Category Archives: Extinction of Species

The Mobility Ecosystem: the changing landscape and the need for fresh, new ideas (Part 9: A Brief History of Our Human Species and Mobility)

07 Sunday Mar 2021

Posted by in Asset & Life Cycle Management, Benefit-Cost or BC, Biological Diversity, Business Transformation, Climate, Collaboration, Economics, Electric Vehicles, Environment, Extinction of Species, Fuel Taxes, Funding, History, Homo sapiens, Infrastructure, Interstate, Maintenance, Mobility, Mobility Ecosystem, Multimodal, Return on Investment or ROI, Safety, Society, Technology, Transportation

≈ Leave a comment

Current events seem a good place to start before a walk through some history and mobility—where we’re at and how we got here.

We are a society of people, and with that comes “the good, the bad, and the ugly,” borrowing from the movie of that name, and mobility is a part of that mix. The United States, and other cultures as well, have come a long way, including the times when discrimination and oppression of anyone that was different and had not been a part of the dominant class—African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans, other colored peoples, women, other cultures and religions, and others—was rampant. But, we have a long way to go. In some form or fashion, this is reflected in what we are experiencing in the United States—division, tribalism, polarization, radicalism, cults, misinformation, disinformation, lies, conspiracy theories, inability to agree on facts, trust deficit, racial inequality, economic disparity, escalating, vindictive, caustic political dynamics, and even nihilism. These elements helped facilitate an attack on the United States Capitol, an act of domestic terrorism if not sedition (Bush, 2021). Moreover, voter suppression is reasserting itself at the state level and counterproductive to democracy. There is some speculation that this era of suppression may allow minority rule, similar to some fascist and autocratic regimes  (Derysh, 2021; Bagley, 2021; Albert, 2021; Smith, 2020; Chung and Hurley, 2021; Wolf, 2021). Where is this all headed and how will it end? How do we address or respond to this morass? Isabel Wilkerson (2020) makes a compelling case in her book, Caste: the Origins of Our Discontents, about how power—which groups who have it and which do not—has shaped America through a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings, that has continued from our nation’s beginning to today. The situation our society has found itself in has been referred to as a “cold civil war.” With all of the issues we in the United States and around the world are facing, it can be a challenge to resolve them. Developing leaders and helping them succeed, trust, display mutual respect, create strong relationships, educate the public, and listen are critical to addressing these challenges and in a civil and collaborative way. One element that is emerging is discussion to develop consensus of what democratic social media and the Internet look like in order to guard against extremism, hate, and lies that can foment conspiracy theories, attacks on our democracy, and distract and make difficult the work toward more important issues and needs such as transportation and infrastructure while protecting the freedom of speech and Internet, in the United States and around the world. This is a fine line to walk but with progress, democracy will be improved. The United States Constitution preamble, after all, is: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” The work to achieve that aspirational preamble will never end. The mobility space is a part of this mix, is impacted by these events, and has a role to play in advancing a more sustainable and healthy society, economy, and environment.

It is hard to imagine how we can meet and overcome our many challenges—social, economic, environmental—associated with growing populations (Figure 10) in cities and countries around the world, but transportation/mobility are part of the solution. In 1968, The Population Bomb (Ehrlich, 1968) predicted worldwide famine in the 1970s and 1980s, major societal upheavals, and other environmental degradation due to human population growth. While most of the predictions did not occur as predicted, the general premise is hard to ignore considering today’s climate change, environmental degradation, and other global events. Ehrlich’s predictions were not new. Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834), a British economist and mathematician, proposed that population growth would outstrip increases in food supplies in his day (Malthus, 1798). Others have predicted that a sixth mass extinction has already begun (Ceballos et al, 2017; Carrington, 2017). While events have not unfolded as Ehrlich, Malthus, and others predicted, environmental resilience and human ingenuity, although limited, have almost certainly delayed and modified the timing, scale, and specific details of their predictions. It is startling to contemplate these events, the fact that there is evidence to speculate on these outcomes is reason enough to act to change their potential impacts (Lovejoy, 2017). It is also rare that predictions of any kind take place as originally described.

FIGURE 10. Population growth over the last 10,000 years. (Source: Our World in Data, 2019)

Transportation and mobility have been around since the beginning of humans. In fact, the history of people and civilization could be told in terms of mobility. Therefore, it provides some context and perspective for where our species started and how we got to the present. Our species, after all, are travelers and explorers that seek to understand our world and ourselves.

The universe and our place in it is a complex one (Figure 11) (Flannery, 2012; Flannery, 2002; 2018, Christian, 2019; Harari, 2014).

