Smart Mobility: Putting GCC Cities On A Fast Track To The Future

Imagine the mobility options of a city of the future. A linked network of autonomous vehicles (all carbon-neutral) reacts to adaptive traffic signals that can sense current conditions and adjust their route and itinerary to improve traffic flows. Shared-mobility solutions, from cars to scooters to futuristic options like passengercarrying drones, give people a wider range of options for getting around. Improved transport boosts economic growth, instead of stifling it.

Cities around the world are already taking bold steps to get there while aiming to transform to have “smart” approaches. For example, London has a central traffic-management system that pulls data from 9,200 buses, 6,000 traffic signals, and 1,400 cameras, and adjusts signals to improve vehicle flows. New York City is piloting connected vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure technology. Cities like Phoenix, Singapore, and Tokyo have all successfully tested autonomous taxis.

Some cities in the GCC are already implementing smart mobility. The smart city projects underway in Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. focus on improved mobility for residents. Dubai's mobility strategy aims to convert 25% of total trips to driverless vehicles by 2030. Other cities are taking smaller steps and generating progress. Riyadh has already invested in a project to better manage daily traffic through adaptive traffic signals powered by artificial intelligence.

To capitalize on smart mobility and address their growing urban transport challenges, GCC authorities need to learn how to manage a fast-moving set of tech-enabled mobility solutions and providers. To get the greatest benefit, they should apply a three-step approach.

First, cities need to establish an overarching policy and strategy for smart mobility. That starts by engaging stakeholders and quantifying a city's most urgent problems and difficulties, typically in the areas of the user experience, safety, mobility, accessibility, and environmental sustainability. From that baseline, city governments can set their vision for future transportation, in line with national priorities and technology standards serving as the trigger to begin deploying specific solutions to address their most urgent needs.

Second, cities need to develop the right institutional and regulatory framework for smart mobility. At a high level, this framework ensures that public agencies are prepared to use smart mobility systems for an array of possible scenarios. More specifically, it identifies the various players who oversee and execute specific actions to implement smart mobility solutions, and it ensures they have the right capabilities and skills. Critically, the framework includes any legislation and regulations required to support smart mobility solutions, setting parameters in areas such as common standards, open platforms, and other factors.

Third, cities should collaborate with the full ecosystem of transportation entities, in both the private and public sector. For example, the growth of micromobility has allowed cities in other countries to provide more commuting solutions within busy urban centers through collaboration with the private sector. These cities have partnered with private bike-sharing or e-scooter companies. Similar alliances would allow GCC cities to transform urban mobility with minimal infrastructure disruptions or changes.

Public-sector collaboration is required as well. For example, a system to give priority signals at intersections to certain vehicles, such as connected city buses, would require close coordination between the public transit operator and the infrastructure operator, such as a centralized traffic management command and control center.

Worldwide, the mobility sector is going through the most significant revolution since the invention of the car over a century ago. Even more than other parts of the world, GCC cities are ripe for the benefits of smart mobility.