Welcome to the Spring 2017 edition of our innovator’s brief for the transportation industry.

By Scott Silence,
CIO Public Sector Conduent

The one constant in the world today is change. Anyone working in the transportation space today—which is to say everyone reading this Innovator’s Brief—is well aware of that. So in that spirit you’ll notice a significant change in that we are no longer Xerox but Conduent. Conduent is a $6.6B start-up in the business process services space, spun off from Xerox at the beginning of 2017. Conduent serves many markets and segments, including Public Transportation and Mobility. Our new structure and independence from Xerox will enable us to better serve our clients: government agencies and their constituents. But one thing that has not changed with the transition to Conduent is the focus on innovation.

In January, the US Department of Transportation published the finalized Beyond Traffic 2045 report. This is the latest in a continuing series of reports from the US DOT intended to spur discussion of the future of transportation in the United States. The megatrends, issues, technology outlooks, and calls to action are not unique to the United States, of course. In our global and connected world these are universal and occur everywhere to a lesser – or often greater – extent.

One thing that is clear in the report is that the era of big data has fully arrived in transportation. It is no longer the promise of the future, it is the reality of today. Accomplishing what you need to in transportation– whether it is personal travel, shipping goods, or enforcing laws and regulations – has been made more effective and efficient today through acquiring, understanding and using data. There are many technology enablers that have made this possible, including better and more ubiquitous sensors to generate data, better connectivity and networks to transmit data, and increased computing power to make sense of all that data.

In this Innovator’s Brief, you will read about the upcoming release of the new Conduent Public Transportation & Mobility Study report on the Customer Experience of Urban Travel. This report represents the users’ point-of-view because it started from a survey of those who use transportation in and around their city. One point that I cannot emphasize enough, is one that was also made in the Beyond Traffic 2045 Report: the most important transportation innovation of the last decade is the smartphone.

Travel apps are the norm for urban travelers today. When asked about their ideas on transportation in 2020, almost half of respondents (49%) agreed that they will have one app for all their transport needs. And the service that will win in the marketplace is the one that offers the best user experience – the right integration of services along with a simple, integrated interface. We’re in the early days for Mobility as a Service (MaaS) but as services segments such as retail have gone digital and mobile, the winners have been those like Amazon, which have provided the best and simplest user experience.

Another observation the Beyond Traffic 2045 report is that transit buses and demand response/paratransit services have the lowest passenger miles per gallon of gas equivalent in the transportation space today – lower than cars or even light trucks. Reducing emissions and increasing fuel efficiency in public transit is an imperative. Smart public transit systems, enabled through significant advancements in the use of smart computing and the emerging Internet of Things (IoT) will not only make public transit systems more predictable but also more efficient and reliable. You will read about such innovation in transportation from the transportation provider’s point of view in this Innovator’s Brief.

Cheers to innovation in transportation,

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