(upbeat music)
This time we reveal
how city planners keep millions on the move.
Everything is instant.
Everything has to be now.
City life is I want it, I go and get it.
From the extreme climbers
maintaining San Francisco's Bay Bridge.
All you have to ask yourself is,
well, does my family, does my wife and boys
go over the bridge?
How much do I value their life?
To the hidden army
that keeps London's buses running.
Have to make sure everything leaves on time,
all routes, all services.
There's hardly any gap in any service.
And scientists fighting the crisis
with inspired solutions for the future.
Something that's going to transform the world
and it's something that's going to happen.
It's not a dream, it's going to happen.
(intense music)
Half the world's population
live in urban areas.
And the number is rising every second.
Each day is a race against time
to house, feed, water and move more than 3.5 billion people.
It's an impossible daily challenge.
The slightest glitch can bring a city to its knees.
And every 24 hours,
it has to be done all over again.
This is the story of how cities work.
San Francisco.
Every day tens of thousands of commuters
pour into the city over its two bridges.
The busiest is the San Francisco to Oakland Bay Bridge,
which carries over a quarter of a million cars every day.
But, like every structure in the Bay area,
it's under attack from a natural enemy, rust.
Today an inspection team
is heading for its massive western span.
It's a high risk operation for Rachel Donovan
and her team.
All kinds of terrible things could happen, so,
everything high, if we were to drop something
and if it were to fall in the traffic,
you know, it would easily break a windshield.
So, one of the things we're doing,
in addition to making sure we have
all of our safety gear for ourselves,
is we're making sure that everything we have
is tethered on a string of some kind.
Anything could become a lethal projectile
if dropped from up here. (dramatic music)
They're aiming for the top of the towers
which soar 160 meters above the bay.
There aren't any lifts.
The only way to the top is up a cable
that's just 80 centimeters wide.
As you can see, it's a little difficult
walking on the cable.
And we're walking on a circle, basically, so,
trying to stay on top of it.
It's not very wide.
At this height,
any fall will almost certainly be fatal,
so they're clipped on at all times.
As they get higher, the risk increases.
As you can see,
the cable starts to get steeper and steeper
as we reach near the top of the towers,
so makes it a little bit more difficult
once we get closer to the tower to hike up.
(tense music)
After the long climb,
they reach the relative safety of the summit.
Now, the real work begins.
If left unchecked, rust could force the bridge to close,
cutting off the city's most important commuter link
and endangering the lives of those who use it.
Our role in the maintenance of them
is to find defects.
In most cases, we don't find anything real bad
and that's the whole idea of maintenance.
When you're finding something small and minute,
get it fixed then so it doesn't deteriorate further
and become a full-blown issue.
To find those defects,
there's only one way to go: down.
And this time, they won't have the safety of the cable
under their feet.
They'll be abseiling.
Chris Elbo is an experienced abseiler.
But he and his teammates still have to look out
for each other.
Periodically, you have to check
your buddy's gear as you're checking your own.
'Cause a lot of times when you're out here,
you're out in the sun,
you've been climbing a few hours,
you might miss something so,
it's always a good idea to check each other's work.
And if things do go wrong up here,
they're on their own.
We are all ready in the event of an emergency
to rescue each other.
Someone could drop in and help the other person
who is on the rope, perhaps,
if they are unconscious or whatever,
we are trained for first aid CPR
so we can provide that right on the spot.
The two-man descent team is finally ready.
If anything's going to go wrong,
it's likely to happen now.
Just a few meters down, Chris detects a problem.
His safety rope is caught up.
You know what? I don't like this.
His team looks on helplessly.
(tense music)
Moments later, his rope untangled,
Chris is safe to continue.
While traffic thunders beneath them,
the inspectors record any corrosion on the tower face.
For Edward Thometz, the importance of what they do
outweighs the risk.
All you have to ask yourself is,
well, does my family, does my wife and boys
go over the bridge?
How much do I value their life?
There ya have it.
That's how thorough I'm gonna be.
Finding corrosion is only the start of the job.
If it's not dealt with,
rust will eat away at the structure,
so Chris and the team call in the paint crew
to tackle it.
Today's job, a patch under the main highway.
To fix it, the paint team need to get to it.
But the only access is from the road itself.
Shutting down the bridge would cause chaos.
Without this bridge,
it would probably cause numerous backups
on the other arteries.
So, they close a single lane.
This is a very risky job
considering that each driver that passes through
is a potential hazard for us
in terms of wiping us out.
I've seen several accidents since I've been here
a little less than two years.
