The Backbone of Mobility Innovation is Infrastructure
By: Christian Saur
Tags: Mobility, Infrastructure, Venture Capital, Infrastructure Innovation

Charting a Path Beyond the Roadway

No doubt automobiles of many types will be an important part of our personal mobility experience in one way or another for many decades to come — but mobility is going multimodal. Micro-mobility options are on the rise, drones are on the horizon, and mobility, in general, is becoming more multi-faceted. Infrastructure will need to reflect and be responsive to this diversity in mobility modes.

Everybody can take off, but who can land?

Although drones and other aerial transport modes are not yet established in our cities, their buzz is real. Their impact, especially on logistics, is too disruptive for them to be excluded from tomorrow’s transport systems. However, they have not yet carved out their space in urban environments. In part, this is due to missing regulation, which prohibits drone deployment in certain areas and raises questions of liability in others. But it is also about a lack of infrastructure.

“To take off, flying vehicles first need places to land” — Johnston, Riedel, Sadev (McKinsey 2020)

In urban centers eVTOLs for people will likely require larger, airport-like structures. These will not only consist of a simple VTOL pad but are also likely to feature more elaborate check-in and waiting areas, making them space-intensive. However, assuming these eVTOLs will be among the Mobility 4.0 components deployed last (compared to, e.g., micro-mobility), we could see them repurposing existing mobility infrastructure. Examples could be roads, parking structures in city centers, or similar spaces made redundant by shifts in user behavior.

The more pressing question is how to address drone delivery. While drones might be able to drop off packages in the backyard in the suburbs, this approach is not feasible in city centers. Buildings will have to provide dedicated drop-off areas where drones can safely deliver goods. Here, utilizing existing packing stations that aggregate deliveries for a block could be an approach. Instead of only installing a packing station where deliveries are locked for safekeeping until the recipient can pick them up, these stations could also feature a space for drone delivery. In this case, the recipient might need to accept the delivery or allow someone else to receive the delivery instead. In any case, thinking both take-off and landing through is an essential first step to enable the roll-out of urban air mobility.

Infrastructure — channeling collective intelligence

With autonomous vehicles around the corner, expectations towards traffic infrastructure will change — infrastructure will need to become smart. Small manipulations of traffic signs (e.g. graffiti) might be enough to have autonomous vehicles interpret them incorrectly. But more generally, when driving, humans can look beyond what’s directly in front of them, anticipating sudden braking or congestion due to interpreting general traffic flow or their experience and reflexes. By contrast, AVs currently react according to pre-defined rules, taking decisions based on a limited number of parameters. This is a technologically pragmatic approach to limit computational complexity and ensure AVs take action before it is too late.

“One of the most difficult challenges for SAE Level 4 and Level 5 autonomous vehicles is predicting and responding to the actions of human drivers. In comparison, the actions of other driverless vehicles will almost certainly be predictable and their intentions transparent to driverless vehicles, which will most likely be in constant communication with each other in order to share information about traffic conditions and coordinate their use of the roads” — Sparrow and Howard (2017)

Infrastructure, however, can take over a vital role here to expand vehicles’ field of vision. Instead of expecting every vehicle to communicate with each vehicle around them, imagine a system where each vehicle is in constant exchange with the smart infrastructure around it, receiving all relevant information from the infrastructure instead of other vehicles. This might not only serve to reduce communication overhead. By equipping the infrastructure with computing power, it might be able to take over edge computing tasks. In turn, vehicles would require less powerful onboard computers, reducing energy consumption. This might enable manufacturers to pack smaller batteries into their cars or extend the range achievable with a given battery size. All of this starts with smart, connected traffic infrastructure able to take over local mobility computation.

Connecting these local computational units can also have beneficial effects, especially for traffic flow. Knowing of an increase in traffic flow in a particular direction, traffic lights could dynamically adjust their intervals to optimize throughput and reduce congestion. In a different scenario, the traffic light might communicate the information to a car’s navigation, enabling it to adjust its routing accordingly.

These are merely two examples of how the diversification of movement will transform mobility infrastructure. Many of the benefits here might be achievable by repurposing and upgrading existing infrastructure instead of radically rebuilding. While this will ensure modern transport modes are supported and enhanced by future mobility systems, powering them requires investment in entirely different infrastructure.