Data Driven Transportation

Smart Cities’ passenger transportation systems are required to meet the diverse needs of millions of citizens every day. As cities’ population and economies grow, city managers must take steps to ensure that their transportation systems continue to support their citizens in the most efficient manner possible. Data analytics can help to unlock tremendous value by providing cities with the information and tools to create more efficient transportation systems, with optimally designed routes, services, infrastructure, and regulations. Doing so will lead to lower levels of congestion, reduced tailpipe emissions, and less time spent in transit, resulting in communities that are cleaner, safer, better designed, and more economically prosperous.

An increasing number of organizations and individuals are collecting significant amounts of transit-related data. The range, scope, and volume of data collection is expanding. This increase in data presents a massive opportunity to better integrate components of existing transport systems, optimize transit options to users’ needs, and plan and regulate cities to match mobility patterns.

Smart Cities Mission-Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs intends to launch a set of web-based resources to provide Smart Cities with information and guidance to build and strengthen their data collection, sharing, and use ecosystem for the transportation sector. These resources include a Framework document to provide a basic understanding of mobility data, a Workbook to guide city managers in understanding various ways in which data can be used in the passenger transportation sector and what steps to take toward implementing and supporting these use cases, an Evaluation Metrics document to provide a framework for assessing and tracking progress, and a Best Practices Compendium to illustrate examples of cities from around the world that have implemented/are implementing several data use cases effectively.

Together these documents aim to help Smart Cities better leverage the potential of data to address challenges and improve efficiency in the passenger transportation sector. They encourage Smart Cities to develop the institutional framework to effectively implement data initiatives—such as appointing a City Data Champion and building a platform for stakeholder engagement—as well as learn from and work with other cities. The documents are designed to be continuously updated over time with new developments and input from stakeholders.

Data-Driven Transportation Sector Framework documents are intended to be used by city managers, municipal commissioners, CEOs of smart cities SPVs for development & integrated planning. These framework documents will help develop capacities of these officers to better understand this sector in terms of policy perspective, designing, financing, technology and overall development.

Your feedback and suggestions over draft transport data resources would be invaluable for us. We request you to provide your feedback/ suggestions/ recommendations on this consultation paper, here, by 24 January 2019.