New Age Transportation
A developed country is not a palace where the poor have cars. It’s where the rich use public transportation.
—Attributed to Gustavo Petro
In 2014, Americans spent an average of forty-two hours per year sitting in traffic jams. In Washington, DC, the average was nearly double that, at eighty-two hours per year, and in the West, Seattle now has the second-worst traffic in the United States. Travel plans can be checked on your smartphone, tablet, or computer via Bluetooth; you can tap into your transportation apps for an accurate picture of how to best get around, but traffic can’t be improved.
For 95 percent of the time, private vehicles are stationary, parked in lots or in front of houses—or in traffic jams. All in all, the space they take up totals about thirteen thousand square kilometers, which corresponds to an area bigger than Puerto Rico. Los Angeles alone has dedicated 14 percent of the county area to autos. This space could be used for playgrounds or urban gardening—creativity knows no bounds for converting such free spaces.
Public transportation is a necessity, a pillar of green living, and some left-leaners think it should be a right. When asked to identify the top issues of concern with regard to urban environments, 58 percent identified air quality, 53 percent noted traffic congestion, and overall 91 percent claimed that they were concerned about the effect of traffic congestion on their business and their air quality.[1] The largest pollution-producing sector in the country is transportation.[2]
In future cities, moving people will be done effectively, efficiently, and economically and will play a key role in making communities sustainable. For the health and well-being of citizens, walking and cycling between their homes, workplaces, shops, and schools are already being encouraged. Imagine a future where self-driving cars, trains, buses, subways, and EV (electric vehicle) devices are all seamlessly connected through an app, where traffic jams are a thing of the past, and “car parks” have been turned into real parks and green spaces.[3]
One option is called the hyperloop. It’s a new technology that can move people at aircraft speeds for the price of a bus ticket. A levitated pod uses an electric motor to glide silently through a low-pressure tube. The hyperloop is designed to operate on demand rather than on a fixed schedule, reducing wait times.[4]
Another is podcars, also known as personal rapid transit or PRT: smaller groups of people are transported in cars powered by electric motors operated by computers and moving on lightweight tracks. Riders select their destination prior to riding, and each car only goes to their final destination without stops on the way.[5]
The Olli is an electric mini powered by IBM’s Watson technology. It’s operated and paid for through an app. Wherever you are is your bus stop. Olli can also have a conversation with you to provide a dinner recommendation or even tell you to bring an umbrella. Olli had trial runs in Copenhagen, Las Vegas, and Miami in late 2016.[6]
If roads are too congested, go up. Overhead transportation literally takes people off the road and allows them to take advantage of the underutilized urban space above our roadways. Like the subway, it allows for the addition of capacity without displacing existing supply. But it does so with a much more attainable profile of routing, cost, and construction.[7]
Vehicles will become part of an automated smart system called Interactive Driver Assistance, a “connected” system designed to increase situation awareness and monitor and mitigate traffic through vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications. In other words, vehicles are going to talk to one another and to services in their surroundings, to smooth the trip of passengers.[8]
Sophisticated scanners will be able to identify you and then charge accounts accordingly. Just think about what this will mean for pedestrian traffic flow when you can walk into a train station without swiping at the turnstiles. We’re starting to see technology like this on highways the world over, where cameras are replacing toll collectors, so it’s only a matter of time before this translates to public transportation as well. Imagine a city where drones are capable of route mapping, suggesting the best alternatives and means of transportation that lead to less congestion, to get you where you’re going.