Figure 11. A brief history of human evolution. (Source: http://esccalbe.blogspot.com/2013/05/prehistory-over-hundreds-of-millions-of.html)

Mobility allowed our species to move out of Africa and around the world in roughly 50,000 years (starting around 60,000-80,000 years ago and completing this global journey around 15,000 years ago). Early components included navigating on animal trails and along waterways (rivers, lakes, and oceans), increasingly large and sophisticated floating craft (boats, canoes, ships, and others), and using domesticated animals to increase transport (horses, alpacas, camels, and others) over larger and larger expanses. The invention of the wheel (and associated axle) appears to date back to about 5,000 years ago and was a milestone that has resulted in vehicles of increasing size and capability ever since. The Silk Road connecting Europe and Asia, and others, increasingly expanded trade and cultural exchange over vast areas of the globe.

History is marked by the longest and oldest trade route in the world—the Silk Road—an ancient overland trade route formed in the Western Han Dynasty from about 202 BC to 9 AD. This road or trade route spans 4,350 miles, connecting China, India, Persian Gulf, Japan and Europe. While this route has periodically declined in usage, it has existed for over 2,000 years. (History.com, 2019; Elizabeth, 2016; National Geographic Society, 2019).

Within the realm of recorded human history, mobility and its infrastructure is also marked by the Romans building a network of an estimated 200,000 miles of roads to connect their empire. That was in their DNA from the beginning, and is likely in ours today (Morales, 2021).

Fast forward to the United States. Our forefathers had a great interest in roads, particularly in a “National Road” to connect the emerging United States of America. What eventually became the National Road (also known as the Cumberland Road, Cumberland Pike, National Pike, and Western Pike) was created by an Act of Congress in 1806 and signed into law by President Thomas Jefferson. The Act was revolutionary and called for a road connecting the waters of the Atlantic with those of the Ohio River. Federal funding began in Cumberland, Maryland. The predecessors of the National Road included buffalo trails, Native American footpaths, Washington’s Road, and Braddock’s Road. The latter two were developed over part of the Nemacolin Trail, a Native American pathway, as part of the British campaign to evict the French from the forks of the Ohio River (Weiser-Alexander, 2019). Congress paid for the National Road, in part, by establishing a “2 percent fund” derived from the sale of public lands for the construction of roads through and to Ohio (National Road PA Org, n.d). Construction took longer than expected and the costs of maintenance were underestimated. As a result, tolls were eventually collected to pay for maintenance. To this day underestimating the cost of maintenance is true in many states and communities.

The United States developed the first National Park System in the world, signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1873, that began with Yellowstone National Park, treasures for all to enjoy. Prior to full control by the National Park Service in 1918, the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers was responsible for building roads, bridges, buildings and other appurtenances that provided access for the public to the Park while leaving nature as they found it (Williamson, 2016).

Early in the 20th Century, Gifford Pinchot, forester, conservationist, former Pennsylvania Governor, first Chief of the U. S. Forest Service, and close friend of Theodore Roosevelt, became known not only for advancing the protection of forests and public lands but economic development including road building for recreational public use access. (U.S. Department of the Interior, 2017; Encyclopaedia Britannica, n.d.).

In 1919, Oregon was the first to develop a reliable funding mechanism—the fuel tax—which has been the primary funding mechanism for roads and bridges. By 1929, all states had a fuel tax. It was not until 1956, that the federal government created a federal fuel tax—Federal Highway Trust Fund— to pay for construction (not maintenance) of the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, commonly known as the Interstate Highway System. While much of the first half of the 20th Century was spent “getting out of the mud”, the 50 years subsequent to 1956 were spent building and maintaining the interstate highway system under the responsibility of state departments of transportation. In large part, the 21st Century ushered in an era of system preservation, due largely to inadequate funding, NIMBY (not in my backyard), and other competing issues (e.g. climate change, pandemic, social justice, equity, political polarization, etc.).

Using the United States as a yardstick, the first half of the 20th Century was marked by increasing motorized road, rail, air, and river and blue water conveyance. The second half of the 20th Century was marked by improvements in all areas of conveyance but largely by the creation of the Interstate Highway System. Simplistically, these can be referred to as the motorized conveyance era and Interstate era, respectively. The Interstate era also saw an increase in the emphasis on safety, an effort to decrease loss in lives and property driven partly by liability concerns and increasing value placed on human life. This is critical and continues to this day.

As great as development of the interstate highway system is, there is also a dirty secret. It destroyed many neighborhoods of color, the poor, and underserved through destruction of homes, businesses, displacement, congestion, pollution, noise, and racism. The shadows of these impacts linger to this day (McFarland, 2021).

