Issue 03/11 - Siemens Mobility

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ITS magazine · The Magazine for Siemens
Intelligent Traffic Systems
Publisher: Siemens AG · Industry Sector ·
Mobility Division · Complete Transportation ·
Intelligent Traffic Systems · Hofmannstrasse 51 ·
D-81359 Munich
Editors: Dr. Michael Ostertag (responsible for
contents), Karin Kaindl: Siemens I MO CT BD&MK
Coordination:
Roland Michali: Siemens I MO CC Erlangen
Copywriting: Peter Rosenberger, Philip Wessa:
www.bfw-tailormade.de · Eberhard Buhl
(“In the side-view mirror”)
Photographs:
Corbis Cover, pp. 4/5, 6, 7 above, 9, 10, 14 left,
16, 17 below · dpa picture alliance pp. 7 below, 8,
12/13, 14 right, 15, 19 below · Roland Michali
p. 18 middle · AutoNOMOS p. 20 · Photocase.com
p. 21 · Achim Graf pp. 22–25
All other photographs: Siemens AG
English translation: Dr. Barbara Gutermann
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Printing: Mediahaus Biering, Munich
Copyright: © Siemens AG 2011
All rights reserved. No part of this publication
may be reproduced or used without express prior
permission. Subject to technical modifications.
Printed in Germany.
The next issue of the ITS magazine will be
published on January 15, 2012
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ISSN 2190-0302
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313686 IF 09115.5
ITS magazine
The Magazine for Intelligent Traffic Systems I 3/2011
www.siemens.com/mobility
Blueprints
for the future
How modern mobility planning
wants to keep the world moving
S

Editorial & Content
Content
Focus
4 “Who wants to travel where,
when and how?”
University Professor Dr. Klaus J.
Beckmann, scientific director at the
German Institute for Urban Studies,
talks about the most important insights,
opinions and perspectives in
modern mobility planning
10 Heading for the cloud
Tom Vanderbilt, author of the New
York Times bestseller “Traffic: Why
We Drive The Way We Do (And What
It Says About Us)” speaks about the
revolutionary role that computer
clouds could play in solving mobility
problems
Editorial
12 The future on a drawing board
More and more, architects and infrastructure
professionals are designing
entire cities or neighborhoods on their
drawing boards. When a whole new
world is being created almost from
scratch, the design of transport
networks plays an important role
Dear Reader,
“Prediction is difficult, especially about the
future,” as Nobel laureate Niels Bohr is reported
to have said. Or was it Mark Twain?
Or maybe even the German comedian Karl
Valentin, as some people insist? The fact that
this aphorism is attributed to several sources
at the same time, says quite a bit about its ingenuity
and a lot about its validity. The latter
will certainly be confirmed by anybody having
to develop professional plans on the basis
of prognoses. This is particularly true for mobility
planners, because the solutions realized
as a result of their conceptual plans are often
literally set in stone – or rather cast in concrete,
steel and asphalt. Consequently they
cannot be easily modified in case a future
survey should produce different results.
4
“ Who wants
to travel
where, when
and how?“
16 New transport consulting
When manufacturers of traffic equipment
offer also consulting services,
they usually focus on their own products
and systems. The Siemens Mobility
Consultants, in contrast, go at least
one step beyond: They provide wellfounded
inclusive concepts and strategic
answers for the central questions
of sustainable urban development now
and in the future
At least not yet. On the other hand,
modern technology can be the key to creating
the necessary flexibility, as affirmed
by at least two of the experts that we interviewed
on mobility planning – the focus
topic of the present ITS magazine. One of
them is Professor Dr. Klaus J. Beckmann of
the German Institute for Urban Studies,
who is convinced that intermodal traffic
management systems will make an important
contribution to the mobility of the
future. The other is the best-selling US author
Tom Vanderbilt, who expects our mobile
society to head for “cloud commuting.”
But as all articles in the present issue
explicitly or implicitly show, there is one
thing that mobility planners, even with the
most innovative thought impulses, will not
Trends & Events
18 Trendspot
New small signal heads used as separate
traffic lights for cyclists and pedestrians
are a convenient tool for increasing
traffic safety
18 Event news
Compact news on recent events
Partners & Projects
19 Shortcuts
Recent traffic engineering projects
in the UK and Switzerland
be able to do without: a partner who is
able to think (into) the future and provide
sustainable support for the long run.
I wish you enjoyable reading.
12
The future on a
drawing board
20
A spirit guide
Know-how & Research
20 A spirit guide
This story has a hint of Hollywood
about it, but it’s showing now in the
capital of Germany and it’s all about
science, not fiction. Researchers at FU
Berlin have managed to control a vehicle
using the power of thought alone
2 its magazine 3/2011 3/2011 its magazine 3
Sincerely
Hauke Jürgensen
Head of Intelligent Traffic Systems
Mobility & Living Space
22 A dynamo of a woman
With sheer and inimitable power, Verena
Bentele dominates the Paralympics. But
how safely can this top athlete, blind from
birth, move through the hectic traffic of
a metropolis?
Rubrics
21 In the side-view mirror
Reflections and lateral thoughts on
the ever-present topic of mo bility
planning: “The big plan”
26 Profile
Simone Köhler, Mobility Consultant
at Siemens AG, speaks about
her professional need to look outside
the boundaries of her own
company: “Stop thinking within
boundaries”
28 Imprint

Focus
4 its magazine 3/2011
“Who
wants
to travel
where,
when
and how?”
Interview n University Professor
Dr. Klaus J. Beckmann, scientific
director at the German Institute
for Urban Studies, talks about
the most important insights,
opinions and perspectives in
modern mobility planning.
3/2011 its magazine 5

Focus
Professor Beckmann, the quality of any
plan for a range of services is fundamentally
affected by the quality of the
demand forecasts on which it is based.
Some of your colleagues believe that all
the predictions concerning future mobility
demand that were made before the
economic crisis can safely be consigned
to the bin. How about you?
I also believe that reality has put the
break on many of the scenarios that were
sketched out in the past. I think that while
this is partly due to the upheaval caused
by the world economic crash, it has more
to do with considerably deeper reaching
changes in prevailing conditions for mobility
that basically went to work much
earlier. For one thing, there are rising
energy prices, which are being pushed
into the limelight more than ever because
of current political developments such as
political instability in several oil producing
countries and the increasingly heated
debate surrounding future energy sources.
Add to that the climate change debate,
which, in Europe at least, is rising steadily
in volume and highlighting the leading
role of transport and the related increasing
CO2 emissions as one of the major
causes.
So in the field of mobility planning,
news of world markets reeling in fear
of renewed recession in the USA is only
a cause for minor headaches, if any?
There is no really general answer to that.
It’s a fact that by concentrating on the
observation of long-term and sustained
trends, mobility planning can shelter quite
well from the uncertainties of short-term
turbulence. Of course the total collapse of
the world economy would be an exceptional
case, but for the moment that seems
far from likely. Under normal conditions
it’s important to assess whether the events
that are making the headlines are sufficient
to trigger fundamental changes in
behavior or not. So with all this in mind,
one of the most important questions that
the world of mobility planning should ask
itself is, is it possible that we might revert
to a kind of isolationism by re-erecting
the customs’ barriers? This would have
huge effects on globalization and hence
freight traffic.
What do you believe – is it possible?
No, I think there’s a very slim chance.
Existing predictions for the future of
passenger transport already seem to
factor in fundamental changes in behavior.
Up until 2020, passenger transport
is forecast to grow in many industrialized
countries, after which there will be
a fairly clear decline. In freight traffic
the latest predictions continue to signal
virtually unchecked growth. Do you find
that realistic?
Yes and no. I too cannot imagine that
freight traffic will shrink significantly in the
foreseeable future. But I am similarly skeptical
about any continuation of the rates of
growth that we have seen up to now. The
“ In logistics the
developments are
tending towards
decentralization”
restructuring of the logistics chains that
has been under way for some years now
are too far-reaching for that to happen.
