1:1 with Bibiana McHugh, Manager of Mobility and Location-Based services at TriMet

This is a transcript of a video interview with Bibiana McHugh on May 16, 2022 in Chicago, IL at the Mobility Innovation Collaborative workshop. Find these videos on the Mobility Learning Center here. 

Tell us about yourself and your project. 

Hi, I’m Bibiana McHugh and I’m the Manager of Mobility and Location-Based services at TriMet in Portland, Oregon. I’ve been fortunate to have been there for about 25 years. 

What inspired your project?

First, we were awarded the MOD Sandbox grant and we took the open trip planner, which is a multimodal open source trip planner, and we expanded it to include all shared-use mobility modes. This next project, the IMI grant, kind of builds upon that. It builds upon a lot of our technology, existing technology, our existing data, etcetera, and takes it one step further. Focusing on customer information payment, mobility data, and metrics. 

Tell us about your project partners and their role.

Partnering with so many, both public and private agencies to make this project happen I think really demonstrates the importance of the project and how committed people are to developing this platform that is replicable for others and built on open architecture, open data, and open data standards. 

How does the Shared-Use Mobility Center support your project and team?

SUMC is just an invaluable resource. We worked with them quite a bit on both the MOD Sandbox grant and the IMI grant. They’re an amazing resource and I’m really grateful that the FTA has them as a resource for us, and really grateful as well that the FTA is providing funds for everyone to really explore technology and innovations in technology. It’s very important, especially in this new world of mobility and it’s really furthering the industry and SUMC is making that all happen as well.