Public transportation
Providing safe, reliable, accessible and sustainable transportation for all
Balancing investments in the future with the demands of today.
Public transportation agencies face the ongoing challenge of balancing investments to restore aging infrastructure with adopting emerging technologies and modes of transportation that could disrupt or revolutionize how we travel. This tension will continue to challenge how public transportation agencies invest budget allocations for the wide range of mission-critical priorities facing them: repairing roads, bridges, and railways; modernizing transportation systems; ensuring safe, equitable access for riders; and long-term environmental and economic sustainability.
Here are six leading trends we see shaping the future of transportation:
Rethinking public transit: From transport-builders to community-connectors
Robust and resilient: Once-in-a-generation investments in aging transportation infrastructures
Seamless city journeys: Integrating micromobility programs into public transportation
Competition for the curb: From curb clashes to smart curb management
The transit data tsunami: Harnessing insights from petabytes of data
Adoption of emerging solutions: Public-private collaboration fuels emerging, innovative transportation solutions
1. Rethinking public transit: From transport-builders to community-connectors
Public transportation is undergoing a paradigm shift, moving from transport-builders to community-connectors. This shift, referred to as community-oriented transportation by departments of transportation (DOTs), is an evolving paradigm for the design and implementation that goes beyond providing modes of transportation. Instead, it prioritizes a transportation system that’s accessible, equitable, sustainable, and emphasizes the community’s participation to prioritize their specific needs. To achieve this, community-oriented transportation is co-designed: engaging residents earlier in planning and design processes instead of asking for feedback after the plan is set into motion. While this framework will take time to adopt broadly, a growing number of DOTs are already applying the National Cooperative Highway Research Program’s (NCHRP) recommendations for how to engage the community in community-centered transportation planning.
Actions and models to consider:
Rethink how we listen to communities and measure performance. Design prototypes by involving your local residents and neighborhood stakeholders (businesses, universities, freight companies, and riders) from the beginning so that their voice is embedded in the design. Use modern data management approaches to efficiently synthesize existing and real-time data on ridership, accessibility, and demographics with equity analyses to identify access and socioeconomic impact gaps. A few examples of how to do this are the Los Angeles NextGen Bus Plan and NCHRP Project 23-24.
Use virtual field offices that increase resident access and improve the delivery of DMV services, such as driver’s license and vehicle registration renewal, address changes, title transfers, and disabled person parking applications. The State of California provides an example with their DMV Virtual Field Office, set up during the pandemic so that residents could access services remotely.
2. Robust and resilient: Once-in-a-generation investments in aging transportation infrastructures
Many countries are grappling with an aging transportation infrastructure not resilient enough to meet today’s needs and tomorrow’s challenges, such as growing populations, crumbling bridges, extreme temperature shifts weakening the structural integrity of our roads and tunnels. In the U.S., the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) gave the transit and highway infrastructure a C- grade in its 2021 Infrastructure Report Card.
Transportation agencies also face rapid changes driven by technology advancements like sensors, autonomous and connected vehicles, and new business models like rideshare services. Our reliance on digital technologies also increases opportunities for bad actors to cyberattack our infrastructure and jeopardize passenger safety and trust. To balance today with tomorrow, transportation leaders will continue to weigh investments in existing infrastructure with new and emerging transportation solutions.
As you use regional planning to anticipate events, understand risk, and proactively plan for a broader range of scenarios, identify the infrastructure most critical to the network, make a robust backup, and strengthen it to reduce the likelihood of catastrophic failure. See Guidance for Scenario Planning prepared for NCHRP 08-36/Task 145.
Use digital twin technologies to predict maintenance needs and simulate future usage and infrastructure loads. Establish a plan to integrate live telemetry and other data sources (e.g., video feeds) into virtual models of the environment. These solutions will facilitate a deeper understanding of usage patterns and simulation scenarios that can inform your infrastructure upgrades. The US Department of Commerce provides examples in the NIST Digital Twin Core Conceptual Models and Services and IoT Security Maturity Model Digital Twin Profile.
3. Seamless city journeys: Integrating micromobility programs into public transportation
Cities worldwide continue to integrate bike-sharing, electric scooters, kick-scooters, and other forms of micromobility (often privately owned) into existing public transport networks. As an eco-friendly, accessible alternative to private vehicles, micromobility solutions continue to gain popularity in urban areas (with an estimated 16% annual market growth rate) to bridge the first-mile and last-mile gap between public transport hubs, homes, and workplaces.
