Nick Marks, Intelematics CEO, recently spoke at the FIA Smart Cities eForum — Asia-Pacific and was asked how to promote transport and urban mobility usage. In his response, Nick highlighted customer engagement and convenience, along with data to make informed decisions, and reducing congestion.
He also cautioned against the hype cycle that was in effect a few years ago regarding ride share and how many commentators thought car share was going to replace private car ownership and use.
What can we do right now to boost road usage productivity?
By leveraging data and technology we can save driver time.
Planning and driver decision making can be improved by using traffic data and by deploying predictive traffic and parking solutions that, when combined, can cut trip time by pushing congestion alerts to drivers to avoid bottlenecks on main arterial roads and direct drivers to available parking bays and reduce circling.
Top 3 Actions for Reducing Drive Time
Predict and avoid the jam: We can reduce vehicle travel times and reduce the amount of greenhouse gases that conventionally powered car travel is pumping into the atmosphere. A key way of doing this is by identifying and preventing traffic bottlenecks. Machine learning models using historical traffic data and can now predict traffic jams with up to 96% accuracy. The next job is to get it in the hands of officials and drivers. That takes engagement and collaboration between project partners, and promotion and adoption by end users.
Don’t reinvent the wheel: COVID-19 has created a new normal; it’s just that we are not exactly sure what trends are going to stick and what was a blip. One thing we know in transport is that congestion is here to stay, as the traffic data shows it has returned to pre-COVID levels and higher. We need historical, real time and predictive data to deliver more efficient road usage. Connected car and smart city innovation will only serve to improve the data available to inform how and when we use our transport infrastructure.
Strengthen the core: Meet the end user’s core need and they will use the service. That is what years of research has shown Stephen Alexander, Adjunct Professor at the Hult International Business School London, and digital value capture expert. “You don’t need all the bells and whistles on your app on day one. Start by mapping and meeting the core requirement and that will drive adoption. Then you can build it out with all the ‘nice to haves’.” For example, the Arevo journey planner app enables you to journey plan using all modes of transport to save time and increase trip reliability and payment convenience. And a pipeline of innovative features will continue to help users move smarter, faster and more sustainably in the future.
As an industry we can identify the problem and potential solutions. Looking at patterns of road and mobility usage, car manufacturing technology and driver preferences, future pain points can be identified. Actions to reduce congestion and increase convenience can be proactively taken, such as development of Mobility-as-a-Service offerings and connected car services.
We have the key ingredients: computation power, reliable technology, connectivity and sensors delivering trillions of data points.
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