There’s a clear trend away from supplying
all the consumer centers in an entire country
from a single central warehouse or, for
instance, taking the individual components
of a pot of yogurt on a thousand-kilometer
mystery tour before the final product
reaches the chiller cabinet. The logistics
industry is clearly tending towards decentralization,
and regional distribution of
goods is growing in significance once again.
This is not merely a reflection of sustained
rises in transport costs resulting from
higher energy prices and the political trend
towards so-called internalization of external
costs, but is tied to the fact that just-intime
deliveries by road over long distances
are becoming steadily less reliable. Because
every single HGV that arrives late brings
with it the risk of extremely expensive
production stoppages.
Besides the growth of overall de-
mand, mobility planning needs to
take account of preferences for certain
modes of transport over others,
especially in the field of passenger
transport. There’s some evidence
that the automobile will lose its dominant
position …
Quite right. For some years now we have
been witnessing a progressive decoupling
of mobility decisions from considerations
of status. This development began among
a section of the younger generation but is
now spreading to other age groups – even
including the so-called Silver Surfers,
whose 18 th birthday wish lists were once
topped by a driving license and a car to
call their own. Now this does not mean
that in future no one will want to drive a
Internet surfers at a café: “One very exciting question for the
future is the extent to which the trend towards virtual mobility
will influence actual mobility in the long run”
New arrivals in London looking at the city map: “The decision
of more and more older people to move into towns from the
surrounding area has a range of impacts on mobility planning”
car, but merely that a formerly emotional
relationship will gradually become a rational
one. In future, road users will increasingly
follow pragmatic criteria to decide
on a mode of transport for a particular
journey. For mobility planning this implies
a clear requirement for holistic transport
choices, networked in the most efficient
possible way.
Nevertheless in your recent lecture on
mobility planning at Greifswald University
you described how the need for
local authority investment in road transport
is currently running at a level four
times higher than in the public transport
field. How do these two things relate?
It’s quite simple. As those with responsibility
for mobility generally have only
limited public funds at their disposition,
the focus has to lie on maintaining the
existing infrastructure. In the field of road
transport, many systems already have
some decades of use behind them. I’m
thinking in particular of assets like bridges
and tunnels – they do not often require
refurbishment, but when they do, it tends
to be quite expensive. Local authorities
find themselves on the horns of a dilemma:
how to fulfill their task of securing
mobility on a shrinking budget. The costs
for road transport infrastructure are higher
for the simple reason that we have
more streets and highways than rail
routes in our cities, and the fact that buses
also use the road network.
In mobility planning, what role is being
played by mega-trends such as urbanization
and aging society?
Their role is crucial, without a doubt.
Saying that, these two examples clearly
demonstrate the high extent of interdependence
between many different trends.
The conscious decision of ever more older
people to move into towns from the
surrounding area has a range of impacts
on mobility planning. Route structures
change because older inhabitants concentrate
to a greater degree on their immediate
neighborhoods. There is also more
competition between local authorities in
terms of the quality of life that their municipalities
offer. Mobility is an important
criterion in this respect. But besides urbanization
and aging society, there’s a whole
set of other mega-trends that mobility
planning has to address. One very exciting
question for the future, for instance, is the
extent to which the trend towards virtual
mobility will influence actual mobility in
the long run. To my mind, it will have both
a damping and a stimulating effect. After
all, at some point, the digital Romeos and
Juliets who get to know each other over
the Web will want to meet in person.
In free markets, demand generally
determines supply. In the field of mobility
things are not so simple because
both ecological and economic criteria
are in play. To what extent does mobility
planning get involved in shaping the
market for mobility?
First I would like to expand the concept
and talk about more than ecology. I prefer
sustainability because by definition, the
word brings social and economic aspects
into the reckoning. It then becomes easier
to give an answer. Because to my mind,
the determined promotion of sustainable
solutions is a public task first and »
Bridge refurbishment in Dresden: “In the face of limited public funds, the focus has
to lie initially on maintaining the existing infrastructure”
6 its magazine 3/2011 3/2011 its magazine 7

Focus
“ Leave aside ecology, let’s talk about
sustainability”
foremost. There are of course firms that
take their responsibilities very seriously,
but generally speaking it’s the public institutions
that have a much greater chance of
arriving at issue-driven, multidimensional
recommendations. This is why I would like
to see politicians and policies that make
greater use than ever of options for determining
the shape of things to come –
though I know that this is not always easy.
It sounds as if you were not fully convinced
that our current crop of elected
representatives will come to the right
conclusions from their multidimensional
considerations.
Again it’s important to guard against blanket
judgments. Of course there are developments
that we are anything but happy
about – look at the way we have promoted
suburbanization over many years by dint of
the transport services that have been made
available. But I can also point to thoroughly
positive decisions. Any number of German
cities avoided the mistake of closing tramways
in the years when motorized private
transport was making its triumphant progress.
And now, at the dawn of the multimodal
age, we are of course reaping the
benefits of this conservation while, for instance,
our French neighbors are frantically
trying to restore a former status quo.
But in Germany in particular, many transport
scientists are criticizing the political
class for their lack of courage in promoting
the urgently needed user-financing
for road transport. How long will this –
or rather can this – go on?
I’m no clairvoyant so I can’t give you a
date. But I find it significant that the political
camp in Germany that was most vocally
against congestion charging has recently
adopted it most enthusiastically. There are
many reasons for this. Firstly it is becoming
more and more difficult to finance
transport infrastructure with no more than
the public funds that have been available
“ Successful mobility
planning starts with
urban development”
up to now. Secondly, the projects that
started out under highly critical scrutiny,
such as those in Stockholm and London,
have performed very well on the bottom
line. At least their initiators achieved all
their main goals. Congestion was reduced,
traffic flows became more fluid and the
environmental burdens decreased. And
what is more important perhaps, at least
Computer simulation of the light-rail system planned for Hamburg: “The determined
promotion of sustainable solutions is a public task first and foremost”
from the point of view of the politicians, is
that it has since become clear that people
are well capable of accepting these sorts of
payment systems, provided the goals are
well understood and they do not leave
users with the feeling of just being ripped
off. To my mind, the first step for Germany
should not be the congestion charge; rather
the best opportunity would be the introduction
of country-wide usage charges for
long-distance routes.
So, when all the data on the growth in
mobility demand have been gathered
in, and all the political and social goals
have been formulated and prioritized,
how do the mobility planners proceed
from that point?
To begin with there is a need to analyze
and interpret this wealth of information to
a point where an answer can be given to a
simple sounding but, in actual fact, incredibly
complex question, namely, who wants
to travel, by what means, when and where
to? From this, the likely burden on the road
and rail networks can be gauged and compared
with the available capacity. In some
cases it will become clear that there are
shortcomings in certain areas and that an
expansion of infrastructure is required. In
other cases it might be enough to optimize
existing services. In any case, this pragmatic
approach results in a catalog of
measures to be transformed into concrete
concepts for action, for example the improvement
of intermodal interfaces for
transport in inner cities.
What are the instruments that will
be used to assess future stresses on
the network and to define the concepts
for action?
In the field of outline planning we still
apply some deterministic approaches.
However, for fine-tuning we fall back on
computer simulations and more specifically
on stochastic models because events in
real traffic obey stochastic laws. But the
perhaps most intelligent approach for designing
communal mobility schemes is different
again. It starts with careful urban
development which, when planning out
the future land usage, takes care that
additional traffic will only arise in locations
where it can be handled with reasonable
inputs and few undesirable side-effects.
In other words, proximity to sources of
supply is every bit as important as highquality
public transport service connections.
Reasonable inputs presumably meaning
“affordable measures”.
That’s right. In the first phase of mobility
planning only the effects come in for scrutiny,
but after that the focus must inevitably
be on the costs. As a rule, the conclusion
is that the number and scope of
necessary measures exceed the available
budget to a greater or lesser extent. The
next thing is to set priorities, which is a difficult
task that also has to be carried out
under relatively high time pressures. In the
field of mobility in particular, the speedy
implementation of those measures that
are identified as necessary is of the essence
– even though it is the planner’s lot
to be permanently shadowed by uncertainty.
I believe that the highest hit rates are
achieved by a combination of professional
planning, responsible assessment of options,
timely implementation and continuous
evaluation.
