Improving traffic management was a major theme throughout the week. FutureStructure caught up with Sameer Joshi, head of Siemens Road and City Mobility in the U.S. following the company’s announcement of some major new product launches.
We asked Joshi about connected and autonomous vehicles, traffic management and how ITS will help improve transportation in cities both large and small.
FutureStructure: It seems as though there are a lot of different expectations in the industry about the advent of connected and autonomous vehicles. What are your thoughts on where we are with them?
Sameer Joshi: Cities globally are facing an opportunity to modernize infrastructure. And it couldn’t come at a more opportune time. In the US, for example, infrastructure grades have been near failing for years. What is going to be our response to congestion, to climate change?
One thing is to be secure for today, meet the needs for today, and have an infrastructure today that is resilient but also pave the path for the future, of which connected vehicles are an absolutely essential part. Connected vehicles could take us to the extent that in 25 years’ time we may no longer have signals at intersections because the cars are speaking with each other and know what to do and when to do it. The intersection will still physically exist but the infrastructure to guide it will go away.
In other ways the vehicles will also talk to infrastructure. This is where we see the biggest value-add we can provide – to get the vehicle-to-infrastructure communication in place.
FS: At FutureStructure we’re trying to share with government the role it will have in building Intelligent Transportation Systems and it seems like the infrastructure is where government can have the most influence. How big a job will it be and what will it take to get the public and private sector investing in connected vehicle infrastructure?
SJ: This is a multiple stakeholder game. No one party is going to do it alone. This will require a coming together of all forces, all of whom you see at the ITS World Congress. I think the time to do that is now. There is no time like the present. The hardware is there, the software is there, the communication infrastructure is there. This is why communications companies can work with companies like Siemens to make this happen. But all of this cannot happen unless the policy framework is there. If that doesn’t happen it’s like running on a treadmill – we’ll get stronger but we won’t move forward.
FS: So what does this mean for multi-modal transport? Siemens works across a number of transportation industries so what becomes of things like regional rail systems if, with connected vehicles, you’re able to better optimize existing road infrastructure? Can ITS and public transit coexist?
SJ: It’s a very interesting question. There is space for both and there is space for both to grow and coexist. Intermodal systems are a reality. By optimizing roads and freeing capacity on them, we make road traffic better, faster and more efficient. But that doesn’t take away from other modes of transit. I think the challenge is how we then get them working together even better. That’s where the focus is going to be. So I don’t think they get in each other’s way, I think they work together to make the whole system more efficient.
FS: Siemens made some big announcements this week at ITS World Congress. Can you explain what those announcements were about?
SJ: So the first one was m60 – our advanced traffic controller. It is a controller that is scalable. The second is TACTICS 3.0, which has better functionality, better graphical user interface, and it makes the whole usability experience for a traffic engineer much, much better. The third is TACTICS smartGuard. Now smartGuard is a cloud-based system. And this is really exciting. Now with smartGuard, what used to reside on a computer now goes into the cloud. And this gives a huge amount of scalability.
The smallest town to a large metropolitan area can all be covered with these tools. Now the small and medium sized cities that haven’t been able to afford to have their own 24/7 traffic management can now do it from their smartphone.
FS: That seems pretty remarkable. I’m not a traffic engineer but to be able to manage traffic from your phone seems like something that, ten years ago, would have been literally unbelievable.
SJ: The technology of today is making so many thing possible. And we’re right at the forefront and we want to make use of that.
FS: Our cities historically have been built around and to accommodate our transportation systems. Do you think Intelligent Transportation Systems will influence how we design the smarter cities of the future?
SJ: This will be different for different cities. Newer cities will be more in line with modern transportation systems. But in more conventional setups I think technology will have to find how to influence existing structures.
FS: What about the mid-size and smaller cities, where most Americans live, how do you see Intelligent Transportation Systems impacting those places and their corresponding infrastructure?
SJ: That is a huge market and a spot that could see a lot of benefit from traffic management. If you don’t connect systems, if you stop at each traffic light, if these are not controlled by a management system – this is where is a cloud-based system is perfect. It’s scalable, it can be small or it can be big. So for a small city you get in there and implement the system and suddenly you have much better traffic flow.
Most small cities are feeders to interstate highways. So by relieving congestion from the beginning you can make sure traffic gets onto highways more efficiently and can also be eased out of them. And if all this is connected it’s much easier for a traffic management system to be able to handle that.
If something is happening on an interstate and traffic needs to be rerouted through a smaller city, it becomes much easier. That’s where interconnectivity of traffic plays a huge part and that’s where smaller cities start playing a greater role.
This interview was originally published by FutureStructure.
