What defines a smart city?

A smart city is a city that not only uses advanced technologies to improve the quality of life for its citizens, but also takes a step back to think about the overall makeup of the city and where the weak points are. This involves the integration of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, which work together to collect data, analyze it and use it to optimize city services. These devices span over every aspect of a city that one could think of to properly modernize and technologize the 21st century city. 

Smart cities aim to make urban living more efficient, sustainable and livable, by improving mobility, energy efficiency, waste management, public safety, and more. The implementation of smart city technology has the potential to revolutionize the way we interact with our cities, creating a more sustainable, efficient and enjoyable urban environment. The effects of a smart city can be felt outside of an urban environment as well. 

 

What about cars and traffic congestion in a smart city?

One major problem that smart cities set out to solve is the problem of traffic and congestion throughout the city and its surrounding metropolitan area. To do this, we must first start with the idea of a smart car. A smart car is a car that is equipped with electronic devices or sensors that help the driver or passengers in a variety of ways. These could vary from warning  beeps when falling out of line within your lane, occupancy detection, all the way up to the end goal of autonomous vehicles (AVs). These sensors can also be a part of the car itself, or outside sensors such as those built within roads or traffic lights. All of these potential assistance tools all have the end goal of increasing driver safety and efficiency of vehicles on the road. As these cars get smarter, they are typically paired with outside infrastructure that can help communicate city wide with these smart devices to dynamically assist the flow of traffic. For example a smart car on the East side of the city can report to the city-wide infrastructure that the East bridge is non-functional in real time so that it can direct traffic elsewhere. Without smart infrastructure this would most likely need to be communicated via something such as the news, which would take time to reach the end users and have a ripple effect that can cause extra traffic.

Copenhagen’s Smart Traffic Lights

Copenhagen has the massively ambitious goal of becoming carbon neutral by the year 2025. This is obviously an extremely tall task, but a city such as Copenhagen has one of the better starts. It is notoriously a biker’s city, and Copenhagen only wants to further incentivize biking and other forms of public transportation that are not personal and singular cars or vehicles. In addition to creating less fossil fuel emissions in the goal of being carbon neutral, this will also have the effect of lowering the amount of vehicles on the road, thereby decreasing overall congestion within the city. Copenhagen already has plenty of bike-specific infrastructure, so the upfront cost of a solution such as this one is massively dampened.

To pull this off, Copenhagen is footing a rather large bill (although it could be much larger) to install hundreds of these smart lights that will specifically denote and prioritize both cyclists and their most notable public mass transport – buses. These methods of transportation will get priority over private cars when at stop lights. For example a bus turning right may get a greenlight before horizontal crossing traffic gets a greenlight in order to reduce the amount of time that the bus itself needs to be stopped. Prioritizing mass transit like this is important because the capacity of buses is much more efficient than that of private cars. Their major end goal is to reduce the trip time for buses from up to 20% and for bikes up to 10%. They also forecast that this will potentially end up easing car traffic times by 5-10%. By actively encouraging other such modes of transportation that are not the traditional single person car, they are removing many vehicles from the road because of the fact that buses and bikes may just simply be faster for some people. In addition to this, these options are the cheaper options which increase the overall accessibility of the city itself. Another aspect of this that makes it so effective is that these sensors are simply infrastructure only, in other words there is no additional cost associated with the bikes and buses themselves. The brunt of the solution weighs solely on the cities shoulders rather than the citizens.

In my opinion, this will be a massively effective smart city initiative focusing on traffic and congestion. As noted earlier, Copenhagen is already known for its biking population and bike-ability, with approximately 45% of commuting trips being cyclists. This makes a further push for cycling all the more effective, as there is already infrastructure and it is culturally supported.  The end goal along with being carbon neutral is to limit car trips to only 25% of all trips throughout the city. Although a bit beyond my specific topic, encouraging an act such as cycling has many more positive outcomes such as a general health increase across the population. The new smart lights will as a matter of fact consume one third less energy by being able to dynamically change it’s light cycles so that it needs to change less often. This is yet another push towards their carbon neutral goal. Overall, there seems to genuinely be no downsides to this ambitious project Copenhagen is implementing besides the ~$9 million dollar bill to install the first wave of smart lights (most likely with more to come in the future).

Singapore’s Electronic Road Pricing

Singapore is at the forefront of many smart city initiatives, but their electronic road pricings (ERP) is one of the coolest they have implemented to date. Again this approach focuses more on infrastructure/sensors that are outside of the cars or vehicles themselves. As noted earlier, this means adoption has less hurdles as the citizens being most directly affected by these changes do not need to purchase an entirely new car or upgrade a pre existing part. Instead in this implementation all they need is what we in America know as a toll tag.

The concept of this ERP solution is that the city will charge users electronically via a specific tolltag-esque device whenever they enter the traditionally busier roads within the city. These roads are identified by other smart infrastructure throughout the city and dynamically change every day up to each individual half hour. For example the morning rush hour or the evening rush hour when the majority of full time workers are commuting will have larger tolls on major roads. In addition to this, there is functionality to completely overhaul the system on major holidays or things such as sporting events, which can be some of the main culprits of traffic congestion in a city the size of Singapore.