This time, no such trouble.
And it's over to the paint crew.
Between them, Randy Crawford and Floyd Lacy
have over 14 years experience on the bridge.
The worst enemy is probably the weather.
The fog comes in, it just sits on it
and that's what creates the rust.
They call it volatile organic compounds,
salts, bird crap, smog, all those things
mixed with the moisture sit on the steel
and eat it up.
We get a low charge through the bridge
that's caused just by the wind and the currents
that you get electrolysis at the bottom,
you get all kind of things acting on the steel
to tear it apart.
It's a dangerous job.
They have to clip on to avoid falling
but that's not the only hazard.
The old paint work contains toxic lead.
So, they have to suit up in protective clothing.
Once ready, it's time to apply the protective red primer.
To reach this stage, they've already spent
a week preparing the surface.
It's a lot of work, a lot of hand tools.
The other days, we're, like I said,
on our knees, on our back with hand tools, grinders,
roto hammers, needle guns,
working the iron.
It's loud, it's dusty.
Then we're wearing different respirators with air fed,
keeps us safe from the lead.
The protective clothing
makes a tough job even harder.
It's stifling.
You're in a sauna.
Your shoes will fill up with water,
just your sweat.
I lost 12 pounds my first month last summer
just doing that.
You can't breathe.
Once the primer is on,
Floyd and Randy will use a special kind of aluminum paint
to protect the steel from corrosive elements.
Once finished, this area should remain rust-free
for the next 15 years.
The war against corrosion will never be over,
but for Floyd and Randy, there is a plus side.
This is somewhere not anybody can be at.
This is kind of an amazing thing to me
to be working up here.
It's the best views in the bay, though,
being up here all day long.
Rust is a menace,
but the bridge faces a far more instant,
catastrophic danger.
It can reek havoc in seconds.
And tackling it will take way more
than a simple lick of paint.
San Francisco sits on two major fault lines
in the Earth's crust,
placing it in the shadow of a constant threat.
Earthquakes.
On October the 17th, 1989,
a 6.9 magnitude earthquake ripped through the Bay area.
A 250 ton section
of the Bay Bridge's eastern span collapsed.
A driver was one of 63 fatalities that day,
and the bridge was closed for a month.
San Francisco will experience another earthquake.
When it does, it can't afford to lose the use
of this major commuter link again.
The solution?
To replace the old eastern span
with a whole new, earthquake-proof bridge.
The man commuters are depending on to deliver it
is seismic engineer, Marwan Nader.
The old bridge, obviously was built in the 1930s
and back then, as engineers,
we did have a good understanding
of what earthquake loads are like.
This is one of the most advanced bridges
in the world.
Today we have a much better understanding of that
and we have good understanding of ability to model these
and analytically analyze them
in terms of the forces and displacements.
Nader and his team have designed a structure
that looks like a regular suspension bridge
but it's packed with life-saving innovations.
Andrew Gordon, a manager on the project for five years,
is familiar with its hidden inner workings.
This is one of the most seismically advanced bridges
in the world
and it's been designed to withstand the largest possible
ground motions from an earthquake
within a 1500 year period.
These internal tunnels will be key
to the bridge's survival.
People think of bridges probably being solid structures
but there's actually these tunnels
running through the bridge decks
of the new east span and that's for routine maintenance,
just ongoing upkeep of the bridge,
but also in the event of an earthquake,
workers can come inside and check for damage
on the inside of the bridge as well as on the outside.
Marwan and his team used computer models
to predict where that damage might occur.
The computer analysis that we did
models the geometric stiffness of all the elements
and all the forces and the stresses
and the strains are captured.
What we see here is what's going on
underneath the roadway where the expansion joints
are going going in and out, closing in and out,
about a meter, meter and a half,
and this is the hinge pipe beam
that's keeping the two roadway structures together.
They're basically large metal dowels
and they're designed to act like the bumper on your car
or even a lightening rod.
They're designed to fail.
They are here to absorb and take damage from the earthquake
to protect the rest of the bridge.
So, that's why these exist
'cause these are easy to access, easy to fix.
All of this hasn't come cheap.
It's taken 15 years and cost $6.4 billion to build.
But with human lives and city transport links at risk,
it's money will spent.
So much has been built in
to assuring that this bridge can withstand
any size earthquake,
or at least the largest earthquake
within a 1500 year period.
So, again, if there is an earthquake,
this is probably where you're gonna wanna be.
(lively music)
Most city bridges exist
to allow huge numbers of cars to get into and out of them.
