After I posted my thoughts on the need for smarter traffic systems, I was quite curious to find out what my fellow comrades thought about it. So I created this poll and shared it with my friends on LinkedIn.
In about a week the responses started changing my bar graph & got me thinking further.
While most respondents provided an optimistic “yes”, believing that smarter software can in-fact create smarter traffic, a good 28% believed “it would be difficult to implement” and a not so mere 14% believed it could be done with government support. This led me to my next question: Is technological infrastructure implementation so difficult in our country? Have we gone past the threshold we built for ourselves? Have we indeed crossed the point of no return?
In a country such as ours, where each day is a battle and infrastructure hassles are a dime a dozen in every nook and corner, I believe there is still hope. Not because I am an optimist, but because technological advancements are solving highly complex problems these days. The implementation of the metro rail in cities is a great example to show that the process has started. The revamp of Indian railways was another great case study. Car makers are realizing the need and building fuel-efficient engines to minimize pollution levels. Traffic controllers are being geared with sensors that help capture real-time data which helps in better response time to situations.
The support of government is definitely required and is possible to achieve. The process may take its own time and course, but both parties want the problem solved.
In and around us, the change has begun. The results of these incremental changes will surely take time to surface, but realization of the problem has struck.
Here are some insights I have received to my question on LinkedIn:
For sure yes and my assumption is that the concerned Government authority will issue it like a mandate to be used and not by choice by all states.
By Sushant Dubey Lead – Strategic Partnerships at VeriSign
The increasing Traffic in India is due to primarily -
1. Increasing number of vehicles and population which is difficult to manage with the poor infrastructure and shortage of efficient man-power.
2. Attitude and bad driving etiquette of Indian drivers.
It would be challenging to implement. But of course if everything is considered in detail including the root cause of the Traffic issues, then surely this is not impossible. But again Government support is also required as it is the government who has to implement it in India.
By Avijit Ghosh Senior Analyst – Capacity & Performance Management @ Accenture, India
In 2007, the world crossed an epochal threshold. For the first time in history, the majority of the human population lived in cities. And this urbanization is accelerating. The number of metropolitan cities (with populations greater than ten million) have increased from 4 to 7 and the number of metros have increased from 23 to 35 during the 1991-2001 Census.1 India’s urban population is estimated to increase from 340 million now to 590 million in around 20 years, putting a huge pressure on city infrastructure. It is estimated that approximately 70% of our carbon emissions are from urban India, 40% of it is vehicular pollution. This is a significant amount and clearly we have to do something about it.2
Every day when I set out on the road, I encounter major traffic congestion at the same points in my commute. Often the traffic backs up from a single bottleneck (close to Savitri cinema on the outer ring road in Delhi) for quite a distance and it takes over half an hour to cover the distance that should have taken two minutes. Quite simply, our transportation infrastructure and management approaches are unable to handle the traffic situation. I must confess that I feel an urgent need to act on it.
Every year, traffic wastes 58 supertankers of fuel, which is roughly $78 Billion per year. A number of estimates suggest that in both developed and in developing cities, traffic congestion costs between 1 and 3 per cent of GDP. In a recent IBM Commuter Pain Study it was found that 57 per cent of all respondents said that roadway traffic has negatively affected their health and that driving makes them angry. Some said it affected their work or academic performance, for others it made them stressful. We all know the problem exists and the enormity of it.
For over a decade now, IBM has been nurturing the Smarter Planetinitiative. As much as the words sound nice to our ears, it strikes me hard that we actually have the technology and the expertise to handle such rampant problems that may soon become unruly & unmanageable. The fix does not lie in adding a new bridge, widening a road, putting up signs, establishing commuter lanes or deploying traffic copters. We need to go to the root of the problem. The good thing about urbanized transportation is its “systematic nature”. We need to carefully study the relationships across the entire road network and all the other systems that are touched by it: our supply chains, our environment, our companies, the way people and communities live and work. We need smarter transportation that is optimized around the traveler’s experience, is connected across all elements of the system, and communicates its status in real time. A system that fluidly interacts with the other systems of our planet — from healthcare, public safety, commerce and more; making our responses faster & smarter.
Digital and physical infrastructures are now converging. Transportation officials can now collect real time data on traffic conditions and instantaneously analyse that data and deploy strategies that minimise delays and congestion. Changes in signal timings, dynamic toll adjustments, incentives to change mode of travel, incentives for changing time of travel, among other things, can result in smoother traffic flow, reduced emissions and reduced delays.
All in all, “Smart traffic” isn’t yet the norm—but it’s not some far-off vision of tomorrow.
After a year, we are almost through with the slump that played on our minds throughout last year. We are now gaining back to normalcy, destined for a recovery. As an individual I believe that every situation, good or bad has something to offer and it is our responsibility to learn from the past, so as to strengthen our future.
IBM as a company has always been instrumental in compiling the essence of such critical scenarios year on year. And this year too, we have compiled important findings of last year. I believe in today’s business environment that only possible way to grow is by growing together, and so I would like to take this opportunity to share with you all an insight from the IBM global CIO and CFO study.
I am looking forward to read your comments and views on it, because no study is ever complete without a feed-back.
You can also download the complete report by visiting the links provided below:
We may only dream of complete virtual existence, but virtual services offered in Cloud computing is a reality, which the world is happy about. Cloud computing, an internet based computing platform that lets users use-as-per their requirement and pay as per their usage, is a phenomenon that has changed and will further change the way we compute.
Having realised the user preference for pay-as-per-use model, wherein the cost of capital expenditure hardly exists, big players in the domain have subsequently started putting more of their services on the cloud.
With players like Amazon, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Google, IBM and many other private companies the future of cloud seems quite interesting and promising. I believe the reason behind the upscale of cloud as a service traces its promotion from the fact that all companies, big, medium or small, all verticals, require technology to support their cause. What makes cloud computing all the more enticing is the absence of capital expenditure-physical infrastructure that plays roadblock for many organisations.
Its implementation in India is quite evident, but cloud has shadows of scepticism. The cynicism over security and privacy has put brakes on cloud acceptance, and this needs to be sorted out. I do believe that security is a concern, but by falling prey to scepticism we are only restricting ourselves from reaping the benefits that cloud offers.
I want to hear from my peers, what they feel about cloud computing and whether, in future the perception regarding the security will change or not. I feel it must change, and we must find ways to change it.
To all those who stumble upon this site, this is my weblog. A personal journal where I write about those things which matter to me and about which i am passionate. Over the years, through my professional tenure I have witnessed how, the role of a CIO has metamorphosed significantly, and today in a world where technology is all about empowering lives, a CIO plays a very important role in an organization, in terms of carrying the vision forward. I want this space to be a melting point of ideas, of thoughts and of solutions that can be beneficial for the CIO community at large. Lets start talking. Let’s build some dialogues..
As Director of IBM Research - India, I lead research efforts to develop breakthrough technologies for IT services, systems, and solutions for growth markets. I am also leading the worldwide activities of IBM Research in the Mobile Web area.
I have previously led research on system software for the IBM Blue Gene supercomputer (for which IBM received the National Medal of Technology and Innovation in 2009 from the US President) and other Deep Computing platforms.
As Director of IBM Research - India, I lead research efforts to develop breakthrough technologies for IT services, systems, and solutions for growth markets. I am also leading the worldwide activities of IBM Research in the Mobile Web area. 
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