The following are either in use somewhere in the world or in development:
Smart stations: transit hubs that bring together a variety of transportation services, from public transportation to self-driving EVs to autocopters, hyperloops, and subway systems to help residents and visitors
Apps or kiosk data centers that integrate all public and private transportation providers, connecting travelers to the best mobility option for them and providing integrated payment options and real-time travel information
Traffic information boards and electronic signs displaying real-time information about traffic, parking conditions, issues associated with major events or incidents, and possible detours
Traffic sensors and signals that can receive and transmit data, and technology installed in fleet vehicles to collect data on traffic conditions
Sensors on highways and arterials running via a smart system that will monitor traffic not by analog “wait times” but by real-time traffic conditions
Efforts to make more opportunities for car sharing, scooter using, and bike riding[9]
Practically all cars in the future, save for specially licensed permits for collectors, will be AI (artificial intelligence) based, self-driving, and autonomous. After all, the US Department of Transportation claims that 94 percent of vehicle collisions are caused by human error, resulting in thousands of deaths every year.[10] And fewer accidents aren’t just about safety. In 2015 alone, the incidental costs of motor vehicle accidents equaled more than $44 billion.[11]
There is so much traffic in our lives that we spend 127 extra hours per year sitting in a paved purgatory of our own making.[12] Even though the average personal vehicle sits parked for 95 percent of its life,[13] US drivers spend well over $1 trillion on auto expenses, according to RMI Outlet magazine.[14]
A radical and forward-thinking initiative to make public transportation free for everyone could decrease traffic while helping the environment. Luxembourg is a tiny country, but that doesn’t prevent it from having a big-city traffic problem. It also has the highest car-to-person rate of any nation in the European Union. In addition, more than 170,000 people from the neighboring nations of France, Belgium, and Germany commute into Luxembourg for work, swelling the population of its capital city fivefold.[15]
In Luxembourg, the hope is that eliminating all fees for public trains, trams, and buses will encourage more people to use those services. Not only would that decrease personal vehicle traffic but it would also reduce pollution. This initiative won’t solve the global emissions problem, but if commuters decide to take advantage of free rides, other nations might see the value in following Luxembourg’s lead in addressing traffic woes, the physical damage done by cars, and the woes inflicted on the environment. Luxembourg likes the results, claiming that it has dramatically reduced car use, traffic, and pollution.[16]
A staggering 14 percent of Los Angeles County’s land is devoted to parking and parking infrastructure, which takes up about two hundred square miles or 18.6 million parking spaces—1.4 times more land than that taken up by streets and freeways.[17] In the United States there are a billion parking spots, four for every car. The downtown areas of most cities devote 50 to 60 percent of their scarce real estate to vehicles.[18]
Parking lots are basically city deserts. They don’t employ many people, are a kind of blight on cities, displace neighborhoods, and empty pocketbooks with monthly or hourly parking rates. Some large cities charge as much as $770 a month, and the most expensive rates for parking are in New York—a staggering hourly parking at an average of $27 an hour.[19]
Where parking lots are underused, some cities are already thinking about redesigning and converting them to needed living spaces, which translates into more access for bikes, scooters, and pedestrians and more walking boulevards, green spaces, and additional commercial space.[20]
By 2020 cars with AI will be able to chat with their passengers to enhance the driving experience, will be able to track a user’s conversational preferences, emotions, habits, safety, music preference, and may even recommend a place to stop for refreshments.[21]
One thing that everyone working in the auto industry seems to agree upon is that more testing is required, as hiccups have happened with many of the self-driving cars. General Motor’s (GM) chief of product development says that by 2020, new cars will be “mostly in charge” of driving and by 2025, “they’ll be fully in control.”[22] Elon Musk has cut that last prediction by two to three years. Along with his subway innovation, Musk has promised a pod-type car that will be able somehow to traverse tunnels. He believes the best way to eliminate the scourge of traffic congestion is with electric, autonomous vehicles bearing an extra set of wheels, shooting through thin tunnels at speeds up to 150 mph.[23]
Hydrogen fuel cells were supposed to be the next big thing in engine propulsion, but the promise peaked during the gas crisis of the 1970s and hydrogen fuel never really gained traction. It was simply too expensive to make the fuel. A couple of car companies have come out with hydrogen-fueled cars as hydrogen-based fuel has become cheaper to manufacture and perhaps promises to become a viable, widespread source of clean energy in the future.[24]
Ammonia has recently surfaced as a source of the molecular hydrogen needed to generate electricity. Now researchers have figured out how to extract the molecular hydrogen and generate power without creating the usual pollutants that come from using ammonia (NH3).[25]
Researchers have been working on nuclear- or plasma-powered cars but none has been successful yet. While small-scale thorium-powered nuclear reactors are theoretically possible, none has been designed that could fit in a car. Thorium is a radioactive chemical element that could, in theory, be used to generate large quantities of low-carbon electricity in future decades, and some theorists claim it can aid in powering an engine that runs off noble gases with no pollutants. Compared to the uranium that powers today’s nuclear plants, thorium is more abundant and widely distributed in the earth’s crust. But just give it another twenty or so years, and you could be driving a reactor home.[26]
A solar-powered buggy by Solar Lab combines pedal power with power produced by rooftop photovoltaic panels. Riders get an easy lift to their destination while being protected by the elements, and the driver gets a break through solar energy.[27]
There has been a lot of high-flying buzz about airborne autos since the first was proposed in 1917, when GM had conversations with “air taxi” companies about using electric vehicle technology to create flying cars—way before George Jetson’s flying car.
