You can not solve 21st century problems with 20th century solutions! And if you are tempted to know how the modern world is solving its most intractable mobility issues then this is the right place to park your wheels of thoughts. This article highlights those cities which throttled the right technology to solve those common impending problems of every urban city.
The first decades of the 21st century have given us an unprecedented experience of fast-paced technological growth. Many nations and their cities are undergoing R&D with Industry 4.0 and paving the way forward into a future where technology has an answer to every question.
The following is a list of top 4 cities which have tackled traffic congestion problems with modern technology and thus have become an example of a futuristic city.
#1 Helsinki
Helsinki is the hub of Futuristic mobility where the government and the private sector are working hand in hand to provide the best traffic management solutions. All the projects (to be precise 201) and companies are co-founded by the Tekes witty city programme between 2013-17. Tekes united with Finpro to form Business Finland on 1st January 2018.
With improved public transport, cab sharing, smart parking solutions, e-bicycles to automated cars they have covered it all and along with the traffic management solutions Helsinki has been able to bring sustainability.
Mobility as a service (MaaS) is a project where the users get all the details about the timing and route of the public transports and also provides payment options. Various players like the Whim mobile app are actively working to provide MaaS to the population of Helsinki.
Leanpark and Witrafi are the two services which provide smart parking solutions and also the vision to develop automated cars in the near future is undertaken by players like Nokia and Infotripla leading this sector by using digitisation, 5G and artificial intelligence. EVs have also been tapped by a few companies like VIRTA.
Thus, Helsinki is solving the traffic issues with futuristic use of technology.
#2 Dubai
Talk about Futuristic and miss Dubai? That is impossible!
The Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) of Dubai worked on an integrated approach for procuring real-time data. From the ground to the marine and up in the air all modes of transportation are integrated for smooth flow of traffic.
The Smart Mobility Master Plan includes EC3 that integrates all the 3 modes of transportation and is one of its kind multi-modal transportation in the world.
If there is congestion at one particular location this system suggests people alternate routes, metro train and taxi options.
RTA outsources some of its working sectors to private players and one of them is SERCO which manages the Dubai Tram and Metro.
Do you remember the Jetsons and their flying cars? Dubai took them quite seriously and have undertaken various projects towards it, for example, the Volocopters and a little off track the Virgin Hyperloop One.
#3 Singapore
The island-city-nation Singapore has the Smart Columbus Project of which one program is the Department of Transportation. This program includes various projects which will be discussed here.
Smart Columbus Operating System: This project provides integrated data like Traffic Characteristics, City Infrastructure Inventory, Crash Records, Emergency Response time, Parking locations, Health Behaviours etc. all this is real-time data.
Smart Mobility Hubs: A hub that provides transport information to a person to get from one place to another this is done through an interactive digital kiosk known as IKE (Interactive Kiosk Experience)
Singapore also aims at Connected Vehicle Environment, Self Driving Shuttles, Mobility assistance for people with disability etc.
#4 Barcelona
The Spanish city of football has also got good skills in smart city applications. Using IoT this city has made tremendous progress in its smart city project since 2015. It all started with the 500km optic fibre network below the city infrastructure and now has grown into a backbone of integrated city systems and provides almost 90% of the fibre to home coverage.
The Sentilo platform has helped make Barcelona a smart city. The information is collected through sensors placed throughout the city and the data can be classified into Energy monitoring, Noise monitoring, Urban Lab monitoring, Garbage Collection monitoring, and Parking Spots monitoring (according to research gate article). Urban Lab Monitoring and Parking Spot monitoring address the Traffic Management issues.
Sentilo has helped Barcelona for implementing multi-modal strategy in transportation and encourages the use of electric cars and bike, sharing.
The digital bus stops give bus location updates, USB charging and free Wifi. The lamp-posts in the city are all interconnected and set the brightness according to the presence of pedestrians. Also, the lamp-posts are a free wifi network providing wifi service to the entire city.
Barcelona estimates that the use of modern technology has tremendously helped it economically reduce the water bills, increasing revenue through parking and generating 47000 new jobs. (according to the Harvard article)
These 4 cities discovered better traffic management with the help of latest technologies like digitisation, 5G, IoT, artificial intelligence etc. and are paving the way for the cities of the world to adopt these technologies and take a step towards a better future for transportation.
Our research considered cities like Stockholm, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Hangzhou, Copenhagen, London and a few more. These cities too are doing remarkable work but the 4 cities mentioned are implementing modern technology in a personalised and not so common manner.
We would like suggestions from you about mentioning any city that you think should be included because it is doing remarkable work in solving its traffic management issues.
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