Data for improving mobility is not new and is reflected in virtually every aspect of the mobility ecosystem. These include engine oil diagnostics which serve to extend engine life, data-based preventative maintenance checks and services and scheduled services for all types of vehicles, data-based structural and functional capacities of roads and bridges, data-based pavement management systems, data-based bridge management systems, data-based needs assessments and estimated costs for repair and replacement of infrastructure (roads, bridges, buildings, runways, etc.), data-based asset management for determining priorities of spending within and between modes, analytic tools such as life-cycle costs, return on investments, and many others. In fact, it would be difficult to identify an element of the mobility ecosystem that is not or cannot be managed by data—we are dependent on it. Of course, good data does not always exist. There are many examples of poor organization and project performance (over budget, over schedule, poor quality) that resulted from the lack of good data.

In 2007 the first iPhone was fielded, and this serves to mark the beginning of a new era, one driven largely by rapidly evolving digital technology but other elements as well, including demand for vast amounts of data and analysis. These elements include other technologies and increasing demand for collaboration. While 2007 was not the beginning, it is convenient to view it as an inflection point, especially for mobility. The United States is, and has been, a leader in mobility and that has been a significant force-multiplier in building our nation’s strong economy.

The result—the United States is the best connected country in the world with the most extensive transportation system in the world—over 4 million miles of public roads, over 600,000 bridges on public roads, over 5,000 public airports, over 90,000 miles of privately owned Class 1 freight rail, over 20,000 miles of AMTRAK passenger rail, over 10,000 miles of transit rail, nearly 7,000 public transit providers, over 25,000 miles of navigable river channels, and over 300 ports (Wagner, 2020; BridgeReports.com, 2019; Hughes-Cromwick, 2019; Mazareanu, 2020; Bureau or Transportation Statistics, n.d.; Maritime Administration, 2019). This does not even consider other privately owned roads, bridges, airports, and other means of conveyance such as pipelines, short-line rail roads, trails, etc.

While much of the rest of the world has lagged behind the United States in the mobility space, it is rapidly catching up. Two examples: China’s “One Belt, One Road” which will result in the largest road network in the world, paving the Silk Road connecting China and Europe (Belt and Road Initiative, n.d.), and India’s National Highways Development Project which will result in a road network of over 30,000 miles as an element of their industrial revolution (IBEF, 2021; Devonshire-Ellis, 2020). This does not even consider other countries such as Norway, where roughly half of all cars on the road are no longer powered by gas, incentivized by tax savings, toll road exemptions and other incentives to limit climate change (Welch, 2021).

Multimodal advances, including through technology and collaboration, are also increasingly providing three dimensional vice two dimensional thinking—land, water, air, and space. It’s about connecting people to people and to other assets and resources. As such, transportation and mobility professionals are deemed “essential workers.”

We are now in the 4th Industrial Revolution—digital technology—with velocity, scope, and systems impacts that are blurring the lines between physical, digital, and biological spheres. The speed of these break throughs has no historical precedence and is evolving at an exponential rather than a linear pace. (Schwab, 2016). The evolution of transportation and mobility has been quite a journey and that journey continues.

Citations

Albert, S. (2021, February 24). Based on Trump’s election ‘big lie’, GOP proposes 165 voter suppression bills in 33 states. Between the Lines. Retrieved March 7, 2021, from https://btlonline.org/based-on-trumps-election-big-lie-gop-proposes-165-voter-suppression-bills-in-33-states/

Bagley, P. (2021, March 1). Bagley cartoon: voter oppression. The Salt Lake Tribune. Retrieved March 7, 2021, from https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/bagley/2021/03/01/bagley-cartoon-voter/

Belt and Road Initiative. (n.d.). Belt and road initiative. BRI. Retrieved March 7, 2021, from https://www.beltroad-initiative.com/belt-and-road/

BridgeReports.com. (2019). National bridge inventory data. BridgeReports.com. Retrieved March 7, 2021, from https://bridgereports.com/

Bureau of Transportation Statistics. (n.d.). System mileage within the United States. United States Department of Transportation. Retrieved March 7, 2021, from https://www.bts.gov/content/system-mileage-within-united-states

Bush, D. (2021, January 7). How the attack on the U.S. Capitol unfolded. PBS News Hour. Retrieved March 7, 2021, from https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/how-the-attack-on-the-u-s-capitol-unfolded

Carrington, D. (2017, July 10). Researchers talk of ‘biological annihilation’ as study reveals billions of populations of animals have been lost in recent decades. The Guardian. Retrieved March 7, 2021, from https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/10/earths-sixth-mass-extinction-event-already-underway-scientists-warn

Ceballos, G., P.R. Ehrlich, R. Dirzo. (2017, July 10). Biological annihilation via the ongoing sixth mass extinction signaled by vertebrate population losses and declines. PNAS. Retrieved March 7, 2021, from https://www.pnas.org/content/114/30/E6089

Christian, D. (2018). Origin story: a big history of everything. Little, Brown and Company.