We’re a lot closer to flying cars than you may think. In fact, the country of Dubai has already begun testing a prototype of a self-driving hover-taxi with the hope of launching an aerial shuttle service with an electrically powered quadcopter that can travel on a programmed course at 60 mph at an altitude of three hundred to one thousand feet. The service is meant to help reduce traffic congestion and was built to withstand the country’s extreme temperatures during summer.[28]
German carmaker Porsche has a flying passenger drone concept in the works that supposedly won’t require the driver to have a pilot’s license to operate, and Volkswagen has already been working with Airbus on a Pop-Up car-drone hybrid.[29] Musk’s SpaceX claims it will have a working autonomous flying taxi by 2026.[30] Daimler, the parent company for Mercedes-Benz, has teamed up for a vertical takeoff and landing vehicle (VTOL).[31]
In 2016 German authorities issued Volvo’s Multicopter a permit to fly. Its first staffed flight took place in 2018 and ended with no problems. The pilot controlled the vehicle easily with a single joystick, and the Multicopter was stable and autonomous enough to retain its position automatically even when the pilot released the joystick. Almost all of the new “flying cars” will be designed for autonomous operation.[32]
The vehicle can reach a speed of up to 62 mph, with eighteen rotors powered by nine independent batteries, and has a one-thousand-pound takeoff weight. The large number of rotors and batteries means that even if one of them fails, the Multicopter can still retain height. It is one of the top candidates in the race to become the world’s first air taxi.[33]
Most are VTOL flying cars, meaning no landing strips are necessary; non-VTOLs will need about an 850-foot strip for takeoff and just 160 feet for landing, with speeds from about 300 to 466 mph in the air and a ground speed of around 100 mph with a range of around 450 miles. So it would be possible to fly the 400 miles from Los Angeles to San Francisco in little more than an hour, which is less than a commercial flight and cuts drive time by almost a full workday.[34]
A common denominator for all drone designs is the use of electric motors for quiet, emission-free mobility. This makes them lighter and smaller than helicopters; they are also easier to operate with less complicated technology.
Flying cars will face significant regulatory hurdles. Owners will probably need a pilot license to operate these vehicles and access to a runway in most countries. Cost will vary, but these cars won’t come cheap—think Ferrari.[35]
Future aerodromes or skyports will have the capacity for up to one thousand flying taxis. And a single flying copter could be parked on top of a roof, a garage, or a high-rise, conveniently ready when needed. The Uber that drove you home will one day do it by air, when the company inaugurates Uber Elevate, its proposed flying taxi service.[36]
Uber envisions a future in which city dwellers can glide over that horrible, time-wasting gridlock in a quiet, luxurious, clean, cheap, auto-operated, and anonymous aboveground air taxi. Initially they will be operated by pilots, who will eventually be phased out and replaced by an autonomous piloting system. Uber plans to start testing the service in a few years. But new technology is needed—some entity will have to design new electric batteries and figure out the logistics for coordinating thousands of flights per day.[37]
A Tesla Roadster will literally hover off the ground using SpaceX thrusters, according to Elon Musk. “I’m not joking,” said Musk, who is sometimes known for his outré sense of humor. “We will use a SpaceX cold gas thruster system with ultrahigh-pressure air in a composite overwrapped pressure vessel in place of the 2 rear seats.”[38] Wonder what it could do in a quarter mile?
New, thin solar panels are designed to be glued into or on top of pavement, and only 215 square feet of solar panels would be needed to generate enough power for all public lighting for a city with a population of five thousand. Autos will be equipped with a solar collector on the bottom that can be reenergized—no plug-in required—as it drives along the pavement, over a solar power exchanger.[39]
The composite material is just 0.28 inches thick, making it possible to adapt to contraction and expansion of a thoroughfare as well as assuring the durability and safety of the tile. The surface also offers good grip for car tires, making roads safer. However, the big drawback is cost—about $4.8 trillion to convert the four million miles of roads in the country. The cost could be partially offset by charging customers for charging, and by the system’s modern, more efficient technology.[40]
Nationwide, transportation by bike in the United States is still less than 2 percent, and twice as many men as women ride bikes. So a crossover might attract more attention. It’s called an ELF (electric light fun), a hybrid between a bicycle and a car, which is powered by a 750-watt electric motor; has three wheels, pedals, and a solar panel on top; and can be plugged into a regular home outlet. It has a carrier in the back for a rechargeable battery—so no petropower or foul emissions.