Once in, sooner or later,
the cars have to stop somewhere.
One third of all city congestion
is caused by people driving around,
looking for parking spaces.
It's a massive global problem.
Here in Birmingham,
in the industrial heart of England,
engineers have come up with an ingenious solution.
Up to 2,000 people live, work, or shop
in the city center's Cube Building.
Parking should be a nightmare,
but thanks to revolutionary new technology,
it's far from it.
The primary driver for us
was making sure that this building, at its base,
had retail spaces and things other than
a big car park entrance with a ramp.
In conventional car parks,
almost half the space is used for access
rather than parking.
So, the designers here did away with the ramp all together.
The car park parks your car for you.
Well, the car park here is a bit different
from the traditional car parking system.
You park in one of four garages,
swipe your card, and then machines take your car away
and park it for you.
A robotic sensor checks that your car
is in exactly the right position.
Then a lift takes it to the parking level
where it's spun through 180 degrees
so it's ready to drive straight out on leaving,
and transported safely to a parking space.
More than 320 cars can fit into the limited space
under the cube.
This system is run entirely by computer
requiring virtually no on-hand human supervision.
Just two maintenance visits a month
by specialist engineers.
It's really good.
This is the first one in the country of this size.
It's the first pilot lift system of this nature.
The system runs itself pretty much.
It has no manned personnel at any time.
If there is any slight problems, they'll call us.
And we can operate the system remotely
and it's fully self sustaining.
To retrieve your car,
you simply swipe the card.
The robotic lift collects it and brings it to you.
Cities all over the world are starting to catch on.
When we were researching this technology
we went round places like Barcelona, Budapest,
where they're used a lot.
So, I think, because of the demand on city space,
actually, that they will have to get used more and more.
Robotic car parks may work to solve
part of the problem,
but the number of drivers on our streets
is still increasing at a worrying rate.
When the car was invented,
it revolutionized the way we think about travel.
There are now over a billion worldwide.
They've become victims of their own success,
especially in cities
where people are becoming tired of their dominance.
Metropolises, the big cities, they all have the problem,
the people are driving, one person in one car.
If you look at the statistics for London, for example,
is like 1.2 persons per car
and that's not sustainable.
An extreme solution
would be to banish the car from cities entirely.
In Berlin, engineers think they have a better idea,
to eradicate, not the car, but the driver.
If cars drove themselves,
more people would use them like taxis.
There would be fewer on the roads
and cities would flow more smoothly.
Here, the driverless car is no sci-fi dream.
It's on the road in the heart of the city.
Today, safety driver, Fritz Ulbrich,
and his co-pilot Sam Shaher,
are test driving this revolutionary new vehicle
in one of Berlin's busiest and more iconic locations,
the Brandenburg Gate.
Okay, then speed to one, go.
And the car's driverless.
I'm not touching anything at all,
not the steering wheel,
not the brake or the gas.
This is a fully automated car
that can see, think, and drive on its own.
The onboard technology was devised
by Berlin Free University's artificial intelligence expert,
Raul Rojas.
What you're are seeing here
is the brain of the car, if you want.
We have a GPS navigation unit.
This is for locating the car in the city
and knowing where it is.
We have computers, several computers.
This, for example, is for processing the video cameras.
The laptop on the seat, that's the driver.
The computer decides which is the best command,
should I stop, should I accelerate,
should I take the next corner?
Putting a computer in the driver's seat
could change urban car usage forever.
You can go with several people at the same time
so that nobody's driving,
everybody's enjoying the ride
and everybody's going faster
because there will be less cars in the streets.
It's a bold vision for the future of transport.
Out on the road, the car is getting to grips
with its surroundings,
using a remarkable piece of technology.
This is a very special laser scanner
because it sends 64 rays of light
to watch the environment.
We get one million measurements per second
of everything around the car,
so that the computer can make
a three dimensional reconstruction of the environment.
All of which is fed into the central computer.
What I can see on this display is actually
a three dimensional view of the roads we're passing
and the cars that are nearby.
The ones that are interfering our plan
are directly in front of us are marked in red.
Sam keeps an eye on other vehicles.
Not because the robotic car is unpredictable,
but because his fellow humans are.
There are many things that can go wrong in traffic
because it depends not just on you,
it depends on the rest of the drivers,
that they keep the rules.
Computers are very good at keeping the rules actually
so they keep the lane, they keep the distance.
Humans are not very good at obeying the rules.
They always go into your way if they see that you leave
a big gap in front of your car,
then they try to occupy that gap.
Fritz must remain alert.
