Transport Committee on Feb. 21st, 2017

[Angelo Iacono, Liberal, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I also want to thank all the witnesses who have joined us this morning to share their expertise on smart cities.

My first question is for you, Mr. Picard.

In your presentation, you said that legislation should be enacted to standardize technologies, so that cities can become smart. What did you mean by that?

[Guy Picard]

I emphasized the fact that a number of American cities currently have private service providers such as uberHOP, Lyft and Bridj, to name only a few. The arrival of those providers on the market may lead to a cannibalization of our clientele. Those people set up shop around very lucrative routes. I am not saying that's a bad thing, but there should at least be some coordination between what those companies are doing and what public transit authorities are doing.

Streets are public goods. So anyone who wants to be involved in the business of transporting people should share their data, so as to enable the public authority to improve its transportation system.

I don't think we can ignore those new players. They must be seen not as adversaries, but as providers of complementary services for the last few kilometres that are sometimes difficult to cover using public transportation.

Data must be shared if we are to successfully work together. However, those kinds of businesses are jealously guarding their data at this time. If we want to provide a transportation service that is efficient and effective, we need to exchange information with those private businesses.

[Angelo Iacono, Liberal, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

How is Laval's private sector currently investing in research and development in this field? Can you give us a few concrete examples?

[Guy Picard]

The City of Victoriaville, the City of Laval and Coop Taxi Laval—the corporation responsible for taxis in Laval—have formed a partnership in order to develop applications that could make life easier for users. One example is an application that would enable them to complete the first segment of the journey by taxi or by shared taxi, and then transfer to the bus system. We are currently thinking about what the future could look like with that kind of a solution.

We also have partnerships with Communauto and Coop Taxi Laval to figure out how we can work together. The idea is to try to set guidelines for the various players so as to avoid a chaotic situation. We already have chaos on the bridges and we would like to improve things going forward.

[Angelo Iacono, Liberal, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

What do you think are the most important lessons to be learned if a city wants to become smart? What is your advice? What things should be looked at? What should the city pay attention to? What should it change or modify?

[Guy Picard]

I think that the client must be kept in mind. We should always try to maximize services for the client and provide a service that is as effective and as efficient as possible. We have to be creative. Some small elements aside, we have not invented any of the new technologies implemented in Laval's public transit system. I believe that one of the key elements of a smart city is to have leaders who are smart enough to seek out technologies that are used elsewhere and implement them in their city.

[Angelo Iacono, Liberal, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

Speaking of Laval, you mentioned technologies that you use a lot. Aside from public transportation, do you think other services could be operated through the technologies you have developed?

[Guy Picard]

Absolutely. The traffic light prioritization system we have established for our buses can actually also be used to improve the synchronisation of traffic signals for automobile transportation. We are already seeing that drivers are wasting less time on the road. Thanks to this kind of technology, the overall traffic flow will be improved for Laval residents.

[Angelo Iacono, Liberal, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

In the context of smart cities, where do you think Laval stands, Mr. Picard? For example, is it ahead or behind Ottawa and Montreal?

[Guy Picard]

I could not speak for the city in a general sense, but when it comes to public transit, I am sure that Laval is among the top five cities in North America.

[Angelo Iacono, Liberal, Alfred-Pellan, QC]

What do you think are the key next steps in the deployment of smart technologies? Where do you think Laval will be in the next 10 or 15 years? What do you anticipate for the STL?

[Guy Picard]

I anticipate smart applications and transportation packages that include a certain number of trips by taxi, public transportation and car sharing. That kind of a package is a solution we are working on.

There is also a lot of talk about autonomous vehicles. I think we should start working on autonomous buses. Buses have an advantage over cars: they always travel along routes that are relatively stable, in lanes that can be reserved. We are currently looking at that. Those technologies won't be implemented within a year or two, but we are thinking about ways we could establish autonomous and smart bus systems that could create a feeder system on our main lines.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Luc Berthold]

Thank you very much, Mr. Picard. I think you just got a reaction from some committee members by talking about autonomous buses.

We will now give the floor to Mr. Aubin for six minutes.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank our guests for sharing their expertise.

My first question is for Mr. MacKay.

I had an idea while I was listening to you, and I told myself that, if I had this idea, millions of people have probably had it before me. In this transition to electric cars, we are often being asked to change our behaviours or to plan, for example, to stop for lunch at a restaurant that has a charging station so that we can continue driving. However, one place I know my car will lose time is when I put money into a parking meter.

Is there a type of parking meter that is both a parking meter and a charging station? If so, has it been implemented in any municipalities?

[James MacKay]

You are talking about something that we are very much in the middle of at the moment. There is a unique relationship between charging and parking. Essentially, they go hand in hand, and MacKay is in the prototype stage of a parking meter that charges your vehicle as well.