We’re also seeing cities shift toward more sustainable and accessible urban mobility. This shift results in more user-centric, data-driven solutions that create a seamless door-to-door journey through us of accessible design, multimodal and contactless ticketing, and charging infrastructure. In their shared Micromobility Report, NATCO lays out a blueprint for effectively regulating micromobility providers and capitalizing on these new modes of transportation.
Actions and Models to Consider:
As you integrate micromobility into existing public transit networks, consider these ideas:
Standardize data-sharing among public agencies and private mobility providers to better manage the public right-of-way. A leading model is the Open Mobility Foundation’s Mobility Data Specification (MDS), a global open-source standard used by over 130 cities around the world.
Enhance and personalize passenger experience through responsible AI-powered automation, optimization, and marketing technologies (e.g., MarTech, CRM, and omnichannel).
Intelligent traffic management systems (ITMS) that use real-time data to monitor, predict, and optimize traffic flow and safety provide another example of emerging applications of AI/ML in transportation.
4. Competition for the curb: From Curb Clashes to Smart Curb Management
Increased urban density means more competition for limited, multiuse curb space. Demand for the curb creates safety concerns and congestion and discourages the use of public transit. A growing number of cities, including New York City, Minneapolis, San Francisco, and London, are pioneering shared curb management approaches and open data standards that aim to improve safety, increase access, and adapt in real time to the changing demands of users. While challenges exist in managing data privacy and ensuring equitable access, cities can adapt parts of these approaches to fit their specific infrastructure.
The US Department of Transportation has selected 59 projects across 33 states in its Strengthening Mobility and Revolutionizing Transportation (SMART) Grants Program that provide additional examples.
5. The transit data tsunami: Harnessing insights from petabytes of data
Transportation agencies are sitting on a goldmine of raw data that could become their most valuable asset in creating safer, more efficient, user-centric transportation systems. In North America, petabytes of data are generated daily from vehicle data, ticketing systems, traffic cameras, toll booths, ridesharing, micromobility, and other sensors embedded in infrastructure. One large US city estimated that it generated billions of data transactions per day, and over five petabytes of transportation data annually. Often, transportation agencies underutilize this data due to siloed technology, inefficient storage solutions, skill gaps in the workforce, and the need to balance data utilization with privacy concerns.
Promising applications of AI/ML can optimize traffic flow and traffic management systems to analyze real-time traffic data and dynamically adjust lights or lane restrictions. The San Francisco Airport (SFO) digitized the end-to-end airport journey and used AI to optimize airport operations. Another example is Kawasaki Heavy Industries which uses intelligent products to make it easier and less costly for rail companies to keep their tracks safe.
Embrace modern, cloud-based data lakes to integrate data sources and run large-scale analytics. Agencies can more easily uncover hidden patterns to improve schedules, communicate with passengers in real time, and address transportation inequities. One example is how the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority advanced equity through use of large-scale analytics in their (MBTA) Bus Network Redesign project.
6: Adoption of emerging solutions: Public-private collaboration fuels emerging, innovative transportation solutions
Emerging technologies, often built and financed through public-private collaboration, continue to fundamentally reshape how people and goods move. Investments in the research and development of autonomous, connected, electric, and hydrogen vehicles; micromobility; and AI-powered solutions can potentially create more efficient, sustainable, and accessible transportation for everyone. Government agencies will need to develop policies and regulations to support the deployment of emerging technologies and determine how to seamlessly and safely integrate them into our transportation systems.
Data lakes store and process location, speed, and sensor data from buses and trains in real time to reduce downtime, dynamically adjust scheduling and traffic flows, and inform electric charging infrastructure planning. Models emerging across multiple countries include:
Zero-Emissions Bus Fleet Performance Measurement deployed by King County, Washington. The county uses electric vehicle (EV) dashboards to visualize public transit data on routes and EV charging schedules for its electric bus fleet in near real-time.
Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) platforms—like those being piloted in Vienna, Helsinki, and countrywide in Spain—offer integrated end-to-end travel experiences across multiple modes of transportation.
Slalom contributors: Nate Higgins, Mike Kerr, Jim Stroiney