One possible response to the uncertainties
surrounding planning could
be to increase flexibility in terms of
solutions. Many transport scientists
therefore make a case for greater use
of intermodal traffic management
systems. Do you also view this as an
effective tool?
“ The future of
mobility demands
networking of the
transport system”
Yes, definitely. Rigid, impermeable infrastructures
always harbor the risk that
some part of the system will fail long
before the limits of the overall system are
reached. Intermodal traffic management
not only allows the service to be optimized,
it can also go some way to influencing
the demand – in my view this is
one of the most important conditions for
facing up to the challenges in the future.
In the ideal case, intermodal traffic management
is, so to speak, the extended arm
of a holistic mobility management system
that goes to work much earlier – for instance
within firms that develop appropriate
mobility plans for their staff. In
this particular area, my observations tell
me that countries like Belgium and the
Congestion charging in Stockholm: “It has since become clear that people are well capable
of accepting these sorts of payment systems, provided the goals are well understood“
Netherlands have progressed much further
than we have here in Germany.
To what extent is mobility planning being
coordinated at the various levels –
local, regional, national, international?
Without some form of coordination we
will of course end up in the madhouse sooner
rather than later – which is why there is
a history of coordination on all levels, although
admittedly with all the difficulties
associated with overcoming administrative
boundaries. Even when it comes to coordinating
transport in Munich with transport
in the surrounding administrative areas
there are inevitable conflicts of interest –
and in attempting to do the same at a national
or international level, the extent of
these conflicts tends to increase rather
than decrease. Nevertheless there are
examples of promising projects in Europe
thanks to the EU Transport White Paper
and the proposal for European networks
(TEN-V). This is partly to do with the commissions
that have been put forward, but
also with an ever-maturing conviction that
the mobility of the future demands efficient
networking of the transport systems.
And this applies not only in the multimodal
sense, but also in the spatial sense.
Professor Beckmann, thank you very
much for talking to us. «
Biography
In 1985, University
Professor Dr. Klaus
J. Beckmann was
appointed head of
the research and
teaching field of
“Municipal infrastructure
planning” at Karlsruhe University.
From 1990 to 1996, he worked
as public works engineer for the urban
planning department of Braunschweig
before being appointed director of the
Institute for Urban Planning and Urban
Transport of Rheinisch-Westfälische
Technische Hochschule Aachen.
Since October 2006, he is the Scientific
Director and General Manager of
the German Institute for Urban Studies
(www.difu.de), the largest research,
education and information institute for
cities, towns, districts, and other entities
and collective planning organizations
on the municipal and regional
level for the German-speaking countries.
8 its magazine 3/2011 3/2011 its magazine 9

Focus
Heading for
the cloud
Essay n Tom Vanderbilt, author of the New York Times bestseller
“Traffic: Why We Drive The Way We Do (And What It Says About Us),”
speaks about the revolutionary role that computer clouds could play
in solving mobility problems.
When I think about mobility lately
I find myself thinking about music.
Music was once a very real thing in
my life. In college, I spent hours picking
through bins in record stores,
while the objects of my hunt bulged
from stacked milk crates in my dorm
room. On the floor of my car lurked a
foundation layer of cracked cassette
tapes. Then CDs arrived, and I basically
spent the 1990s trying to figure
out, in vain, the most attractive and
efficient way to store them. Zigzag
tower from IKEA? Ring-binders full
of sleeves?
But in the last few years, as I have come
to rely on MP3s and streaming services
and cloud storage, music has gone from a
product in my life to a service. From cabinets
filled with CDs, to cabinets filled with
hard drives, my music collection – to my
wife’s eternal gratitude – now consists of
a single computer connected to the internet.
Instead of a mountain of discs lying
dormant, waiting to be played, now when
I want to hear something I simply access
Spotify. Via the cloud, I have access to
millions of songs, and the collection is
eminently mobile – I can take it “with me”
on my iPhone.
Now, consider your car. Like that old CD
collection it most sits unused, simply parked,
taking up storage space, about 95% of its
life. What function is it actually performing
during this time? It sits, essentially, as a
reserve of future mobility (to be sure, there’s
some social signaling going on, just as there
was in displaying the massive collection of
alphabetized CDs). But what if we could
“stream” the car, or some other personal
mobility device, only when we needed it?
David Levinson, a transportation researcher
at the University of Minnesota,
has coined the phrase “cloud commuting”
in analogy to „cloud computing.“
“Once upon a time people kept their
personal transportation near their person,
parking cars and bikes at their
homes, workplaces, or other destinations,”
he writes. “This was the only way
to guarantee point to point transportation
in a timely way where densities were
low, incomes high, and taxis scarce. Then
‘cloud commuting’ was invented, cars
Balancing individual
convenience with system-wide
efficiency
from a giant pool operated by organizations
in the cloud would dispatch a
vehicle that drives to the customer on
demand and in short order, and then
deliver the customer to the destination.”
Of course, this system is already here,
in the form of various car and bike sharing
schemes, though at this stage it’s like
the early days of digital music: sporadic
service, cumbersome paywalls, a vague
suspicion of the reliability of something
that’s not before your eyes.
The key to mobility in increasingly
crowded urban locales is balancing individual
convenience with system-wide
efficiency. In this sense, we need our
transportation engineers to be more like
software engineers, our physical transportation
networks to be more like computer
networks. As Dutch design guru John
Thackera notes, “the speed-obsessed computer
world, in which network designers
rail against delays measured in milliseconds,
is years ahead of the rest of us in
rethinking space-time issues.” But for all
the talk of the “death of distance” that
high-speed computing has brought – I can
listen to my cloud music collection anywhere
– computer geeks, notes Thackera,
are always trying to reduce distance, in
microchip architecture as much as networks,
to avoid the issues of “latency”
and “attenuation.” “Network designers
are good localizers,“ he writes. “Striving
to reduce geodesic distance, they have
developed the so-called store-width paradigm
or ‘cache and carry.’ They focus on
copying, replicating and storing web pages
as close as possible to their final destination,
at content access points.”
Our transport networks, by contrast, are
riddled with inefficiencies. For years, notes
Alex Steffen from the online magazine
Worldchanging, “we have used mobility to
get the access we need,” building sprawling,
underpriced (and now overcrowded)
networks. Now, however, as the social and
personal consequences of “hypermobility”
are coming into focus, there’s increased attention
on how much access you can have
with less mobility. “The only sustainable
trip,” Steffen notes, “is the one you never
had to take in the first place.”
For all the time lost in peak-hour congestion,
as the Rand Institute has noted,
more than 90 percent of American roads
are not congested 90 percent of the time.
Much of the congestion that does occur can
be attributed to “user error.” As Sebastian
Thrun, the Stanford computer scientist currently
working on Google’s autonomous
car technology has noted, even a crowded
highway is still relatively free of actual
cars, filled instead with the needs of
human reaction times and driving ability.
A fleet of autonomous cars could squeeze
two to three times the capacity out of the
same number of lanes.
But it’s not just cars. One in five shipping
containers handled globally is empty.
Our emphasis on transport speed sometimes
masks other inefficiencies. As journalist
Philip Longman points out, where
“fast mail trains” once “ensured next-day
delivery on a letter mailed with a standard
two-cent stamp in New York to points as
far west as Chicago,” today, “that same letter
is likely to travel by air first to FedEx’s
Memphis hub, then be unloaded, sorted,
and reloaded onto another plane, a process
that demands far greater expenditures
of money, carbon, fuel, and, in many instances,
time than the one used eighty
years ago.”
All this is why I think the next great
revolution in transportation will not come,
as it has before, in the form of a new
conveyance (there are those that still hold
out for flying cars). Rather, it’s already
here, and it’s in your pocket. The fact that
the world increasingly carries computers
with them at all times provides an unprecedented
opportunity: to not only give
us a more complete picture of transportation
– our options, our wait and travel
times, the costs of our choices – but to
transform us into sensors, with powerful
feedback loops making transport systems
more responsive and efficient. Just as we
no longer hunt for CDs, nor should we
hunt for parking spaces: We should know
where they are, and what they will cost,
ahead of time.
