Mobility In Smart Cities

Few thoughts on having citizen-centric transportation infrastructure

Olli, an electric, self-driving shuttle in Phoenix [1]

Tenets of smart mobility in cities

1. Community based initiatives: It is very important to identify the citizen-specific problems of each region.
2. Learning to push back against a technocratic solution: By fixing the context based on truly understanding their regional needs, the cities can then form a clear policy agenda before deploying the technology [2]. This also opens avenues to creatively deploy simple but effective solutions like user-friendly apps.
3. Pro-active governance: At this point of time it is very important for cities to recognize the importance of regulations- Companies may insist they want to make the world a better place for everyone, but that’s the government’s actual job [3]. At the same time, government has to take care not to stifle innovation by too much regulation.
4. Providing options to citizens: The modes of transport need not be limited to few selections. By providing access to multiple modes of transportation, the cities move towards smarter mobility.

Importance of autonomous vehicles

There is indeed a positive impact of having autonomous vehicles in urban environments:

• Reduction in human error inherent in driving.
• Increase efficiency of travel.
• Intelligent re-design of urban infrastructure to enable greater connectivity and data analysis.

But we should be cautious that it is not the panacea for all the complex socio economic problems that inflict our cities. In addition, there are so many pieces in the technological puzzle that still needs to be ironed out before AVs become mainstream[4].

How does the future look?

The city of Columbus, OH was the winner of the Smart City Challenge- an initiative to re-design the transportation [5]. It was heartening to note that the city had a very citizen-centric approach to building their proposed framework. Columbus recognized that the access to quality prenatal healthcare suffers from the socioeconomic disparities that afflicts the region. Instead of focusing on building a novel infrastructure based on flashy new technologies, Columbus proposed a plan to subsidize on-demand ride service to the impacted community. This is true innovation as it solves the immediate problem without any elaborate solution.

I am hopeful that many other cities would recognize the importance of what Columbus has done and also learn from the past mistakes of the Motor Age. As Green mentioned- “It is only by recognizing a technology’s limits and dangers that we can hope to attain its benefits.” [2]

[1] “We Need New Rules for Self-Driving Cars | Issues in Science and Technology,” Issues Sci. Technol., p. 13.
[2] B. Green, “2. The Livable City: The Limits and Dangers of New Technology,” p. 27.
[3] R. Razdan, “Exploring The Three Elephants In The Autonomous Vehicle Room,” p. 3.
[4] “Miller and McAslan 2018 — autonomous vehicles in tempe — opportunities and risks.pdf.” .
[5] “USDOT 2016 — smart city challenge — lessons for building cities of the future.pdf.” .
[6] I. Docherty, G. Marsden, and J. Anable, “The governance of smart mobility,” Transp. Res. Part Policy Pract., vol. 115, pp. 114–125, Sep. 2018, doi: 10.1016/j.tra.2017.09.012.