Intelligent Transportation Systems in a Smart City: Week 10 - Week 11
For the last two weeks, I have been looking specifically into the idea of implementing Intelligent Transportation Systems into cities through the use of the Smart City concept. An Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) is an advanced application that aims to provide innovative services relating to different modes of transport and traffic management and enable users to be better informed and make safer, more coordinated, and 'smarter' use of transport network. With this and the implementation of technology and data, the city would become more efficient with travel and grids as the urban populations increase around the world.
From research, I have gathered and come to understand that this type of implementation is a 2-way idea where both parts need to work in tandem to create an efficient whole. Through physical implementation and digital implementation, data can be shared across networks to be applied by systems in the physical world. Big Data (BD) can come in from sensors and points throughout the city and then be evaluated by the system to make adjustments and change as needed. “Applications of Big Data to Smart Cities” suggests, sensors are placed throughout the city in “smart” street lights and can sense the surrounding physical world through data collected about “speed of cars, traffic density, waiting times at lights, traffic jams, etc.” This data is then sent through the interconnected network in the city and can adjust, through an algorithm, to make the traffic and streets as efficient as they can be.
Another more physical implementation is the look at the future of autonomous and automated vehicles. This idea a more tangible concept that begins to play into the lives of citizens that use this as transportation. The author of “On the Future of Transportation” suggests that the technology and intelligent way of implementation is already laid out for the city through the ideas and established basis of Uber and Lyft. Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) are already on the road with us and are just going to grow more and more. The use of a transportation system, allows people to not even have to own a car (as shown through studies of Uber and Lyft) and transportation becomes a system of pick-up and drop-off through the use of the citywide system. The paper puts forth data that suggests “30% of downtown traffic are people just looking for a place to park” and eliminating that number will eliminate 30% of cars on the road as well as parking lots that take up valuable land within the city limits. This allows more land to become available for a more dense city that relies on a more public transportation system that can be accessible to a majority of the population (as it is now).
From suggestions on the mid-review presentation, I wanted to take the idea and method that Le Corbusier laid out in his utopian cities and be able to look at how transportation can be optimized from a city of the future. Looking at the physical implementation of where technology is going and how it impacts the public and their lives as well as looking at the digital implementation of technology to allow systems and the city to be able to share and speak to one another.
From this research that I have conducted to understand variations of implementation and redesign of transportation systems within cities, I look towards being able to understand the technology that is behind the digital side of implementing these ideas into the city. The physical side is a little easier to look at and understand, but the digital side is a little more difficult to be laid out in words. I look forward to being able to use the data that I collect to potentially make a handbook of systems and implementation that can then create a kit of parts to be applied towards a city looking into the future. This will allow a city to be more energy-efficient as well as make the lives of people and traveling easier.