Chung, A. and L. Hurley. (2021, March 2). U.S. Supreme Court signals more leeway for voting restrictions. Reuters. Retrieved March 7, 2021, from https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-ballots-idUSKCN2AU13M

Derysh, I. (2021, February 27). Republicans roll out “tidal wave of voter suppression”: 253 restrictive bills in 43 states. MSN. Retrieved March 7, 2021, from https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/republicans-roll-out-tidal-wave-of-voter-suppression-253-restrictive-bills-in-43-states/ar-BB1e4akH?ocid=BingNews

Devonshire-Ellis, C. (2020, May 18). Belt & Road initiative: India. Silk Road Briefing. Retrieved March 7, 2021, from https://www.silkroadbriefing.com/news/2019/06/20/belt-road-initiative-india/

Ehrlich, P.R. (1968). The population bomb. Buccaneer Books.

Elizabeth. (2016, December 6). How long is the Silk Road in miles. PandaSilk. Retrieved March 7, 2021, from https://www.pandasilk.com/how-long-is-the-silk-road-in-miles/

Encyclopaedia Britannica. (n.d.). Gifford Pinchot American conservationist. Britannica. Retrieved March 7, 2021, from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Gifford-Pinchot

Esccalbe Blogspot. (2014, April 20). Science. Esccalbe Blogspot. Retrieved March 7, 2021, from http://esccalbe.blogspot.com/2013/05/prehistory-over-hundreds-of-millions-of.html

Flannery, T. (2002). The eternal frontier: an ecological history of North America and its peoples. Grove Press.

Flannery, T. (2012). Here on Earth: a natural history of the planet. Grove Press.

Harari, Y.N. (2014). A brief history of humankind. Signal Books.

History.com (2019, September 26). Silk Road. History.com. Retrieved March 7, 2021, from https://www.history.com/topics/ancient-middle-east/silk-road

Hughes-Cromwick, M. (2019). 2019 public transportation fact book. American Public Transportation Association. Retrieved March 7, 2021, from https://www.apta.com/wp-content/uploads/APTA_Fact-Book-2019_FINAL.pdf

IBEF. (2021, February 28). Road infrastructure in India. India Brand Equity Foundation. Retrieved March 7, 2021, from https://www.ibef.org/industry/roads-india.aspx

Lovejoy, T.E. (2017, July 26). Extinction tsunami can be avoided. PNAS. Retrieved March 7, 2021, from https://www.pnas.org/content/114/32/8440

Malthus, T.R. (1798). An Essay on the Principle of Population, 2 vols. E.P. Dutton & Co., New York.

Maritime Administration. (2019, July 23). Ports: the gateway to American waters. U.S. Department of Transportation. Retrieved March 7, 2021, from https://www.maritime.dot.gov/ports/strong-ports/ports

Mazareanu, E. (2020, June 26). How many airports are in the U.S.? Statista. Retrieved March 7, 2021, from https://www.statista.com/statistics/183496/number-of-airports-in-the-united-states-since-1990/

McFarland, M. (2021, February 27). Highways that destroyed Black neighborhoods are crumbling. Some want to undo the legacy. CNN Business. Retrieved March 7, 2021, from https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/27/cars/buttigieg-highway-removals/index.html

Morales, J.R. (2021, January 21). 200,000 miles of Roman roads provided the framework for empire. National Geographic Society. Retrieved March 7, 2021, from https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/world-history-magazine/article/200000-miles-roman-roads-provided-framework-empire

National Geographic Society. (2019, July 26). The Silk Road. National Geographic Society. Retrieved March 7, 2021, from https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/silk-road/

National Road PA Org. (n.d.). Historic National Road: America’s road to revolution. National Road PA Org. Retrieved March 7, 2021, from http://nationalroadpa.org/timeline/

Our World in Data. (2019). World population since 10,000 bce. Our World in Data. Retrieved March 7, 2021, from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/world-population-since-10000-bce-ourworldindata-series

Schwab, K. (2016, January 14). The Fourth Industrial Revolution: what it means, how to respond. World Economic Forum. Retrieved March 7, 2021, from https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/the-fourth-industrial-revolution-what-it-means-and-how-to-respond/

Smith, T. (2020, August 20). Timeline: voter suppression in the US from the Civil War to today. ABC News. Retrieved March 7, 2021, from https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/timeline-voter-suppression-us-civil-war-today/story?id=72248473

U.S. Department of the Interior Blog. (2017, August 9). Gifford Pinchot: a legacy of conservation. U.S. Department of the Interior. Retrieved March 7, 2021, from https://www.doi.gov/blog/gifford-pinchot-legacy-conservation

