Safer, Faster Public Transportation: AC Transit’s AI-Powered Upgrade with Hayden AI - Ep 290

Welcome to the NVIDIA AI podcast. I'm Noah Kravitz. Join us at the world's premier AI conference. GTC San Jose is online and in person, March 16 through the nineteenth. From physical AI and AI factories to AgenTek AI and Inference, GTC twenty twenty six will showcase the breakthrough shaping every industry. Learn more and register now at nvidia.com/gtc. Today, we're diving into the future of public transit safety and efficiency. I'm excited to be joined by two guests who are at the forefront of this transformation. Asan Baig, CTO of AC Transit, the third largest bus operator in California and main bus operator for the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, shout out Alameda County, And Marty Beard, CEO of Hayden AI, a San Francisco based company that's using technology to make roads safer and public transit better. Hassan, Marty, thank you both so much for taking the time to join the AI podcast. Welcome. Thank you. Thanks for the opportunity. So maybe we can start with a little bit about what AC Transit does, and then we'll get to what Hayden does. And, Hassan, you can speak just a little bit about your role as CTO. And then as we go, we'll get into the collaboration, that brought you guys together and brought us here today. Yeah. Sure. Thank you so much, Noah. Thanks for the opportunity. Hassan Bey, chief technology officer, Alameda contract cost County's transit. So a lot of time, people think AC is only Alameda, so we do serve in Alameda and Contra Costa County. So so, basically, we are a two county public transit system. I just wanna clarify also, we are bus only. As you mentioned, Noah, we're the third largest in in the in the state, and we are the largest bus only in the in the Northern California region. Our pre COVID, daily ridership was about 200,000 people. Roughly about, you know, when you look into on an annual basis, you're talking about 55 to 57,000,000 riders, on on on an annual basis. I mean, that's a fairly significant mobility domain area if you if you wanna look from that perspective. Our mission, at AC Transit is safe, secure, reliable, and sustainable public transit. AC Transit is really kind of a unique that our board is an elected board. It's different from many other public transit agencies. There are only possibly, I think, three public transit agencies in the country. They have elected boards. Oh, is that right? Okay. Really means, Noah, is that it, basically, these are the board members elected board members are sort of really the people who are passionate about public transit and about mobility services. So I'm really, you know, proud of, part of the team. I've been here for almost eight years, managing the the technology programs, innovation program, and, you know, love my job and really, I'm passionate about providing those services to my customers in the East Bay. Well, as …