202 PART | V The future of ITS applications
of the urban environment. As far as it concerns the transportation alternatives,
public transportation cannot compete for private means especially in areas with
disperse population and the network and frequency of public transportation are
not satisfactory. Finally, all the green ways of transportation (walking and bi-
cycle) are not so popular and have a limited impact on traffic. The compact and
densely-populated cities of East Asia, appear to be more promising for develop-
ing sustainable smart-mobility schemes based on mass transportation, whereas
in the large but widely dispersed cities of the United States and Australia people
still prefer private means of transportation and require a different approach.
Large European cities stand in the middle since they have a smaller population
size, density, and area. They are usually built around a single city center that
promotes green mobility and is connected to the surrounding areas with metro-
politan transportation networks.
Smart and sustainable mobility can help in solving many large cities issues
and make cities friendlier and more attractive to citizens. However, the term
smart has to be connected with—(1) the design of services and the city, that
must minimize the need to move, (2) the ability to collect and analyze infor-
mation that can help us make decisions, (3) an infrastructure that can process
information and adapt in real-time, and (4) a mobility ecosystem that can be
used efficiently and in a sustainable way. The redesign of city transportation
services must be connected with a replanning of the land usage and the proper
arrangement of business, commercial, residential, industrial, and other zones.
The combined use of a public transportation network, pedestrian, and cyclist
zones and parking lots at the city center limits are expected to keep cars away
from the city center and reduce traffic (Koska & Rudolph, 2017).
In an effort to bring smart and sustainable mobility as close as possible (i.e.,
making them overlap in the optimal case), Lyons (2018) defines the concept
of sustainable smart mobility, which is defined by the requirement for afford-
able and attractive, but also effective connectivity. With connectivity referring
to the need for physical transport of people and goods, a more viable solution
will be to reduce the need for physical transport and distances through digital
connectivity and city and services redesign. Affordability and attractiveness de-
mand for solutions that reach a wider population base, even people that do not
have smartphones or have other cognitive, physical, and financial restrictions,
whereas effectiveness examines both economic, social, and environmental as-
pects and sustainability requests for solutions that maintain the aforementioned
characteristics on a long-term basis.
18.3 The future of smart mobility and the open challenges
The “Intelligent Mobility Incubator (http://centro.org.uk/about-us/news/2015/
intelligent-mobility-incubator/)” was the attempt of the UK Government to fo-
cus on smart mobility, building on new technologies, and smarter and greener
solutions. The main effort was on the development of mobile applications that