Carlo Ratti, the director of the Senseable
Cities lab at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, notes that it used to be sufficient
for cities to wield top-down control
over their citizens (and in demo “smart
cities” built from whole cloth, like Masdar,
that may be possible, at the outset at least).
But as cities grow larger, and more complex,
the desirability of bottom-up, opensource
operating systems grows. Why
spend money putting inductive loops in
asphalt when an army of smart-phone
equipped “probe” drivers can provide even
more information? For a project the lab is
currently undertaking in the well-wired nation
of Singapore, it envisions “mash ups”
of data layers: If there’s a rain burst on one
section of the island, taxis can be instantly
sent to the area of sudden demand, even
before clients have begun summoning
them via their taxi apps.
Much of the congestion
can be attributed
to “user error”
Mobile devices alone will not ensure
mobility: We still need hard infrastructure.
Even in something as prosaic as the highway
interchange, there is still room for
innovation. But you know there’s a sea
change at hand when Bill Ford, CEO of
what is perhaps the archetypal car company,
says that where he used worry how to
sell more cars and trucks, now his concern
is that: “What if all we do is sell more cars
and trucks?”
How do we sort out the need for individual
mobility within an increasingly constrained
landscape? We need to “Spotify”
transportation: to do away with the inefficiencies
of storing a huge collection of
things that are hardly used, instead offering
real-time, on-the-fly, when-and-whereyou-need-it
access, engineered to be delivered
to the most people, most efficiently.
It’s time for the transport world to get its
head in the cloud. «
10 its magazine 3/2011 3/2011 its magazine 11

Focus
The future on a
drawing board
Greenfield mobility planning n More and
more, architects and infrastructure professionals
are designing entire cities or neighborhoods
on their drawing boards. When
a whole new world is being created almost
from scratch, the design of transport networks
plays an important role.
Admittedly, the New Town idea is not
exactly new. As far back as 1891, the construction
of Brasilia as the new capital was
enacted in the Brazilian Republic’s first federal
constitution. The reason was a desire to
have a neutral seat of government right in
the geographical center of the country, an
area that until then had been completely
underdeveloped. And the creation of the
“drawing-board city” of Canberra as Australia’s
capital in 1927 went down in history as
a mere compromise arising from the fight
to a draw between longtime rivals Sydney
and Melbourne. In later years, the making
of entire new cities was more about bringing
workers and miners closer to their work
benches or mines – such as in Wolfsburg or
in the new town of Wulfen in Germany.
The urbanistic expression New Town,
however, comes from the UK. It means a
town that has been planned and built from
scratch in line with functional considerations,
mainly serving the single purpose
of relieving the pressure on existing conurbations.
That is still the most important
objective of planned cities today, and in
the early 21st century they are therefore
often found on the far peripheries of
rampant megacities in emerging nations.
Apart from, of course, spectacular exceptions
such as Masdar City in Abu Dhabi,
the first CO2-neutral science town, where
construction began in 2008.
In many cases, the mobility planning
know-how for New Towns, which plays an
increasingly important role in the creation
of urban living space out of nothing, comes
from the so-called “old” industrial countries,
for example in the scope of the “Young
Cities – Developing Urban Energy Efficiency”
research project, which is being promoted
by the German Federal Ministry for Education
and Research (BMBF) as part of the
“Future Megacities of Tomorrow” umbrella
program. The required knowledge is being
exported to a total of ten regions, in South,
East and West Asia as well as North, East
and South Africa and South America.
This intellectual export includes such
essential components as, for example, all
the modern standards that have emerged
over the years as efficient solutions in
the developed countries under the pressure
of extreme traffic loads. One such
component is an integrated transport
planning process that produces balanced
solutions to traffic problems, reconciling
the conflicting goals of different groups
of road users. “Solutions range from the
categorization of roads right through to
integrated network design, for instance,”
says Andreas Karger, transportation planner
at Siemens Mobility, who worked on »
12 its magazine 3/2011 3/2011 its magazine 13

Focus
Look at today’s Brasilia:
The roots of the drawingboard
capital reach back
into the 19 th century
one of the BMBF projects during his studies
at the Technical University of Berlin. Also
when selecting the suitable means of
transport, guidelines from Europe for
example provide help. “Buses are the preferred
option on less frequented routes,
while from about 5,000 passenger journeys
per day a tram would be more efficient
in handling the traffic flow.” And
for routes daily serving 30,000 or more
passengers, a subway or light-rail line
becomes profitable.
Step by step, a suitably
sized transport
network is created
As Karger knows from experience, the
mobility planning process for New Towns
starts with the collection of maximally comprehensive
data on the physical structure
and the population, mainly from local government
bodies. For transport planning in
developing and emerging countries, information
on transport-related mobility behavior,
the level of motorization as well as
accident statistics are also of considerable
relevance. Land-use data is usually available
in the form of a master plan. Based on these
findings, future patterns of mobility can be
Daily traffic in Ho Chi Minh City: The traffic plan for this city on the Mekong River is going to
cover also the needs of pedestrians and cyclists, two previously neglected types of transport
described, predicting the likely source-target
relationships for journeys and trip chains.
These form the basis for the planning
teams to develop scenarios for transport
links to the nearest city, and for the design
of overall and local transport structures in
the New Town itself – both for motorized
private traffic and public transport. The
various scenarios are then evaluated and
optimized using computer simulation.
Thus, step by step, a suitably sized transport
network is created, defining main
roads that have a connecting function,
collector roads that act as feeders from
residential areas, and bus lines for main
routes and local districts.
Overall, the transfer of knowledge from
the old industrial countries to the countries
of the Middle and Far East or South has
gone fairly smoothly – with one exception:
Modern concepts for sustainable transport
design based on an intermodal network
linking together the different mobility
options, is often initially greeted with incomprehension
at the local level. “The
local decision makers have mostly studied
in industrialized countries in the 1960s or
1970s, and are often locked into an oldfashioned
way of thinking,” says Dr. Wulf-
Holger Arndt of Technical University of
Berlin and coordinator of the “Megacities
Mobility” cross-link for the entire BMBF program.
“That’s why they still rely on a one-
sided approach, expanding capacity for private
vehicles – which has of course turned
out to be anything but the right solution to
traffic problems, but rather one that creates
even more traffic and environmental damage
while leading to higher accident rates.“
In the end, New Town projects are excellent
opportunities of encouraging newly
arrived road users to adopt alternative mobility
routines. That is why, despite regular
conflict situations, Dr. Arndt’s planning
team places great importance on integrating
the different modes of transport with
urban and traffic planning in emerging
countries and at least tries to make a start
in implementing efficient mobility management:
“On the road to sustainability, it
is important to use consulting services that
help establish mobility styles focused on
the local environment, and correspond
with a type of urban development that
keeps traveling distances under control.“
These objectives are particularly evident
in the example of Hashtgerd New Town in
the urban hinterland of Tehran with its 12
million inhabitants. In a conventional traffic
simulation model that had been extended by
researchers, the land use in the New Town
has been designed to require a minimal level
of traffic – for example through increased
building density and mixed-use areas. A
model adapted to local conditions serves
to estimate the CO2 emissions of the various
alternative plans. The environmentally
sustainable choice of transport in this New
Town is going to be promoted by a highquality
public transport system, among other
measures. This involves a main transport network
consisting of a Bus Rapid Transit system
(BRT) and tram lines, complemented by city
buses as well as neighborhood buses operating
on a demand basis. The type of transport
that is typical in this country, such as a multilevel
paratransit system consisting of a variety
of taxi and car-sharing arrangements,
can be integrated into this traffic concept.
The projects in India and Vietnam funded
by the BMBF do not only cover the construction
of new settlements to take the
pressure off megacities, but also involve
the optimization of the transportation systems
in the cities themselves. For example,
PTV AG is working with local partners on
tools for designing and implementing an
energy-efficient and sustainable transport
system in Hyderabad. One of the main issues
is planning how to minimize network
downtime caused by climatic factors, such
as floods or extreme heat waves.