The ELF, which meets the federal definition of a low-speed electronic bicycle, travels at about 15 to 35 mph, and burns 586 of your calories per hour by pedaling. And when a little extra boost up a hill is needed, or to take a break from pedal pumping, the electric motor can be goosed to help move you along. Pedaling does not charge the battery (an option in the future).
Although some people have attached child carriers in back of the seat, the ELF currently seats only one passenger. A standard ELF has a battery that can move it fourteen miles without pedaling and without being recharged, although an upgraded battery can go roughly forty miles. The vehicle works great for commuting, errands, and cruising around town; it can pack 600 pounds of cargo.
It’s not car-pricey but quite a bit more than a typical bike. A base model costs close to $10,000—pricey, but consider it gets 1,800 mpg.[41] The ELF may not replace cars or even bicycles anytime soon as a primary means of transportation, but it can provide mobility for seniors or people with disabilities, especially on city and country roads.[42]
The boom in light electric vehicles (LEVs) in Asia and Europe is now reverberating in the United States, with industry watchers expecting sales of cycles of more than one million by 2020.
LEVs look like high-end mountain bikes, but they’re heavier than most bikes. Twist the motorcycle-like grip throttle and the bike surges with a sudden shot of electric power. The top speed of a LEV is restricted to 20 mph, and it offers 11.4 ampere hours of charge. At present the tab is around $5,000.[43]
Electric buses offer more than twenty miles per gallon compared to their petropowered cousins. Against a traditional diesel bus, you’re saving more than 80 percent of the energy used, and maintenance is significantly better than with fossil-fuel vehicles.
There are more than twenty transit agencies in US cities that have said that they will not buy more fossil-fuel buses and are looking at 100 percent battery-electric power in their future. New York City got on board with the program and plans to convert its fleet of 5,725 buses to electric over the next two decades.[44]
Inside the city a series of light trains will carry you efficiently and quickly, utilizing underground “electric skate” subway platforms on wheels propelled by multiple electric motors.[45]
Rent or ride a bicycle and then put it back into a kiosk where your leg power is converted into electricity to run the city’s electric buses. Such a system would drastically cut down both fossil fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions in cities that still use fossil fuels.
Drones make most people think of unstaffed aircraft that can fly autonomously—without a human in control. But an unstaffed aerial vehicle (UAV) is a machine that can fly autonomously or by remote control.[46]
Flying drones will share the friendly skies and range from microdrones (smaller than the palm of your hand), minidrones (they can carry small cameras), midsized drones (often used for photography and making videos), large drones (for industrial work and deliveries), and supersized drones (similar in size to a bus or up to a small plane). The designs will be quadcopters (with four propellers), hexacopters (with six propellers), and octocopters (with eight propellers), and the largest ones will be able to move small houses.
By the way, the drone’s exact altitude may not seem crucial, but it is unclear if landowners get to decide if they can shoot down a drone over their property at one hundred or even three hundred feet, because no one has actually decided yet who owns the airspace.[47]
Another first for Dubai is buying and patrolling its streets with hoverbikes. While they look fun, their range is still very limited, with a flight time of only ten to twenty-five minutes. We have yet to see how such a futuristic mode of transportation could actually be helpful for real-world law enforcement.
