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The technology in connected vehicles has the potential to improve how our cities function – if the infrastructure can keep up

A driver slips into a diabetic coma while behind the wheel. His car alerts paramedics, sends vital signs from the driver's smartwatch and pulls over. Then it sends signals to traffic lights, so they can clear a path for the ambulance.

"You wouldn't just have to listen for the siren, you'd get the notification in your vehicle," said Don Butler, Ford's executive director, connected vehicles and services. "It's conceptual, but it's a scenario that is highly feasible within the next three or four years."

The car-to-the-rescue scenario is a dramatic example of how connected vehicles could potentially reduce fender-benders and congestion. Connected cars would talk to each other, to smartphones and to city infrastructure.

"It's where the market is headed, for multiple reasons," said Sasha Sud, senior program manager of transportation and energy at Toronto's MaRS Discovery District. "There's safety — if you have a convoy of cars, the first car to brake could let the last car know. Or, if there's construction happening, connected infrastructure could communicate those outages in advance to the cars or to mapping systems like Google Maps."

Cars, especially semi- and fully-autonomous cars with a gamut of sensors, could share information with others and with the city – infomation like whether an oncoming car is veering into another lane or whether there's black ice up ahead. Connected light signals could warn cars of traffic accidents or of lights about to change.

"In a few years from now, you'll see more interaction between infrastructure and the vehicle, and it will be seamless," said Omar Herrera, program manager, transportation futures at UBC's clean energy research centre at UBC. "As a driver or pedestrian, you probably won't know it's happening."

The technology isn't the problem

Ford Motor Company’s Living Street display at CES 2018 imagined the ‘City of Tomorrow.’

So how close are we? Right now, some cars are connected to cellular-based networks like GM's OnStar and Ford's SYNC, and cars can talk to mobile apps. But cars don't yet talk to each other or to anything else on the road.

"It should have been solved 20 years ago — the tech was good enough then to make it work," said Paul Godsmark, chief technology officer with the Canadian Automated Vehicles Centre of Excellence (CAVCOE). "But it's a bit like fax machines: It's not much use unless everyone else has it."

One barrier? A lack of an agreed-upon technology for sending signals.

"There is no standard at all, and everyone is making strides in whatever directions they're already going," said Nik Stewart, autonomous vehicle program manager with the University of Waterloo.

While some tech companies are still using Dedicated Shortwave Wireless Communications (DSRC), a technology that has been around for over 20 years, others, like Ford, are proposing new tech — like Cellular Vehicle to Everything (CV2X) technology that will use 5G networks.

"In order for vehicles to talk to each other, they've got to speak the same language," Ford's Butler said.

It might be up to government to decide on the standard that everyone will use, Herrera said.

"If Tesla wants to do this and Chrysler wants to do that, there's no regulations on how to do it," he said. "In Canada, we could say this is the network we'll be using and that's that."

Lack of connected infrastructure

An illustration of a connected ‘City of Tomorrow.’

Right now, apart from test areas in Edmonton, Surrey, B.C. and Stratford, Ont, there's no infrastructure in use that can talk to vehicles.

"When there are still street lights that can't tell that there are no other cars around at 3 a.m., it's hard to believe that all of a sudden we'll have all this smart infrastructure," Stewart said,

Several cities, including Toronto, have pilot-tested smart traffic lights that use sensors or cameras to measure traffic flow. But those lights still don't talk to cars.

"No, we do not have any connected vehicles at this time," said Gregg Loane, manager, traffic control and safety systems with the city of Toronto. "It is likely first going to be accomplished with a closed group of vehicles, such as a public or private fleet of vehicles."

The biggest challenge for cities? They're going to have to start replacing infrastructure at the pace of changing technology, said Dan Mathieson, mayor of Stratford, Ont.

"Cities are used to making infrastructure investments where the life cycles were 30 to 40 years," Mathieson said. "But with connected cars, they need to make an investment today in infrastructure which, if they're lucky, will last seven or eight years."

Stratford, which already has a city-wide wireless WiFi network and is a test bed for autonomous vehicles, is looking at both DSCR and CV2X technology.

"We're prepared to do both — we want to be that city on the front edge," Mathieson said.

Who gets the data?

The Waterloo Centre for Autonomous Research self-driving car sits idle on a test road near the University of Waterloo campus in September, 2016.

Ottawa recently launched a Smart Cities competition, with a $50-million grand prize, to get local governments to brainstorm ways to improve cities using sensors, connected tech and data.

"Today, if there's a problem with a street, I can put out a traffic counter, and I'll get the information within a six to 12-month window," Mathieson said. "In the future with connected vehicles, I can have real-time data that allows me to make decisions much more quickly."

As cars, cell phones and sensors in infrastructure collect and share more and more data, selling that data — instead of keeping it open to everyone for free — could be a source of income that helps cities further upgrade infrastructure, Mathieson said.

For example, using car and cellphone data, a city might be able to tell how many people in a certain age group pass by a particular business (a McDonald's, for example) at certain times. The city could then sell that data to the business, so they could push ads directly to a consumer's phone.

"If cities are collecting that data, should they be able to commercialize it?" Mathieson said. "We'll have to decide on that."


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