Economist Clifford Winston of the Brookings Institution outlines the surface transportation system of the future in a Wall Street Journal commentary, "Paving the Way for Diverless Cars." Winston notes "a much better technological solution is on the horizon" than high speed rail "as an effective way to reduce highway congestion" as the Obama administration in Washington and the Brown administration in Sacramento contend. Indeed, not even the voluminous planning documentation used to justify high speed rail provides evidence that the 21st century edition of an early 19th century technology can materially reduce traffic congestion.
Already Google has conducted experiments with the automated car that have been so successful that they are now permitted in Nevada. Winston suggests that by automating cars, it will be necessary to separate automobile traffic from truck traffic, which will make it possible to provide additional traffic lanes within the existing road footprint. Non-automated cars and trucks would continue to operate in conventional, wider lanes on the same right-of-way. Another advantage would be that with the automated control, more cars could be accommodated in each lane. The need for highway expansion would be largely displaced by substantially improving capacity by upgrading highways with 21st century technology.
Winston has been a critic of overly expensive urban rail systems and transit subsidies. Driverless cars were also the subject of a Wall Street Journal commentary by Randal O’Toole in 2010.
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25 responses to “Transportation for Tomorrow: Driverless Cars”
Arthur C Clarke among others had this idea. The difference from then is that instead of having to build the intelligence into the road, today you can build it into the auto. See Imperial Earth for one example.
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It only enhances the immediate potential for these new systems, if low-cost dedicated “guideways” (? – wrong word, I know) can be built specifically for the new cars to use as a congestion-bypassing alternative to the existing network. One proposal called “EDM Skyway”, has them added above existing highways, cantilevered from centrally mounted pylons. The thing is that the cost of building such guideways is low if they do not need to be engineered for heavy trucks. And the convoying of vehicles with little “headway” at high speeds, mean that one single lane each way is capable of carrying very large numbers of such vehicles before there will be any need to add a second lane in each direction. And the lane concerned can be super narrow. 2 or more “lanes” could be fitted within a fraction of the space required by a normal highway.
The economics of this are mind-blowing.
Another such proposal is called “Freedom Transit”.
http://freedomtransit.com/
“EDM Skyway” is here:
http://www.innov8transport.com/
Also incorporated in these suggestions is a “third rail” or some such built-in power supply to the vehicles on that guideway. This solves the electric vehicle “range” problem. This is really what someone should be proposing for the length of California instead of HSR.
This proposal does not even need the cars to be self-drive under all conditions; “Skyway” and “Freedom Transit” assume that control is taken over from the driver once the car is on the special guideway. This alleviates concerns regarding driverless cars on the existing road network. Of course the drivers can drive the cars as normal while they are on the existing road network.
Besides long distance highways, and clip-on “express lanes”, there is massive potential for bridges and tunnels and even dedicated “slip lanes” to take these special cars past choke points. The narrowness is a cost advantage for tunnels and the weight restriction is a cost advantage for bridges and flyovers.
The Nordhaus and Shellenberger suggestion that we need an “Apollo Project” for 21st century technology solutions is a good one, but the politicians and most advocates seem to be hell-bent on taking us back to 19th century systems that have already well and truly reached the end of their Kondratieff cycle. IF ONLY the money being thus sucked down a black hole, could be redirected to a totally superior system of “mobility”; I think this is the next Kondratieff cycle, and the estimable Jesse Ausubel had it wrong to suggest that Mag-Lev was “it”.
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Non-automated cars and trucks would continue to operate in conventional, wider lanes on the same right-of-way. Musterhausparks Another advantage would be that with the automated control, more cars could be accommodated in each lane.
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