There are situations where you cannot resell electricity as a city, but you can charge for parking and provide the electricity for free. In our parking equipment when payment is rendered it can turn on a charger. When the payment essentially expires, the charger turns off.

So we can offer a unique piece of equipment, and there is not one in the industry right now who is parking-based with the means of having the general public being able to pay for it. It is not using a closed loop system where you have to sign up and get a membership card, but one where you can go to the meter, pull out your wallet, use your Visa, MasterCard, coins, cash, and pay for the charging or parking, whatever you're looking for.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Thank you.

[James MacKay]

You're welcome.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

My second question is for Mr. Lazenby.

In your presentation, you said something I found very interesting. Since the beginning of our study, I feel that we have seen many technologies, each more interesting than the last, but authorities lack the intelligence to operate or coordinate all those technological applications. That creates a huge gap between cities that are already referred to as smart and other municipalities that are struggling to get Internet service.

What do you think the first steps of coordinated development are when it comes to smart cities?

[Bruce Lazenby]

That is a good question. If it's okay with you, I will answer in English.

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

No problem.

[Bruce Lazenby]

I sit on the board of the Intelligent Community Forum, out of New York City. You may know them as the ones that announce the 21 smartest cities every year, and then the top seven, and then finally the most intelligent city. We have a process for evaluating these cities. We began that process by simply measuring bandwidth. If you're connected, you have the infrastructure in place to do this; but that infrastructure has to be coordinated.

I talked earlier about roads and other utilities.

What kind of car do you drive, sir?

[Robert Aubin, NDP, Trois-Rivières, QC]

I drive a Subaru Legacy.

[Bruce Lazenby]

I'm sorry, “You can't drive on the Toyota roads or the Ford roads, but only the Subaru roads. The more roads Subaru builds, the better your life is going to be.” That's insane. None of us would ever expect that, but it used to be that way back in the day. If I built a road, it was my road. If you wanted to ride on my road, you had to pay me to ride on my road. I could decide who could and couldn't ride on my road. That was back at the time of Confederation. Of course, we realized that was insane, so we stopped doing that.

Recently, I joined one of the largest land developers and builders in the city of Ottawa, the Regional Group. We're building a big residential area right now of 3,000 homes. One thing that surprises me is that the city is going to tell us exactly how much parkland we need, exactly how long the roads need to be and exactly how high the curbs need to be and exactly where the sidewalks need to be; exactly how much power we need to put in and where we can can can't put those power lines; and exactly the amount of water that has to go in, but they're silent on bandwidth. But bandwidth is the new utility. It's the new energy. It's the new infrastructure upon which everything else is going to have to sit.

Mr. MacKay, with his parking meters, has a big bandwidth issue, I'm sure, and probably pays a fortune for connectivity through Rogers or Bell or somebody else. It is crazy, in my opinion, that we have not yet said that we need to control this, that we need to regulate this.

I spent 20 years in government, and one of the questions we always had was about what government could do versus what it should do. I think what we have all agreed to is that government should be making sure the infrastructure is in place, which the private sector can then build on. The infrastructure part that we're missing right now is that bandwidth.

As I said the other day, it would be comical if it weren't so sad that Hydro Ottawa, OC Transpo, Bell, Telus, and Rogers were all digging up the same streets laying fibre, side by side and not sharing amongst each other. It's crazy. The best cities in the world are doing that.

Chattanooga called themselves the Gig City. Now they call themselves 10-Gig City, because they can provide 10 gigabytes to desktops for $200 a month. That is insane. The really crazy part is that when they cut the ribbon on that about a year ago, my board chair, Dave Ritonja from Ottawa, was there cutting the ribbon. Why? Because those switches are made in Ottawa. They're being deployed in Chattanooga by Power Corporation. So it was the guys who own the telephone lines, who own all the rights of way, who laid the fibre. The biggest expense was their legal fees suing Comcast, because Comcast was trying to get them to stop doing it.

If there's one thing the federal government does have control over, it is the CRTC ruling on how we can find a way to take the issue of proprietary bandwidth locations off the table and realize that we need to treat bandwidth just like water, roads, and everything else.

[The Vice-Chair, Conservative, Luc Berthold]

Mr. Lazenby, thank you very much.

Here, we have only one “lane”, and we take turns using it. It is now Mr. Fraser's turn.

You have the floor for six minutes.

[Sean Fraser, Liberal, Central Nova, NS]

Great, and thanks very much.

I'll begin with Mr. MacKay.

One of the aspects of the study that I don't think we've touched on as much is the ability of companies based in small communities to take part in the economic benefits of the so-called smart economy.

Mr. MacKay, could you elaborate on some of the challenges that you, with a small-town business, face in trying to take part in the smart economy, and maybe suggest what the federal government could do to assist companies trying to grow in this industry?