HOW CITIES CONNECT It takes a village to create a connected city. Data comes from companies and flows through servers owned and operated by government agencies. Sounds simple, but the process is complex. Its smooth operation is critical to the future of transportation. In Las Vegas and southern Nevada, local officials established a collaborative Freeway and Arterial System of Transportation (FAST) under the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada that acts as the brains for traffic operations and data management, including safety and location messages and live camera feeds. Here's an example. 1 2 3 4 14 A self-driving shuttle and a connected car separately communicate with a traffic light via dedicated short-range communication. The traffic light intersection uses a fiberoptic cable to tell the Las Vegas central traffic servers where the bus and the car are and other traffic information. The Regional Transportation Commission serves that message wirelessly to the cloud, separate private and public data servers, and local emergency authorities. The bus and car locations are carried by cellular connection from the cloud through a cell tower to a connected Audi vehicle approaching the intersection. shift * july 2018