Cities are facing a conundrum. Approximately 83 percent of the American population lives in an urban area—and that number is expected to grow to an estimated 89 percent by 2050. Yet, city planners can’t simply snap their fingers and build infrastructure, or move buildings to expand roads. They’re contending with the changes that come with increasing rates of urbanization on multiple fronts. Amongst the many challenges cities face in maintaining quality of life, one challenge links them all: finding the best way to move people around. Citizens are the lifeblood of urban areas, and mobility is a constant heartbeat that maintains smart, healthy cities.
Therefore, any conversation about smart cities can’t exist without discussing mobility. Discussions about city infrastructure would be held in a vacuum if not paired with insights on transportation trends. Municipal transportation and the question of how to improve mobility takes place towards the top of any planning agenda.
Answering this question has never been more complicated. In the pre-digital past, cities relied on municipal-owned transit as the majority. The underground was ruled by subways, and taxis owned the streets. Today’s mobility infrastructure features more players in the arena in the form of third-party apps like ParkWhiz, ride-sharing programs, and micro-mobility. Because of this, the average citizen has never had as many choices to complete a journey door-to-door. Concurrently, a city has never had such an opportunity to get smart and solve the challenge of moving people around through innovation and data.
To address the opportunity this presents, we spoke with civil and transportation engineering Professor Stephen Boyles of the University of Texas at Austin and Juan Rodriguez, founder and CEO of FLASH.