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When your goal is to be the most livable city in the world

What does it mean to be the most livable city? For Auckland, New Zealand – where I live and work – our aspiration is that residents and visitors can get anywhere, easily and predictably, even as 800 additional cars drive onto its roads every week.

Picture of Mark ButterworthI am Mark Butterworth, and I work at Microsoft New Zealand in Digital Advisory Services. Microsoft Digital Advisory Services is a team within Microsoft Services. Digital Advisors bring their expertise, as well as Microsoft’s resources, experience and innovation, to empower organizations to reach their digital aspirations. We partner to drive a program of change to build our customers’ digital business, and our website can be found here.

Screen grab from video with text that says "Auckland's population is growing at 2X the forecasted growth rate."For Auckland, meeting increasing demands is no small feat. Auckland’s current population of 1.5m could double in 25 years. To meet the demands this will make on the city, Auckland Transport needs to lead innovation in the digital world, and it is achieving this goal through several initiatives. Two of the initiatives are customer engagement and congestion management.

Engaging with Customers

Screen grab from video with text that says "What are my best options for getting to work?"Auckland Transport are undertaking significant projects within the city that impact everybody that lives in and around Auckland – not only customers. @AucklandTransport has systems in place so that they can respond effectively to real time events happening in Social Media, and manage feedback that comes through satisfaction surveys. With a single view of customer, Auckland Transport can respond in a personalized way and provide integrated access to different transport services such as parking, permits and public transport cards. Auckland Transport are making significant inroads into improved customer engagement, and have experienced a dramatic increase in their speed to market for new digital services.

Managing Congestion

While Auckland Transport delivers 83 million public transport trips per year, it also sees room for improvement since the number of new cars on the road per week is outstripping the growth of residents in Auckland. 78% of all commuters travel by car, 95% without passengers.  Lastly, as the number of cars increases, 30%+ of congestion gets created by drivers looking for parking.

Image of city intersection with traffic and a red bus for public transportationThe future of congestion management for Auckland Transport lies in reducing wait times for public transport to optimize the throughput, predictability, and total travel time for public transport passengers. Using IoT data, along with routes, traffic lights and intersections, Auckland Transport can identify and resolve congestion-causing events in the city quickly.

As the Digital Advisor for Auckland Transport, one of the aspects that I’ve seen make the biggest difference to its digital transformation is increasing agility. The organization is using fail-fast methods, which is helping it reach its goals faster. They are also training and empowering their staff to grow into the cloud-based service model. They are building the capabilities in-house to lead innovation.

Stay connected with Auckland Transport projects by visiting their Facebook or Twitter pages. Or better yet, come visit Auckland and experience what we think will win the “most livable city” in the near future.

 

 

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