The company behind the hoverbikes is California-based startup, Hoversurf. Its FAA-approved Hoverbike is essentially a cross between a motorcycle and quadcopter, with a capped max speed of just over 43.5 mph—and a cost of $150,000.[48]
The use-by date of Marty McFly’s hoverboard (in Back to the Future) has come and gone—and there’s nothing much like it floating around. There are plans available online for a DIY hoverboard powered by a leaf blower that might be improved upon, power-wise, down the road.[49]
A more modern version is not a hoverboard but a propeller-powered drone. Other hoverboards use fields of magnets—a magnetic levitation system. The Hendo, named after its inventor, Greg Henderson, uses the same kind of electromagnetic levitation that allows maglev trains to buzz through the countryside at 300 mph. The main caveat is that, as with all forms of magnetic levitation, you need a special surface for the magnets to push against—you can’t just take your maglev train or Hendo hoverboard and levitate over concrete, wood, or water—and you don’t want splash down at $10,000 a pop.[50]
There are hoverboards powered by jet fuel or kerosene that is carried on the user’s back, but they won’t find their way into common use soon, as they are still dangerous and can only fly a very limited duration. So, sorry, no Marty McFlying in sight for some time.[51]
For all of you James Bond wannabes, first you’re going to require the budget of Bond’s spy agency because jet packs run from $125,000 to $500,000.[52] One kerosene-powered pack has thrust generated by five miniature jet engines—two mounted off each arm and one affixed to the back, producing almost 300 foot-pounds of force—for two- to three-minute flights, all supposedly manageable and safe.[53]
The latest version of the jet pack, called M3, has miniturbos that fire up three jet thrusters with 1,000 hp output from its thrusters to steer, aided by a sense of balance. Speed data shows up on a heads-up display in the pilot’s helmet, and it’s steered by adjusting the arm-mounted thrusters. The engines don’t burn the pilot because the heat dissipates quickly, and it doesn’t take tremendous strength to manipulate the arm thrusters. The inventor claims that anyone can be taught to fly in fifteen minutes. The jet pack is reportedly capable of 200 mph and up to ten thousand feet of altitude in a ten-minute flight.[54]
And it’s said to be surprisingly safe; if there is an engine failure it automatically spools down slowly, so the worst thing that can happen is a slow descent to the surface. There is also a built-in life preserver for a water landing—all for a cool half a million.[55]
There are other jet-powered packs, some burning hydrogen peroxide, for example, but capable of only thirty-second flights, and they’re not cheap, either, at a reported cost of around $150,000. No matter what anyone says, it’s dangerous to strap a rocket to your back and shoot yourself up into the air, knowing you only have thirty seconds of flight time. In addition, the chemical reaction generates superheated steam that shoots out of nozzles at 1,300°F, making it even more risky.[56]
Another version is the rocket belt. It weighs 125 pounds, and the pilot has to weigh 175 pounds or less, or the rockets won’t provide enough lift. For a thirty-second ride, it burns seven gallons of hydrogen fuel at $250 a gallon. That’s $1,750 for a thirty-second jaunt, still a little high for picking up a six-pack.[57]
So this personal flying product doesn’t seem anywhere near ready for public propulsion at a reasonable tab or time frame.
A space plane is an aerospace vehicle that operates as an aircraft in Earth’s atmosphere and as a spacecraft in the vacuum of space. As an air-breathing, hypersonic craft, it could travel at up to Mach 5 (around 3,800 mph), enabling it to cross the Atlantic Ocean in just two hours and the Pacific in three. The plane would cruise at ninety-five thousand feet, with stunning views featuring the earth’s curvature at the horizon and the blackness of space above.[58]
China is now testing a hypersonic plane dubbed the “I Plane.” Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing successfully tested their I Plane (named because it resembles a capital I when viewed from the front) in a wind tunnel at speeds ranging from Mach 5 to Mach 7, or 3,800 to 5,370 mph. In their research, published in the journal Science China Physics, Mechanics & Astronomy, the team explains that the hypersonic plane would only need a “couple of hours” to travel from Beijing to New York. A commercial airline flight can take at least fourteen hours.[59]
Global powers are pushing for ever faster flight. With Japan looking to reintroduce supersonic aircraft, several US companies are working on aircraft capable of achieving hypersonic speeds for commercial carriers, and they report impressive progress.[60]
One of the first things that will change in aviation transportation is the speed of a space plane: supersonic at Mach One, or 768 mph; transonic between Mach 0.8 and 1.2, or about 600 to 900 mph; and hypersonic at Mach 5 and above. Strictly available via TV sci-fi is Warp 6, the cruising speed of the starship Enterprise, which is 216 times the speed of light.[61]
One more billionaire tech magnate is elbowing his way into space. Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen’s Stratolaunch Systems (SS) revealed expanded plans to revolutionize the private space industry using a massive space plane.