Traffic researchers from the Technical
University of Vienna are creating an integrated,
multi-modal land-use and transport
model for Ho Chi Minh City that predicts
the choice of transport mode, traffic
accidents, emissions, traffic congestion,
land-use evolution and other indicators.
In developing the traffic plan for this city
on the Mekong River, it was vital to include
pedestrians and cyclists – modes of transport
that had previously been neglected.
The most important recommendation
of the Western researchers for overcom-
ing the daily traffic jams is to replace the
planned expensive expansion of the metro
system into the flood-prone area of the
Mekong Delta with an extension of the
BRT system as an alternative that would
be both faster and cheaper to implement.
A successful mobility plan can counteract
at least one of the fundamental problems
in the construction of New Towns,
as demonstrated by the example of Anting,
a new district designed by the renowned
architects and planners, Albert Speer &
Partners (AS & P) of Frankfurt am Main
with the goal to relieve the pressure on
the megacity of Shanghai. The acceptability
of New Towns designed on the drawing
board naturally suffers from deficits in
terms of tradition, history, culture, and
therefore identification. “That was one
of the reasons why,” says AS & P partner
Johannes Dell, “we initially wanted to wait
until the Light Railway link to the center
of Shanghai was completed before actually
starting construction. But our Chinese
clients were of the opinion that our architectural
concept was coherent enough to
attract people into the area.” The result was
that the settlement of Anting was rather
slow at first, until the transport links to
Shanghai were completed just before Expo
2010. Now, demand for apartments in
Anting is much greater than supply – and
the expansion of Anting East has been in
the planning stage for some time.
The opportunities arising from efficient
mobility planning on greenfield sites are,
of course, not only of benefit in emerging
countries but also in conurbations in old
industrial countries. The city of Dortmund,
The New Town of Anting: Since an efficient transport connection to Shanghai is in place,
demand for apartments in Anting by far exceeds supply
Airrail Center in Frankfurt: Sometimes, accessibility
is not only a condition but rather a trigger
for the emergence of a new urban center
Future-oriented PHOENIX site in Dortmund:
An intelligent mix of transport modes for
modern transport handling
for example, has set itself ambitious goals
for PHOENIX West, a future-oriented district
built on the site of a former blast furnace
and steel plant. “PHOENIX West,” says Winfried
Sagolla, head of the Mobility business,
“represents a modern and contemporary
way of dealing with traffic – for example by
using an intelligent mix of transport modes,
creating offers and incentives to reduce
traffic, and constructing space-saving parking
lots.“
And sometimes, the perfect transport
network is not just a condition that must be
achieved, but rather a trigger for the emergence
of a new urban center, such as Airport
City in Frankfurt am Main, which, like
Anting, was designed by town planning
specialists Albert Speer & Partner. “Here,”
says Stefan Kornmann, a partner at AS & P,
“accessibility is the driving force for planners
and users alike.“ «
14 its magazine 3/2011 3/2011 its magazine 15

Focus
New transport consulting
Mobility Consulting n When manufacturers of traffic equipment offer also
consulting services, they usually focus on their own products and systems.
The Siemens Mobility Consultants, in contrast, go at least one step beyond:
Their approach is based on inclusive concepts and well-researched strategic
answers for the central questions of sustainable urban development – now
and in the future.
For them, the golden rule is precisely
not to propose a silver bullet supposedly
fitting any city, for the simple reason that
in every city the transport situation is as
unique as the skyline. Today, one-size-fitsall
solutions are of next to no use to mobility
planners seeking to prepare municipal
and regional transport systems for the
challenges of the future in a genuinely
sustainable way – because the respective
conditions, political choices and local options
vary just too widely.
These are the basic facts underlying
the foundation of Siemens Mobility Consulting
a little over a year ago. The new
unit’s most urgent tasks embrace the active
dialog with the municipal transport
officers aimed at developing answers to
the following central questions: What are
the most efficient strategies and concepts
to meet – right there in every community –
the manifold mobility requirements of today
and tomorrow? What lessons do the
experiences of other cities provide for the
development of tailored solutions for each
individual community? And last but not
least, what business models will create
the necessary financial and organizational
scope for realizing the most effective solutions
in the local context?
To turn these questions into as many
viable answers, the Mobility Consulting
unit builds and dispatches an interdisciplinary
team of experienced specialists,
including experts for road and rail traffic,
port and airport management, ecological
issues and economic calculations, depending
on the task at hand. Whatever
their specialty, they all follow the same
fundamental rule: Their job is not to sell
Siemens products, but to analyze and
understand the needs of their municipal
partners and to cooperate actively with
them to define pragmatic and sustainable
solutions for the future (see the interview
on page 26 “Stop thinking within
boundaries”).
In doing this, they can rely on Siemens’
many years of international experience in
all areas of mobility as the best basis for
the development of holistic, fully integrated
solutions. After all, it is a generally accepted
fact that, in the ever narrower strait
between urbanization and climate change,
island solutions will hardly do when it
comes to mastering the challenges of the
future. The interplay between the megatrends
requires the creation of closely interacting
systems, including highly powerful
interfaces.
On a regular basis, Siemens consultants
use not only their own best practice
projects from around the globe for their
consulting services, but also the knowhow
of selected external experts. One
such expert is Professor George Hazel
from Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen,
Scotland. In one of his research
projects, the renowned urban and transport
planner investigated the transport
system of Austria’s capital Vienna, which
in conclusion he describes as a showcase
of modern, sustainable mobility, pointing
out in particular that in its “Transport
Master Plan 2003,” which defines the
most important measures for infrastructure
expansion and public transport enhancement
up to the year 2020, the city
already takes account of an expected rapid
increase in the demand for mobility.
Vienna – with a f utureoriented
master plan
to sustainable success
The customers of Siemens Mobility
Consulting benefit as well from the insights
provided by comprehensive worldwide
studies such as the Green City Index
or the Complete Mobility Index. These
studies estimate the optimization potential
of traffic management alone to reach
up to 30 percent. At the conference
table, this comprehensive knowledge is
always “on standby,” so to speak, when
regional solutions are discussed, even if
the first meeting does not yet cover the
realization of integrated multimodal
solutions, but “only” the future potential
of partial solutions for which there are
already concrete plans.
So it comes as no surprise that shortly
after the foundation of the new unit, the
consulting services are already in high
demand by cities all over the world, from
Europe and Asia to North America. An
especially comprehensive project is being
carried out in Toronto, Canada, with
the investigation and evaluation of nearly
all mobility aspects, from management
of private transport to measures
for making public transport, including
the related information and payment
systems, more attractive; from traffic
safety and energy efficiency right up to
economic and ecological questions related
to urban transport.
Tram traffic in Vienna: Part of a showcase
system of modern, future-oriented mobility
City traffic in Toronto: In Canada’s largest city,
all aspects of mobility are being investigated
The often quite ambitious CO2 reduction
regulations adopted by ever more
cities are among the main reasons for
transport optimization having become a
necessity: It’s not a question of “if” anymore,
but of “how.” And just like any
long journey, the way to sustainability
starts with a first step, for example a half-
or full-day strategy workshop with the
Siemens Mobility Consulting team, who
will draw on their entire wealth of experience
to support the municipal decision
makers in identifying pragmatic and
workable measures. «
16 its magazine 3/2011 3/2011 its magazine 17

Trends & Events Partners & Projects
Added safety and
convenience
Small signal heads n Dedicated traffic
lights for pedestrians and cyclists help
improve the safety at traffic intersections,
with separate green and red phases for
each of these groups providing additional
optimization potential. As an especially
practical solution for implementing such
signalization measures, Siemens offers
new types of small signal heads, which
are also very useful as subsidiary or supplementary
signal heads for special traffic
situations. Available in a wide range of
versions based on different technologies
An electric future
E-car sharing system launched n In early
September, Siemens AG added twelve
electric cars based on the Opel Agila
model to its e-car fleet in Berlin, which
had become operational about ten
months before as part of the 4-S (“For
sustain electromobility”) project. In
future, the additional “shared” e-cars
will be available to more than 100 employees
for business-related trips within
the German capital. The e-car sharing system
consists of a coordinated range of
integrated solutions to help meet the
requirements of modern electro-mobility.
