City Moonshot: Mobility challenges and how cities can solve them

Recently, I have read ERTICO's City Moonshot report with great interest. For this insightful study, more than 150 representatives of cities worldwide were interviewed on their smart mobility challenges, needs and trends. Which takeaways specifically are of interest?

Challenges

Let’s have a look at the challenges first: 61 % of the surveyed cities indicated traffic congestion as their primary challenge followed by pollution & noise (51%) and a lack of budget and/or resources (50%)  

#1 Congestion ➡️ Intelligent Traffic Management is a key.  As an example, future-oriented cities like Taichung or Vienna rely on our real-time solution PTV Optima which combines innovative machine learning techniques with proven dynamic traffic modeling. It helps operators identify the best scenarios to manage congestion, road closures, and construction sites, and to accurately simulate the resulting network performances.  

#2 Pollution & Noise ➡️A paradigm for the use of transportation modeling and simulation. Digital models allow planners and officials to estimate the social, environmental, and economic impacts of planned infrastructure measures, and to make the best decisions. PTV's consultants also provide support in this field. For example, in developing SUMPs Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans. Currently the team is working on a SUMP for my home-town of Frankfurt.

#3 Lack of budget and/ or resources ➡️ To save budget & resources, good planning is crucial - especially for costly infrastructure projects. In the virtual model environment, different ideas and measures can be tested and optimized before their implementation. 

Key priorities

In terms of key priorities city authorities named improving the public transport system (79%) and air quality (68%), followed by decarbonizing city mobility (68%).   

#1 Improving public transport ➡️ Here again transportation modeling and simulation are powerful tools: They enable operators to design reliable transit services which optimally serve diverse passengers’ needs. Various public transport lines, vehicle types, timetables, and routes can be modeled. For example, the city of Madrid uses PTV Visum to analyzes and estimates passenger flows and travel demand, and ensure efficient operations and a high-quality service.

#2 Air quality ➡️To support cities in improving air quality and reducing traffic-related emissions, we joined forces with @Bosch last year. We brought together our expertise in traffic planning and simulation with their know-how in measuring, modeling, and analyzing air quality data. Today, precise emissions data by Bosch is available in PTV Vissim, allowing city and traffic planners to immediately see how different traffic measures, such as adapted signal control, will affect vehicle emissions and air quality.   

#3 Decarbonizing city mobility ➡️ Modeling and simulation are helpful here in many ways: For example, in the decarbonization of bus fleets, which is a major investment for public transport operators. With the help of modeling software, different planning issues can be precisely analyzed and tested as early as possible. Another example is the systematic and cost-efficient planning of public EV charging infrastructure.  The research project Charge in UK used a model in PTV Visum to identify the best locations for charging infrastructure taking the future demand and even the capacity of the electricity network into account.

In general, transportation modeling and simulation are powerful tools to develop advanced and future-proofed transportation strategies and solutions. Virtual models enables cities and transport planners to understand the entire mobility ecosystem and to take the right decision towards a more sustainable and efficient, safer and equitable future.

ERTICO is continuing with the City Moonshot and the interviews. Cites will find more information online. 

On a final note, we, the PTV Group Team, are constantly addressing these challenges and priorities to even better adapt our solutions to urban requirement as we aim to empower cities for a cleaner and smarter future.