Wagner, I. (2020, May 18). U.S. highway mileage 1990-2018. Statista. Retrieved March 7, 2021, from https://www.statista.com/statistics/183397/united-states-highway-mileage-since-1990/

Weiser-Alexander, K. (2018, December). Nemacolin’s Trail in Pennsylvania & Maryland. Legends of America. Retrieved March 7, 2021, from https://www.legendsofamerica.com/nemacolin-trail/

Welch, C. (2021, January 22). Has the electric car’s moment arrived at last? National Geographic Society. Retrieved March 7, 2021, from https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/has-electric-car-moment-arrived-at-last

Wilkerson, I. (2020). Caste: the origins of our discontents. Random House.

Williamson, E.L. (2016, September 15). 100-year-old National Park Service’s roots go deeper with U.S. Army. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Retrieved March 7, 2021, from https://www.nad.usace.army.mil/Media/News-Stories/Article/947994/100-year-old-national-park-services-roots-go-deeper-with-us-army/

Wolf, Z.B. (2021, March 2). Two maps show why both sides are trying to change rules ASAP. CNN Politics. Retrieved March 7, 2021, from https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/02/politics/what-matters-march-2/index.html

The Mobility Ecosystem: the changing landscape and the need for fresh, new ideas (Part 2: Safety, Smart Cities)

18 Monday Jan 2021

Posted by in Biological Diversity, Clean Energy, Climate, Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAV), Economy, Electric Vehicles, Environment, Extinction of Species, Future, Internet of Things or IoT, Mobility as a Service, Mobility Ecosystem, Multimodal, Pedestrians, Resilience, Ride Sharing, Safety, Smart Cities, Society, Technology, Transportation

≈ Leave a comment

Safety

There is likely not a transportation agency or company that does not consider safety as their number one priority. This is how it should be. The very first roadway powered vehicle fatality in the United States was on September 13, 1899, when Henry Hale Bliss, a 69-year-old local real estate dealer, was dismounting a southbound 8th Avenue trolley car in New York City when an electric-powered taxi cab struck him. Bliss hit the pavement, crushing his head and chest. Bliss died from his sustained injuries the next morning (Eschner, 2017). A plaque was dedicated at the site on September 13, 1999, to commemorate the centenary of this event. It reads:

Here at West 74th Street and Central Park West, Henry H. Bliss dismounted from a streetcar and was struck and knocked unconscious by an automobile on the evening of September 13, 1899. When Mr. Bliss, a New York real estate man, died the next morning from his injuries, he became the first recorded motor vehicle fatality in the Western Hemisphere. This sign was erected to remember Mr. Bliss on the centennial of his untimely death and to promote safety on our streets and highways.

Since then, it has been a continual challenge to reduce fatalities, injuries, and property damage. Entire industries have grown up during this time (insurance, roadway policing, etc.).

More recently, while technology and autonomous vehicles hold promise to reduce and perhaps eliminate crashes, it will be many years and probably decades before a significant impact occurs. The United States alone averages 30-40,000 roadway deaths a year. Globally there are 1.35 million people annually killed on roadways around the world (3,700/day) with a $1.8 trillion economic cost in 2010 U. S. dollars (Road Traffic Injuries and Deaths—A Global Problem, n.d.). In the meantime, efforts must continue to protect people. Within the past decade, many in the industry have set goals for zero fatalities. As an example, one of these is Houston’s Vision Zero Action Plan (Begley, 2020). The city’s plan identifies 13 “priority actions” the city is committing to take. Among them:

  • construct at least 50 miles of sidewalks annually
  • build at least 25 miles of dedicated bike lanes annually
  • evaluate road projects for options to include sidewalks, bike trails and other amenities
  • redesign 10 locations with high numbers of incidents every two years, and make those changes within the following calendar year

Additionally, the plan calls on the city to train its employees on how to talk about crashes to avoid victim-blaming or playing down safety issues. It also calls for a detailed analysis of Vision Zero’s progress to be made publicly available.

These are not particularly unique actions to improve safety, as professionals work every day—through planning, design, construction, operations, maintenance, education, and collaboration—to reduce, if not eliminate, crashes and the circumstances that lead to them in an effort to keep people safe. However, “action” is the operative word just as Houston is doing.

Smart Cities and Concepts

Advances in policy, planning, partnerships, and innovation are being developed at all governmental levels in an effort to provide a framework for the public and private sectors to work in unison within an architecture to increase effective and efficient mobility. An early example of this is the Intelligent Transportation System or ITS Architecture developed by the U. S. Department of Transportation in conjunction with many partners and issued in 2001.

