Smart transport for smart cities

By Mariam (Masho) Dzneladze March 5, 2025
A serene, eco-friendly city with green hills, wind turbines, solar panels, and modern buildings. A cyclist rides along a curving road, while a car drives past under a bright sky with clouds and a hot air balloon.

This article was written in 2020, and the mentioned cities have changed since – some for the better, some for the worse.

Have you ever walked down a street in your city and asked yourself:

Who made this pavement so narrow? Who decided to remove the bus stop that had been there for decades? Who thought it was a good idea to cut down the trees and widen the road? You are probably not alone – most people resent decisions made without consulting them or offering any explanation. Nobody tries to persuade us that a particular decision is justified. Instead, our protests and petitions are ignored. In most Eastern European cities, there is no dialogue between the municipality and its citizens, and so their needs go unmet. I have lived in three big cities: Tbilisi, where I was born and grew up; Prague, where I lived for two and a half years; and Belgrade, where I moved in September 2019.

Tbilisi

I remember when the street I lived on ran in both directions. Then one day, to my younger self’s surprise, it became one-way. More and more streets turned one-way; more crossroads got traffic lights with timers, so even when no cars were around, you had to wait to cross. More and more people moved to the capital because the government neglected the rural areas, and ugly buildings kept going up. The tram lines that once covered the whole city vanished in the 1990s – people stripped them for scrap metal during the severe economic crisis that followed the civil war, independence from the “Socialist” USSR, and the slide into capitalism.

Tbilisi does have a metro today, with two lines, but it falls well short of what the population needs and leaves many neighbourhoods unserved. There are some buses, but far more “Marshrutkas” – the scourge of post-Soviet countries. These cramped minibuses are wholly uncomfortable for anyone taller than 175cm. You flag them down anywhere in the middle of the road by raising your hand, much like hailing a taxi in an American film, but the resemblance ends there. Previously, many small companies competed with each other, racing to pick up as many passengers as possible. Now all Marshrutkas belong to the Tbilisi Transport Company – a privately owned monopoly that shows little concern for passengers or workers. These minibuses are usually packed and driven recklessly. Cycling infrastructure is practically nonexistent. At best, a bike lane appears on one side of a street in a handful of places, so you can ride more or less safely from one end of that street to the other. Some brave souls cycle all over Tbilisi, risking their lives in doing so. A rail line runs the length of Georgia all the way to Azerbaijan, crossing the capital from north to south-east, with several stops near metro stations – but the city government decided to relocate it away from the city centre to the far side of the Tbilisi Sea, making it harder for everyone to reach. There are reports that this was done to free up land along the railway corridor for sale. Another “smart” decision by the city government was to fill in kilometres of an already-dug tunnel intended for a third metro line. Taken together, Tbilisi’s transport system nudges you towards buying a car – and for the roughly 65% of the population who cannot afford one, it remains an ordeal.

Prague

When I moved to the Czech Republic and started getting around the city, I was genuinely astonished. Could a transport system actually work – and be a real system? There is a metro, trams, buses, and trains, all interconnected and accessed through a single, simple payment method that was, incidentally, introduced by the Green Party (in case you were wondering whether public transport is political). Services run on time, and the vehicles are clean and spacious.

Only rarely, during rush hour, do you need to ask one or two people to move so you can get off. The price is more than reasonable for the quality of service. All stations are clearly connected to one another, and even without a smartphone you can read a map at any station showing which bus, tram, or metro line serves which part of the city. You can also download the Czech transport app or check connections on Google Maps. The same card – the “lítačka” – even covers the cable car.

To be clear, Prague’s transport system has plenty of room to improve. Cycling, for instance, is quite daunting for beginners: there are not many bike lanes, and where they do exist they sometimes disappear mid-street, leaving you stranded and unsure where to go. You can take your bike on public transport for a small surcharge, and free of charge on some trains. The night bus network could also be strengthened. Even so, Prague’s public transport system ought to serve as a model for other Eastern European capitals, whose decision-makers have yet to treat decent, accessible mobility as a human right.

Belgrade

Moving to Belgrade was an exciting experience, but after living in Prague, adjusting to the car-centric capital of Serbia was hard. Here, as in Tbilisi, people are pushed into buying cars, paying for petrol, staying sober at night – or driving drunk, paying fines for driving drunk, and paying fines for parking in the “wrong” places. Where else would they park if the authorities push everyone to own a car? There simply cannot be as many parking spaces as there are residents. Every morning, on my 30-minute walk from my flat to the office, I would pass four or five inspectors checking number plates and handing out fines. In Belgrade I became wary again. You never know from which corner a car will lurch out, because everyone is in a rush – rushing to shave a few seconds off each junction, only to sit for minutes, or even an hour, in traffic jams elsewhere in the city.

