Transportation For America » A smarter transportation system begins with smarter technology

A smarter transportation system begins with smarter technology

May 7, 2009
By Andrew Bielak

Singapore’s congestion pricing system

When filmmakers envision the future of our transportation system, they often seem to come up with one enduring image — millions of layers of flying cars breezing effortlessly through impossibly dense cities, surrounded by mile-high skyscrapers.

There’s a good chance the future may not look quite so, well, futuristic. But that doesn’t mean that advanced computer technology — namely, wireless networks known as Intelligent Transportation Systems that feed through our transportation infrastructure — won’t have a huge role to play in helping move people and goods safer, more efficiently, and with less pollution in the 21st Century.

As this recent article from the New York Times makes clear, Intelligent Transportation Systems, or ITS, are becoming increasingly valuable tools for governments looking to better manage transportation networks without increasing capacity, and important investment opportunities for private companies who help develop these systems.

We can’t just pave our way out of congestion, but better technology can help us better utilize the system that we have now and maximize capacity — without always having to resort to costly new infrastructure.

When applied to our roads, bridges, transit systems, and rails, ITS can be as simple as the tolling booths that photograph license plates to allow drivers to pass straight through tolls and pay at a later date, or as complex as computer sensors installed on railroad tracks to better monitor and navigate the movement of freight.

I.B.M. has become involved in the effort to build these systems, particularly through the growing use of congestion pricing (which we’ll talk more about later on in this post), and even has this handy video — which you can watch below the fold — on its “Smarter Planet” website, in which we can see benefits of monitoring travel patterns and using computerized models to improve efficiency.

As the researcher featured in the video says, we have a limited amount of space in our towns and cities, and can’t just solve our transportation problems by building more or bigger roads. Our country has taken drastic steps forward in utilizing greater technology and wireless communications as a means of improving our economy in hundreds of ways, and it’s time we learn how to better use this technology to make our transportation system work better.

To give you a better idea of some of the things we’re talking about, here are just a few examples of the technology that city, state and federal governments are starting to implement to make our networks of roads, transit systems, rail lines, sidewalks, and bike paths safer and more efficient for all users:

Floating Cellular Data: Without building any new infrastructure, we can link location data from cell phones in cars to a central network in order get a complex and precise reading of how traffic is flowing, helping us use quantitative analysis to of travel patterns to better manage congestion.

Congestion Pricing: Though it hasn’t yet been implemented yet in the United States, congestion pricing — the process of using an electronic toll collector to charge drivers if they enter a highly congested areas in urban centers — has helped cities like London and Stockholm incentivize transit use and decrease overall levels of traffic.

Transit Signal Priority: Computer systems installed at traffic-signal controlled intersections can give us new ways to make public transportation more efficient without creating more congestion by giving traffic signal priority to transit vehicles.

To get a more thorough (albeit not exactly user-friendly) look at some of the ITS research and projects being funded at the federal level, check out the U.S. Department of Transportation’s website on the subject.

Filed under: Campaign Blog
Tags: congestion pricing, ibm, intelligent transportation systems, its, new york times, technology, transit

Comments are open

First Name
Last Name
Email

The United States of Transit Cutbacks

Driving is down and transit ridership is at record highs. Yet transit agencies across the country are considering layoffs, service cuts and fare hikes. Find out more and learn what you can do to help at t4america.org/transitcuts