There are a number of concepts that can and have been referred to as “Smart Cities” or “Smart City Concepts”. These have evolved especially during the technology revolution of the past two decades. This list is far from exhausting the myriad concepts or disciplines. The following discusses some of these disciplines and concepts, in no particular order, and none fit neatly within one topic.

Some disciplines in these concepts:

  • Strategic Planning. This is the starting point for virtually everything else. It is, of course, preceded by the necessary outreach, listening, team building, and collaboration needed to build a strategy.
  • Performance Metrics. Tracking progress toward meeting the goals imbedded within the strategic plan is equally important. Any plan becomes useless without progress toward obtaining it and performance metrics provide that tool to measure progress.
  • Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAV). Driven by rapidly developing technologies, CAV primarily provides more capacity from infrastructure, essentially reducing costs and improving safety.
  • Clean Energy—Maturing Alternative Fuel Technologies. The Industrial Age and resulting pollution and climate change that resulted have demanded clean energy in all its forms—solar, wind, hydrogen fuel cell, and electricity. Electricity is currently most dominant.
  • Electrification. As electricity emerges as the clean energy fuel, vehicle manufactures and governments are rapidly moving forward to increase electric vehicle use and reduce carbon-based vehicle use. The Governor of California has mandated no new internal combustion vehicle sales within California after 2035 while electric vehicle use continues to rise, and many states and communities are encouraging their use with supporting infrastructure. California has led many areas in the mobility space so this is one to watch.
  • Hydrogen Fuel Cells. Recently, the diesel engine manufacturer Cummins is developing hydrogen fuel cell engines that they believe will be efficient and compete favorably with electricity for heavy vehicles such as buses, heavy trucks, and trains.
  • Mobility as a Service/Mobility on Demand. Mobility as a Service, or MaaS, also known as Transportation as a Service, provides services typically with a joint digital channel that enables users to plan, book, and pay for trips. This is part of a more global shift from personally-owned vehicles to mobility provided as a service. Micro-mobility and micro-transit are also emerging (Regional transportation study suggests ‘’micro-transit’, 2020).
  • Car and Ride Sharing. Car and ride sharing has been around for decades, but the technology of recent years has allowed it to become much more effective and efficient as evidenced by the rise of Lyft and Uber.
  • Increasing Biking, Scooters, and Pedestrian Mobility. In recent years as a means to reduce car usage especially in metropolitan areas, bike lanes, trails, sidewalks, and scooter/bicycle rentals are increasing. These have the ability to also improve health while reducing congestion and increasing the capacity of infrastructure.
  • Big Data. This is the best of continuous improvement. Virtually every organization has legacy systems of data, physical (e.g. file cabinets) or electronic (e.g. servers or the cloud). For a variety of reasons, these data have resided in ”silos” and are not easily accessed and analyzed from broader, more complex perspectives. New technologies and related tools are now allowing “big data” to be accessed and analyzed with resulting increases in efficiency and performance.
  • Risk. Risk has always existed and is dominant in mega and giga projects as evidenced in projects such as the California High Speed Rail. While private companies have had risk management programs for years, the most recent federal transportation act (Fixing America’s Surface Transportation or “FAST Act,” 2015) requires states to have a risk management program. Using different tools to anticipate potential challenges (e.g. lost revenues) as well as opportunities (e.g. lost opportunities to increase revenues), these tools allow proactive development of strategies to mitigate and address the challenges as they occur vice the turmoil and problems associated with surprises. Of course this does not eliminate surprises termed “black swans” but these tools do significantly reduce most risks.
  • Resilience. Infrastructure is the backbone of our economy, connecting people, enhancing quality of life, and promoting health and safety. But climate change is revealing infrastructure vulnerabilities (Will infrastructure bend or break under climate change?, 2020). Like risks, resiliency or the lack of it, has always existed. As our built environment has increased, come into conflict with, and impacted the natural environment, the demand for protecting the built environment has increased. The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) (Lindsey, 2020) estimates a sea level rise of one foot to 8.2 feet by 2100. The variables are such that it is impossible to project more precisely. These apparently man-induced climate changes have increased hurricanes, other storms, coastal erosion, flooding, and other events that erode or destroy man-made structures including roads and bridges. This has demanded more resilient infrastructure through better materials, protective structures, relocation to less exposed areas, improved construction practices, and others (Parsons, 2020). One of the more recent efforts to improve the built-natural environment coexistence is the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers initiative “Engineering with Nature” (https://ewn.el.erdc.dren.mil/).
  • Environment. This discipline, like other disciplines, interacts together. As living beings, we depend on and are part of the natural environment. Thus, while risk and resilience are critical to the built environment, the healthy functioning of the natural environment is essential to our well-being. There is general recognition that climate change, biological diversity, populations, species loss and other insidious environmental impacts are undermining the natural world on which life (including humans) depends. (Will infrastructure bend or break under climate change?, 2020; UN Report: Nature’s Dangerous Decline ‘Unprecedented’; Species Extinction Rates ‘Accelerating’, 2019; Bongaarts, 2019; Duckett, 2020; Sofia, et al, 2020; Kann, 2020). There are emerging lab cultured meats that may reduce greenhouse gases 20-30 percent, slaughtering of 80 billion animals a year, improve land use, and reduce creation and transmission of diseases such as coronavirus. In the end we must take care of our natural environment. There is an increasing demand for the transportation/mobility space to not only mitigate but improve the natural environment. While many techniques are not new, the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers initiative “Engineering with Nature” increases the attention to the importance and techniques to live well within and take care of the natural environment.
  • Internet of Things (IoT). This is technology taken to a high level. There is increasing demand for seamless mobility and IoT provides tools to achieve that future. As the title of this blog infers (The Mobility Ecosystem), the IoT allows an increasing emphasis on a “systems perspective” of our lives. Technology is allowing us to not only see the mobility ecosystem more clearly but how to improve its performance in all of its myriad impacts and relations…economic, social, environmental etc. (Joshi, 2020).

