Are you coming from one of the those extremely populated cities, where you have to risk life squeezing yourself into the metro, or stuck in traffic jams for hours and desperately curse the stupid traffic? Even so, every year, tens of thousands of people still swarm into Tokyo, New York, and Shanghai, making these cities’ traffic congestion problem even worse. These cities, having a metropolitan population over 10 million, is what we call a megacity (Basulto, 2014).
With the rapid development of big data, computational technologies and sensing technologies, many countries and organizations around the globe are collaborating to develop an Intelligent Transportation System (ITS), aiming at solving the traffic problems in big modern cities.
ITS has many potential benefits. The most apparent benefit is that it reduces traffic congestions by optimizing the traffic routes that it recommends to the end users. Apart from this, it also ensures safer road transport and efficient infrastructure usage. One of the examples is the ITS system in Glasgow. The ITS system in the city provides regular information to the commuters about the real time location of the buses, the density of passengers on the bus, timings, and actual time it takes to reach the commuter’s next destination. (Choudhary, 2018) A more highly developed ITS should be comprised of a complete sensor network that exchanges all traffic-related information and cognitive management of the overall infrastructure. (Dimitrakopoulos and Demestichas, 2010)
Although there are many potentials of ITS, its development still faces some obstacles. The further development of ITS relies heavily on the technological advancements of sensing technologies, which have not yet reached their mature stage. On the other hand, the privacy and security issues that are associated with ITS remain controversial. In 2016, the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment released new regulations addressing the problem related to development of ITS in Amsterdam. With the technology advancements and perfection of relevant regulations, a new era of smart mobility is coming along the way.
Reference
Basulto, D. (2018). The future of innovation belongs to the mega-city. [online] Washington Post. Available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/innovations/wp/2014/10/28/the-future-of-innovation-belongs-to-the-mega-city/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.4c035a31dd28 [Accessed 13 Sep. 2018].
Choudhary, M. (2018). What is Intelligent Transport System and how it works. [online] Geospatial World. Available at: https://www.geospatialworld.net/blogs/what-is-intelligent-transport-system-and-how-it-works/ [Accessed 13 Sep. 2018].
Dimitrakopoulos and P. Demestichas. (2010) Intelligent Transportation Systems. IEEE Vehicular Technology Magazine, vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 77-84, March 2010.
