200 PART | V The future of ITS applications
They are the backbone of the transportation system and serve the largest traffic
volume, using the minimum resources, and space. In the new mobility schemes,
they are the main transportation hubs, where all other means of transportation
(cars, taxis, mini-buses, bicycles, etc.) connect to increase the area of coverage
and the efficiency of the transportation system. The design of a smart mobility
solution, especially in urban areas must begin and end with public transporta-
tion in order to be effective. The connectivity among the public means of trans-
portation and the connectivity with other transportation means is the first thing
that must be considered in this redesign. The connectivity must be both in space
and time, in order to increase land and population coverage and reduce waiting
times and the total travel time. Another objective is to increase the efficiency of
public transportation against private alternatives. This can be supported by the
development of transportation hubs and the collaboration of all operators in or-
der to provide single ticket solutions and reduce the time for switching between
the different public transportation networks. It is also important to renew public
transportation fleet with smart vehicles that provide automation and high quality
services (information to the passengers, internet connectivity, etc.), to introduce
new mobility schemes that prioritize public means of transportation in specific
urban zones and promote the use of smart cards and e-payment applications and
replace traditional tickets in order to allow combined public transportation us-
age schemes.According to the comprehensive review of Mangiaracina, Perego,
Salvadori & Tumino 2017 , the efficiency of mass and public mobility services
is based upon the economy of scale, which is achieved by transporting a large
number of passengers and goods and on the better management of physical
flows using fewer resources. ITS can improve performance in this direction by
automating or supporting decision making, based on richer information that can
be collected from various sources. They can support vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V)
and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) connectivity and facilitate data and informa-
tion exchange. They can also take advantage of the rich data and take better
and instant decisions. Finally, they can engage people in this communication
network, either as drivers that take decisions for moving safer or faster to their
destination or as pedestrians or passengers that share information and use pub-
licly available information to move around the city.
Smart mobility is defined in an urban context and aims in providing better
(faster, cheaper, safer, etc.) flows within the city context. Among the cities that
have invested in smart mobility one can see large cities mainly from Asia, Eu-
rope, and North Americas:
• Singapore uses thousands of sensors to collect data from every aspect of
urban life, such as vehicles and pedestrians in its E3A platform: Everyone,
Everything, Everywhere, All the Time.
• Dubai has invested in the Smart Dubai project, which involves the use of
blockchain for digitizing government, the development of a dashboard
(Smart Dubai index) for monitoring city performance at all times and the