I still want to keep my hands close to the steering wheel
because I'm the safety driver.
I'm not here for fun.
There's some situation where they could happen a crash,
I have to take over control
because we don't want to risk anything.
As they get deeper into the city,
the risk level increases.
And I have to concentrate a little bit, so,
watch if other cars come too close to us,
like him.
What is he doing?
He was changing lanes without looking
and turning on the turning signal.
So, I took over control because I wasn't really sure
if the car would have avoided it.
There's a lot of responsibility
on Fritz' shoulders.
We always have a safety driver behind the steering wheel
when we are driving, because this is a requirement
from the City of Berlin.
The person will not be doing anything,
so we'll be just watching the car.
Despite the dangers,
this mass of moving cars and pedestrians
is a perfect training ground for the development
of driverless technology.
But there's one familiar urban obstacle
the car has yet to understand.
Road works.
Okay, right now we are in the middle of the city
and right now I'm a little bit nervous
because there's so many construction sites.
And I have to take over control
because this construction site here,
because the car wants to go there.
And it thinks there is a lane
because in its map, there is a lane there.
And it's occupied by construction site
and the car does not know what to do.
It's critical Fritz is able
to take over at a moment's notice.
The slightest collision could cause
thousands of Euros worth of damage
to the car's sensors and computer equipment.
This is a very expensive car.
The total cost, just of the car,
is like 400,000 Euros,
and we have put the work of 20 people over six years.
Driving around road works
may be a current challenge for the car navigation system,
but the team is already working on a solution.
Future research, we plan to address this
by creating a dynamic map
where informations like construction sites
you get from other cars, from other drivers,
over car to car communication,
or from the construction site itself.
Driving through busy traffic
is one half of today's test.
(energetic music)
To develop the car's full driverless technology,
the team's set up camp in the grounds
of the now disused Tempelhof Airport.
We need to test at Tempelhof Airport
because it's a big space,
there's nothing there so we can drive safely.
Every piece of new technology is tested
first in the computer and computer simulations,
then it's tested in Tempelhof
with no people, no cars,
with just a big plain space.
And then when we are confident,
we go to the streets.
This wide open space allows the car
to drive at speed, enabling its software components
to be tested.
For today I think the testing was very successful.
Unusually successful,
but sometimes failure is success
if you find the error.
A few more years of development are likely
before driverless cars will hit our roads for real.
Everything we test very intensively
because for getting this kind of technology on the road,
for having it as a commercial product,
you need to run thousands and even millions of kilometers
on the streets, and then show that it's safe.
But, for Rojas,
the wait will have been worthwhile.
Something that's going to transform the world,
and it's something that's going to happen.
It's not a dream, it's going to happen.
Keeping traffic moving
within cities is one thing,
but as our world becomes more interconnected,
high speed travel between cities
is increasingly important.
Spain's two biggest cities are Madrid and Barcelona.
For years, overland travel between them
took a whole day by train.
So, people tended to fly instead.
The communication between Madrid and Barcelona
was done mainly by plane
because we had what we call aerial bridge
between Madrid and Barcelona.
But air travel has a serious drawback.
If you go to a plane, you have to wait,
you have to go through different security controls
and things like that.
For business travelers,
time wasted is money lost.
We needed something more efficient.
That something was high speed rail.
Over 3.7 billion Euros were spent
laying 804 kilometers of specialist train track.
The trains that go on these tracks
can travel at the speed of Formula 1 racing cars,
making them some of the fastest in the world.
Dozens depart each day from Barcelona's Sants Rail Station.
(Felix speaking in Spanish)
Before high speed trains arrived,
this journey took seven hours by rail.
That time has been slashed to under 2.5 hours
by trains that can travel at 300 kilometers an hour.
Those speeds would be impossible
if it weren't for the work done here,
the Santa Catalina Rail Depot in Madrid.
It's a maintenance hub for high speed trains
on the network,
and one of the biggest of its kind in Spain.
Every night trains arrive for essential checks and repairs.
But the engineers don't have long.
Many of the trains have to be back on the tracks
and transporting passengers by the morning.
So, they work through the night.
The wheels suffer greatest wear and tear.
After it's been in a hot conduct with the track,
what you need to do
is to give it its original shape,
or giving it profile, that is how we call it,
so it can run smoothly over the track
at speeds over 300 kilometers an hour.
Imperfections in the shape of the wheels
cause loads on the axle and suspension.
So, there original shape has to be restored
using a lathe.
To save time, it's done on raised tracks
without the need to remove the wheels.
