The shift of the transportation and mobility industry during the pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted nearly every industry that our global economy has to offer — and sure, while some industries may have experienced a bit of an upswing, it’s clear to see that none have gone without interruption, disruption, and transformation. In fact, the transportation and mobility industry has shifted quite a bit during the pandemic — and while it could be argued that there was a shift, or a transformation, already underway, the pandemic has certainly accelerated it.
The Observable Shift
Time.com recently referred to public transportation during the COVID-19 pandemic as “apocalyptic,” and that’s not exactly an exaggeration. As people have continued to embrace social distancing guidelines, ridership across cities has been at a near all-time low. In addition, with businesses remaining closed and workers remaining remote, there has been less of a demand for public transportation — but that will obviously change as things continue to open back up.
Along with a decrease in public transportation, there have been some new developments that are increasingly coming up in conversation amongst urban planners and city designers. For instance, eScooters have become an exciting new technological solution that allows the everyday citizen to quickly travel from point A to point B within an urban space without putting themselves in harm’s way. Not only are eScooters convenient because they can avoid traffic jams, they can avoid mass transit, and they can reach their destination without coming into contact with others as scooters are single-rider vehicles allowing for social distancing.
In other words, urban transportation isn’t as simple as it once was — people are looking for ways to avoid mass transit, which is ultimately going to correlate with more people on the road, an increased complexity of traffic patterns, and greater instability on the roads.
What does this mean for the industry? Well, it means that drivers on the road will now have to take into account more vehicles, more pedestrians, and a complex new system of rideable technology like eScooters, hoverboards, bicycles, and more.
As it relates to commercial fleets, the attention of fleet managers has been directed to this shift in transportation. The focus is now on advanced video analytics and computer vision technologies that can be used to make their vehicle operations safer for drivers, pedestrians, and the industry at large.
How Peregrine contributes to this transformation
Here at Peregrine, we offer a ground-breaking video analytics approach that leverages computer vision and AI technologies to make vehicle operations safer for all parties involved in urban spaces. We empower commercial fleet operators to embed advanced technologies into their operations to help support this new shift in mobility and transportation.
