Cutting the cost of getting from a to b

In the 20th century, transport was revolutionised by the meteoric rise of the automobile. But a new era of ‘multi-modal’ travel is now taking shape, promising smarter, cleaner and quicker ways to get city-dwellers to their destinations.

The cost of traffic congestion is high – and growing.

A 2015 report by the Centre for Economics and Business Research and Inrix, a traffic information provider, found that gridlock is costing Europe and the US almost USD200 billion a year in lost productivity. By 2030, the figure could be 50 per cent higher.

Yet the financial loss that comes with wasted car fuel and having employees stuck in their vehicles instead of sat at their desks is nothing compared to the environmental cost of traffic snarl-ups. That bill is probably too big to tally.

urban mobility

Fortunately, tech companies both large and small are helping to tackle such problems. The plethora of products and services they have under development promises to transform urban travel in particular into a more pleasant and less costly experience.

Technologies in the ascendancy include autonomous and electric vehicles, shared electric bicycles and scooters and phone apps that integrate real-time travel information. With these alternatives to traditional petrol-powered cars all maturing at the same time, the question is, which will offer the best solution for our overcrowded and polluted cities? The answer is all of them.

commuters are often
a problem still

Park rangers

A major cause of city congestion is inadequate parking.

Since cars in the US are parked around 95 per cent of the time, drivers waste huge amounts of time circling around in search of a space. One solution comes in the form of smart sensors.

These devices, which are placed underneath parking spots, keep drivers informed of parking availability in real time by feeding data direct to mobile phones. They have already been deployed across cities such as San Francisco, Boston and Los Angeles.

Another way of tackling the problem combines wireless connectivity with the principles of the sharing economy. Rather than sourcing car park data from traffic control centres, parking app company Waze uses information collated by a local community of car users.

With 50 million people already on board, and a new partnership with app developer Lyft likely to increase that number further, it is little wonder that Google paid more than USD1 billion to acquire the firm.

The success of such technology has also come to the attention of the auto giants.

Ford is taking the parking-space hunt particularly seriously. After cementing a partnership with tech firm ParkWhiz, which enables drivers to book spaces in advance, it has now joined IBM in developing an in-car app that informs drivers of available parking.

While they are proving popular with drivers, these innovations are no panacea, however.

traffic

That is because there are simply too many cars chasing too few spaces. Here is where auto share firms could help.

Car-sharing companies are gaining members and expanding their fleet size at a rapid clip. Zipcar, for example, boasts more than 730,000 members and has access to 11,000 vehicles, which it makes available by the hour.

Uber’s growth to a business worth more than USD60 billion also bears witness to the rewards available to those who come up with new solutions that strike a chord with travellers. Urban dwellers, it turns out, are interested mostly in cost and convenience.

Driverless cars, meanwhile, could offer more than just convenience.

Although it is not yet clear whether the emergence of autonomous vehicles will lead to a fall in car ownership, they may bring other benefits. According to the consultancy McKinsey, self-driving cars could free up as much as 50 minutes a day for people who would otherwise be concentrating on getting from A to B. That adds up to 1 billion hours extra hours a day that humans could spend on more economically productive activities. What is more, McKinsey reckons, because self-driving cars do not require their doors to be opened when exiting car park spaces, they could reduce the amount of space currently taken up by parking lots by as much as 5.7 billion square metres in the US alone.

Accidents – and the traffic jams they cause – might also become less frequent. Around 1.2 million people worldwide die in car accidents every year, with the majority caused by poor driving. Estimates of the economic cost of car crashes start at upwards of 1 per cent of total GDP. So if driverless cars can indeed reduce the number of crashes by 90 per cent simply by eradicating human error, as their most famous proponent Elon Musk claims, then the economic and social gains could be considerable.

congestion day

Proving “public” works

But for sustainable urban transport systems to take root worldwide, new technologies must not remain the preserve of the private sector. Public transport will also need to adopt them, says Diane Davis, Professor of Regional Planning and Urbanism at Harvard University.

With new technologies you can create a more integrated system that is far more promising than a single firm disrupting the sector.

“With new technologies you can create a more integrated system that is far more promising than a single firm disrupting the sector,” she says.

US cities remain far more car dependent than their counterparts in other developed countries. While public transport accounts for more than half of all trips in some Asian and European cities, in the US it is less than 10 per cent. Large-scale collection and standardisation of real-time public transport data can address three of the public transport’s sector’s biggest problems: cost, efficiency and waiting times. Waiting times have a curiously strong effect on customer use of buses, trains and trams.

congestion city

When real-time transport data apps emerged a few years ago, one study found that bus passengers overestimated the time they waited when no information was provided – but not when it was.

And if it seems that smart management of public and private transport can go only so far in making cities more liveable, consider this: a recent paper released by the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology suggested that with smart transport systems such as automated buses, Singapore’s mobility demand could be met with just 30 per cent of the city’s existing vehicles.

Like Singapore, Helsinki is taking radical action to ensure that city transport works more efficiently. It has put in place a plan that aims to make cars useless by 2025. The Helsinki Regional Transport Authority last year introduced an inventive new public mini bus service which lets riders choose their own pick-up and drop-off points via their smart phones. The city has also introduced a public transport app that is both journey planner and ticket issuer.

“The draw of car ownership is that it provides a certain guarantee to take care of not just one journey, but all of your journeys. So an alternative must be able to guarantee a seamless, high-quality service.” explains Sampo Hietanen, CEO of ITS Finland, a not-for-profit association that promotes smart public transport.

If recent studies and technological improvements have proven one thing, it is that the more convenient the service, the more customers will use it and the more data they will provide. This creates a virtuous cycle that benefits customers and providers alike.

how could congestion

About

Mega

Mega seeks to energise and enrich the debate over how to create a better-functioning economy and society.

Megatrends are the powerful socio-economic, environmental and technological forces that shape our planet. The digitisation of the economy, the rapid expansion of cities and the depletion of the Earth’s natural resources are just some of the structural trends transforming the way countries are governed, companies are run and people live their lives.

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