Before the train can leave,
engineers also have to deal
with its other major safety feature, the brakes.
The train has two main braking systems.
One is the electrical one
and the other one is the mechanical one.
Both systems must work together.
The electrical brakes slow the train
by reducing the energy emitted from the motor.
But to halt the train completely,
the mechanical brakes have to be employed.
If the driver is using the mechanical braking system,
these two pieces will come together
and press the disk
and take the train to a complete stop.
This takes its toll
on the pads and brake discs.
So, they have to be checked frequently.
Normally, to take out the brake pads,
it will take five minutes
but then if you have to take the whole disc out,
it will be a major operation.
The effort is essential
as it's these brakes that will be needed
if the train has to make an emergency stop.
An emergency stop can happen at any speed of the train
even at 300 kilometers an hour,
so that will be one of the hardest braking situations
that the system will have to go through.
Thankfully for tonight's engineers,
it's just pads that need to be replaced.
They're able to finish work
before the morning deadline.
Spain's high speed rail passengers
are on track for another day.
Trains travel from city to city
at record-breaking speeds.
When they get to their destination,
modern stations need to be able to cope
with increased journeys and more passengers.
In Sweden, Stockholm's main railway station
was built in 1871 to accommodate 10 trains per day.
Its two lines now serve 550 trains.
230,000 commuters pour into the city every morning.
But there's a problem.
The station is one giant bottleneck.
All southern commuter trains
pile into the city on the same two lines.
Engineers are under extreme pressure
to create extra rail capacity,
and the only place to do it is underground.
Tunneling beneath Stockholm is a mammoth task.
The city sits on a bed of two billion year old granite rock.
So, Lars Osterlind and his team
are having to blast their way through it
meter by meter.
We are blasting about every four meters
and we have six kilometers of tunnels
that we are excavating.
We have two tunnels, calculate this together,
it gets a lot of blasts.
Well we do over 7,000 of blasts over the whole project.
(soft music)
The project is known
as the Stockholm City Line.
Six kilometers of new line running 10 to 40 meters
under the city streets.
When finished, it will double the city's rail capacity.
To complete the project,
tunnel workers must remove over a million cubic meters
of material, enough to fill up 30 skyscrapers.
And they don't have long to do it.
The line must be up and running by 2017.
To get it done quickly and safely,
the explosives team is using a mix
of ammonium nitrate, oil, and water.
When mixed together, they become highly explosive.
Right now, behind me here,
we have the equipment for the emulsion
where the explosives are mixed.
Therefore, the track behind me
is working out as a small factory for explosives.
Precision is everything.
If you don't get the right density of the explosives,
you can't ignite it, it doesn't work.
The moment, the correct proportions are mixed,
the emulsion becomes highly explosive.
The team has to work fast,
but they can't afford to rush.
Any mistakes now could easily prove fatal.
Preparation is painstaking.
The whole process of this,
the drilling takes about three hours to do.
Afterwards, we do the charging work
and that takes us about two hours.
Five hours in total to set up each blast.
300 kilograms of explosive are carefully pumped
into 100 holes drilled into the rock face.
While Lars and his team place the charges,
another crew is hard at work
in the tunnels already blasted.
(lively music)
Peter Dahl is the project manager
in charge of turning this subterranean cave
into a working station.
We are in the middle of the new station.
Basically, we're standing at the platform
and around us, on that side and on that side,
we are going to have the trains.
One of the biggest challenges
is to build concrete walls to cover the rock face.
We have about 30,000 rock walls.
We have concreting works to the scale
of 30,000 cubic meter of concrete.
Workers just create a timber framed mold
into which the liquid concrete will be poured.
After that, we have to put in all the escalators.
There are roughly about 50 escalators,
all the details, finishing works, electrical cabling,
ventilation systems.
Escalators will link the new commuter lines
with the existing metro system.
When finished, this station will be
one of two brand new hubs servicing the new City Line.
Although we are now in the middle of the project,
we still have a lot of work to do.
Peter's job is made even more challenging
by the project's location,
right below Stockholm's bustling city center.
There are a lot of restrictions.
We have to be within the noise levels.
We have to be within the vibration levels.
And there are many other factors
that we have to be within,
when we're working in the middle of a town like this.
Such restrictions make the 2017 deadline
even harder to hit.
They've brought in a team of workers
from all over the world
to join the 2,000-strong ground crew,
including New Zealander, Luke Harris.
There's a series of different people
that are working here.
So we do the ground works,
other guys do explosives.
Other people do the concrete and spraying across the roof.