Some Smart City Concepts

  • Incentivize High Density Development. Our society has seen in an ebb and flow in regards to this concept—rural agriculture migrating to cities during industrialization, migrations to suburbs during metropolitan growth, migrations to more rural areas with increased opportunities for remote work, and a return to metropolitan areas primarily for work. This latter has dramatically increased traffic congestion and no one likes that. So, metropolitan areas are employing solutions to address this issue, such as providing incentives for high density development, not only of businesses, but housing and support services such as health care and  grocery stores that are within walking distance. Due to population densities in European and Asian metropolitan areas, high density development has been occurring for some time. The United States is a much younger country so, we can learn from looking at their experience.
  • Incentivize Core Downtown Development by Charging Fees for Increases in Traffic. This is more of a technique than a concept. Nonetheless, charging fees for development that results in traffic increases can be a powerful tool while developing downtown areas, reducing traffic congestion, and increasing pedestrian/bicycle/scooter traffic.
  • Electrify Transportation: While electrification is a discipline, its application to traffic is considerable and is rapidly occurring. The economics driving this are discussed in a later post in this series.
  • Use More Shared and Connected Transportation. While shared transportation providers such as Uber and Lyft are becoming increasingly ubiquitous and used by many, especially millennials, there is little question that these and other providers will continue to expand. Connected transportation is beginning to emerge essentially in two forms. One is connecting various modes into one seamless multimodal transportation system, largely through technology. The other is by linking buses, trucks and cars into essentially “trains of vehicles or platoons” with little or no separation (i.e. virtually or physically connected). This has the net effect of increasing the capacity of infrastructure and increasing the productivity (and safety) of vehicles.
  • Use Traffic Calming Devices that Slow Cars and Enhance Pedestrian, Bicycle, Scooter, and Transit Mobility. This is likely one of the less obvious smart city concepts. However, the use of traditional traffic lights, traffic circles, pavement markings, and signs can have the net impact of slowing cars and enhancing pedestrian, bicycle, scooter and transit mobility.
  • Adopt User-Friendly App(s) for Routing and Paying for Multimodal Trips. This may be more of a technique for increasing connected vehicle use by a user-friendly app that allows for routing and paying for multimodal trips. These are being developed in locations such as the Denver RTD.
  • Free Public Transportation. As population densities increase and the impacts are valued and assessed via more “systems thinking,” the results may be that free public transportation may be more advantageous and cost-effective than alternatives. Dunkirk France concluded that free public transportation was more advantageous and cost effective than other alternatives, and thus provide free public transportation. Kansas City, Missouri, is providing free public transportation in a one year test to determine whether to do the same.
  • Stay Healthy Streets. Making more use of streets has gone by various names including complete streets, but Stay Healthy Streets is a more recent terminology. Essentially, this concept increases the usage of roads from motorized vehicles to pedestrians, bicycles, and other micro-mobility. This can be accomplished by closing or limiting streets to vehicle access, pavement markings for bicycle lanes, etc. The cities of Seattle and Minneapolis saw increases in pedestrian and bicycle traffic during the COVID-19 Pandemic while other cities saw little or no change. The question now is whether to keep these Stay Healthy Streets or not.

The fDis Global cities of the future (fDiintelligence.com, a service of the Financial Times LTD) also offers a variety of great insights, including by competitions to identify the best practices for future global cities.

