Miovision is a company that provides cities with modern tools to fix today’s traffic problems, and the company offers solutions that collect multimodal traffic data and uncover actionable insights, helping municipalities get more out of their road network. The result: streets capable of moving more people (safely and efficiently) whether in a car, on a bus, on a bike or e-scooter, or walking. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Miovision co-founder and CEO Kurtis McBride to learn more.
Kurtis McBride’s Background
McBride co-founded Miovision from the University of Waterloo, where he graduated from a Systems Design program. “So, in many ways, founding a company was my first real job! Along the way, though, I’ve ended up seeing other challenges that have led to other projects. For example, as Miovision grew, we needed a larger space. My team wanted something close to downtown, near trails, transit, and parking. That combination just wasn’t available,” said McBride. “One of our core values is ‘complacency is not an option’ – something my team reminded me when I couldn’t find a suitable new home. So, I thought about the problem in a new way. If Miovision was having this challenge, other growth companies probably did too. I ended up partnering with a property developer to co-found Catalyst137, developing a former tire warehouse into a 475,000-square-foot space that brings together innovative companies – including Miovision – and the services they need to grow. I view my job as seeing opportunities other people miss.”
Formation Of Miovision
How did the idea for Miovision come together?
“The idea behind Miovision started when I was a student at the University of Waterloo. I was doing a co-op term at an engineering firm, and there was an opportunity on weekends to earn a bit of extra money by collecting traffic data. I was a little surprised how the data was gathered – I was literally manually counting vehicles at the roadside,” McBride revealed. “I learned first-hand that humans are not good at this kind of data gathering – we get bored; we need to eat and go to the washroom – there’s a bunch of reasons that the resulting data might not be as accurate as it could be. Plus, it’s not scalable. Even at the relatively small hourly wage I was making, this wasn’t a method that cities could afford to do across the entire traffic network, 24/7. Miovision began to come up with a better way to gather more – and more accurate – traffic data.”
Favorite Memory
What has been your favorite memory working for Miovision so far?
“I like to think that leadership is about earning the right to solve the next, more challenging problem. Every time we manage to move the company forward; every time we solve one of those challenges is a great day. That was true when we were shipping our first products. It was true when we moved into Catalyst137. It was true recently when we made our largest acquisition – Global Traffic Technologies – and raised C$260 million,” McBride reflected. “Each time, there’s a celebratory moment, then the next day, you know you are on to the next, more challenging problem. So – my favorite day is always either celebrating a milestone or rolling up my sleeves to take on a new challenge.”
Challenges Faced
What are some of the challenges McBride faced in building the company, and has the current macroeconomic climate affected the company?
“One of the biggest challenges is we’re at the leading edge of a shift in our segment. Transportation infrastructure is still very hardware-centric; relatively expensive, single-purpose hardware is installed at the roadside to deliver a specific function for an agency or municipality. We’re at the forefront of a shift towards installing flexible, powerful, connected hardware that can deliver a range of solutions via software,” McBride acknowledged. “But decades of procurement have been built around the notion of paying once for hardware that really doesn’t change in function until it’s ready to be replaced. The idea of buying software services via a license or subscription model is still relatively new in our space. That influences how we go to market today and how we anticipate the market will evolve over the next few years. A related influence is public policy and related funding. Road safety, as one example, has become a significant public policy backed by significant funding – $5 billion over the next five years through the Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) program. As agencies – and funding – start to focus on a range of transportation-related challenges, we see an expanding opportunity in the marketplace.”
Core Products
What are Miovision’s core products and features? “There are two ways of looking at our product – from our perspective or the customer’s perspective. From our perspective – we just rolled out a unified software platform called Miovision One. We’ll be migrating our solutions to Miovision One, which means that customers will be able to access data and insights via a single interface – and we’ll be able to iterate quickly on new solutions,” McBride explained. “We also have two main hardware platforms – one for portable traffic studies (Miovision Scout) and one that helps cities and agencies modernize their traffic signal infrastructure (Miovision Core). Think of the hardware platforms as roadside data and computing platforms that leverage the software platforms to turn traffic data into actionable insights. Most customers, though, come to us with a specific challenge they are trying to solve. They want to add detection to an intersection without digging up the intersection to install induction loops. Or, they want a solution that can help them identify places where there is a risk of injury-causing or fatal traffic collisions – before people get hurt. Or, they want access to 24/7 multimodal traffic data to help them optimize traffic and reduce congestion. The same hardware and software platforms we offer can deliver all those solutions – and more. That means customers often adopt us to solve one challenge, then expand their adoption as they see how useful our tools are for helping them address a range of issues.
Evolution Of Miovision’s Technology
How has Miovision’s technology evolved since launching?