So, yeah, we basically work with the machines
and excavators and just do the ground works.
Today, he's helping fit a man hole
which will form part of the station's drainage system.
There's a lot of other things
that are gonna come in on top of what we've done.
And obviously, if it's not correct,
then it has to be taken up and dug up and fixed.
When working to a schedule this tight,
any mistakes can be hugely costly.
There's no margin for error.
Back at the rock face,
Lars and his team have set
300 kilograms of charged explosives.
The moment they're ready,
the area is evacuated.
Now everyone has to move out of this tunnel
and get rid of the equipment out of here.
The moment of truth.
(horn blasting)
(explosion booming)
The blast is a success,
bringing the project four meters closer to completion.
There's still some way to go.
So, for Lars and his team,
there's no time to relax just yet.
This was the last blast for today.
And tomorrow we continue in the same way.
Stockholm's transport crisis
is a clash of modern commuter needs
and an aging infrastructure.
Many cities worldwide have the same problem
and are having to find solutions.
But not everywhere can dig out
a giant new underground network.
Elsewhere, they're turning to technology.
(uptempo music)
Today, there are more than a billion cars in the world,
afflicting our cities with a global congestion crisis.
This is London,
one of the most modern urban environments in the world.
But, like older cities everywhere,
it has one thing that's stuck in the past,
its roads.
London, unlike other cities,
wasn't designed for the motor vehicle.
We're still in the horse and cart era.
The city's aging road infrastructure
means chronic congestion,
costing the city billions of pounds.
The stakes are so high
that authorities have created a specialist,
high tech traffic control center,
headed up by John Tenton.
If we didn't exist,
London would definitely grind to a halt.
As a control center, we work 24/7.
I don't think people realize this.
There are people in here all day, all night,
monitoring the traffic flow.
1200 cameras, located around the city,
give its controllers a bird's eye view
of every critical junction,
enabling them to spot traffic incidents
as they happen.
A broken down vehicle, that's all it takes.
Or there's a slight accident,
or there's some form of incident
that stops the free movement of the traffic.
Today, Kenny Malin is on duty
as a chaotic situation begins to unfold in central London.
At the moment, we got a major problem at Victoria.
It's a burst water main,
so a crack in the road, or a burst water main
going underneath and they got to repair it.
So, closing the road for two to three days
to repair the main.
Roadworks are one of the major causes
of congestion in modern cities.
Work here in Victoria is having a knock-on effect,
causing gridlock through neighboring areas.
And it has a rather large impact.
I'll just show you on the map here what happens.
There's the Victoria area there,
but anything effecting that area there
will also effect Hyde Park corner,
also effect Marble Arch.
Kenny and the controllers
have a long day ahead, trying to keep a lid on the chaos.
Out on the street, project manager Felicity Luckett
and her team are hoping a brand new piece of technology
can help ease the pressure.
This is a magnetometer.
It's an in-road vehicle detector
which we put in the middle of the carriage way.
It works by measuring the magnetic field
and detects changes in the magnetic field
when metal objects such as cars and buses pass over it.
These new units work wirelessly,
making the devices faster and easier to install
than any other traffic detection system.
A single eight-centimeter hole in the road
is all that's needed.
Once installed, the sensor will help the traffic signal
make decisions about when to change the lights
from red to green.
Cities around the world are experimenting
with smart technology systems,
but none quite like this.
It improves traffic flow
because if we didn't have this information
it would be on a fixed plan
and not be able to react at all
to changing traffic conditions.
And so you'd spend a lot longer
waiting around at traffic lights.
Tests show that the system
can reduce delays by up to 20%,
so London is rushing to extend the program
as fast as possible
to all the city's 6,000 traffic signals.
Engineers like Nick Ames have their work cut out for them.
I've probably done in the last few months, 100.
We have a batch of maybe 40 to do
and they usually give us a week or so to do it.
Working at some of London's
busiest traffic spots,
it's essential he remains alert at all times.
You got to keep your wits about you most the time.
The traffic is, yeah, it's the main thing.
You gotta watch out for the traffic quite a lot.
People go more faster than you would've thought in a city.
Long-term, they hope
this will keep traffic moving.
But short-term, Nick and his team
have become part of the problem.
We gotta open up the bus stop again
because the people are coming down to do the buses.
So, we're gonna have to be pretty quick on this one,
I think.
With rush hour almost upon him,
Nick just manages to finish the job in time.
We gotta get going
because we got another three or four today,
but loads still in the pipeline to do.
Smart traffic control devices like this
are being rolled out across the world.
