Claire Walters on autonomous vehicles, demand-predictive transport, and making Helsinki carbon neutral 2035
As you might expect from this year’s Intelligent Transport Conference, there was a good deal of focus on the challenges of autonomous vehicles in public transport. We learned that the publicly-owned Vienna-based tram company, for example, is working towards a fully autonomous system in the future. They are developing a driver assistance system to try to avoid accidents and collisions in a very congested city centre, as their main concern is safety. It seems likely, however, that it will be some years before a driver will not be needed.
One fascinating presentation was on a project being carried out by a company called Prospective. It has received funding from the National Infrastructure Commission to build a digital “twin” for the whole of the UK so that movement of all forms of transport can be measured and, most interestingly, any planned changes to the transport network can be tested and the potential impact assessed. Currently, they have only mapped some of the larger cities, but it is expected that every address in the UK will be covered in due course. The ambitious end-point is that transport could move from a demand-responsive system to a demand-predictive one, which would be less wasteful and far more based on what people are actually trying to do, so that greener options can be provided for people who currently have to rely on a car to live their lives.
A representative of Helsinki City Government explained their long-term policy of prioritising public transport in the city and their aim to be carbon-neutral by 2035. The population of Helsinki is only 650k but they still have huge congestion issues so they are seriously considering banning private cars from the city centre and using other legislative approaches to get people out of private cars. In the meantime, they have now reduced speed limits in the city 4 times and the accident rate has decreased exponentially.
We heard about research into ways to provide better information and advice during travel disruption as well as addressing the disappointment and frustration felt by customers whose journeys go wrong. The use of IT to manage the human side of travel problems, rather than just the practicalities had become a much larger part of the project than originally anticipated, as both regular and occasional travellers expressed their expectation that they would be treated better.
Also of interest were the attempts to find ways to keep data anonymous and consistent with GDPR when systems are so good at capturing data, and people are so keen to share their experiences online. This is particularly relevant where so many of us use mobile phones to book tickets and manage our lives. There are tensions between the need for privacy and a desire for tailored services and offers: it’s very tempting for companies to use the data they have for uses that the public don’t expect when they go online to buy a ticket. While the motives may not be sinister, it’s still problematic in terms of privacy. A Crypto-ticketing system is being developed to enable data to be kept truly private.
To find out more about next year’s event and register your interest, visit Intelligent Transport Conference 2020