The typical day to day implementation of the ERP policy has a specific traffic control goal. Road hierarchy is vastly important to consider when accounting for traffic flow of a large urban city, and ERP’s specific goal is to keep the roads most important as according to the city’s road hierarchy flowing as intended. The goal is for the expressways (highways / motorways) to maintain traffic flow at a speed of 45 – 65 km/h (28 – 40 mph) on average when accounting for standstill as well. One step down in the hierarchy would be the arterial roads (avenues) where the speed goal is from 20 – 30 km/h (12 – 18 mph). Although these numbers may indeed seem small or slow, when compared to a city such as New York (Manhattan in specificity) where the average car speed is only 4.7 mph throughout, these numbers paint a much prettier picture.

I think that this is a massively successful endeavor. Tolls have been around for a long time, but the idea to actually dynamically change toll prices in order to incentivize traffic flow in direct ways is genius. The cost upfront for an endeavor such as this is most certainly relatively large, but with a population such as Singapore’s I would not be surprised if the ERP not only pays itself off, but becomes a profiting venture. This is also not an entirely prohibitive feature as the ERP will only be used as needed and is really only in the major city center where traffic is most an issue. Unless you need to venture directly into downtown, you will not be affected by the ERP price whatsoever. On the flip side though, whether participating in the ERP tolls or not, all drivers in the Singapore metropolitan area will feel the benefits of the effects of ERP trickling down outside of the major city roads themselves.

Helsinki MaaS

Acronyms using the nomenclature XaaS are becoming fairly common in the tech world used to denote something (X) as a service. In this case, Helsinki is implementing mobility as a service. This is fulfilled by utilizing an app that helps users choose the most effective means of transportation to get from one point to another with offerings of all means of transportation all housed within the same app right at the user’s fingertips, and accessible with a swipe or two. The end goal is to lower the amount of privatized cars that are on the road of Helsinki, which will help the city’s air quality to come back in line with European standards which they are currently not fulfilling. Helsinki aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 30% in 2030, with the overarching goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2050.

The actual solution is utilizing an app called Whim that is developed by a startup company that specializes in MaaS solutions. Whim has all transportation options within Helsinki available and involved in the algorithmic decision making system of curating the proper and most efficient route for every user’s trip that they input into the app. It will choose the most effective path utilizing any and all combinations of transport options. For example, it could tell you to walk 2 blocks, pick up a bike, then bike a mile to a bus stop where you will then reach your end destination. Although this may seem tedious, with these options readily available and accessible directly through the app, it becomes much easier.

Since this is indeed an outside solution not directly implemented by the government itself, it does include a larger bill for the end users. Fortunately, there are options to this with varying prices. Starting at the top, a 499 euro fee monthly will allow the user to take unlimited transportation options throughout the city (including taxis, buses, bikes, etc.). The other monthly price point is at 49 euros a month, where the user gains unlimited access to bikes and buses with discounts for the other modes of transport. To not prohibit visiting or infrequent users, there is also pay by trip functionality where the user will be able to pay for a one off trip without having to pay a monthly fee. The convenience of these payment plans is also enhanced because a user’s payment information will be tied to their Whim account. The city currently has 45,000 users with 5,100 users specifically paying for one of the monthly fee options. Whim reports that if roughly 3 – 5% of the population pays for one of the monthly subscriptions, it would then be able to operate profitably. Although this doesn’t inherently sound better for the end user, when Whim begins to operate profitably it allows the company to go out and purchase these transport options and infrastructure at a bulk and discounted rate. This will eventually trickle back down to the end user, benefitting them by eventually decreasing the costs of transport and increasing the options available to them. Overall I think this is an excellent solution that will only grow to be better overtime as adopters increase.

Citations

CITIES100: Copenhagen – smart traffic signals boost cycling. C40 Cities. (2022, February 15). Retrieved February 17, 2023, from https://www.c40.org/case-studies/cities100-copenhagen-smart-traffic-signals-boost-cycling/

Davies, A. (2016, February 18). Copenhagen’s new traffic lights recognize and favor cyclists. Wired. Retrieved February 17, 2023, from https://www.wired.com/2016/02/copenhagens-new-traffic-lights-recognize-and-favor-cyclists/#:~:text=Copenhagen%20installed%2010%20smart%20signals,like%20soccer%20matches%20and%20concerts.

Electronic road pricing (ERP). LTA. (n.d.). Retrieved February 17, 2023, from https://onemotoring.lta.gov.sg/content/onemotoring/home/driving/ERP/ERP.html

Helsinki pioneers maas. The Agility Effect. (n.d.). Retrieved February 17, 2023, from https://www.theagilityeffect.com/en/case/helsinki-pioneers-maas/#:~:text=MaaS%20combines%20all%20public%20and,where%20they%20need%20to%20go.

Jones, M., & Martin JonesMartin Jones is a Senior Manager and Editor for CoxBLUE at Cox Business covering business technology. (n.d.). Martin Jones. Cox BLUE. Retrieved February 17, 2023, from https://www.coxblue.com/10-things-to-consider-in-planning-and-building-a-smart-city/

Köllinger, C. (n.d.). How Helsinki became a ‘mobility as a service’ leader. Eltis. Retrieved February 17, 2023, from https://www.eltis.org/discover/news/how-helsinki-became-mobility-service-leader

Los Angeles Times. (2018, January 25). The average speed of traffic in midtown Manhattan is 4.7 mph. New York thinks it’s found a solution. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved February 17, 2023, from https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-new-york-traffic-manhattan-20180124-story.html#:~:text=The%20average%20speed%20of%20a,mph%20%E2%80%94%20barely%20faster%20than%20walking.&text=Truck%20volume%20has%20increased%2C%20too,the%20proliferation%20of%20e%2Dcommerce.