But, in a crisis situation,
there's still no substitute for human intervention.
Back in the traffic control center,
Kenny is still battling with the burst water main
that's wreaking havoc on the city's roads.
He relies on something that other Londoners
can only dream of,
the ability to turn the traffic lights green.
Kenny's colleague, Steve Gilmore,
will have to use that power to keep the city moving.
The timings on that were low.
So, now I've gone from nine seconds
up to 42 seconds green.
That enables the eastbound traffic
to have more time to flow out.
The ability to manipulate
traffic signals remotely
has helped Steve avert a full-blown crisis.
Control centers like this are helping traffic flow
in cities around the world.
But if city authorities are going to deal long-term
with the congestion crisis,
they need to find ways to get people
out of their cars entirely.
We can't deny that we got congestion problems
as all major cities have.
So, if we're taking traffic off the road,
we're helping congestion,
we're helping everybody to get around easier.
In July, 2010, London launched a pilot scheme
aimed at swapping the city's mode of transport
from four wheels to two
by providing bicycles for easy, immediate hire
around the capital.
The idea of the scheme is for short journeys.
It's to get people off the buses, off the tubes,
and to try and ease congestion on the roads.
The scheme has sparked off
a cycling revolution.
There are now 9,000 bikes available for use
at 450 docking stations around the city.
It's a scheme that works.
23 million trips.
People aren't gonna use the scheme if it didn't work.
But the scheme's increasing success
brings with it a responsibility to keep more people safe.
One defective bike could put lives in danger.
It sounds simple, but it's an awful lot of work
and a very big workforce behind it.
There's always a certain number of bikes
that are coming in to repair
because just the general maintenance.
And every bike also gets a service at least once a year.
Part of this critical maintenance workforce
is based here, at the main bike depot in north London,
one of several maintenance depots
located throughout the city.
Here, defective bikes arrive in lorry loads
and into the hands of Turan Hasan,
one of the depot's mechanics
whose job it is to restore a bike to working order.
But first, he has to find out what the problem is.
Everything that is dangerous,
you've got to do, you have to do, you know?
If it's cosmetic, then okay, that's not too bad,
but brakes, gear changes, buckled wheels,
something that's gonna cause you to have an accident,
you have to change.
You know, you can't just bypass stuff like that.
But one of the first things Turan checks
is if the bike is true.
True means it's balanced, it's not wobbling.
Sometimes as you're going
up on the curbs or whatever,
it can take the balance out of them.
Well, you get buckled wheels,
broken spokes, cables,
and you check the gears.
Just going up in the gears first,
second, third.
Yeah, that looks true.
But with a guarantee
to keep a certain number of bikes
always available at docking stations,
Turan and his team must work around the clock
to carry out repairs.
You try to average about six or seven bikes a day,
depending on what's wrong with them.
I mean, some mechanics are really fast,
I mean, if the bikes aren't too complicated,
they can knock out about eight, 10, 12 bikes a day,
which is not bad going.
But if you got hard bikes,
you will be getting about six to seven bikes a day.
This group of bikes
may be newly restored,
but it's only half the battle.
Another team of hidden heroes, like van driver,
Mohammed Muhith, is out on the street topping up
the network's docking stations
with newly serviced bikes.
It's a physically demanding job.
Well, basically, it keeps me fit.
I push about probably 80 to 100 bikes a day.
And I enjoy it.
It's a good workout.
It'll be quicker.
You are going fast,
you are going to errand there quicker than cars,
you have to wait in traffic.
I mean, there's cycle lanes,
so that's even quicker now.
And it's improving, so it's green, ain't it?
London's going greener.
Helps you get around easier,
quicker and with less congestion.
If we could all do some of that,
and you get the health benefits,
what's not to like?
This scheme could bring relief
to the troubling congestion in London.
But many think the real answer lies
in mass transit.
6.5 million bus journeys are made in the capital each day.
More than any other form of mass transit system.
Its success is dependent on the buses' reliability.
If that goes, then people will stop using them.
It's 5:00 a.m. at the Brixton bus depot.
While most of the city sleeps,
Brixton's bus workers are already hard at work.
Depot controller, Sharon Moses, faces a massive challenge
to get 100 vehicles onto the road before rush hour.
So, in the morning, we have about four hours
to get rid of 100 buses here,
to get them all out on time,
fit for purpose.
This scenario is repeated every day
at depots across the capital.
Servicing 8,500 buses running on over 700 different routes,
Sharon's biggest task is making sure all drivers
have a functioning bus.
