3052: Transportation
The largest part of the world's population simply walks
everywhere they go. They do not travel
far beyond the distance one can walk in half a day. In the developing parts of the world, trains
that were introduced by the British and left over after the collapse of
colonial rule carry millions of people in and around their provinces. The ubiquitous automobile has made its impact
on every population on the planet. Each
of these modes continues to evolve and expand. In countries where Brittan was
not the colonial government, the leaders and planners of transportation have
embraced high-speed rail systems to move great numbers of people very fast
along the ground. China and Japan are just two of those powerhouse economies
that have already seen the future and have moved to meet it.
Each of the three modes mentioned above represents a higher
energy budget than the one before it.
Conversely, each one represents a lessening of flexibility and
convenience than the one before it.
At today’s level of intrusion of the automobile into daily
life, we are experiencing difficulties in sustaining that level. Flat production levels for petroleum coupled
with larger populations demanding fuel from the ground, makes the paradigm
unstable. The amount of carbon
emissions, sulfur and Nitric Oxide is making the planet less habitable each
year. The planet itself cannot sustain a
doubling of automobile usage without at least a halving of the emissions.
The typical automobile carrying one human to work each day
devotes the energy needed to move 4000 pounds of glass, plastic and metal that
commuting distance. A commuter train
carrying 135 passengers per car devotes only 830 pounds of glass, plastic and
metal to the same task. With standing
room only capacity that number can drop to 650 pounds[1].
In our thousand year future, we will not be driving personal
vehicles for the bulk of our transport needs.
This is not to say automobiles will be extinct but they will be
relegated to a secondary status.
The cost of moving around may indeed make moving around a
nearly extinct aspect of daily life.
That ability is a luxury of energy utilization that takes from someone
else. The billions of more people on the
planet will undoubtedly force a shift in behaviors. Leisure travel may still remain high but the
lion's share of miles traveled is associated with employment.
In countries like Japan
and China
where there are great high-density cities, there are also highly crowded subway
rail systems. Millions of people make
their daily trips-to-work by public means merely because there is not enough
space available to allocate to automobiles.
At one point in the 1990s a square foot of Tokyo real estate ran upwards of $2,500. They needed to make the most of that square
foot and built skyscraping offices and apartments that had as many floors as
possible to distribute that cost.
The luxury of being allowed to drive a $60,000 vehicle into
a city and park it all day will certainly fall out of favor as the cost of
doing so rises and limits the practice.
Meanwhile urban planners and environmental advocates will have rethought
the practicality of accommodating that desire for luxury and will not have
allocated as much of our common resources to the practice.
The flying car that was predicted back when automobiles were
first produced and traffic resulted may see a short lived appearance in the
future but fuel costs and overhead congestion are certainly to go up. Small
passenger compartments will certainly be common on the public transit ways of
this distant future if only because of the diversity of where people will come
from and travel to. Much like the convenience that personal autos provided for
door to door travel, so might the public systems deliver a person seamlessly to
the floor of their office suite from their dwelling. Not only the trains go
forward and back, but sideways and vertically to the final destination of the
trip. This would be like convergence of the building elevator and the subway
train.
In my dream of the far distant future, automated freight
hauling trucks plied the highways following magnetic markers embedded in the
pavement. They breezed along at an efficient speed of 35 MPH automatically maintaining
large distances between small numbers of units or positioning themselves in platoons
of 5 to 10 trucks to make use of the reduced drag in the longer group. No
drivers were needed that would become fatigued and required sleep, food or rest
stops. There was no hurried delivery in order to pickup a return load or to get
back home before the end of the day.
Trucks were organized and directed from Global Positioning
Satellite dispatch and tracking systems. A load was scheduled to arrive at a
time and place that was systematically plotted for maximum lane availability,
less personal and local travel and accounted for weather and road conditions.
The trucks plodded along using solar roof panels, computerized
regenerative braking systems and stops where batteries could be switched out
for minimal down time. These were the medium distance haul trucks since the
long haul loads went by rails to their just-in-time delivery points at
manufacturing plants and transfer depots for the "last mile" final
delivery.
The few personal automobiles were the first-mile/last-mile
segment of much longer travel. They kept to themselves out of the truck-haul
lanes and drove much faster due to the anxiety and personal needs humans
wanting to get there quickly.
[1] Derived
from the seating capacity and vehicle weight of the two-level Kawasaki Rail
Cars that are operated by the Maryland Area Rail Commuter (MARC) railroad.
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