Building a sustainable future requires smart, data-driven public transport networks, says Devin de Vries, CEO of WhereIsMyTransport
In recent years, people, leaders and organisations have prioritised sustainable development in order to address the worsening climate crisis and build a future with a better quality of life. As such, we’ve seen economies around the world make significant progress in sustainability across healthcare, education, gender equality and climate action in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
However, populations are continuing to grow at a rapid pace and urbanisation increases as people, particularly young people, move from suburban and rural areas into the cities to find and access better opportunities.
There is now an urgent need to intensify efforts to establish more sustainable cities. And effective public transport is critical to successful urban sustainability, especially as current economic challenges, such as rising inflation and fuel prices, continue to put pressure on people in emerging economies.
Rising fuel prices are creating challenges across the globe
Recently, residents in Panama held eight consecutive days of protests to urge the government to curb inflation after the cost of food, medicine, electricity and fuel shot up, while in India and South Africa, the steep hike in fuel rates have made it difficult for people across these countries to manage their household budgets.
These emerging challenges are severely dampening industry and the wider economy, and showcase that private transport is quickly becoming unfeasible and unsustainable.
Therefore, it is imperative that emerging economies pursue more sustainable and accessible public transport by significantly improving public transport networks. Emerging economies across the world are starting to leverage advanced technologies like Artificial Intelligence, cloud computing and the Internet of Things in order to drive progress on urban sustainability goals and must also begin to look at doing the same within the transport sector.
But this requires us to gain a deeper understanding of current public transport environments that will help to find or create new solutions to tough, and unique, sustainability challenges within public transport in emerging markets.
How data-driven transport can find solutions to sustainability challenges
Transit and mobility data have a significant role to play in achieving this, particularly as economic growth and development are continuously changing urban structures as new business districts are created, new residential areas are constructed and informal settlements continue to grow. In addition, mobility data also provides decision makers with the relevant and vital information needed to understand and improve transport networks.
So, with unreliability, inaccessibility and poor infrastructure plaguing public transport networks in emerging economies, how can we shift towards more sustainable transport and how can data enable this?
Increasing accessibility
Accessibility is a crucial component to sustainability. By enabling more accessible public transport, we can ensure that everyone is able to access critical community resources and services, such as employment and healthcare.
Creating more accessible public transport networks will require the establishment of more inclusive and diverse public transport systems. For example, people living in informal settlements are reliant on informal public transport, such as minibus taxis and tuk tuks, which have no scheduled arrival or departure times and no formal pick-up areas, as other transport modes such as buses and trains are rarely close by or do not stop near these areas.
Expanding public transport networks to service key economic areas such as these will significantly improve not only the perception of public transport, but its benefits to the wider economy as well. In order to do so, we need to be able to identify where these key economic areas are that are underserved and understand how and where people are travelling. Through the utilisation of point of interest data, policy and decision makers can gain valuable insight into the informal economy and key economic locations with value to people when travelling which can then be used to inform the modelling and planning that ensures more inclusive and accessible public transport.
The integration of mobility data
The integration of mobility data can be vital to helping achieve accessibility in transport systems by integrating informal neighbourhoods into city networks, thereby ensuring access to critical services, job opportunities and facilitating more connected communities.
Identifying investment opportunities and building better infrastructure
In emerging economies, transport infrastructure plays a key role in enhancing economic activity by boosting productivity, ensuring safety and lowering the cost of mobility. However, transport infrastructure in these markets is often inadequate and emerging economies have unique spatial challenges that need to be mapped in order to address infrastructure gaps.
By utilising accurate and reliable transit data, which maps every transport mode and operational style, cities and key decision-makers will be able to identify opportunities for improvement and growth in public transport infrastructure, thereby enabling them to close infrastructure gaps that hamper the development of transport networks such as insufficient power supply.
More importantly, having a clear overview of the risks and opportunities of public transport networks will encourage increased investment in infrastructure, particularly from the private sector and financial institutions, which continues to remain low and is not keeping pace with transformation efforts.
Data is a powerful tool in the success of sustainable public transport networks as it helps us to draw important insights into how current transport systems work, as well as where their challenges and opportunities lie. With emerging economies set to bear the burden of rising costs and climate temperatures around the globe, it has never been more important than it is now to unlock the value of data to achieve better, more sustainable public transport, especially as it invariably leads to better and more sustainable economic development, which ensures benefits for communities through improved access, health, reduced congestion and increased equity.
Devin de Vries
CEO
WhereIsMyTransport
https://www.linkedin.com/company/whereismytransport/
https://www.instagram.com/_mytransport/
