In increasingly urban societies that see the constant exchange of people and goods, the transportation sector is undergoing some of its most profound changes in decades. Intelligent rail management systems today enable subway trains that ferry millions of people in smart cities such as Singapore and Hong Kong to run more safely and efficiently, with fewer faults.
On the roads, safety systems enable smart vehicles to transport more people and goods with fewer incidents in a future powered by green energy. At the world’s busiest seaports, terminal operating systems enable 24/7 movement of goods, while airports use air traffic management solutions to route and guide planes taking off and landing.
These snapshots of the technological innovations that have delivered safety, efficiency, and safety globally are part of an estimated US$156 billion smart transport market in 2025 that is forecasted by MarketsandMarkets Research. One big driver for these technological advancements in smart cities is the need to enhance customer experience, the research firm explained.
Rail and road traffic management systems, rail operations management systems, incident management systems, travel assistance systems, and toll collection systems are among the areas that would see growth, it added. It is not hard to see why. In Hong Kong, a signaling fault in in October 2019 caused four major subway lines to go down, leading to large crowds of disgruntled commuters at stations across the city. In Singapore, a 2017 system failure injured 29 people. These are just a couple examples that show the critical need for all railway and transport systems to be highly available, with no margin for error, given the role they play in a sustainable smart city.
Intelligence Makes a Difference Across Asian Cities
Not surprisingly, digital innovation is going to define the future of transportation, according to 200 global business leaders interviewed by the Economist Intelligence Unit. In the study, 80% of transportation executives surveyed predict vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication, as well as intelligent transport systems (ITS), coming to fruition in the near term. These respondents also expect innovations in transit technology to increase road safety, reduce congestion, and improve fuel efficiency.
Indeed, ITS is already making day-to-day travels smoother, safer, and shorter by enabling, among other things, cashless payments and by guiding people through congestion with real-time traffic information, according to the Economist study.
The Covid-19 pandemic may have impacted various sub-sectors, in particular air travel, profoundly, but it also underlines how critical these transport links are to today’s interconnected world. It has also encouraged businesses and governments to continue to invest in smart city technologies that enable more to be done with lower labor costs, for example.
The main driver for digitalization is efficiency and higher revenue collection. In Seoul, subway lines used by seven million people each day rely on a robust system that controls and manages train signals, platform screen doors, and other applications. In China, road tolls were collected manually before 2014, which caused traffic congestion following the exponential growth of vehicles over time.
The government has now adopted an electronic toll collection system that enables high-speed, automated toll collection, reduced management costs, and fewer billing errors. The technology behind it is the Stratus everRun® software, a platform that is now used across China for toll collection systems.
Perhaps few other places have intensely focused on digitalization as Singapore has. Here, an upcoming fully automated driverless line — the Thomson East Coast Line — will rely on CCTV camera systems for 32 stations. This setup provides seamless management and interpretation of digital video, audio, and security data. The architecture is built to have a microsecond-level failover.
At the city-state’s sea ports, some of the busiest in the world, the port authorities are looking to consolidate its three existing ports into one, the Tuas mega port. Expected to be the largest container terminal in the world and fully operational in 2040, it will make use of intelligent control systems and sustainable technologies.
The Cities of Tomorrow Are Forming Today
Many smart cities are already underway. While autonomous vehicles are still developing, their applications are becoming more prevalent and widespread, including automated yard cranes and drones, as well as driverless trucks to ferry goods from seaports. These innovations will rely on a network running on both fiber optic cables and 5G wireless connectivity.
At Singapore’s airport, a ground service provider makes use of Stratus’ fault tolerant systems for its cargo inventory sorting control and monitoring system. This brings mission-critical reliability to its gateway and food services operations. Underpinning the success of these operations is the certainty and reliability of the systems that enable them.
No matter how fast, efficient, and convenient a smart system is, it has to be constantly up and running for long stretches at a time. Often, this is a nonstop 24/7 shift, say, at a seaport. What this means is that systems have to offer high availability and, sometimes, fault tolerance. In other words, they automatically find a way to keep running even if a fault is found.
Consider a server that has to manage the many sensors and IoT devices for a toll collection system. If it takes a few minutes to restart or failover during peak traffic hours, then long lines of cars will quickly form, disrupting commuters and transit workers alike. Even more sensitive, perhaps, are the signaling systems for subway trains. Whenever they fail, trains cannot run on time and thousands of commuters can be left in a lurch. The same can be said of autonomous vehicles; systems must run flawlessly all the time.
The future is a demanding one, where digital transport systems not only have to have the latest features to deliver new levels of efficiency and convenience, but also near-faultless uptime, depending on the application. Tomorrow’s smart cities aren’t too far away, either. Robo-taxis are already available today in cities in the United States, according to The Verge, with more on the way. Digital innovation in the transport sector is already poised to make a difference in airports, seaports, subway tracks, and highways around the world.
Source: Stratus
