#192: AI-Native Operations for Public Transportation with Amos Haggiag CEO of Optibus and Jonny Simkin CEO of Swiftly
For years, AI in public transportation has primarily helped professionals predict, analyze, and optimize.
A new generation of AI is beginning to do something different:
Act.
What happens when an AI system can not only answer a planner's question, but help modify a detour? Not only analyze schedules, but find an available driver? Not only identify a disruption, but prepare an operational response?
In June 2026, Optibus launched Optibus Agent, an AI agent purpose-built for public transportation and embedded across planning, scheduling, dispatch, and real-time operations.
I will speak with Amos Haggiag, CEO of Optibus, about what agentic AI means for the people who actually plan and operate public transportation.
We will explore:
From assistant to agent. What makes agentic AI fundamentally different from the chatbots and copilots transit professionals have already encountered?
Where AI can act today. What tasks in planning, scheduling, disruption management, driver assignment, and real-time control can already be delegated?
Human + AI workflows. When should AI recommend, when should it act, and where must a human remain responsible for the decision?
Why transit is uniquely difficult. Can general-purpose AI understand labor rules, vehicle constraints, timetables, passenger demand, road disruptions, and the thousands of interdependent decisions behind a transit service?
The future of transit work. How will the roles of planners, schedulers, dispatchers, and operations managers change when producing an answer is no longer the bottleneck?
From efficiency to better service. If agentic AI works, what should the passenger actually notice?
What comes next. How close are we to transit systems that continuously sense what is happening, adjust operations, and learn from the results?
The discussion will go beyond the technology to examine a larger question for transportation leaders:
How much of running a public transportation system should we ultimately delegate to AI—and who remains accountable when we do?
Join us for a practical conversation about Grounded AI: not what AI might someday do for transportation, but where it is beginning to change real transportation work today.
Mobility Forum sessions are free and open to the public.