The intelligently networked and fully
dynamic management systems for vehicle
fleet, parking space and environmental
zones cover also the required recharging
inf ra structure for the e-cars. Every car
is equipped with a mobile computer
and voltages and offering a selection of
symbols and signal colors, the small signal
heads can be tailored to the requirements
of any application. The LED versions provide
the greatest benefits because they
consume only a fraction of the energy
needed by conventional signal heads,
require next to no maintenance and no
replacement at all of their extremely longlasting
LED light sources. For maximum
safety and reliability, an electronic monitoring
circuit in every LED light source permanently
supervises the LEDs‘ current and
On-board units provide the e-car test drivers with important information
(on-board unit) that provides information
on booking times, charging status
and remaining cruising range. In addition,
an integrated satnav system (GPS)
and a permanent communication link
with a control and information center
provides the driver with directions to
the nearest available parking space
with recharging facility, if desired. The
secured data link of the on-board unit
enables the automatic billing of rental
and parking fees as well as recharging
costs. The experiences gathered in the
pilot fleet project will provide essential
insights into how to optimize the networking
of recharging infrastructure,
fleet and parking management systems
to make urban mobility more efficient
and reduce its environmental impact
in particular. «
Separate traffic signs for cyclists
voltage levels. If the actual values are
below or above the pre-set thresholds,
the input current is interrupted immediately
(signal protection).Of course, the
new small signal heads from Siemens are
fully compatible with the Sitraffic Cx00V,
Cx40V and Cx40ES controller families as
well as with the signal monitoring systems
of these controllers. «
The new e-car sharing system was discussed at
the IAA, too
Future comes
as standard
International Motor Show (IAA) in Frankfurt/Main
n At this year’s IAA, exhibitors
dedicated around 10 percent of overall exhibition
space to various aspects of electric
mobility. For instance on the “Boulevard of
the Future“ at the booth of Siemens AG –
a showcase of the company’s comprehensive
activities in the area of electric mobility.
The Siemens range not only includes components
for electric drives, power electronics
and charging technology, but also concepts
for a practical charging infrastructure and
tailored software solutions for the development
and production of electric vehicles.
As a globally leading provider of industrial
software and automation technology,
Siemens is excellently positioned to help
manufacturers optimize the production of
vehicles, components and batteries and
thus to cut the overall production costs of
electric vehicles. «
The city of tomorrow
London n More than 100,000 visitors are
expected to flock every year to the Centre
for Urban Sustainability that Siemens AG is
currently building in the Green Enterprise
District of the British capital. With the new
center of competence, Siemens wants to
provide municipal decision-makers, planners,
architects and also the general public
with a comprehensive source of information
on technologies, strategies and concepts
for more sustainability and higher
quality of life in tomorrow’s cities. Besides
a fascinating and partially interactive look
into the future of urban life on close to
2000 sqm of exhibition space, the center
will offer spacious conference and research
facilities as well as offices. The building itself
will be a showcase of sustainability and a
first-hand demonstration of eco-friendly
ways of using water and energy. Nature and
the special character of the site at the
London docks provided the inspiration for
the crystal-shaped design. Various transparent
and reflecting materials will capture
the light in a multitude of ways,
adding dynamism to the architectural
geometry. The Centre for Urban Sustainability,
where the mobility of the future is
going to play a major role, is due to be
open to the public by the spring of 2012. «
Safety is a priority in the construction
of the Gotthard base tunnel
The Centre for Urban Sustainability is scheduled to open its doors in the spring of 2012
Fresh breeze
Luzern n For the Gotthard base tunnel, the
largest tunnel ventilation system ever will
be implemented. It comprises two ventilation
centers dividing the railway tunnel
into three sections of nearly the same
length. In each center, four ventilators will
control fresh air supply during ordinary
tunnel operation. In case one section is
temporarily blocked for maintenance or
other reasons, they will continue to feed
this part. If a fire breaks out, the ventilation
centers ensure the rapid evacuation
of smoke from the tunnel and keep the
escape routes clear. As a special challenge,
the design of the system had to take
account of the strong pressure surges caused
by the high speed of the trains passing
through the tunnel. What makes the ventilators
supplied by the Siemens company
TLT Turbo especially suitable for this application
is their reliably stable operating
range, as demonstrated in the corresponding
tests in another part of the project.
After completion in 2016, the Gotthard
base tunnel will be the world’s longest tunnel
with an overall length of 57 km. For its
construction, more than 28 million tons
of rock had to be moved. The costs for this
structure of the century will total around
€ 8 billion. «
18 its magazine 3/2011 3/2011 its magazine 19

Know-how & Research
A spirit
guide
Project Braindriver n
This story has a hint
of Hollywood about it.
It’s showing now in the
capital of Germany and
it’s all about science,
not fiction. Researchers
at Freie Universität
Berlin have managed
to control a vehicle via
a man-machine interface
using the power
of thought alone.
In the dream factories of the cinema,
the future is already old news. As early as
1985, the US thriller “Firefox” featured
Clint Eastwood, sharing the lead with an
experimental jet fighter that received and
converted flight instructions in the form
of brain waves. Fourteen years later the
Oscar-laden blockbuster “The Matrix” also
gave center stage to a computer that was
literally mind-controlled. Has the fiction
now actually been stripped away, leaving
us with just science?
That is pretty much the case. In the
Faculty of Artificial Intelligence at Freie
Universität Berlin chaired by Professor Dr.
Raúl Rojas, the AutoNOMOS team led in
turn by Tinosch Ganjineh has been focusing
on the development of fully autonomous
vehicles since 2006. They are aiming
for a vehicle that can independently
assess everyday traffic conditions and operate
and move about without human assistance.
Two vehicles were built for this
purpose, including the prototype “Made-
InGermany,” a VW Passat that is equipped
with cam eras, laser scanners, radar sensors,
a high-precision GPS and a link to the
vehicle network (CAN). In the scope of
this pro ject, AutoNOMOS is also working on
user interfaces between humans and machines.
The visible results of their efforts
include an iPhone-based vehicle control
system, a more complex control and
“MadeInGermany” prototype: Different
thoughts generate different time series
sensor monitoring system using an iPad,
and an optical control that functions using
a pupil tracking system.
From that point it was just a small step
to the spectacular project that caused such
a stir recently when it was announced by
an AutoNOMOS research group headed
by professor Rojas. Using a so-called Brain
Computer Interface (BCI), the scientists
succeeded in enabling human test subjects
to control the experimental “MadeInGermany”
car by the power of their thoughts
alone. The test driver is required to don a
skull cap with 16 electrical sensors. Following
EEG principles, the sensor positions
correspond to particular regions on the
head where voltages produced by local
brain activity can be measured. When the
test subject concentrates on a previously
defined thought pattern, for example a
color or an object, the sensors detect voltage
variations in the micro- to millivolt
range which, under ideal conditions, result
in a time series that can be identified
by a computer using a 16-dimensional
voltage vector. Different thoughts generate
different time series for the computer
to map later into different classes.
To make the computer allocate different
time series to different classes – in
this case the commands “left, right, forward,
reverse” – the test subjects have to
“teach” their thought patterns to the computer.
For this learning process there is a
piece of software that displays a cube and
an activation indicator to give status messages
about the signals that are detected.
If the person’s thoughts turn to a category
that belongs in the “left” class and if the
thought is correctly identified, the cube
moves to the left. This makes it possible
to distinguish up to five classes. Besides
the four classes in which a defined
thought corresponds to a defined direction,
there is a null class in which none
of the calibrated thoughts are registered
and which therefore has no impact on
changes to direction of travel or speed.
The results of the thought classification
are then transferred via Ethernet
to the control computer in the autonomous
vehicle. To convert the registered
commands to actual car control, the
AutoNOMOS team apply two different
control programs:
• In variant 1 (“semi-autonomy”), the vehicle
travels auton omously along the road
and only requests a thought-generated
directional decision at intersections or
motorway exits.
• In variant 2, so-called “free driving”, the
human can control the vehicle entirely by
thoughts alone. The four commands “left,
right, forward, reverse” are mapped to
correspond with steering directions and
with an increase or decrease in speed.
