Role of ICT in Sustainable Transportation-Focus on Reducing Traffic Congestion

Abstract: Our cities have been continually growing at an uncontrolled rate leading to the problem of trafficcongestion, which has discernable effects on all the aspects of sustainability, be it social,environmental or economical. This continual shift of increasing size of centre and decreasingsize of periphery poses huge sustainability challenge of meeting the consumption demands. Wepresently face the most unprecedented times in terms of the pace at which our natural resourcesare getting consumed. It is clear that replenishing some of these resources is totally out ofquestion. On the other side of the coin, the advances of human technology have provided itsgreatest gift of information & communication technology (ICT). Today we have access to datafrom any point of the world to anywhere. There is a growing need to use this data andinformation with a holistic view to build more Intelligent Transport Systems. In our paper wediscuss how the advent of ICT can have an impact on bringing a sustainable transportationsystem. The work is divided in two folds, by first understanding the direct role of ICT intransport sustainability and then observing the direct correlation between usage of ICT andtravel demand. The problems of traffic congestion and its solutions like congestion pricing haveexisted in practice since ages; the perspective which we add to it is the role of ICT in making itbetter. The greater perspective that is being researched here is at an absolute fundamental leveland takes us to the question if and how ICT can work on root level challenges, like findingmethods to have a better traceability without compromising on privacy, changing driverbehaviour patterns and stopping the expansion of centre & contraction of periphery.