The MT Position

By Raul Arce

The Fourth of July weekend always means high travel volumes, and this year was no exception. While it has yet to be announced how many Americans traveled over the holiday weekend, a recent survey by AAA predicted the number of travelers would jump to 34.9 million, up 17.1 percent from 29.8 million travelers in 2009.

Although holidays like the Fourth always bring traveling pains to the forefront, it is daily commutes that really hit the psyche of the commuter. Released last week, the findings of IBM’s annual Global Commuter Pain Index put daily travel into context. The study was based on a survey of 8,192 drivers in 20 cities worldwide, including three of the most congested cities in the United States: New York, Los Angeles and Houston. More than 31 percent of those surveyed said traffic was so bad at times that they turned around and went home. Nearly a quarter of drivers in LA reported being stuck in traffic for more than an hour, and one in five had delays of more than two hours.

Some may dismiss congestion as a necessary trade-off for city living, but inefficient transportation impacts more than quality of life. It reduces the productivity of workers, the flow of goods and overall economic competitiveness — not to mention our air quality and the global climate. Despite these concerns, the United States spends at most 2.6 percent of GDP on infrastructure — far lower than countries such as China, which invests in infrastructure at a rate of 9 to 12 percent of GDP.

The Commuter Pain Index underlines the urgent need to reinvent America’s transportation system to meet the economic demands of the 21st century. As the population of cities across the country continues to expand, the United States must go beyond simply building more roads or adding more trains. We need to run existing and new systems more efficiently through a combination of technology, planning and greater intelligence.

A smarter transportation system will connect and collect the data of vehicles, government agencies, freight carriers, travel service providers, weather patterns and even individuals using tools like social media. But connectivity alone isn’t enough. To get insight from all that data, we need to apply advanced analytics — sophisticated mathematical models that detect the patterns and spot the correlations within large volumes of information, turning real-time insight into predictive actions. This can create a more traveler-centric system, empowering commuters and shippers with real-time updates so they can control their own journeys across multiple modes of transportation, adjusting to last-minute schedule changes or service disruptions.

Cities around the globe are testing this now. Netherlands Railways is already using smarter technology to weigh variables, including passenger demand and available rail cars to assemble and schedule 5,000 trains over a network of 390 stations and 2,800 kilometers of track. Taiwan High Speed Rail Corp. (THSRC) is leveraging smarter technology to ensure that hundreds of high-speed passenger trains are safe and on time, maintaining an average punctuality rate of 99.15 percent.

In addition to these real-life examples, new technologies are in the process of being developed and tested. The train of the future will be able to leverage smart vision technology to sense what is around it, including obstacles in its path so it can slow down and stop without human intervention. It will also be able to harness data to predict and prevent breakdowns, using sensors to collect data and alert operators before the issues impact a train’s safety and schedule.

If there’s one thing the Commuter Pain Index makes clear, it’s that the United States cannot afford not to invest in smarter transportation — both from a public health and economic standpoint. And the challenge of updating the infrastructure is far too big for transportation agencies alone. The best investments will combine actions by agencies with those of businesses and commuters themselves. All parties need to work together, using the latest information technology not only to repair our systems today, but to prepare for what is to come.

By bringing our mass transit system into the 21st century, we can deliver better commuter experiences, ensure faster freight deliveries and keep America’s economy and society moving forward.

Raul Arce is vice president, travel and transportation for IBM.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 8th, 2010 at 2:54 pm and is filed under Transit Talk. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.