The Future of Public Transit and AI’s Role
Many technological innovators are implementing artificial intelligence in the public transit sector in an attempt to make public transit run smoother and more accessible to the general public. It seems as though each year major cities work to streamline their public transit systems. Not only do these efforts help provide a meaningful service to the city’s citizens, but they also work to reduce the city’s carbon emissions by cutting the number of single-passenger vehicles on the road.
Today’s Public Transit
The most popular modes of travel in mass transit are buses, cars, and trains. In recent years, car rentals by the hour, bicycle, scooter rentals, and car-sharing services such as Uber and Lyft have aided in evolving the public transit sector. Generally, every time a person utilizes any of the available transportation options, all functions of the use are recorded — the location pick-up and drop-off points, the number of passengers, the direction of travel, and the amount charged.
Currently, this mass collection of data regarding all forms of public transit is being used to improve the current systems. Each bus ticket purchased and each subway card scanned is working to collect valuable information that will help shape the future of public transit. Analyzing big data will provide new opportunities in developing innovative software tools that will connect with AI to create a more organized and streamlined system. It will make it possible to increase operational efficiency, improve scheduling power, and provide services that are in high demand.
How Does It Work?
The evolution of AI has had a positive impact on many industries and changed the way the world operates. AI works using the language of code. Current tools connect with AI that only knows what they are taught and can do tasks such as learning your name or guiding you on a new route as traffic updates are fed into their systems.
Many have been wary of AI being completely in command of moving vehicles due to the risk of accidents occurring. Research on self-driving cars has shown that human error is much higher than systemic errors, making self-driving cars more appealing for than ever. Using software that judges space and proximity to other objects improves the safety of the passengers.
High-speed transport currently uses software and technologies from a number of global conglomerates to aid in navigating China’s Shanghai Maglev train — a marvel that has reached speeds of 311 miles per hour. As the population continues to rise, the need to transport mass amounts of people in a short amount of time has the world looking towards engineering feats such as China’s bullet train.
Future Transit
The future is mobility-as-a-service (MaaS), a single mobile app that combines multiple modes of public and private transport to be accessed for a single flat fee. This will include driverless services on platforms such as trains, cars, and shuttles. According to ABI Research, MaaS will have a “disruptive impact on traditional transportation modes like car ownership, buses, trains, aviation, taxis and rental cars.” It may momentarily be economically disruptive, but the convenience and environmental impact will long outweigh the bump in the market. Likely, the largest cost to the general public will be the increases in taxes as the infrastructure is built to provide for the new systems.
Using big data, triggering a ride for pickup on the app will offer you the best options to optimize your time. Much like how Google Maps currently offers numerous options and arrival times, including means of the bus system, personal vehicle, walking, or biking — the app will do the same but include all possible options near you. It will use real-time updated information about traffic, breakdowns, and construction using AI and contributed information used by companies such as Waze which acquires information through user input.
ABI Research anticipates that autonomous passenger drones and flying cars will become increasingly more viable and popular in as little as six to 10 years from now. They anticipate in the near future, on-demand buses and shuttle services will be more commonplace. The research company also does not foresee the rate of bicycle rentals increasing any further than what we have seen in the past with the widespread availability of affordable, immediately available covered transit.
For those that live in cities, public transit is often more convenient than owning a personal vehicle or bicycle. The ease of access continues to grow and so does the technology, right alongside with it. Big data will continue to gather the information to better design ways to get people from A to B without the aid of human drivers in the future. The future of public transit is very appealing, even if we haven’t quite figured out how to teleport ourselves from one side of the city to another.
