Transportation Futuristics is a website run by UC Berkeley that collects different visions of transportation from the past. It includes everything from concepts to drawings to prototypes to proposals from all decades of the last century in air, land, sea, public, and private transport.
The overview section gives a good introduction and raises a good question:
"This exhibit examines some of the efforts to address transportation needs in ways that didn’t quite get off the ground literally or figuratively. Are the designers simply ahead of their time? Are the failures attributable to an infrastructure that never anticipated such a development? Was there ultimately no way to make the new idea work financially?"
While many of the concepts are "the usual suspects" (flying cars, hover crafts), it's interesting to note some of the other ideas that's existed for a surprisingly long time. In particular, I didn't realize that Intelligent Transport Systems and Personal Rapid Transits have been prototyped in the 60s and have failed to take off over and over. The introduction section to ITS gives a good historical overview on ITS.
One of the sticky messages I got from taking Paul Saffo's future of engineering class was that things happen in S-curves, and to see what's coming next, it's a good idea to find something that's been failing for a long long time (people are still trying but haven't hit critical mass). Who knows, one of these crazy seeming ideas from the sixties could be the next big leap in transportation.
Tomorrow's Transportation: New Systems for the Urban Future
University of Washington's Innovative Transportation Technologies Website has an "excerpt from a 100 page report to the U.S. Congress that was submitted in 1968 by President Lyndon Johnson. It was undertaken by the Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (Robert Weaver) at the request of Congress. Its purpose was to explore areas of research and development that might ease the problems of Americans who live in and commute to work in cities. Research and development projects that offer promising prospects for transportation improvements in our cities are identified as is a longer term program of R&D activities, concentrated in areas of greatest promise and benefits."
The section available online is the Recommended Future Systems, and lists numerous future schemes, their cost, and the underlying needs it suggests. Not surprisingly, in 1968, the top concerns were suburbanization and congestion, the result of mobility spreading the urban limits and increasing traffic. There are no mentions of the environment or the dependence on foreign oil.
The Seven Recommendations are:
1. DIAL-A-BUS (DEMAND-ACTIVATED BUS SYSTEM
"A major failing of public urban transportation today is its inability to provide adequate and attractive collection and distribution services in lower density areas of a metropolis. In some parts of urban areas and in many small cities and towns, the travel demand is too small to support any transit service at all. It is simply economically infeasible to route and schedule present transit vehicles efficiently when only a few people want to go to and from the same places during a short period of time. Rail systems are too expensive and are technologically unsuited for low volumes of demand. Ordinary buses cannot maintain sufficiently frequent service in outlying areas to attract any but those who have no alternative. What is needed is a public transit system which can respond dynamically to the needs of these areas, that is, a system whose routes and schedules are both flexible and ubiquitous."
"The Dial-a-Bus, which is a hybrid between an ordinary bus and a taxi, could be the basis for such flexibility. It would pick up passengers at their doors or at a nearby bus stop shortly after they have telephoned for service. The computer would know the location of its vehicles, how many passengers were on them, and where they were heading. It would select the right vehicle and dispatch it to the caller according to some optimal routing program which had been devised for the system. Thus, the system could readily link many origins to many destinations."
2. PERSONAL RAPID TRANSIT
"The demand for transportation in areas of medium to low population density is at the present time predominantly served by private automobiles. Public transit trunklines may traverse these areas, but collector-distributor service is poor if it exists at all. More than half the automobile travel in large cities occurs in such areas in trips longer than 2.5 miles. Increasing travel demands of this kind, unmet by public transportation services, tend to encourage multiple-automobile ownership and use; often these additional automobiles can be neither afforded nor efficiently accommodated."
"Personal rapid transit would provide travelers the important advantages of minimum waiting time at the origin station, and private, secure accommodations. At the heart of the concept is the premise that personal transit would serve a metropolis, except perhaps for its lowest density outskirts, with a network or grid of lines, each perhaps a mile or two apart."
"Empty passenger vehicles or "capsules" would be available at each station on the network. The riders would enter one, select and register their destination, and then be transported there automatically, with no stopping. The average speed would be essentially equal to the vehicle speed. The station spacing on a guideway network for the system would have no influence on speed of travel. Passenger demand and station costs would dictate proper station spacing."
"A personal rapid transit system having these performance characteristics is an important element in a viable urban transportation system for a number of reasons:"
• An exclusive right-of-way
• Automation
• Small, individualized vehicles
• Additionally, use of small lightweight vehicles
3. DUALMODE VEHICLE SYSTEMS
"On the outer fringes of the personal rapid transit system just described, the network of lines in the lower density areas, to remain economical, would probably be too far apart for convenient walking access, and unsuitable for short neighborhood or local trips. The new systems study found the dualmode vehicle system to offer a possible solution to these problems. In a dualmode system, the vehicle can convert easily from travel on a street to travel on an automated network. It thus could serve as a logical extension or elaboration of personal rapid transit."
