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How Network Convergence Will Save Transportation

The aging public transportation in many American cities is straining under increased use. New tools and technologies are needed to create new options for city planners and policy makers.

For the first time in world history, more people today live in cities than outside of them. In a departure from the suburban flight of the mid-to-late 20th century, 62 percent of the Millennial generation (as well as a growing number of their graying Boomer parents) prefer to give up the picket fence in favor of denser urban housing closer to cultural offerings, workplaces and mass transit – cutting their commutes and often car ownership altogether. 

Form follows function. This new urban lifestyle does not happen in a vacuum. Strong transportation infrastructure creates a successful urban living environment: public transportation to move people from place to place, and the supply chain bringing in products that make urban life possible. 

The aging public transportation in many American cities is straining under increased use. In 2012, approximately 10.5 billion trips were taken on public transportation, according to the American Public Transportation Association – a 60-year high. 

Global trade comes at local cost – unprecedented volumes of goods are crisscrossing city streets, traveling over bridges, and making their way through ports and airports – putting additional pressure on aging, crumbling transportation infrastructure that dates back to the Eisenhower administration

Interoperability and the Elephant in the Room

The old parable about blind men futilely trying to describe an elephant – each touching a different part of the animal – is a bit like the transportation ecosystem when considering the communication needs for rail, mass transit, roadways, fleet vehicles, maritime, aviation and freight. And that’s before you factor in state-specific and regional differences in data flows and communications. These siloed systems prevent agencies from communicating effectively, seeing into each other’s operations and exploiting synergies in real time. 

Unprecedented challenges create unprecedented opportunities, which can be pursued aggressively when new tools and technologies create new options for city planners and policy makers: Witness the rise of public/private partnerships and the still nascent Internet of Everything (IoE). 

This is a moment of coming together of formerly discrete agencies and sectors of the economy. It is also a coming together of technologies that are still too often managed separately – marking the convergence of huge volumes of data from a variety of sources and put to work at a speed and distance that are made possible through a hyper-connected network cloud. Such is the new converged platform that can make sense of and leverage the immense pool of data from vehicles, sensors and devices embedded across the transportation system.

Cisco’s portfolio of intelligent transportation systems – Connected Rail, Connected Roadways and Connected Mass Transit – work with transportation agencies to address limitations and shortfalls cost-effectively and with elegant impact. To achieve convergence, multiple networks are fused into a single IP network for greater interoperability, communications, ease of management and decreased cost. Cisco moves computing into the cloud to streamline transportation infrastructure while enabling secure data sharing, higher performance, greater safety and a brave new world of situational awareness few agencies can afford to do without. Agencies can kick-start the transition with any combination of solutions and scale up as needed. 

“The position of most forward-leaning governments today is intermodality – the ability to move between different modes of transportation more effectively and efficiently,” says Barry Einsig, global transportation executive for Cisco’s Connected Industries Group. “We look at connectivity first, creating a connectivity architecture so that government can take advantage of building one network that serves multiple applications, rather than single-use proprietary networks with limited value. We build out that architecture all the way from the data center to the vehicle, then test it to make sure it meets performance criteria.”

Indeed, the United States Department of Transportation cites new priorities for its 2015-2019 strategic plan that include enterprise data capture; mechanisms for housing, sharing, analyzing, transporting and applying data for improved safety and mobility across all modes of travel; and interoperability among devices and systems.

A Smarter Road Ahead?

The enormous demand on transportation and its relationship to urban centers clearly isn’t relegated to the United States. The World Health Organization expects 7 out of 10 people on earth will live in cities by the middle of this century. In that time frame, freight traffic in the U.S. is projected to increase 45 percent, and climate change could leave some airports below sea level. Ours is a nation of vast consumption with too many demands on resources and transportation – but the problems we face in moving people and cargo from place to place can be solved with technology. 

The Obama administration’s Grow America Act, if passed, would invest $478 billion in transportation infrastructure, effectively increasing spending on roads, bridges, transit and other modes by 45 percent. In many respects, the proposal hinges on a vision of a converged future in which more effective use of data improves safety, transportation planning and decision making, and enhances economic vitality while moving people and goods more safely and efficiently. 

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