Because concentration on defined
thoughts can be very taxing for humans
and often only functions with a time lag
of one to three seconds, the FU Berlin researchers
have so far only carried out their
“free driving” tests under conditions of a
feasibility study on a fenced-off terrain.
There’s another reason why from today’s
perspectives variant 1 looks very much
more appropriate for practical purposes.
Even with the latest BCI hardware, only a
small percentage of test subjects achieved
genuinely reliable control of the vehicle
using the 4+1 thought classification. «
In the side-view mirror
The big plan
What would we be today without visions and great plans! All the
same, most Utopias soon reach their sell-by date. And that’s when
a pragmatic view of the details can be helpful.
Since time immemorial, thought-
leaders and visionary planners have
designed new cities and reshaped the
old. Sometimes the aim was to improve
the world and to serve mankind, but
more often it was to satisfy a leader’s
ostentatious ends or to meet strategic
considerations. More recently the reasons
have also included the creation of
more space for the automobile.
In 1925 at the Paris Exhibition of
Modern Decorative and Industrial Arts,
the architect and urban planner Le
Corbusier presented a Utopian design
called “Plan Voisin.” Financed by the car
and aircraft maker Gabriel Voisin, it
foresaw the demolition of vast areas of
central Paris to make way for wider
streets and a gigantic skyscraper district.
Parisians failed to see the joke. But
there was no stopping Le Corbusier:
“Where are all those cars speeding to?
The center!” he crowed. “In the center
there are no open spaces for driving on.
They must be created. The center must
be torn down!”
All the same, 20 years later, urban planners
took up the idea once more, drove
naked concrete channels through the
center and created a city fit for the car.
The opposition had been on the case
for some time. Austrian exile Victor
Gruen declared “Cars buy nothing” and
invented the shopping mall for pedestrians.
In his shopping center opened
in Detroit in 1952, visitors could not
merely shop, but also go to the theater,
stroll in green spaces and simply enjoy
themselves. The warmth of the idea’s
reception meant that access roads were
clogged with more and more cars, so
later he planned his malls outside the
cities, on greenfield sites. What’s the
legacy of all that today? Too many cars
in the city – and in our countryside too.
Literary giant Friedrich Dürrenmatt
hits the mark: “The more humans advance
with a plan, the more effectively
they can be thwarted by chance.” So
rather than bold plans, should we try
bean-counting?
The American mathematician Charles
Komanoff has applied himself to that
very thing. For several years his work
has been devoted to accurate measurements
of Manhattan’s traffic. Using his
PC spreadsheet he inputs taxi waiting
times, subway journey times and passenger
numbers, the bridge authority’s
user figures and much much more, then
gives the public free access to the data
on the Web. Not exactly a visionary
idea. Traffic planners find it brilliant: at
long last, facts instead of bold ideas!
Sometimes the greatest progress is
made by simply adding one plus one. «
20 its magazine 3/2011 3/2011 its magazine 21

Mobility & Living Space
A dynamo of a woman
On the road with Verena Bentele n Calling her a bundle of energy would
be a very defensive description of the woman who has dominated the
Paralympics with sheer power. The world knows the inimitable way in
which Verena Bentele pushes forward on cross-country ski trails and in the
biathlon stadium, achieving a series of victories. But how safely can this top
athlete, blind from birth, move through the hectic traffic of a metropolis?
Actually, we should have guessed, and
maybe we knew it already. Nobody who
wins twelve gold medals at the Paralympic
Games and four world championships
would be considered timid, having to think
three times before taking each step, tentatively
placing one foot in front of the other.
Twelve gold medals at the Paralympic
Games and four world championships are
only achievable by somebody who knows
exactly what they want, and above all,
where they want to be – even if they cannot
see it.
This was all too clear to the ITS magazine’s
editorial team when they arrived for
an appointment with Verena Bentele in
Munich’s Westend. Nevertheless, within a
few minutes, reality shattered the first stereotypes.
Because Verena Bentele did not
receive us at an easily accessible, geometrically
furnished ground floor apartment,
The photographer
can hardly keep up
and repeatedly has to
ask for a slow-down
but rather in an older gem of an apartment
just under the roof, reachable only
via an endless stairwell. And – although
today it is all about a demonstration of
her urban mobility – she is not wearing
sneakers, but high-heels. This is a superwoman
who is not defined by her handicap,
and, as became apparent quite soon,
she is not defined by her athletic achievements
either.
Verena Bentele likes her “student digs”
with old wooden floorboards in a quiet
location – and yet she wants to move on
soon. “A few more square feet would not
go amiss.” Perhaps so that she can always
be surrounded by her trophies in future.
Until now, she has had to store a large
number of them at her parents’ home on
Lake Constance, including the prestigious
Bambi media prize, one that Sophia Loren
also keeps on her sideboard. But even
the small selection we can see here in Munich
is more than impressive – World Cup
awards, gold medals – and of course the
Laureus World Sports Award, which makes
its owner into a legend in their lifetime.
For example, besides Verena Bentele, in
2011 tennis god Rafael Nadal and the very
charming – she thinks – shooting star of
golf, Martin Kaymer, also won this Oscar of
sports. She is almost as proud of her huge
collection of books: “I have either read
them all myself or had them read to me by
the computer.”
After the first photos in the apartment
we go out into the city. Even in the stairwell,
it is soon clear what sort of pace the
editorial team can expect over the next
two hours. While our unfit staff gasp their
way downstairs, Verena Bentele glides
nimbly to the front door, destroying any
hope that perhaps the high heels might
slow down this bundle of energy, at least
a little. On the sidewalk, she steps up the
pace, almost unaware of doing so. She
knows the area – literally inside out – and
marches off, as if it was all about World
Cup points. The photographer can hardly
keep up and has to keep asking her to slow
down so that he can get a good picture
without resorting to a telephoto lens. As
we move on, we conduct a rather onesided
interview – very short questions,
because we are out of breath, and relaxed,
detailed answers that are nevertheless to
the point.
High curbs – a blessing
for the blind, a
curse for wheelchair
users
How does she find her way about in
this environment? Listening and touching
play a crucial role here. “If you need them,”
says the star athlete who has been blind
from birth, “your other senses improve automatically.”
Among other things she has
learned to recognize different sound reflections,
depending on whether she is
walking past a wall or a doorway. Even the
hiss of the subway doors provides guidance.
On the other hand, the stick can be
useful for finding the curb. And sometimes
even just counting can be an effective solution
– for example, if there are several
house entrances on a street all of which
sound the same.
What makes it easier for visually impaired
people to navigate around the city?
“First of all, you can do a lot yourself,” says
Verena Bentele. It all starts with organized
mobility training. It is one of the compulsory
subjects at school, and you have no
choice but to take it. Later, it is up to the
individual as to whether or not they attend
special mobility training courses, say after
moving to a new city. But of course there
Verena Bentele in city traffic: She marches off as if it was all about World Cup points »
22 its magazine 3/2011 3/2011 its magazine 23

Mobility & Living Space
are also structural and technical aids to
help in traffic. For example, on some subway
platforms, orientation grooves have
been created that are easy to detect with
a stick and indicate the distance from the
edge. However, the single most important
support device is the pedestrian lights for
the blind that use acoustic signals and vibration
to indicate when it is safe to cross.
These ticking, shaking little boxes are becoming
more and more common, but
there are still not enough of them. “Sometimes
it makes you a bit sad – you know
this technology exists, but is not used for
reasons of cost ...”
Do the needs of visually impaired people
get enough attention in city planning
departments? “This is a difficult issue,” says
the top athlete, “because of course you
can’t please everybody.” For example, high
and easily detected curbs provide the best
possible help with orientation for blind pedestrians,
but for wheelchair users, elderly
people with walking frames and mothers
Snapshots of an impressive encounter:
“When it comes to organizing barrier-free
mobility, those in positions of responsibility
must discuss the issue with those affected –
and then find solutions that are acceptable
to all road users”
with strollers, they become difficult obstacles.
“Those in positions of responsibility
must talk over these points with those affected
– and then find solutions that are
acceptable to all road users.”
