Building the Urban Mobility Networks of Tomorrow

You don’t have to be the CIO of a city to know that the transportation industry is changing – and changing rapidly.

In the wake of transit agencies experiencing declining ridership; utilities losing revenue to energy efficiency; departments of transportation facing congested roadways; and urban residents suffering from poor air quality, the public sector is starting to join forces with Fortune 500 companies and their start-up partners to leverage technology and reimagine the future of urban mobility. To date, this cross-sector conversation has centered on how to use four streams of technologies (shared, connected, electric, and autonomous) to address four key concerns for cities (safety, air quality, congestion, and accessibility). Thus far, this cross-sector conversation has been mostly that – just a conversation.

Building the urban mobility networks of tomorrow will require conversation, and a lot of it. For example, electric utilities will have to learn about how people and goods move throughout the city so they know where to place electric vehicle chargers. Departments of transportation will have to understand the profit motivations of autonomous vehicle companies so they can provide access and manage congestion. Companies will have to set traditional business models aside so they can help transit agencies improve the way people move around the city.

Moreover, building the urban mobility networks of tomorrow will require collaboration among the actors mentioned above – partnerships that may (at first) feel unconventional, uncomfortable, and unfamiliar. In the process of innovating urban mobility, each of the standard steps of the city-making process, including design, planning, implementation, operation, and financing, will be challenged.

Siemens, a global infrastructure and technology company, has already started collaborating on some of these future mobility projects. For example, in Canada, the company is working with transit agencies to site eBus charging infrastructure and develop diagnostics for managing fleets of eBuses. In Tampa, FL, the company is helping the regional transportation authority to use connected vehicle technology to assist with transit signal priority and to alert drivers of pedestrians in their blind spots (among other use cases).

From these projects and others, it is clear that successful public-private collaboration requires:

• Secure data sharing, which should take place between the public and private sectors, across companies within the private sector, across city/county/regional agencies within the public sector, and across agencies and companies between the public and private sectors.
• Use cases, identified by the public sector and the public, with solutions (technologies, design, policies, etc.) implemented by the public and private sectors together.
• Flexibility in funding, financing, and procurement, with projects jointly funded or financed by public-private partnerships.
• A plan for scaling that will move short-term, smaller pilots to full-scale implementation (e.g., moving from one eBus to an entire eBus fleet).
• Alignment between a single project and the ecosystem of projects occurring within a city (e.g., how does an individual project on electric vehicle charging infrastructure fit into the city’s larger, long-term plan for shared, electric, autonomous vehicles?).

Remaking city transportation networks to fit 21^st-century needs using 21^st-century technologies will be a difficult endeavor, but it is necessary. City CIOs/CTOs/CDOs can play essential roles in enabling public-private collaboration. By managing city IT systems, running pilot projects, and developing smart city plans, they are uniquely positioned to shape the development of the urban mobility networks of tomorrow.