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Future Transport - Trains, Cars or Planes

2022-07-23
(Please read my
A Very Short Introduction to Systems Thinking
⁠
to understand this a little bit better.)
What is the future of transport going to be? Improved self-driving vehicles, or improved public transport?
The answer is going to depend very much on whether you live in the developed, rich world, or the poor under-developed world. In the developed world it is also going to matter a lot whether you are talking about the USA or not.
At the outset, let me say that we will not replace one way of transport with another, at least not for a very long time. But over time, I think we will see large improvements in self-driving vehicles, beginning with remote controlled trucks. This could probably extend to remote controlled taxi fleets. This will greatly reduce two large costs in the transport system - labour, and vehicle downtime. In the trucking industry, vehicle down-time is a major concern. Consumers are willing to incur large capital costs in vehicles that are not used for 99% of the time, just so that they can have transportation on demand.
As far as cars go, as the vehicles become more autonomous, the physical appearance of the vehicles will change. First to go will be the (dangerous) steering wheel, and the other controls needed to steer a vehicle. As the computer and remote controlled drivers make overnight travel easier, people will want to be able to sleep in the vehicle. We will probably see hotel rooms on wheels, in addition to the type of vehicle we are currently used to. Vehicles purely built for office and other commutes (no luggage) can do away with trunks, making them shorter, taking up less space on the road. Individual ownership will greatly reduce.
With automated driving of the vehicles, and vehicle to vehicle communication, following distances can be eliminated between automated vehicles. In areas where there are only automated vehicles, speed limits can be greatly increased. I foresee that in the future we will have “road trains” of tightly packed vehicles travelling at 200 to 300 km/h, and more later on, using lanes dedicated to self-driving vehicles. Designed correctly, this will also greatly reduce wind resistance. Additionally hyperloop type tunnels could be built for long distance travel.
These virtual trains will form and unform dynamically, and are not bound to tracks and shunting yards.
High occupancy lanes on highways would be reserved for autonomous vehicles. In the suburbs, pods of small passenger only vehicles will pick up groups of four to six people, sharing a destination. When these vehicles get to a road reserved for auto traffic, they will intelligently merge. The merge will do two things, get the new vehicle up to the high speed of the lane, as well as attach into a train of vehicles going to the same destination. At the destination, the “road train” will dissolve piece by piece at each offramp. When passengers are disembarked, the vehicles will be (mostly) removed to parking lots on the outskirts of the city centre, while others will move back to the suburbs, either for a second load into the city, for use as school transport, or for other daily run-about commuting tasks in the suburbs.
Let’s think about shopping for those things that you do not purchase online and have delivered. You order the vehicle, which arrives in a minimum amount of time based on your service level agreement. It takes you to your destination, and departs on another errant. You buy your goods, and you (or the shop) commit it to a delivery vehicle. You get into another vehicle to go home.
Happening at the same time several other things will take place re-inforcing growing trend.
People will slowly migrate out of the cities, due to the ability to do remote work. As the number of office days decrease, people will probably be willing to stay further. This will be re-inforced as higher travelling speeds makes the time journeys take shorter. Because a vehicle can serve several families, the number of cars on the road will drastically decrease. The capital cost of transportation will decrease. Maintenance costs will also decrease because of the fact that electric vehicles are so much cheaper to maintain.
The need for high rise parking garages and flat tarred parking spaces in cities will decrease as autonomous vehicles will not need them. When not needed to convey passengers, vehicles will park in facilities on the outskirts of cities, where their batteries will be recharged. Parking lots will be roofed with solar panels, to at least partially provide the electricity needed.
Removing the human element from the driving task, and replacing it with an interconnected network of artificial intelligent “drivers”, will make roads much more efficient over the longer term. These drivers are less likely to make accidents, do not get tired, and do not need to rest. Trucks can be driven overnight, when the roads are less busy. They will keep an even speed, where as human drivers slow down for interesting things like accidents. They also misjudge following distances, and then break excessively resulting in a concertina effect which will cause a busy highway to come to a standstill. Autonomous vehicles will keep a constant speed, and instantaneous communication will keep all cars abreast of road conditions.
Later, when multiple autonomous vehicle lanes are in place, traffic that needs to travel through a city, can be switched to a high-speed, dedicated lane. Currently these vehicles clog up city traffic, slowing themselves and everybody else down during peak hours. The throughput of a road, is dependant on the amount of time that vehicles need to spend on it, and the amount of space that the vehicle takes up. That space is not restricted to the size of the vehicle, but the following distance it needs to maintain to the vehicle in front of it. Virtual road trains, of short, trunkless, engineless cars, with a split second following distance, will massively increase the efficiency of roads.
Further, having dedicated lanes, will make it possible to enable inductive charging while you are driving, further reducing vehicle downtime.
I wanted to also discuss how we can get to this from where countries currently are, but time is out.
I will conclude with this: None of what I have discussed is a technological challenge, it is purely an implementation challenge. And one that is not all that difficult, compared to transportation development of the last one hundred years. Take your self back to an era without highways, and very few tarred roads, when Model T Fords were high tech. When it was not yet clear whether internal combustion, steam or electrical would dominate the coming industry.
Compared to that, the road ahead is much more clear. Electrical vehicles are needed. The current driver-assist features, and early autonomous driving functionality needs to be continuously improved. Road and city planners should start NOW to include these technologies in their design. Roads have decade planning and implementation lead times, I think it is safe to say that in ten years we will have autonomous vehicles, or something very, very close to it.
I think the USA should abandon dreams of a high-speed rail network, and rather focus on a high-speed virtual train network, based on the existing road network.
Let the future come! it will be great.
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