Stratolaunch, with a wingspan of 385 feet, two airplane bodies siamesed together and powered by six Pratt & Whitney Boeing 747 engines, it resembles a giant catamaran. A spokesperson for SS said it envisions using the plane to carry three rockets and a smaller space plane up to a proper altitude before they detach and fire their engines on a path toward space.[62] For larger payloads, Stratolaunch is planning to have a medium launch vehicle scheduled for 2022 that would be used for satellite launches, carrying up to 7,500 pounds.[63]
Regular commercial service is scheduled to kick off in 2020 with the Northrop Grumman’s Pegasus rocket, which has already had more than thirty-five successful launches, but lately it has been plagued with problems.[64]
In a suborbital flight from London to Sydney with the kind of multiple Mach speed being talked about, there wouldn’t even be enough time to watch a full-length film. Despite not quite getting into orbit, suborbital passengers would still technically enter space in altitudes of up to sixty-two miles, which marks the start of space that features weightlessness.[65]
It looks as if Virgin is on the cusp of at least suborbital space flight, as it has apparently sold around eight hundred tickets at $250,000 each.[66]
There are several different types of space tourism, including orbital, suborbital, and lunar. So far, orbital space tourism has been carried out only by the Russian Space Agency via Space Adventures, an American company.[67]
The publicized price by Space Adventures (the only firm that has actually blasted “tourist astronauts” to the International Space Station aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft) was in the range of $20 to $40 million for a ten-day visit. So far, seven space tourists have made eight flights. Russia halted orbital space tourism in 2010 due to the increase in the International Space Station crew size, with available seats going to actual astronauts.[68]
SpaceX announced that it is planning to send two space tourists on a loop around the moon on its Big Falcon spaceship in 2020.[69]
Elon Musk wants to use his rockets to revolutionize long-distance travel on Earth too. He has suggested that in the future, flying from one place to another on Earth will take from thirty to sixty minutes and the cost per seat will be comparable to what is paid on a conventional jet plane. At about 18,000 mph, with a maximum acceleration of a fairly comfortable 2–3 g’s, it would feel like a mild to moderate amusement park ride on ascent and then a smooth, peaceful, and silent descent.
As for space travel, the “xenon ion engine” electrical plasma powered spacecraft that NASA claims to be building is capable of sending a robot-controlled spacecraft hurtling up at more than 200,000 mph—and maybe to Mars. The engines function by turning small amounts of propellant (usually an inert gas, like xenon) into charged plasma with electrical fields, which is then accelerated very quickly using a magnetic field. Compared to chemical rockets, they can achieve top speeds using a tiny fraction of their fuel.[70] To put that into perspective, the space shuttle is capable of a top speed of around 18,000 mph. According to NASA, ion propulsion enables spacecraft to travel farther, faster, and cheaper than any other system. The downside is that it takes about two years to get up to top speed, which is the time it takes to get to Mars.
Elevated hydrogen trains (Hyrail) will be powered by solar energy that electrolyzes water hydrogen fuel cells. Future cities will have huge ponds available filled with algae that produce hydrogen, which will run through stationary fuel cells to provide energy.[71]
Maglev is short for “magnetic levitation,” which means that these trains will float over a guideway on a cushion of air, eliminating friction and using the basic principles of magnetism to replace the old steel wheels and train tracks. This lack of friction and the trains’ aerodynamic design allow these trains to reach unprecedented ground speeds of more than 310 mph, or twice as fast as Amtrak’s fastest commuter train.
The magnets employed are superconducting, which means that when they are cooled to less than −450°F, they can generate magnetic fields up to ten times stronger than ordinary electromagnets, enough to suspend, speed, and safely propel a train. The magnetic fields interact with simple metallic loops set into the concrete walls of the maglev guideway. The loops are made of conductive materials, and when a magnetic field moves past, it creates an electric current that generates another magnetic field and makes the train horizontally hover about five inches above the guideway.
Another big benefit is safety. Any two trains traveling the same route cannot catch up and crash into one another because they’re all being powered to move at the same speed. Similarly, traditional train derailments that occur because of cornering too quickly can’t happen with maglev.[72]
Developers claim that maglev trains will travel from Paris to Rome in just under two hours, reducing train time by almost nine hours.[73]
Anyone who has traveled to Japan or Europe knows that bullet trains (named for their shape) can travel at speeds of over 250 mph. In contrast, the United States’ Amtrak’s showcase Acela train connecting Boston to Washington, DC, slowpokes at just 70 mph. That figure is so low because many sections of the tracks cannot safely support high speeds, even though the train itself is capable of sprints at 150-plus mph.[74]
Super hyper guy Elon Musk aims to completely reinvent public transportation. He claims that he can build a San Francisco–Los Angeles hyperloop for under $6 billion. The trip for San Francisco to Los Angeles theoretically will take less than an hour at a supposed ticket cost of around $20. This time would be almost on par with airlines and cut $80 to $100 off plane fare. However, this doesn’t take into consideration legal hassles and right-of-way dogfights that would take as long as building the transcontinental railroad did.