“At the core of our solution is computer vision – the ability for systems to identify objects of interest in video. Essentially, we can train our systems to count whatever they see, which means we can collect reliable, multimodal traffic data – cars, trucks, buses, pedestrians, bicycles – even e-scooters. As cities and towns look to prioritize transit or encourage active transportation, this kind of data and analytics is vital to help them measure the impact of changes – then optimize towards a desired outcome,” McBride pointed out. “When we started, video and computer vision really pushed the boundaries of available technology. Obviously, cameras, computing, and networks have improved significantly since 2005, so that’s enabled our systems to continually improve.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of Miovision’s most significant milestones? McBride cited the following:
— The launch of their first product Miovision Scout – a portable video traffic data collection platform established us as a company and created a foundation for growth.
— The launch of their intersection product – Miovision TrafficLink – in 2017 expanded the scope of their solutions – and positioned them to help agencies and municipalities measure, manage and optimize their entire traffic network.
— The launch of second-generation hardware platforms for both their portable and intersection products – Miovision Core for intersections and Miovision Scout Explore for portable use – demonstrate they are continuing to innovate; Together with their new software platform Miovision One, these set the foundation for a steady cadence of new software solutions.
— And, of course, the four acquisitions the company made over the last two years – Traffop (signal performance measures), Rapid Flow (adaptive signal control), MicroTraffic (safety analytics), and GTT (signal priority control), which have brought new solutions new customers and new talent to Miovision.
Customer Success Stories
When I asked McBride about a customer success story, he said that they have worked with Quincy, MA, near Boston, in a project that incorporates our intersection solution, including adaptive signals. The result was as follows:
— Reduced congestion by 10 to 15 percent by deploying an adaptive control system supported by reliable detection and performance measures;
— Fixed historical traffic problems instantly by adding detection at key problem areas within the network; and,
— Better served pedestrian and vehicular traffic within the downtown core by collecting real-time data to change signals based on demand through Miovision’s adaptive solution, which uses real-time traffic data to continually optimize traffic signal timing.
“Installing Miovision technology in as many places as we did enable us to have far better data, the ability to remotely monitor traffic conditions in real-time, the ability to detect pedestrians before even activating the push button, and the ability to evaluate how our adaptive system was performing,” Chris Cassani, Director, City of Quincy Department of Traffic, Parking verified.
Another example Kurtis provided was a video documenting the experience of the Town of Milton, just outside Toronto, where the company’s solution made a noticeable difference along a particularly busy commuter corridor:
Revenue Model
How does the company generate revenue? “We are offering extensible solutions. A customer may want to add video detection at an intersection, for example, to activate a green only when traffic needs it. But, the same hardware platform we’ll install to support video detection can also deliver continuous traffic data and analytics to enable the agency or municipality to optimize their traffic signal timing and improve traffic congestion and safety and reduce exhaust emissions,” McBride replied. “I often talk about it being a little like a smartphone model – in the early days, you might have bought a smartphone to access the internet and email. Then you realized you could take great photos and instantly share them with your friends, get up-to-date navigation, or listen to every song ever recorded. So, the revenue model is to establish a presence with our connected hardware platform, then deliver an expanding range of software-driven solutions that address an expanding range of challenges agencies and municipalities face in managing urban transportation.”
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is Miovision pursuing? “Estimates are that the global market for Intelligent Transportation Systems could reach between US$38.7 billion and $52.24 billion by 2030. As we add new solutions onto our platform, we access more and more of that growing, addressable market,” McBride assessed.
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates Miovision from its competition?
“Our industry, by and large, still takes a hardware-centric approach, meaning that new capabilities involve an expensive trip to the intersection to install a new piece of hardware in an increasingly full traffic cabinet. That approach was fine when traffic management was mainly focused on moving as many vehicles as possible. But, that’s changed. Traffic engineers are trying to balance the sometimes competing needs of different road users: drivers, transit riders, emergency responders, cyclists, and pedestrians. They are trying to ensure everyone remains safe while supporting broader urban planning goals around density and active transportation. In addition, there are new emerging needs, including autonomous and connected vehicles,” McBride revealed. “A hardware-centric approach can’t scale to meet all these needs. Our approach – flexible hardware delivering a growing range of software solutions is suited to the needs agencies and municipalities have today and will have going forward.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of Miovision’s future company goals?
“Our mission is to accelerate the development and adoption of transformational mobility solutions that improve the quality of life for communities globally. Part of that demands us to be innovators in our space. But it’s balanced by the need to be able to implement at a scale large enough to actually improve the quality of life in communities around the world,” McBride concluded. “To get there, we are working on expanding our network of connected hardware and the software solutions we can offer over that hardware – either developed in-house, via acquisitions, or third parties.”
