Techin’ Up How We Get Around
by Tony Chavira
Wired Magazine has a slick article about technology’s going to start changing how we get around our cities, even if you’re one of those snobs who hate to use public transportation:
The coming convergence of how we communicate and how we travel is spawning technologies that will change how we get around — and make transportation safer and more efficient, at the same time. The promise of vehicles communicating with each other and with the road, coupled with advancements in transportation infrastructure, has planners, technocrats and futurists creating an Intelligent Transportation System.
The idea of ITS, at its most basic, is to connect every vehicle in a network of transportation users that instantly tracks and shares information. Ideally, everyone will be able to quickly determine where the accidents and tie-ups are and what routes can be taken to avoid them. What this means for the average commuter is quicker drive times by the way of more efficient traffic patterns and planned out routes created for you in real time.
This means better coordinated roads, interactive traffic modules (where your GPS can coordinate where everyone is at the same time), train and bus schedules that are right on time, communicating parking sensors, and traffic signals that don’t waste any time or energy. In fact, reduction in energy use (and travel time) are the key selling points to developing an interactive transportation system like this one. The U.S. Government currently puts about $100 million into transit technology research each year, but that’s only a drop in the bucket compared to the actual amount of money (closer to $2 billion) it’ll take to implement this system.
I think that Eisenhower said it best in 1995:
Our unity as a nation is sustained by free communication of thought and by easy transportation of people and goods. The ceaseless flow of information throughout the Republic is matched by individual and commercial movement over a vast system of interconnected highways crisscrossing the country and joining at our national borders with friendly neighbors to the north and south.
Together, the united forces of our communication and transportation systems are dynamic elements in the very name we bear—United States. Without them, we would be a mere alliance of many separate parts.
Of course, Eisenhower was talking about installing the first massive highway installation throughout the United States but the words still apply. At the time we didn’t care if it was an efficient system, only that some sort of system was in place at all. As time has passed and money’s been spent to figure out how we can best move from one place to another seamlessly, the advent of personal computing and integrated technological networks have given us the amazing opportunity to coordinate our efforts. There’s really no need to sit in traffic if your GPS can show you a better way. But if everyone’s GPS coordinated their movement at the same time, utilizing every possible alternative route available, you may never have to sit in traffic again.
When you hear about recent proposals to bill California drivers directly to pay back fire departments to clean up traffic accidents, the idea of perfectly coordinating our traffic efforts looks better and better. Besides, I tend to think that our fire departments have better things to do with their time... like putting out fires.
(Both above photos are from the portfolio of Romain Laurent, reposted from the site Looks Like Good Design)
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