What is Smart Cities Transportation?

Growing urbanisation, climate change and high inner-city estate values are forcing us to re-think mobility. It is estimated that in 2050 about 70% of the world’s population will be living in cites, accelerating population- and traffic congestions even further. The solution is expected to be found in the vision of Smart Cities, a general term used to describe development concepts, that aim to make the city of the future more efficient, sustainable and socially inclusive. Let us cut it short - concepts that improve our quality of life.

The term Smart City covers many dimensions from security, healthcare, energy and sustainability to governance, housing, community engagement and of course to mobility, which is the main area we will look into when it comes to Smart Cities Transportation. For all dimensions and their possible applications is common, that they are enabled by innovations in digital technology, analysis of data and adoption by authorities and us, the citizens.

The fine dressed-in-suits folks from McKinsey have defined three basic layers that are defining how smart a city is. These are:

• Technology Base: Smartphones and sensors, connected through high-speed communication networks gather and provide information about daily life (traffic flow, energy consumption, community engagement, etc.) and give access to:
• Applications: that translate raw data into alerts, insights and actions. The success of these applications is defined by the:
• Adoption and Usage: of cities, organisations and users, and in the end if they manage to change our behaviours.

Let us now turn to the mobility side of Smart Cities by using a case most of us will know, or even have experienced ourselves. Uber - the taxi eating e-hailing service from San Francisco we either love or hate. The platform uses smartphones from drivers and users, that provide real-time information about location, traffic and routes to determine a convenient and efficient way to bring passengers from A to B. Only in parts of adoption and usage, we have seen Uber to struggle, and authorities began to question the quite disruptive business model, banning the service from several cities worldwide. The user joined in later with ethical concerns about company culture, and the company’s treatment of drivers as independent contractors instead of employees. The Uber case most certainly shows us how these layers play in orchestra for Smart Cities Transportation concepts to work.

Another interesting case of Smart Cities Transportation is the Finish start-up Whim, that provides Mobility-as-a-Service, short: MaaS. By signing up to the service, users get access to all kinds of transportation, from public transport, taxi, car rental, car sharing service, bike sharing and bike rental services. Users plan their trips via the Whim smartphone app, and pay either per ride, or through a monthly subscription plan. The service is currently active in Helsinki, Antwerp, West Midlands in the UK, with a rollout to Amsterdam in the coming months.

The Whim example clearly shows that for any Smart City Transportation project to work, collaboration with and support from key stakeholders is necessary to serve the community of the future. In addition, there is an urgent need to secure and solve how we in the future can use shared data principles for transport infrastructures, so that data can flow between vehicles, authorities, operators and made available to passengers. Already now we are seeing expectations from passengers like; little-to-no waiting time, door-to-door mobility, personal security and smart payment solutions on the rise.

Along with passenger expectations, innovation in mobility technology and the impact of automation and digitalisation in general are changing fast. While limitations in infrastructure and governmental constraints might still be slowing down that progress, urbanisation, climate change, technological enabled alternatives put an inevitable pressure on the industry. Autonomous cars, e-mobility and artificial intelligence are only some of the many technological trends changing the future of mobility, enabling us to pursuit the vision of Smart Cities Transportation.