by Greg Rucks and Alisha Kuzma, via Rocky Mountain Institute
America has been built and shaped by its ability to move people and goods freely and quickly, fueled by oil. But this “freedom” comes at a cost. Transportation is America’s number-two consumer cost after housing. American drivers pay $8,000 a year for an auto they drive only 4 percent of the time.
According to RMI research, using vehicles more productively can provide the same or better access to transportation services with 46–84 percent less driving. Fortunately, we can now access and share detailed transportation data on an unprecedented scale, allowing creative software app developers to expand and enhance our mobility options. It all amounts to an emerging new transportation paradigm.
Imagine, for example, this scenario:
While eating breakfast, you receive a notification on your smartphone alerting you to weather-induced traffic delays along your normal route to work. You decide to take the suggested alternative route that will save you 15 minutes. You then reserve parking in a nearby garage at a fraction of the cost because you received a half-price push notification coupon.
While walking to your car, you notice a street lamp with a burnt-out light bulb. You snap a photo with your smartphone and place a work order with the city, and in doing so, qualify yourself for a monthly cash prize drawing.
On your drive, your car alerts you to two potential rideshares along your current route who have five-star ratings, so you agree to pick them up and make a few bucks. When you drop the passengers off, their mobile phones automatically complete the payment transaction.
In the parking garage, you redeem your coupon and pay the discounted daily rate, all on your smartphone, which then automatically logs the location of your parking spot so that it can help you find it later.
The 3 I’s of Intelligent Transportation Systems
Many emerging factors are making this vision a reality, and many areas of the country have made strides toward it. Scaling these solutions to their full potential will require a transportation system that is instrumented, interconnected, and intelligent:
- Instruments include smartphones, sensors, and onboard vehicle hardware that enable continuous collection, communication, and processing of mobility data—anything from traffic and weather conditions to parking spots and rideshares.
- This data can then be made widely available on an interconnected data grid. Sounds like the Internet, right? Except to be fully functional and responsive, the transportation data grid will have to be capable of handling “big data”—information that is unprecedented in its volume, velocity, and variability.
- All that data racing across that grid is useless until it is processed and used to optimize user mobility. That’s where the intelligence comes in. In particular, user-facing software applications can transform what would otherwise be an overwhelming and nonsensical sea of numbers into an intelligible and accessible graphical interface.
Getting Intelligent Transportation into Gear
What can software developers and municipalities do to deliver the elements of this intelligent transportation system to end-users, and what are they doing already?
One of the biggest enablers of intelligent transportation is an open-data approach. Most cities manage their traffic and transit data on private databases, accessed exclusively by municipal staff to monitor system performance and implement improvements. Imagine: instead of a few municipal staff thinking about how to improve their isolated systems, millions of software developers look to gain lucrative market share in the information space—from established powerhouses such as Google and IBM to individual programmers on smartphone app stores—all contributing their own innovations. Not only would cities tap into a much larger pool of creativity, the collective innovation would be infectious, and individual successes could be quickly replicated and spread to multiple cities.
Many already have: 4 percent of the 400,000 monthly trips on Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) are planned using Embark, a multi-modal trip planning iPhone app started by three college students, that has since spread nationwide. ParkMe, another smartphone app that specializes in predictive algorithms to direct drivers to the best available parking locations, has built an entire business case around providing parking data. While this app is free to customers, developers are willing and eager to pay for ParkMe’s data because they can transform it into their own revenue stream from drivers in search of parking.
Many cities are prepared to spend millions on infrastructure upgrades such as widened roads and more parking lots. Others are constrained by budget limitations and don’t have millions to spend. In both cases, cities would do well to invest relatively little to standardize and disseminate their transportation data. This could harness the legion of problem-solving, self-motivated software developers who can help them make the most of their existing roads and parking lots. It also helps planners make informed decisions about whether, where, and how to build new infrastructure, all while expanding transportation options and enhancing mobility for the rest of us.
Greg Rucks is a consultant with the transportation team at the Rocky Mountain Institute; Alisha Kuzma is an intern at the Rocky Mountain Institute. This piece was originally published at RMI’s Spark Blog and was reprinted with permission.
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All of this complex technology to move us part of the way to what Amsterdam has already accomplished with the simple technology known as the bicycle.
Tell it to someone with a 30 mile one way commute.
I love my bike and live in a place where I can and do use it often for pure transportation and shopping.
Reality is that right now, for millions of people in the USA, biking is NOT a solution for their daily commute.
This article is reality based.
RMI’s technophiliac fantasies are delightfully boundless! Unfortunately, realities are somewhat more limited. In this instance we have a system whose growing complexity makes us ever more vulnerable to simple problems such as violent weather (of which we take careful note on this forum) and its effects, hackers, software and hardware “bugs,” crowding, user error – not to mention resource scarcity, not the least of which is power (yes, I know, alternative energy will save us one of these days – but the very long pending meanwhile what do we do?).
That we like to think that the technology that created our current mess has the wherewithal to rescue us is remarkable.
I agree with Charles – the best transportation option for local travel and errands (and health and budgets) is the bicycle. Can’t use it for everything, but it could put a big dent in our current transportation problems.
When you get into an elevator, that’s an automated transit system. My system simply goes up, sideways to your stop, and down. Now is that so hard?
There are 100 innovative details that go along with this simple system, so no, it’s not quite that simple. However, it’s just plain stunningly cheap, it’s disability friendly to the nth degree and it takes all of the stress out of commuting. It drops you off at your job or the store, it parks itself, it picks up your groceries.
I’ve been sitting on an automated transit system for about 15 years now. Sitting on it. It’s an odd thing that everyone in the environmental movement implies that there’s no such thing as climate change, because otherwise people would demand that I implement the system. Remember the Star Trek episode where Mr. Spock demands that Dr. McCoy keep slapping him hard in the face until Spock wakes up? That seems to be what we have here.
Nix the idea of getting paid for sharing a ride. Your liability then changes to that of a common carrier.
Sharing the cost? Fine.
It isn’t just a distinction without a difference. Share the rent on a house? You’re housemates. The same people helping you on the mortgage? They’re your tenants.
*****
Amsterdam is two things most American cities aren’t: compact and flat.
Productivity is a huge benefit of utilizing big data. As a big data guy with a focus on the back-end side (gathering and analyzing info) it’s great to see apps and incentives taking advantage of available info and delivering services with big impact. More support of the fact that information and analysis is beneficial in every market, from retail, to education, politics, gaming ,commerce and more. http://bit.ly/Qy62pL