Need For Speed: How Public Transport of The Future Will Be Faster, Greener & Easier

According to a 2014 UN report, 54 percent of the world’s population resides in urban areas and this is only set to increase — the UN predicts this figure will rise to 66 percent by 2050. This could pose an issue for public transportation systems in cities where they’re already operating at breaking point (for example, in Mumbai, where CNN reports local railway networks were accountable for almost 38,000 deaths between 2007 and 2017). But hope is offered by the increasingly futuristic solutions to transport problems like speed, environmental sustainability and finding space for parking lots.

HYPERLOOP

Back in 2013, Elon Musk proposed an innovative mode of transport: commuters travelling at 700 miles per hour in pods within tubes. This may have seemed like the stuff of science fiction a few years ago, but the hyperloop completed its first successful test ride last year and if you visit the Middle East, you could experience the hyperloop for yourself in just two years’ time. According to CNBC, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies is aiming to build a hyperloop track which will be operational by 2020. The Abu Dhabi-based track will be the first 10km of a longer network “to connect all the Emirates. Dubai, Abu Dhabi and eventually Saudi Arabia.” Hyperloop Transportation Technologies’ chairman Bibop Gresta told CNBC “It will be like a very comfortable airplane — without all the bumps and the problems of an airplane.” The potential is pretty much unlimited, but if the hype is true, it should significantly reduce time travelling between cities. According to NBC, Musk’s Boring Company’s planned hyperloop between Washington DC and New York City would reduce the travel time from just under three hours (on the fastest Amtrak trains) to half an hour.

SELF-DRIVING CARS

According to Business Insider, 38 percent of America’s largest cities have incorporated autonomous vehicles in their long-range transportation planning. Which is smart, because self-driving cars aren’t just the future of transport but the present — according to Wired, Waymo’s driverless cars have been running in Arizona since July 2017 . Self-driving cars or Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) could completely transform cities. As The New York Times has reported, in a fully-automated future both traffic lights and signs would vanish since “Robots…won’t need signs to optimize the way they move through urban landscapes.” They also report that AVs could speed up the pace of traffic since robot drivers won’t need the same amount of time to consider and navigate intersections.

And this isn’t just about individual cars, but self-driving public transport for the masses. In December 2017, multiple self-driving public buses started taking passengers around Guangdong in China. While most currently operational autonomous buses are minibuses, Mashable reports these four buses are able to carry up to 19 passengers. Curbed claims that buses of the future may not resemble anything we’d normally associate with a bus, instead being a multi-vehicle system of “larger vehicles on fixed routes, adding smaller autonomous shuttles as a kind of feeder system” in order to stay attractive to those who prefer the Uber model.

FORGET PERSONAL CARS

Business Insider reports that in 2017, Stanford economist and RethinkX think tank cofounder Tony Seba and tech investor James Arbib released a study which claimed that private ownership will drop 80% by 2030 in the US and that electric ride-shares will be between 4–10 times cheaper per mile than buying a new car by 2021. What would this mean for cities? The report claimed that when these vehicles drop off passengers, they would then keep going to pick up new passengers, and as such, may never need to park which would mean whole new swathes of land formerly used for parking lots would be available. According to Business Insider, we’re already seeing some potential uses for the land in San Francisco, which has turned some of its parking spaces into “parklets,” which sound like mini parks — “small grassy public spaces that include benches, plants, and (sometimes) artwork.”

INTERNET OF THINGS COULD CREATE SMART ROADS

Kansas City, Missouri is already using the Internet of Things to revolutionise the 2.2 mile smart streetcar corridor they’ve updated in a public-private partnership with Cisco. What does this mean? Free public wifi, 125 smart LED streetlights, 25 digital kiosks where cell phone free citizens can figure out their transportation options and learn about local entertainment and which can also be used as a reverse alert in emergencies. This stretch of road also includes sensors, which collect data from lights, traffic signals and more in order to streamline traffic management. Users can check into the network to see which intersections are suffering traffic jams or gridlock and can even use an app to secure a parking spot ahead of time.

While the road’s only been live for a year, if it proves popular in the long term, it would be easy to imagine such roads being adopted worldwide, gathering big data to solve traffic jams and perhaps even cutting commuting times.

TRANSPORT PAYMENT

Transit app COO Jake Sion told CNN that in the future, commuters will be able to get around cities on multiple modes of transport and pay for it via a single app. “You can already compare multiple options — an Uber trip, a train ride, bikeshare, or a short walk — and choose the best route with one app,” Sion said. “But in the not too distant future, we expect it’ll be easier to combine and pay for them in one app, too.”

Of course, futuristic payment apps already exist. The Guardian notes that Portland’s UBMobilePDX empowers commuters by not just showing them detailed options, “including public transit, parking lots, biking and walk routes and services for sharing rides cars and bike.” The app also includes the environmental impact and safety of the transport choice.

Written by Sophie Atkinson/images by Rosalba Porpora

This month’s theme is SPEED. We can’t stop thinking about autonomous vehicles, how we’ll navigate the cities of tomorrow and how drones will change the delivery process forever. Got a speed-related pitch for us? Drop sophie@toaberlin.com a line.