Getting to work on more eco-friendly transport

It takes a whole lot of data and a never-before-seen displays of collaboration to paint our smart cities green(er). We’re taking a look at the daily commute and examining how location-based technology can play its part in helping you manage not just your time but your environmental footprint, too.

As people of this planet, it’s safe to say the majority of us care about the environment and try to do our bit. There are the little things that go a long way, like recycling, choosing renewable energy, leaving just the one light on for our cats when we go out for dinner even though we know they have excellent night vision. But when it comes to our everyday travel decision-making, things might not always be so black and white… or green.

As eco-woke (that’s actually a term now) as we might be, we still have to get to work on time. Depending on our city’s infrastructure, options may not always abound. We all know that walking is great, and biking is king, but the latter still requires our cities to clear a path for us, as well as for us to have the wherewithal to navigate shared roads before we’ve even had our morning coffee.

So, other than work, where to now?

When it comes eco-commuting, it’s easy to have a “but what real difference can I make?” attitude. And that’s easy to arrive at. We tend to take what’s available to us and go with it. It’s a good thing that more and more public and private sector bodies are hip to the green scene, incorporating future-forward planning into their agendas, even with a spot of collaboration along the way.

Sharing is (planet) caring

The first thing that might come to mind when thinking about sharing is organizing a carpool and facing the commute with colleagues, BYO playlist. But, at HERE, when we think about sharing in relation to more environmentally-friendly travel, we’re thinking about data. In fact, we’re pretty much always thinking about data. Unfathomable amounts of big, beautiful, location-based data. It’s the stuff that compels us to get up and come into work every day, in all our various ways. To us, data is our morning coffee.

When it comes to sharing this data, we’re committed to helping create an open ecosystem between the public and private sectors. The aim is to rethink how we define ownership of and control over corporate and personal data. Eco-friendly smart cities of the future rely on this special kind of openness, so we’re getting a head start on it now.

To help get the party started (and it is a party), we’ve opened up the HERE Open Location Platform to allow organizations and developers everywhere to access our database and technology and create new, differentiating and value-adding products and services of their own.

This is a space where governments and enterprises can collaborate and exchange and utilize data in a way that suits their unique strategies and business models – empowering them to build location-centric products and services that serve the unique needs of all of us.

The results are helping make smart cities a reality, transforming citizens’ lives and bringing the autonomous world closer every day.

Smoother can equal greener

We strive to align road authorities and service/mobility providers with the common goal of improving mobility on the road network, and for all of us to keep working on joint solutions to make modernization of urban movement a reality.

Together with our partners, we’re working on the next generation of traffic management. As an example, let’s say there’s a huge concert going on in your city tonight, meaning road closures, tons of people about, and an even greater demand on public transport. But all you want to do is get home to your cats. Thankfully, the transport department, event organizers, private partners, other involved parties, concert goers and even you are all connected via one common platform, and therefore have a holistic look at mobility and ways to keep traffic and people moving both safely and seamlessly.

Now apply this level of collaboration to your everyday commute and imagine the time it saves cars that would otherwise be on the road. With location-based technology that has the power to manage traffic and public transport flow, the smart cities that data is helping build will give you the freedom to be eco-friendlier and on time to work, too.