The Future of Transportation


Book Description

With the promise of delivery drones, personal helicopters and groceries delivered right to your refrigerator, one might think we are living in the best of transportation times. However, most city commuters would be quick to tell you otherwise. Of all the technological interventions continuously inserted into our daily travels, which ones will last? Is ride-sharing here to stay? In ten years will we all be taking autonomous vehicles to work? Will traffic as we know it cease to exist? While this volume makes no promises or predictions, it does take a step back from the hype of the new to explore more of the options from what might seem like yesterday?s solutions: busses, bikes and even trains. Perhaps remedies to our transportation woes are not all in the future but are hiding in plain and present site. 00'The Future of Transportation' is the third volume in the 'SOM Thinkers' series, conceived by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. 'SOM Thinkers' originated from a desire to start a public conversation about the built environment. Rather than frame the subject in the expected ?professional? language, the series poses today?s most pressing questions about design and architecture in a bold and accessible way.




The Future Starts Here


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Road to Nowhere


Book Description

How to build a transportation system to provide mobility for all Road to Nowhere exposes the flaws in Silicon Valley’s vision of the future: ride-hailing services such as Uber and Lyft to take us anywhere; electric cars to make them ‘green’; and automation to ensure transport is cheap and ubiquitous. Such promises are implausible and potentially dangerous. As Paris Marx shows, these technological visions are a threat to our ideas of what a society should be. Electric cars are not a silver bullet for sustainability, and autonomous vehicles won’t guarantee road safety. There will not be underground tunnels to eliminate traffic congestion, and micromobility services will not replace car travel any sooner than we will see the arrival of the long-awaited flying car. In response, Marx offers a vision for a more collective way of organizing transportation systems that considers the needs of poor, marginalized, and vulnerable people. The book argues that rethinking mobility can be the first step in a broader reimagining of how we design and live in our future cities. We must create streets that allow for social interaction and conviviality. We need reasons to get out of our cars and to use public means of transit determined by community needs rather than algorithmic control. Such decisions should be guided by the search for quality of life rather than for profit.




When Trucks Stop Running


Book Description

In lively and engaging language, this book describes our dependence on freight transport and its vulnerability to diminishing supplies and high prices of oil. Ships, trucks, and trains are the backbone of civilization, hauling the goods that fulfill our every need and desire. Their powerful, highly-efficient diesel combustion engines are exquisitely fine-tuned to burn petroleum-based diesel fuel. These engines and the fuels that fire them have been among the most transformative yet disruptive technologies on the planet. Although this transportation revolution has allowed many of us to fill our homes with global goods even a past emperor would envy, our era of abundance, and the freight transport system in particular, is predicated on the affordability and high energy density of a single fuel, oil. This book explores alternatives to this finite resource including other liquid fuels, truck and locomotive batteries and utility-scale energy storage technology, and various forms of renewable electricity to support electrified transport. Transportation also must adapt to other challenges: Threats from climate change, financial busts, supply-chain failure, and transportation infrastructure decay. Robert Hirsch, who wrote the “Peaking of World Oil Production” report for the U.S. Department of Energy in 2005, said that planning for peak world production must start at least 10, if not 20 years ahead of time. What little planning exists focuses mainly on how to accommodate 30 percent more economic growth while averting climate change, ignoring the possibility that we are at, or near, the end of growth. Taken for granted, the modern transportation system will not endure forever. The time is now to take a realistic and critical look at the choices ahead, and how the future of transportation may unfold.




The Future Starts Here


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Safety for Future Transport and Mobility


Book Description

The book provides background information about technical solutions, processes and methodology to develop future automated mobility solutions. Beginning from the legal requirements as the minimum tolerable risk level of the society, the book provides state-of-the-art risk-management methodologies. The system engineering approach based on todays engineering best practices enhanced by principles derived from cybernetics. The approach derived from the typical behaviour of a human driver in public road traffic to a cybernetical based system engineering approach. Beyond the system engineering approach, a common behaviour model for the operational domain will show aspects how to extend the system engineering model with principles of cybernetics. The role and the human factors of road traffic participants and drivers of motor vehicles are identified and several viewpoints for different observers show how such mixed traffic scenarios could be assessed and optimised. The influence of the changing mobility demands of the society and the resulting changes to the origination of producer, owner, driver and supplier show aspects for future liability and risk share option for new supply chains. Examples from various industries provide some well-proven engineering principles how to adapt those for the future mobility for the benefit of the users. The aim of the book is to raise awareness that the safety provided by a product, a means of transport or a system up to an entire traffic system depends on the capabilities of the various actors. In addition to the driver and passengers, there are also other road users, maintenance personnel and service providers, who must have certain abilities to act safely in traffic. These are also the capabilities of the organisation, not only the organisation that develops or brings the product to market, but also the organisation that is responsible for the operation and the whole lifecycle of the products. The book is for people who want to get involved in the mobility of the future. People, that have ideas to become a player who want to help shape the future mobility of society and who want to bring responsible solutions for users into the market.




New Mobilities


Book Description

In New Mobilities: Smart Planning for Emerging Transportation Technologies, transportation expert Todd Litman examines 12 emerging transportation modes and services that are likely to significantly affect our lives: bike- and carsharing, micro-mobilities, ridehailing and micro-transit, public transit innovations, telework, autonomous and electric vehicles, air taxis, mobility prioritization, and logistics management. Public policies around New Mobilities can either help create heaven, a well-planned transportation system that uses new technologies intelligently, or hell, a poorly planned transportation system that is overwhelmed by conflicting and costly, unhealthy, and inequitable modes. His expert analysis will help planners, local policymakers, and concerned citizens to make informed choices about the New Mobility revolution.