Lecture 1 - Transportation - Current Trends, Challenges, And Opportunities

Sustainable Transportation Curriculum for Universities

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LECTURE 1: Transportation — Current Trends, Challenges, and Opportunities

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Defining Transportation

• Transportation broadly refers to the movement of people and goods
• Transportation systems include:
  • People/goods being moved
  • Vehicles transporting them
  • Physical infrastructure (e.g., roadways, railways, terminals, and stations)
  • Operations that facilitate the movement

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Current Trends and Challenges

• There are several trends in transportation driving unprecedented change
  • Mobility Transformation
  • Electrification
  • Connectivity
  • Autonomy
• Each has challenges for infrastructure
• Climate change, sustainability, and resilience also remain global issues

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Infrastructure Needs and Challenges

Adequate infrastructure is fundamental to transportation systems.

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Infrastructure Needs and Challenges

• The effective operations of transportation systems in the future depend on physical infrastructure becoming increasingly interlinked with and operated using digital infrastructure
• Digital infrastructure refers to the foundational services that are necessary for information technology capabilities including internet backbone, fixed broadband, mobile telecommunications, communications satellites, network infrastructure, and data centers

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Key Trend #1: Mobility Transformation

Changes in our travel choices and the way people access and utilize transportation options, goods, and services

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Key Trend #1: Mobility Transformation

• People are changing how they travel and access goods and services
  • Increased telecommuting/work from home
  • Delivery services instead of shopping trips
  • Use of innovative mobility solutions such as ridesharing, carsharing, ridehailing, bikesharing, and microtransit
• Mobility on demand (MOD) and mobility as a service (MaaS) could potentially drive a shift away from personally owned modes of transportation and toward mobility provided as a service
• Technologies enable customers or goods to seamlessly transition between modes of transportation in a data‑enabled environment.

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Key Trend #2: Electrification

Electrification is increasingly seen as a way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector

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Key Trend #2: Electrification

• 60% of carbon pollution from the transportation sector comes from passenger vehicles
  • Large-scale consumer switch to electric vehicles (EVs) can reduce emissions
• EVs have a growing market share in the U.S., with several new models becoming available in the market

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Key Trend #3: Connectivity

A connected vehicle (CV) has various communication devices (embedded or portable) that enable in-car connectivity with other devices

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Key Trend #3: Connectivity

• CV technology systems enable units in vehicles, or on-board units (OBUs), to communicate with units built into transportation infrastructure and vice versa (V2I communication)
• Other types of CV technology allow vehicles to communicate with other vehicles, data networks, or pedestrians, all using the same OBU that is needed for V2I communication

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Key Trend #4: Autonomy

Automated vehicles (AVs) represent a switching of the responsibility for the driving task from human to machine

• Offer potential safety and other benefits

Society of Automotive Engineers Levels of Driving Automation
(Adapted from SAEJ3016TM)

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Key Trend #4: Autonomy

• Highly automated vehicles, which either remove the driver from the driving task under certain conditions or totally, rely heavily on machine learning systems
• Society of Automotive Engineers defines six levels of automation

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Implications for Transportation Infrastructure

Mobility Transformation

• Ensure safe, multimodal, equitable access

Electrification

• Provision of charging infrastructure, moving beyond home-based charging

Connectivity

• Upgrading roadway infrastructure with digital communications infrastructure

Autonomy

• Adapting infrastructure designed for human drivers to handle autonomous vehicles as well as both humans and AVs at the same time

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Critical Issues Facing Transportation

• Several organizations have discussed key issues that transportation faces in the U.S.
• Key priorities include
  • Safety and public health
  • Equity
  • Resilience and sustainability
  • Innovation
  • Addressing new technologies
  • Addressing changing demographics

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Scenario Planning and Sustainability

• Over the long term, the issues facing transportation will be influenced by
  • Governmental regulations
  • Social changes
  • Environmental protection
  • Economic growth
• The Transportation Research Board studied several possible scenarios for the future of transportation, with a focus on sustainability

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Scenarios to Consider

• The scenarios range from optimistic to pessimistic, in terms of the environment and climate change
• Differences in economic outcomes, technological progress, and urbanization levels are also reflected in the scenarios

Crisis World
Acute events and transportation disasters exacerbate problems due to climate change

Mega World
The gradual and continuous concentration of the population and economic activity into megaregions

Suburban World
Gradual decentralization to small towns, suburbs, and areas outside the megaregions

Wonder World
High economic growth and numerous technology breakthroughs

Green World
Radical shift in favor of a green and sustainable future

Source: NCHRP Report 750: Strategic Issues Facing Transportation, Volume 4: Sustainability as an Organizing Principle for Transportation Agencies. National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/22379

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LECTURE 1: Transportation — Current Trends, Challenges, and Opportunities

 

 

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