The problem in Belgrade goes beyond the sheer number of cars and the shortage of public transport. The city itself has some strangely planned features: tram lines run down the middle of the road in some areas and along the sides in others, which forces trams to move slower than cars, and parked vehicles frequently obstruct them. Belgrade’s metro is now under construction – let us hope it is well planned and eases the city’s congested traffic. Cycling in Belgrade, much like in Tbilisi, is a fairly extreme pursuit, though I see many people doing it – mostly in summer, but in winter too.

Lessons to be learned

What can Tbilisi, Prague, and Belgrade teach us about cities? We Greens agree that urban planning should involve the inhabitants of a city as fully as possible – they are, after all, the ones who will use its transport. Not everyone needs a degree in urban planning, but everyone can articulate their needs, and it is the city’s duty to address them. It then falls to the planner to translate those needs into urban interventions that deliver the required change.

One of the most pressing issues facing Eastern European cities is the deterioration of public transport. This is the problem any visitor notices first. In every Eastern European city I have been to, transport falls short. Below I set out what city governments need to do to turn public transport from an ordeal into a service people actually want to use – in six simple truths.

Simple truth #1: A lack of adequate public transport and cycling infrastructure leads people to buy more and more cars.

Straightforward, isn’t it? How can we blame people for refusing to pack into buses so full that if you fainted from the heat in August in Tbilisi or Belgrade, there would be no room to fall? When the scramble to board and exit metro cars grows too exhausting, a small, cheap car looks like an easy fix. You have your own vehicle and travel from A to B without pressing against six strangers. Except not everyone can afford a car – and even if they could, the traffic jams would be endless.

Simple truth #2: No matter how much you widen roads, you cannot keep pace with ever-growing demand for car space.

There is simply not enough room in the city. Even if there were, you would need to weigh up the social costs of excessively wide, motorway-like streets. It has also been shown that adding car lanes makes driving more attractive rather than easing congestion – just think of Los Angeles.

So what can be done? One answer is to stop squandering taxpayers’ money and invest it in public transport infrastructure instead – bring in professionals to study the city and its travel patterns and develop the best mass-transit solutions. Another answer is technological. Cities now collect vast amounts of data, making it straightforward to estimate passenger numbers on public transport. Planners can use this data to decide on bus frequencies, numbers, and the locations of new bus and tram lines, improving cost-efficiency in the process.

Simple truth #3: Private transport feels good.

We associate private transport not only with convenience but also with comfort. Yet bicycles are also private transport, even if many people do not think of them that way. A bike gives you the same flexibility and independence as a car, and riding one costs almost nothing. Of course, not everyone can cover 10km a day by bike – which is why bikes should be allowed on public transport. This would let people combine modes of transport, opening up more routes and making it easier to arrive on time. People should be encouraged to cycle. A bike-rental scheme would help, and smart-city tools such as a digital map of rental stations and bike lanes would be a welcome extra.

Simple truth #4: People need to know where they are going.

Online maps have transformed how we perceive cities and how we move through them. If we want citizens to navigate confidently, we need apps that show transport in real time, display schedules, and suggest the best connections. Cycling should be included as an option: a map showing bike routes sorted by difficulty, gradient, and journey time – like this one: mapa.prahounakole.cz, which already exists in Prague.

Simple truth #5: Combining different modes of transport often produces the fastest route.

Existing train routes should therefore be folded into the city transport network. In most cases they already pass through the city, making them a fast, practical way to connect nearby areas. Before I discovered the bike-and-train combination from my flat in Prague to my office, my commute by bus, metro, and bus again took up to an hour. Afterwards it took just 25 minutes. By the same logic, ferries and cable cars can be woven into the city transport offer depending on the local landscape, allowing residents to cover long distances quickly.

Simple truth #6: People like to walk if there is space to walk.

The five previous findings point towards reclaiming more space for pedestrians. Some streets can be reserved for pedestrians and cyclists, with access for drivers limited to those who live or work there. Barcelona is pursuing this approach with considerable success – the pedestrianised 3×3 blocks have become livelier and safer.

In place of a conclusion, let me restate the hallmarks of a good public transport system. Let us hope we will one day see these realised in our cities.

This article was initially published by Cooperation and Development Network. You can read the full publication at https://www.cdnee.org/publications