IT and sustainability: New strategies for reducing carbon emissions and resource usage in transportation

• Improvements in IT are improving the economics of bus usage and car sharing.
• Improvements in IT are improving the economics of bike sharing in combination with train usage.
• Improvements in IT are making it economically feasible to dedicate roads to autonomous vehicles.
• Improvements in IT are making a high density of low cost charging stations economically feasible.

This paper describes how rapid rates of improvement in smart phones, telecommunication systems and other forms of IT enable solutions for sustainability and how this provides opportunities for the fields of telecommunication and information systems. While reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change focuses on technologies with rates of improvement less than 5% per year, most types of information technologies are experiencing annual rates of improvement that exceed 30% per year. These rapid rates of improvement are changing the economics of many activities of which this paper describes four examples in transportation. The paper concludes by discussing challenges for universities and in particular for the fields of telecommunications and information systems.