Monday, January 10, 2011

A smarter transportation system for the 21st century

A Frost & Sullivan White Paper
2010



Globalization, for better or worse, is a dominant feature of our world. As barriers between continents, countries and cities have diminished, and a surging population has urbanized, economic growth and prosperity have become inextricably linked to accessibility; accessibility to markets, to production materials, to services, to food and to culture, which are all preconditions for human survival. The increasing density of urban living, however, can slow the movement of people as well as goods; therefore, accessibility is dependent on an efficient and intricate global network of air, rail, road, and water links between and within our population centers of cities and megacities.

This paper finds that our aging transportation system is threatening to restrain globalization as current systems are struggling to meet the needs of this highly urbanized planet in which the business of moving goods and people from one place to another typically generates toxic byproducts and lost productivity. Ground-breaking innovations in transportation technology are difficult for the current system to accommodate, and the system itself has yet to evolve to meet the changed set of fundamental needs and demands placed on it. Whereas the system has not yet completely gridlocked, we clearly need something that is smarter, more efficient, and better than what we have now.

We think the answer is a new ecosystem that marries information technology to the global air, rail, road, and water transportation networks.

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