Intelligent transport takes fast lane at Shanghai seminar
With a focus on the latest products and technologies, as well as opportunities and challenges in the intelligent transportation market, the 12th Intelligent Transport System Market Seminar was held in Shanghai's downtown Jing'an District on Wednesday.
The two-day event addressed popular topics over four major sectors, namely intelligent traffic management, intelligent transportation, intelligent highways and cooperative vehicle infrastructure systems, in one main forum and 13 sideline forums.
In attendance were more than 120 experts, scholars and representatives from businesses such as Shanghai SEARI Intelligent System Company (SEISYS), Baidu, Huawei and Alibaba Cloud.
Xu He, founder of 7its.com, speaks at the event.
Xu He, founder of 7its.com, an online think tank in the transportation industry, said that the total investment in urban intelligent transportation reached 280 billion yuan (US$ 40 billion) over the last five years, among which intelligent traffic management took the biggest proportion with an investment of over 200 billion yuan.
Smart parking and cooperative vehicle infrastructure systems were the fastest-growing sectors, Xu said.
"New infrastructure not only requires new technologies, applications and models, but also new industries," Xu added.
Wu Xiaodong, president of Shanghai SEARI Intelligent System Company (SEISYS), addresses the seminar.
Wu Xiaodong, president of SEISYS, which undertook over 80 percent of Shanghai's intelligent transportation network, said that as well as new technologies, companies in the industry should engage in establishing standards.
"The formation of standards is good for the development of the entire industry," Wu said.
He added that companies should make more use of their own practices and technologies to offer ideas and suggestions for policymaking.
"Policy support and technological development are interdependent," Wu said. "It means that enterprises are closely connected to the industry as well as the whole of society."
SEISYS has been deeply involved in intelligent transportation for over 30 years, and has formulated many industrial codes of conduct.
The company has written 191 national standards and 115 industrial standards and has been a key player in Shanghai's development of an intelligent transportation system.
"We are responsible for Shanghai's first intelligent road, Baiyin Road, in Jiading District," Wu said during his speech in the main forum.
"We created the command center of Shanghai transportation commission, the most fully comprehensive transportation operations coordination center in China, and the city's traffic information platform, the country's earliest big data base on urban transportation."
Shanghai's development of intelligent transportation has been in the fast lane in recent years.
In February, the Pudong New Area released a regulation promoting innovation of unmanned driving and intelligent and connected vehicles.
Shanghai's first batch of ICV taxis were also approved to begin operation in mid-April in Jiading District.
The city has released road-testing approvals and pilot plates to 624 intelligent and connected vehicles from 28 enterprises since last year, with a total testing mileage of over 14.22 million kilometers.
There are 926 roads in the city available for intelligent travel, said a city official.
