Global Telematics, an independent policy consultancy now focused on research, design, planning, and evaluation of policies and actions for transportation improvement. He holds appointments as Research Associate with Mineta Transportation Institute (San Jose State University) and Executive Research Director for the Seattle-based non-profit think-tank, Center for Advanced Transportation and Energy Solutions (CATES). He is also a Board Member of the Rideshare Institute and engaged in creating The Pooling Imperative.

John co-authored The New Management (McGraw Hill, 1976), and numerous technical reports and articles in the years since. He is the co-author with Bern Grush of the 2018 Elsevier textbook  The End of Driving. Other notable writings include co-authorship of two chapters in the Springer book series Lecture Notes in Mobility, and co-authorship of the 2014 report from University of Michigan’s Graham Environmental Sustainability Institute, “Automated, Connected, and Electric Vehicles: Policy Roadmap for More Sustainable Transportation.”

To prepare him for the transportation uncertainty side of Grush Niles’ work, John earned an S.B. in mathematics from MIT, an M.S. from Carnegie Mellon University Graduate School of Industrial Administration. He observes the influence of mobility on culture worldwide as a traveling member of Friendship Force International. He lives in Seattle, Washington.