Which means of transport does Verena
Bentele prefer to use in Munich? “My favor-
A range of structural
and technical measures
help visually
impaired people navigate
around the city
ite is the subway,” she says, “It is the most
frequent, the least affected by unpredictable
weather conditions in winter, and
the stations are more clearly laid out than
those of the light-rail system.” Another pos-
itive point is the similar length of subway
trains, which enables her to orient herself
more easily, as well as the above-mentioned
grooves in the platforms. “Nevertheless,
you have no other choice but to learn your
routes by heart – and in some areas that
are frequently re-designed, one has to ask
oneself if it is really worth it ...”
How should people help the visually impaired
in the city? “Again, both sides have
a role to play,” says Verena Bentele. “The
most important thing is to approach one
another, especially because most people
are unsure how much support we blind
people need.” She would like to point out
a couple of areas where people could be
helpful without being asked. For example,
simply not placing things in the way that
could cause blind people to stumble or
collide with them, such as luggage or
bicycles. Also, warnings should be given
when the situation has changed, such as
at construction sites. Otherwise – just ask.
“The need to frequently ask has the addi-
Verena Bentele at a pedestrian light for the blind: “It makes you a bit sad to know that an existing technology is not used for reasons of cost”
tional effect of helping create a different
attitude to trust.”
After two hours darting back and forth
across Munich, on main roads, on escalators
and through shopping malls, on foot,
by train and by subway, we’re done – in
the true sense of the word. The photographer
in particular desperately needs
a break. Fashion shoots in Miami and
London are apparently far less demanding
on his physical condition than an extended
city tour with this unique dynamo
of a woman.
At our farewell cappuccino, Verena
Bentele stays with the subject of trust –
one focus of her work in the field of per-
“ The most important thing is to approach one
another, especially because most people are unsure
how much support we blind people need”
sonnel training and development, together
with motivation and communication
within the team. And this literary scholar
with a master’s degree in German Studies
knows perfectly well what she’s talking
about in her lectures and seminars. In
2009 at the German Championships in
Nesselwang, she had a serious accident
because her escort runner mixed up right
and left when giving directions. A year
later, and with one kidney fewer and a
total of five gold medals more, she became
the most successful participant in
the Winter Paralympics in Vancouver,
along with Alpine overachiever Lauren
Woolstencroft. «
24 its magazine 3/2011 3/2011 its magazine 25

Profile
“ Stop thinking within
boundaries”
Interview n Simone Köhler, Mobility Consultant at Siemens AG, about
the efficiency benefits of consulting teams assembled for a specific
project, the trend towards interdisciplinary urban planning, and her
professional need to look outside the boundaries of her own company.
Ms Köhler, thanks to your experience
as an international mobility consultant,
you must have a good overview. In your
opinion, which city has solved the problem
of mobility best of all?
Seen from a global perspective, there are
significant differences between cities. In
Europe, however, the cities with top class
mobility are quite close together. Zurich,
Vienna and Stockholm are among the
favorites. But Munich – my adopted
home – is also one of the front runners.
On the one hand, we have well developed
networks of public transport, cycle paths
and private transport. On the other, the
different modes of transport are well
coordinated with each other.
At the moment you are managing a
project in Portugal, and before that
you were working for a Chinese city.
What are your specific responsibilities
in such projects?
The focus of my work is the development
of strategic mobility concepts, with my
own professional emphasis being on
road traffic. In our team, in addi tion to
an extensive expertise in mobility, all
colleagues have their own specialty, for
example, rail or road transport, ports or
airports. But there are also different
aspects under which a problem can be
considered, such as economic assessments
or CO2 efficiency. This comprehensive
range of expertise makes it
possible to put together individual consulting
teams according to the customer’s
requirements – and thus to develop
truly customized solutions for each
customer.
How far into detail do you go with the
development of these concepts – right
down to the individual traffic light?
No, our concepts provide several essential
tools, but do not include any detailed planning.
We want to demonstrate different
ways of optimizing mobility and logistics
to our customers. Our task is to offer
holistic advice – not the specified technical
solution design.
So that means that although you work
at Siemens, you do not recommend
Siemens products?
That’s it. Although we present our own
portfolio, that is only for information purposes
and sometimes in order to illustrate
our conceptual approach. Working as a
consultant enables me to immerse myself
deeper in the subject and gives me the opportunity
to supervise the implementation.
To do this, we must always be able to
go beyond the boundaries of company-
internal thinking, as this is the only way
to give our customers the best solution.
And what exactly is the best solution
for your customers? What do they
consider to be most important – the
economic aspects, or the environmental
ones?
We try to find a happy medium. Ideally,
it would be possible to develop solutions
that offer advantages in both areas. For
instance, implementing a traffic management
system is sometimes economically
and environmentally preferable to, say,
constructing a tunnel. Basically, the financing
of the mobility infrastructure plays a
central role in every city. Here we explore
various optimization opportunities together
with our partners – from Public Private
Partnerships and intelligent financing
models through to congestion charges
and parking systems to provide separate
sources of revenue. We also investigate the
financial assistance facilities available to
the city from EU coffers. Where necessary,
our consulting approach goes even further,
including those overall success factors that
help create an attractive city, such as the
impact on the surrounding area and the
involvement of its citizens. In short, Mobility
Consulting’s core competence is that
we understand the challenges facing the
customer and can provide suitable, sustainable
solutions.
Speaking of the future: How do you see
mobility in – say – 2030?
The demand for mobility, which will certainly
rise, makes it essential to use existing
capacity as efficiently as possible. That
is why local public transport will be linked
to private transport more than ever, and
will become more important – to what
degree, will depend to a large extent on
the success of efforts to make the services
more attractive. I am convinced that intelligent
communication between transport
“ In the ideal case,
ecologically and
economically optimum
solutions
can be achieved”
providers and with the transport infrastructure,
together with integration of different
transport services and of the related data,
will play a decisive role by 2030.
And what trends are you seeing in the
field of urban planning? Will the focus
increasingly be on “green” cities – and
therefore on electric mobility?
Whether electric vehicles will actually be
the cure-all is not yet clear. There is certainly
a growing demand for alternative
types of propulsion. New jobs and housing
concepts are creating hubs within the city,
and this allows residents to live and work
within short distances. This will have the
effect, for example, of relieving rush-hour
traffic. But even if people’s demand for
mobility falls as a result, goods still need to
be transported. When we look at how the
planning process operates, there is a clear
trend away from the isolated analysis of
individual sectors such as construction or
transport, and towards an interdisciplinary
approach involving the development of
integrated solutions.
Finally, a personal question: If you wanted
a challenge for your next project – what
would it be?
The consultant’s dream is of course “mobility
planning on a greenfield site.” But
only a few of us are that lucky, because
it is very rare for a town to be designed
from scratch, completely drawn up on a
drawing board. So I have been looking for
a more realistic dream project: the development
of a strategic mobility plan for a
city that is close to gridlock. I can imagine
that to be a tremendously appealing
challenge, helping develop methods to
relieve congestion and ultimately create
a livable urban center and observe its
implementation and success. But my job
has so much to offer anyway. The most
exciting aspect for me is working with
different people like mayors, experts
from various agencies, engineers, architects
and our Siemens specialists, and
getting to understand the different perspectives
they have on mobility.
Ms Köhler, thank you for the interview. «
Simone Köhler:
Career milestones at a glance
• Born in 1974 in Heilbronn
• 1994-1996: Trained as an aviation
administrator at Lufthansa AG in
Cologne, Stuttgart, Frankfurt/Main,
Nairobi
• 1996-2001: Studied business
administration at Johann Wolfgang
Goethe University in Frankfurt/Main;
degree in business administration
• 1996-1998: Marketing coordinator
for sales in Europe and Africa,
Lufthansa Cargo AG
• 1998-2000: Pricing Executive,
Lufthansa Cargo AG
• 2000-2001: Consultant and project
manager at Integra GmbH in Bad
Homburg and Berlin
• 2002-2010: Various management
tasks in the field of consulting
at Siemens Business Services
and Siemens IT Solutions and
Services
• Since 2010: Principal Consultant
at Siemens Mobility
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