Editor's Note: To learn more about sustainable mobility be sure to check out VERGE@Greenbuild November 12-13.
As more of the global population chooses to live in cities, information and communications technologies (ICT) will exert revolutionary impacts on mobility systems to create "sustainable transportation." However, like the coming smart grid transformations, tectonic shifts in thinking need to occur that change cultures, mindsets and perspectives in transportation to make good on these visions.
What is sustainable transportation? Here’s a description from Susan Zielinski, Managing Director of SMART at the University of Michigan. "Sustainable transportation is about meeting needs by moving people, moving goods, and moving less in ways that are cleaner, greener, safer, healthier, more equitable, more seamlessly connected, better for the economy, and hipper."
Sustainable transportation is not just electric transportation, and not focused solely on electric vehicles, although these will be important options for transportation (and in the case of EVs, revenue production in the smart grid.) And as her description implies, it fully embraces machine-to-machine (M2M) applications that range from location-aware vehicles and devices to fractional-use cars (like Zipcar) and bikes, to buses and trains to telework and locally sourced transactions.
It also makes us rethink this system as a New Mobility grid. New Mobility is an extremely interesting convergence of ICT with automotive systems, real estate, and finance coupled with new business models. Zielinski noted that "a New Mobility grid is the electric vehicle grid on steroids. It means that there's a connected network of all modes, services, technologies and infrastructures from origin to destination, as well as an awareness, thanks to mobile devices, of how options connect seamlessly in time and space on that grid through GPS information. But it can also reduce the need to move by sourcing alternatives within walking distance or using telecommunications to eliminate trips altogether."
ICT technologies, including sensors and mobile applications, will help transportation managers deliver the most dynamic, flexible and cost effective transportation options. These technologies will enable users to know the range of transportation choices available to them at all times.
Smartphone on wheels image provided by Rashevskyi Viacheslav via Shutterstock
