How 27,000 Rides Turned a Transit Idea into the Search for an Integrated Infrastructure Platform

A Systems Thinking Journey

For most of my professional life, I was a lawyer.

I practiced law for approximately twenty-one years across several disciplines. My first seven years were spent as a litigator. I then spent several years working on mergers, acquisitions, privatizations, and complex commercial transactions.

Later, I joined the Italian energy company ENI, where I spent nearly a decade supporting governance, regulatory, commercial, and strategic activities across multiple jurisdictions in Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.

It was an intellectually rewarding career.

But when I moved to the United States, I felt strongly that life was taking me in a different direction. I did not want to return to legal practice.

For reasons I could not fully explain at the time, I felt drawn toward building rather than advising.

Toward creating rather than documenting. Toward the real economy rather than the legal structures surrounding it.

I did not know where that journey would lead. I certainly did not expect it to lead to infrastructure.

Over the following years, I built and operated transportation businesses. I drove for Uber and Lyft. I operated a limousine company. Between platform driving and my own transportation operations, I personally completed approximately 27,000 rides.

Those rides were accumulated over years of work, often six or seven days per week, eight to ten hours per day, with few holidays, few weekends, and long stretches without vacations.

The number itself (27,000) is less important than what it represents: thousands of hours spent moving through Colorado, observing how people experience mobility, opportunity, housing, work, and daily life.

27,000 conversations.

27,000 opportunities to observe how people move through a city.

27,000 small windows into the daily realities of Colorado.

The most important infrastructure lessons did not come from reports or boardrooms. They came from the driver's seat.

The experience taught me things no infrastructure report ever could.

During those years, I experienced Colorado from a perspective unavailable to most policymakers, consultants, executives, or developers. I interacted with thousands of residents, visitors, workers, business owners, students, healthcare professionals, airport employees, hospitality workers, and families.

I also witnessed many of the challenges confronting modern metropolitan regions, including housing pressures, social isolation, substance abuse, mental health struggles, economic insecurity, and transportation barriers.

The experience became a form of field research. It provided a ground-level education in how people actually experience a city.

One particular ride remains vivid in my memory.

I had picked up a passenger at Denver International Airport and was driving her to meet family in one of the communities north of Denver. It was a typical airport ride.

For most of the journey, neither of us spoke. As we approached the destination, I made the same casual inquiry I often made with passengers:

"Is the temperature comfortable for you? Would you like me to adjust the air conditioning?"

A brief conversation followed. At one point, jokingly referring to something I had recently read, I said:

"Perhaps next time I'll pick you up in a flying car."

She laughed and replied that she had recently seen infrastructure being prepared for advanced air mobility systems at major airports.

The comment was brief.

The ride ended.

I dropped her off at her sister's home and continued on my way.

But something had changed.

As I drove away, my thoughts kept returning to that conversation. Flying cars. Advanced air mobility. Billions of dollars being invested into entirely new transportation technologies.

The more I thought about it, the more a different question emerged. Have we exhausted the possibilities offered by the technologies we already possess? Why are we so eager to invent entirely new transportation systems while many existing systems remain underdeveloped?

To be clear, I am not opposed to new transportation technologies. On the contrary, I believe the future will likely involve a combination of existing and emerging systems. Roads, railways, and advanced air mobility may each have important roles to play in a more connected and resilient future. My question was never whether flying cars were valuable. My question was whether we were thinking deeply enough about existing technologies, and how all these systems fit together.

These questions led me toward trains. Then public transportation. Then regional mobility. Then infrastructure.

What began as a passing thought became a persistent curiosity. The curiosity became research. The research eventually became a project.

At the time, I had no idea how far that question would eventually lead.

The project would eventually became Nexus.

At the time, Nexus was simply a transit project. Nothing more. Nothing less. My ambition was straightforward: I wanted to explore the possibility of a regional transit network capable of connecting communities across Greater Denver while also linking to strategic destinations such as Denver International Airport, mountain recreation areas, major employment centers, and future growth corridors.

I was fascinated by the idea. The more I studied it, however, the more an uncomfortable reality emerged.

Rail systems consume enormous quantities of electricity. When examining operating models around the world, it became increasingly apparent that energy would likely represent one of the largest components of long-term operating expenses. In some cases, energy costs appeared substantial enough to influence the economics of the entire system.

The question became obvious: Why think about transportation without thinking about power?

If mobility depended upon energy, perhaps energy should not be treated as somebody else's problem. Perhaps transportation and energy should be considered together. That realization expanded the project for the first time.

When mobility depends on energy, transportation and clean power can no longer be planned as separate systems.

Then another question emerged: Colorado is one of the most beautiful regions in North America.

The Front Range sits between the plains and the Rocky Mountains. If a transportation system were eventually built, should it merely move people?

Or should it also contribute to the quality and beauty of the places through which it passes?

Infrastructure often focuses on engineering efficiency. But cities are also emotional experiences. People remember places that inspire them.

This led us toward concepts involving landscape integration, ecological enhancement, and what eventually became the idea of an Urban Forest integrated into the infrastructure itself. The project expanded again.

