AI-Powered Infrastructure: How Public-Private Partnerships are Building the Future of Transportation

Traffic management is evolving, and the public sector is working hard to adapt. Advanced technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) are changing the game, and success requires a thoughtful implementation strategy. 

To that end, the private sector should be investing to meet agency needs. At a recent workshop hosted by Google and transportation professional services firm WSP,  industry experts and government leaders from the Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration, rail agencies and various state departments of transportation, gathered to discuss the opportunities and challenges in this space. 

Proactive traffic management

Transportation agencies can leverage AI to be more proactive, shifting from reacting to crashes, to predicting and preventing them. What does proactive management look like? Pat McGowan, WSP’s senior vice president and mobility operations director in the U.S., pointed to some likely use cases that would leverage Google’s data to move from incident response to prevention:

• Predictive alerting and preventing crashes: By analyzing Google’s data from two minutes before a crash, WSP seeks to understand if there could be specific “signatures” or triggers of an incident, enabling preventative alerts to vehicles or roadway signs.

• Optimized work zone construction: Using advanced analytics, agencies can determine whether extending a lane closure by just 30 minutes could finish a construction project months earlier.

• Dynamic special event planning: While local sports events have predictable traffic patterns, global events like the FIFA World Cup or the Olympics involve drastic shifts. WSP is investigating how using Google’s demographic and zip code data can better predict these unique traffic origins and patterns.

How Google can underpin the mission

Eric Peissel, WSP’s global director for transport and infrastructure, Kristin White, Google Public Sector’s transportation industry executive, and Andrew Stober, head of public sector partnerships for Google Geo, described how Google is actively sharing geospatial data with transportation agencies to drive impact. Google is committed to being the partner that helps transportation agencies move people faster, safer, and more efficiently. Google’s investments in transportation include expanding its cloud solutions and developing new data and AI models to ‘see’ the world. 

For example, Road Management Insights (RMI) is a geospatial data analytics product within the Google Maps Platform which provides travel time, speed, disruption, and vehicle count data across road networks without the need for physical sensors. By leveraging RMI travel time data, transportation agencies can identify incidents before the first emergency services call, analyze long-term congestion trends, improve urban planning, and identify safety hotspots and crash-prone areas.

Unlike anonymous cell phone data, Google’s insights come from 2 billion monthly active users and 250 million Android Auto users who are actively navigating, ensuring high certainty that the data reflects actual driving behavior. It’s the lowest-latency, highest-speed data on the market to help public agencies meet their goals.

There’s also Google Research’s Mobility AI Traffic Simulation API, which provides a powerful digital twin to help agencies visualize the future of their road networks. In this virtual environment, city planners can "test drive" infrastructure changes before a single cone is placed on the road. Whether it’s to optimize traffic routes during major events or to visualize new bike lanes and road infrastructure before seeking public feedback, agencies can use the simulations to build more efficient and resilient communities. 

The path forward: Strategies for advancing innovation

How can agencies best move ahead? They should begin with an understanding of the technical considerations which can help bring this vision to life. For example, data can be delivered via BigQuery tables, with the computational power of Google Cloud and the domain expertise of firms like WSP helping to transform raw data into actionable transportation solutions.

Agencies need a high-level champion to sponsor technology innovation and make bold decisions that allow for innovation. And they should be building technical literacy within senior leadership and staff, including governors, secretaries, and business managers.

Data governance plans are key; data needs to be kept in one spot and not siloed or fragmented. And a “sandbox” approach can help to create safe environments for experimentation, allowing staff to gain hands-on experience and proving the value of new tools before full-scale deployment.

As agencies look to advance transportation, collaboration between public agencies and industry experts like WSP and Google can lead to tools that ensure data security. With private sector investments in support of public sector operational outcomes, the ultimate goal is to achieve “safe mobility” and maximize the efficiency of transportation systems, without sacrificing safety.

Learn more about how Google for Transportation is enabling safer, more seamless journeys for all.