4. AUTOMATED DUAL MODE BUS
"Medium-sized industrial cities (200,000 to 400,000 population) have characteristically had difficulty in supporting public transit service. Population densities are relatively low, and trip distances are short over essentially radial routes between the urban core and outlying residential and industrial areas. Providing peak-hour home-to-work travel, including both that between suburban homes and the rapidly expanding job opportunities in the outlying industrial and commercial zones, poses major transit service problems. Some form of public transit, improved over standard bus service, but with lower initial costs and greater flexibility than rapid rail transit, is desirable to meet the needs of the intermediate-size industrial city."
"The automated dualmode bus would operate on the public streets as a conventional bus to pick up and discharge passengers. On longer high speed runs it would operate as a fully automatic vehicle on a private right-of-way. Thus, it offers the possibility for a system of public transit which combines the high speed capacity of a rail system operating on its private right-of-way with the flexibility and adaptability of a city bus. This flexibility would make it possible for the transit system to serve areas where the cost of extensive fixed rights-of-way could not be justified, and to minimize the number of transfers which the passenger would have to make."
5. PALLET OR FERRY SYSTEMS
"The most rapid population and employment growth in American cities today is in the suburban areas. As a result, the percentage of trips having an origin or destination in a concentrated central city area is shrinking, and the number of trips between low density residential areas and decentralized industrial and commercial areas is growing. To accommodate this growth pattern and to provide other options of urban development, modes of transportation which span entire metropolitan areas with circumferential, as well as radial links, are essential. A corollary to the dual mode personal vehicle systems which would provide this type of service would use pallets to carry (or ferry) automobiles, minibuses or freight automatically on high-speed guideways."
"A rail-based pallet or ferry system could make good use of abandoned or seldom used rail line in the city."
6. FAST INTRAURBAN TRANSIT LINKS
"The diversification of travel in and around major metropolitan areas requires fast intraurban transit links to move relatively high volumes of passengers between central cities and suburban growth centers. Increasingly, they will be needed for line-haul travel not oriented entirely to central cities: Cross traffic among new towns, between satellite centers and international or regional airports, and as feeder-distributor systems serving the major high-speed ground lines along major regional corridors."
"New systems of fast line-haul links will be essential in the development of new or renewed satellite communities. Indeed, they may be the only means to provide the focal points for future metropolitan development patterns alternative to continued regional sprawl."
7. SYSTEMS FOR MAJOR ACTIVITY CENTERS
"Multitudes of people assemble each day in the major activity centers of a city; large airports, shopping centers, industrial parks, and universities, for example. Central business districts are, of course, major activity centers. Provision must be made for an adequate circulation system to better accommodate the movement of people and goods within these centers. Currently, much of the travel in these areas is by pedestrians on sidewalks. In a few cities, trains provide service in subways or on elevated railways. In most areas, this circulation is now provided by autos, taxis, streetcars, buses, and jitneys operating on city streets, frequently under highly congested conditions."
"Because modal separation is imperative under the congested conditions of travel in activity centers, such systems must operate on some kind of exclusive guideway. Following is a discussion of the principal types of systems:"
"Moving Belts: Horizontal conveyor belts have been in use for a long time. They have many advantages—low cost, no waiting, no operators. A major disadvantage is their slow speed. The very old, the very young and the handicapped cannot get safely on and off sidewalks which are moving faster than about 120 feet per minute (1.76 m.p.h.)."
"Capsule Transit: The complexity of moving belt designs suggests that a type of small vehicle system may be more feasible for major activity center use in the long run, if sufficiently high carrying capacities can be achieved."
"Network Cab Transit: While traditional transit forms are applicable to downtown circulation, on-street forms suffer and contribute to congestion, while new subway systems are both very expensive and highly disruptive during installation. To meet these difficulties, the study considered narrow light-weight, low-noise systems, which can be suspended above city streets or sidewalks with a minimum of intrusion."
What's amazing is that forty years ago, they identified many of the problems of a highly automotive oriented society and proposed numerous solutions, many of which are still being proposed right now. From all I can tell, none of these ideas were implemented in large scale, and instead we've (the US) kept building highways in an endless cat and mouse game of increasing lanes and cars. The Intelligent Transportation Technologies Websites takes a completely opposite view (i.e. positive):
"Some 39 years later, we find that nearly all of the technologies that were identified as "promising" in the report have been developed (or are being developed) and some are currently operational."
Next I'm going to try investigate some of the currently research done in the fields of Intelligent Transport Systems and Personal Rapid Transit.
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