Almost immediately, that expansion created another challenge: Trees require water. Landscapes require water. Communities require water.

Colorado, meanwhile, faces increasing pressure on its long-term water systems. Across the American West, difficult questions are emerging around water security, climate resilience, storage, supply, and sustainability. If we were serious about integrated development, we could not simply assume that water would always be available.

The next question became obvious. Why think about mobility and energy without thinking about water? The project expanded again.

If mobility depends on energy, and resilient communities depend on water, could these systems be designed together rather than treated as separate infrastructure problems?

We began exploring water manufacture, water storage, aquifer enhancement, and long-term water resilience as integral components rather than external dependencies.

Over time, another lesson emerged:

Many of the ideas we were exploring were ambitious. But ambition alone does not create sustainability. I remember sitting in my vehicle one day while working on an email to Dr. Don Elliman, then Chairman of the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. At the time, we were exploring ideas around what we called a Colorado Care Center, and I was trying to draft a thoughtful message seeking his perspectives.

As I worked on the email, a ride request appeared on my phone. The fare was approximately $4.92. I looked at the email. Then at the ride request. Then back at the email.

For a few moments I found myself confronting an uncomfortable reality. The work I wanted to do and the work paying the bills were competing for the same hour.

Eventually, I closed the laptop and accepted the ride. It was only a few dollars. But the lesson stayed with me: Big visions that cannot sustain themselves eventually become dependent on the sacrifice of the people carrying them. And dependence is not a business model.

That experience reinforced something that would become increasingly important as Nexus evolved. If infrastructure was going to succeed at scale, it would have to be economically sustainable.

Not eventually. From the beginning.

That realization gave rise to the next question: economics.

Transit infrastructure is expensive. Energy infrastructure is expensive. Water infrastructure is expensive. When one thinks seriously at regional scale, the numbers quickly become very large.

The conversation quickly moves from millions to billions and eventually to hundreds of billions of dollars. The question was no longer technical. It was financial: Where would the capital come from?

That led us toward an entirely different area of inquiry:

Could an infrastructure platform generate multiple forms of value simultaneously?

Could different systems support one another economically?

Could circularity be built into the model itself?

Could mobility support economic development?

Could energy support mobility?

Could land development support infrastructure?

Could infrastructure create multiple revenue streams rather than relying on a single economic engine?

Once again, the project expanded.

Then came governance: Even if such ideas were technically feasible, even if they were financially feasible, why should anyone trust us? Infrastructure is not merely an engineering challenge. It is a social contract.

Citizens, investors, governments, communities, Indigenous nations, and future generations all have legitimate interests in the outcome.

That realization led us toward a different set of questions:

Could governments become participants rather than merely regulators?

Could public stakeholders share in value creation?

Could infrastructure be structured to create broad-based benefits rather than concentrating gains in a small number of hands?

Could long-term alignment become a design principle rather than an afterthought?

As we explored these questions, we began examining whether public participation could be embedded directly into the ownership structure itself. One concept that emerged was the idea of offering a dedicated equity interest to public stakeholders, including the Federal Government and the State of Colorado, allowing them to participate not only in oversight and regulation, but also in the long-term success of the platform.

The objective was not political. It was alignment.

If infrastructure is intended to serve society over generations, perhaps society should have an opportunity to participate in the value it creates. Whether such structures ultimately prove feasible remains to be determined.

But once again, the project expanded.

What began as a transportation concept was now exploring questions of ownership, governance, public participation, and the distribution of long-term benefits.

At some point, I realized I was no longer working on a transit project at all.

The project that had started with trains had gradually evolved into something much broader: a search for an integrated infrastructure platform built around systems thinking, alignment, and circularity.

A framework for thinking about mobility, energy, water, economic development, governance, land use, ecological enhancement, and long-term community outcomes as elements of a larger system.

The objective was no longer simply to build infrastructure. It was to explore whether infrastructure systems could be designed to reinforce one another economically, environmentally, institutionally, and socially.

In other words, could circularity be designed into the platform itself?

Not because I began with a grand theory.

But because every question naturally led to another.

Every answer revealed a deeper dependency.

Every dependency revealed another system.

Every system revealed relationships that had previously been invisible.

That journey eventually became Nexus Protocol and Colorado Genesis.

Today, Colorado Genesis Phase 1A exists to answer a simple question:

Can a more integrated approach to infrastructure produce better long-term outcomes than treating mobility, energy, water, and economic development as independent challenges?

I do not know the answer. That is precisely why the work exists. The objective is not to prove a vision.

The objective is to determine whether the vision deserves to become reality. To evaluate what is technically, economically, legally, environmentally, socially, and institutionally possible before major commitments are made.

Looking back, what strikes me most is that none of this emerged from a strategic planning session, a government study, or an academic theory.

It emerged from observation.

From conversations.

From paying attention.

From following questions wherever they led.

What began as a transit project gradually became something much larger.

A search for a more integrated way of thinking about mobility, energy, water, economics, governance, and the future of communities.

And that journey began with something as simple as driving people from one place to another.