Building tomorrow’s transport agenda

The City of Amsterdam, Transport for London and numerous municipalities across the globe have implemented and are continuing to implement intelligent transportation solutions to streamline their services.

Many of these have been very successful in terms of congestion reduction, passenger uptake and reduction of CO2 emissions. The success of their intelligent transport systems is measured by metrics that match their specific objectives. Whilst eventually it would be great if these were unified, it cannot be denied that each individual city has its own challenges and moreover their own outcomes in mind. Indeed EU directives will mean that there must be alignment of common goals across multiple countries, however the methods to reach these outcomes will naturally differ.

The Middle East presents a different situation altogether – it is a region made up of emerging transportation services, where ‘green’ eco-friendly solutions are rather low down on the priority list. One issue that faces everyone is that the region is becoming increasingly urbanised and with this mass urbanisation comes increased congestion.

Whilst the first choice of the municipality, transport authority or ministry might be to add an extra road in, it is not the most cost or time effective solution. With the introduction of intelligent transportation systems, these time and cost pressures can be avoided, investment needs to be made with the right technologies and these can be deployed overnight. It would seem that the benefits of deploying the intelligent system completely outweighs the cost and effort involved in building new roads.

So why are we still building roads?

I don’t mean to say that building new roads is not important or necessary, but they are definitely not always the solution. We need to better manage our current infrastructures and services to realise what is possible with what we already have. The resource is there, the infrastructure is there, we just need to pick the right technology to make the most of it and fully capitalise on the services that already exist.