People would enter a “pod,” capable of holding about sixteen people, at an aboveground station and travel at speeds from 150 mph to a possible 750 mph. Musk has announced he has verbal permission to build a hyperloop connecting New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington.[75]
Musk’s Hyperloop One was built on a three-hundred-meter track in a Nevada desert to propel a 1,500-pound aluminum sled in an open-air test. It traveled at 116 mph in 1.1 seconds.[76]
The Rand Corporation’s offering has the simple name of the Very High Speed Transit System, an underground tube that would send passengers from New York to Los Angeles in a hard-to-believe twenty-one minutes. There was even mention of a tubelike network that could connect various points of arrival and departure in a vast nationwide transportation network. To do so, it would rely on a maglev system power-propelling cars through vacuum tunnels at speeds of close to 14,000 mph. Skeptics and critics remark that a hyperloop high-speed system might turn out to be an ephemeral and impractical choice for long distance, since the experience of being shot through a tube while pinned to a seat for around thirty minutes without a view might not charm many people. However, cargo does not demand to be charmed and can easily be shoved in a platform and shot through a tube.[77] A hyperloop might not slow down because of weather and earthquakes and might be a less casualty-prone method of cargo transport, with little or no carbon emissions, less construction cost compared to high-speed trains, and its own seductive speed.[78]
The downside is that a democracy doesn’t do too well with these kinds of proposals. Each project mentioned here involves a very large infrastructure requiring a lot of people to agree. Doing this kind of project in this country involves tedious and entangled right-of-way and environmental issues. In China or Russia, however, all it takes is someone powerful enough to decide that it is to be done, and it happens.
In the future, city traffic could be reduced by taking advantage of nearby bodies of water. One way to ditch traffic could be by employing fleets of self-driving boats that could provide a low-cost alternative to street-based taxis or delivery vehicles.
This idea isn’t new, and all the sophisticated info needed for navigation, steering, and docking capabilities can be done inexpensively with low-cost instruments and 3D printers to build docks. The boats could also be built to be interlocking so that, when they’re not ferrying people and supplies, they could couple to create rail-type barges, a concert stage, a platform for fireworks, and emergency docking.
Like beasts of burden in the past, ani-bots, or machines made to mimic animal behavior, might be the ticket to aid humans in research and exploration and to aid in building and moving supplies on Earth and above. From dragonflies to pack dogs and donkeys to kangaroos, these machines will be human companions and helpmates in the future.[79]
For example, the “Manta Droid,” using its pair of flexible pectoral fins, each powered by a single electric motor, is able to swim for up to ten hours. Researchers see it as an alternative solution to traditional, propeller-based thrusters that are used by most autonomous underwater vehicles. It could be an underwater truck, for relaying supplies, or even an underwater Uber, for getting to and from settlements beneath the surface.[80]
And for sheer fun, pretend to be a dolphin—for $500,000. A California-based company has built a “dolphin” enclosure with a rotary engine that can get you up to 20 mph. By diving up and down within a dolphin like capsule, you will feel—and maybe even travel—like the dolphin.[81]
* * *
One thing is for certain: in the next few decades there is going to be a plethora of choices on how to get where you’re going. Let’s trust that they will all be fossil-fuel-free.
The Road to Sustainable Urban Logistics, UPS, 2017, https://sustainability.ups.com/media/UPS_The_Road_to_Sustainable_Urban_Logistics.pdf.
“Sources of Greenhouse Gas Emissions,” US EPA, https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions.
Sarah McDermott, “Who’s Driving This Bus? Nobody,” CNET, April 29, 2017, https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/self-driving-cars-automated-public-transport-bus.
Amanda Cunningham, “Public Transportation of the Future: Four New Sustainable Technologies,” HOK (blog), Building Design + Construction, January 31, 2017. https://www.bdcnetwork.com/blog/public-transportation-future-four-new-sustainable-technologies.
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