By 6:00 a.m., it's becoming a lot harder.
First thing in the morning,
it's easier to control
because you got so many more buses in here
in the morning, it's packed.
So, if anything goes wrong,
just tell a driver, quick, take that one,
take this bus, take that one.
But obviously, as the buses get fewer and fewer in here,
if there is a mechanical problem, any problem,
it's harder to deal with
'cause we've got a limited amount of buses
we can play with.
As the run out reaches its final phase,
the pressure starts to take its toll.
Gonna have to park up along there.
It can be stressful,
and obviously, I'm not just dealing with one route here,
I'm dealing with all the routes
that come out of the garage.
So, you have to make sure everything
leaves on time, all routes, all services.
There's hardly any gap in any service.
At times like this,
Sharon needs to draw on all the resources
available to her.
It's all part of a team.
I'm only as good as the drivers, okay?
And the drivers are only as good as the buses as well.
So, we all have to work together,
the engineers, the drivers and the controllers as well.
Today, she's relying on bus driver,
Nathan Algeau.
I'm doing on 159 today, G-E-284.
About 10 minutes early.
Just gonna check if there's any diversions or anything.
For Nathan and his fellow drivers,
each day is governed by the clock
which starts ticking the moment they arrive onsite.
If you're not on time,
you could possibly lose your duty
and lose a day's money,
so it's important that you get here on time.
I try to get here ten minutes early every day.
Once on site, he's allocated a bus.
Then Nathan has just 10 minutes
to carry out his inspection
before it's due on the road.
If anything's wrong, his departure will be delayed.
It's rush hour.
People are depending on him to get to work on time.
All they know is they're out they, they want a bus.
Bus hasn't come, oh my god, bus hasn't come.
When the driver comes,
they'll have a go at the driver.
Thankfully, for Nathan,
his bus passes its check
and he makes it out in the nick of time.
His bus is vital to people
making all kinds of essential journeys.
Working people going to work,
doctors, police, students,
everyone really, everyone needs to get on the bus.
Drivers are the core of the bus service.
But if London's buses are to remain
the capital's number one mode of transport,
they need help from here.
3-6-6 receiving.
This is the iBus Control center in Purley.
39 of these are situated around the capital,
keeping a watch over London's bus fleet.
73 you receive.
Here, Jeremy Geldard,
and fellow controllers are in charge
of up to 40 separate routes.
Today I'm working with the high frequency,
which is I have to make sure the buses are arriving
every 10 minutes, so the passengers aren't waiting
more than 10 minutes for bus.
To help him, GPS units
are attached to every single bus on London's roads.
Their positions are relayed back to the center
where they appear as icons on a screen.
It's almost like being in a helicopter.
We could look down and see things and anticipate.
The idea of this would be to have
every single bus in yellow.
If every single bus is in yellow,
that means there's an even headway,
there's a bus every 10 minutes,
and every bus is on time.
Unfortunately, it's a very rare occurrence
for that to happen.
We have red and green.
Red signifies that the bus is actually
too close to the bus in front.
So, we would ask them to slow down a little bit
to create bigger gap.
Technological advances
have changed things dramatically
for Jeremy and his colleagues.
When I first started this, 10 years ago,
we'd stand on the side of the road
and watch buses go past
and we had a little piece of paper in a book
and we'd mark off the bus.
This bus is on time,
this bus is 10 minutes late.
Whereas with this system now,
we see the whole route in real time.
It has been compared to a computer game, basically,
because I look at a screen
and what I dictate to the screen
happens in real life.
That means out here,
where Nathan's continuing his morning run.
Things are looking clear now,
but in London, a congestion crisis is always
just around the corner.
When the city's very bad,
it can take up to two hours
to get from Paddington to come off the garage.
The traffic will be in central London
and then everyone clogs to get out.
Exactly the scenario Jeremy wants to avoid.
But for now, there's not much Nathan can do.
They shouldn't be too upset with me.
Yeah, 377...
A combination of technology and human effort
to helping London's buses enjoy a renaissance.
For Jeremy and his team,
keeping up with London's busy commuters
is a daily battle.
Everything seems to be so much faster now.
If you want a bus, you want it now.
And at the end of the day, that's what we do.
It's there as best as we can for them, there and then.
And that's what city life's all about.
City life means constant movement.
Thousands of people work every day at making it possible
for city dwellers to be where they need to be,
when they need to be there.
It's an endless task demanding brain and brawn.
Without the army of drivers, diggers, planners and thinkers,
our great cities would grind to a halt.