Smart Rural Concepts

In an effort to be holistic, it is appropriate to provide some discussion of Smart Rural Concepts. The needs in largely agriculture-based communities for access to hospitals, schools, jobs and other communities is equal to that of more urban communities although the challenges may vary, including longer travel distances. Nearly every element in the above discussion of Smart Cities also relate to rural areas, the need for strategic planning, clean energy, electrification, big data, resilience, 5G, ITS, variable message signs, CAV, GPS, IoT, user-friendly apps for routing, etc. One exception is that most rural communities are not burdened with traffic congestion in their downtowns so incentivizing high-density development downtown makes little sense. However, many rural communities strongly desire more downtown traffic as a perceived means of economic development. Traffic can be a two-edged sword depending on your perspective. Truck traffic routing is another area rural communities may struggle with more than more urban communities.

One of the more challenging aspects of rural areas is that 45 percent of the nation’s fatalities are on rural roads while only 19 percent of the nation’s population lives in rural areas (Rural/Urban Comparison of Traffic Fatalities, 2020). This warrants counter measures not usually used in more urban areas. With more than 30 people a day dying in roadway departure crashes on rural roads, inexpensive countermeasures like SafetyEdge, rumble strips, lane markings, signage, and edge lines can and are bringing that number down.

Literature Cited

Begley, Dug (2020, December 16). Houston has a plan to end road fatalities. Now the work to implement it begins. Houston Chronicle. Retrieved January 14, 2021, from https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/transportation/article/Houston-has-a-plan-to-end-road-fatalities-Now-15809563.php

Bongaarts, J. (2019, September 4). IPBES, 2019. Summary for policy makers of the global assessment report on biodiversity and ecosystem services of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services. Wiley Online Library. Retrieved January 14, 2021 from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/padr.12283

Duckett, M.K. (2020, March 4). Nature needs us to act – now. National Geographic. Retrieved January 14 from https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/03/partner-content-nature-needs-us-to-act-now/

Eschner, K. (2017, September 13). Henry Bliss, America’s First Pedestrian Fatality, Was Hit By an Electric Taxi. Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved January 18, 2021, from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/henry-bliss-americas-first-pedestrian-fatality-was-hit-electric-taxi-180964852/

Fixing America’s Surface Transportation or “FAST Act.” (2015, December 4). U.S. Department of Transportation. Retrieved January 14, 2021 from https://www.transportation.gov/fastact

Joshi, N. (2020, December 16). How IoT Can Enhance Public Transportation. BBN Times. Retrieved January 14, 2021 from https://www.bbntimes.com/technology/how-iot-can-enhance-public-transportation

Kann, D. (2020, December 3). Salmon have been dying mysteriously on the West Coast for years. Scientists think a chemical in tires may be responsible. CNN. Retrieved January 14, 2021 from https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/03/us/microplastics-tire-rubber-chemicals-killing-coho-salmon-scn/index.html

Lindsey, R. (2020, August 14). Climate Change: Global Sea Level. NOAA. Retrieved January 14, 2021 from https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-sea-level

Parsons, J. (2020, December 16). Shoring Up for Rising Sea Levels. Engineering News-Record. Retrieved January 18, 2021 from https://www.enr.com/articles/50899-shoring-up-for-rising-sea-levels

Regional transportation study suggests ‘micro-transit’. (2020, December 11). Mid Hudson News. Retrieved January 14, 2021 from https://midhudsonnews.com/2020/12/11/regional-transportation-study-suggests-micro-transit/

Road Traffic Injuries and Deaths—A Global Problem. (n.d.) Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Retrieved January 14, 2021 from https://www.cdc.gov/injury/features/global-road-safety/index.html

Rural/Urban Comparison of Traffic Fatalities. (2020, May). NHTSA Traffic Safety Facts 2018 Data. Retrieved January 14, 2021 from https://ruralsafetycenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/812957.pdf

Sofia, G., E.I. Nikolopoulos, L. Slater. (2020, March 16). It’s Time to Revise Estimates of River Flood Hazards. Eos. Retrieved January 14, 2021 from https://eos.org/opinions/its-time-to-revise-estimates-of-river-flood-hazards

UN Report: Nature’s Dangerous Decline ‘Unprecedented’; Species Extinction Rate ‘Accelerating.’ (2019, May 6). United Nations. Retrieved January 14, 2021 from https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2019/05/nature-decline-unprecedented-report/

Will infrastructure bend or break under climate stress? (2020, June). McKinsey Global Institute. Retrieved January 18, 2021 from https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/McKinsey/Business%20Functions/Sustainability/Our%20Insights/Will%20infrastructure%20bend%20or%20break%20under%20climate%20stress/Will-infrastructure-bend-or-break-under-climate-stress_case-study.pdf