Not many entities can soar above transportation systems at 30,000 feet and still make changes that improve the rider experience at the bottom line, but that is exactly what IBM does every day. Known as ‘Big Blue,’ the former hardware maker sold off its personal computer business to Lenovo in 2004 and has reinvented itself as a consultancy — offering transportation solutions and software that affects the lives of tens of millions of people each and every day.

Building upon decades of experience with network mechanics and business systems, IBM has thrown themselves at the task of becoming an indispensable partner in system-wide overhauls of transportation networks, creating smarter commutes, more efficient supply chains and cleaner, more environmentally sound transit systems.

Raul Arce is the global vice president of IBM travel and transportation and he spoke with AltTransport about what a technology company can do to make travel and transportation smarter.

AltTransport: What is IBM’s Smarter Transportation Initative?

Raul Arce: We really break it out into two major buckets. One is the private transportation side of it. That’s really the commuter or the person taking their automobile driving to work, or the person in the city taking the light rail system.

Raul Arce, IBM vice president of travel and transportation

Then there’s the public side of it, which is really where we focus, which is more the business side of transportation. The Freight logistics companies, the distance rail systems and to a certain extent, the airline systems. Smarter Transportation for us, as it relates to those businesses, really cuts across three major domains.

What are those the three domains of Smarter Transportation and how do they interact?

If you look at our overall Smarter Planet initiative, there are three things we really try to drive home. Those three things are: instrumented, intelligent and interconnected.

If I look at the ability to be interconnected, where I know the status of traffic signals, I know the status of video cameras that can show congestion, if I know the potential of road closures or construction, or let’s say I’ve had a rain or flooding in a particular part of the city that I can avoid.

Instrumented: That goes back to all of these devices being interconnected on the Internet.

Intelligent: We have software that’s actually looking at these things and making real-time decisions and making the recommendation back to the scheduler or the driver saying ‘this is our recommendation for a new route.’

So how would that work in a real-world scenario?

So, for example, if I’m a UPS driver or a FedEx driver and I have a certain route to execute against, and someone in the middle of the route decites, I need to either pick up another package, or I need to deliver another package, how do I dynamically reroute everything so that I’m optimizing, avoiding traffic congestion, reducing my carbon burn, improving my per mileage, and getting the most of of my equipment.