It is a rare day that you won't take some form of transportation
A bus, train or car to work. A bike to school. A plane for a business trip. And even if you don't leave your home, your life is still influenced by the transportation industry: virtually every tangible good — food, clothing, medicine, vehicles, computers — has been transported into your world from somewhere else.
Transportation — the movement of people and goods from point A to point B — is the life force of our economy. Cities could not exist if we didn't have transportation systems to move people and goods in, out and around them. It has been a leading driver behind globalisation: shrinking distances, seeding the emergence of entire new economies and improving the quality of life for millions of people.
Yet many of our transportation systems are inadequate to serve the needs of the 21st century. By integrating technology and intelligence into the physical transportation infrastructure, we can improve capacity, enhance the traveller experience and make our transportation systems more efficient, safe, and secure.
Download the Frost & Sullivan report: A Smarter Transportation System (222KB)
City in Motion – a UK perspective
Congestion charging, electric vehicles, traffic management and improved bus and train services are all changing the face of transport - but how do we continue leveraging these new advances with fewer resources and a growing city population?
Flying through check-in with Ryanair
To reduce the costs associated with airport check-in, IBM worked with Ryanair to introduce one of the world's first implementations of Chip and PIN enabled airport kiosks.
IBM Smarter Trends
This new resource shares content on key issues such as: transport, energy, water and city development.
Consider what happens when something goes wrong
A storm, a blackout, or even a strike in one city can reverberate throughout the entire country because transportation is a complex, interconnected ecosystem of many stakeholders.
When our transportation system grinds to a stop, it costs money — between 1 and 3 percent of our GDP. In the United States (U.S.) alone, 4.2 billion hours are lost to people sitting in traffic every year.
We can't build our way out of congestion with more roads and bridges and tracks. "The pattern we see is that every time a new road is built, utilisation increases and congestion comes back," says Phil Mumford, CEO of Queensland Motorways in Australia. "We need to be smarter about how we manage our traffic flow." And our airport capacity. Our railways. And our shipping lanes.
Sir Henry Royce Lecture 2010 - Smarter Transport
Jamie Houghton, who leads IBM's Intelligent Transport Systems global team, presented the latest Sir Henry Royce Lecture at the Institution of Engineering and Technology in London on 29 April 2010.
With many countries experiencing economic difficulties, the UK is not alone in facing a growing demand for transportation which is putting intolerable pressure on an already highly stressed transport network. Strict capital constraints will continue to restrict new infrastructure investment, underlining the importance of evolving smarter and more intelligent solutions. A new generation of such solutions is being enabled by embedding and interconnecting millions of intelligent devices in transport infrastructure, vehicles, the built environment and personal communication products. By using powerful analytics to harvest the realtime information gathered in this way, transport network services can be optimised and travellers kept better informed.
Jamie's presentation reviews leading global Smarter Transport practice and potential, paying particular attention to UK opportunities.
Public Service Review's Transport quarterly magazine - December 2010 edition
This magazine recently carried two articles from IBM:
Sweden's capital gains?
Gunnar Johansson of IBM and Sylvia Rydstrom, of ÖstgötaTrafiken, gauge the impact of automated ticketing methods on public transport in Stockholm.
Get smart
IBM's John Rushton believes that integrated fare management and SmartCard technology is making journeys by public transport easier for commuters and operators alike.
How IBM can help
Download the paper: Shifting gears: Building a smarter future for transport (PDF, 6.51 MB)
IBM Study: Electric cars stir interest but face obstacles - Read more (US)
Trafficmaster – Building the engine to drive smarter traffic – Download the report
bmi airline transforms entire UK check-in with IBM self service system - Read the press release
Travel & Transportation solutions
Red Funnel: Enhancing customer service with Twittering ferries: