It wasn’t long after Winter Storm Leon gridlocked our city before some observers raised the question whether a more robust mass transit system could have alleviated the impact of the storm. Transportation historian David Jones calls this the “mass motorization versus mass transit” debate, and our city seems particularly susceptible to it.
Cars or trains — which will it be?
What few noticed, however, was that just days before the storm crippled our city, the U.S. Department of Transportation announced it will soon require new cars to incorporate communications technologies that will allow them to communicate with other cars and with traffic infrastructure such as stop lights and road signs.
These technological advances are expected to lead to significant improvements in car safety, potentially saving thousands of lives and billions of dollars in damage caused by automobiles accidents each year.
In addition to being safer, these “connected cars” will improve the efficiency of our highway and street infrastructure by injecting intelligence into car routing and signaling systems. The days of sitting at traffic lights at empty intersections may soon be behind us.
What these technologies do is allow automobiles to begin to act more like transit systems. Using specially designed software, they coordinate the speed, movement and spacing of cars to optimize the use of the road and highway infrastructure. During our recent storm, these cars could have informed drivers immediately that is was going to take them 12 hours to get home. I am sure many people would have abandoned their quest if they had known what was awaiting them on the interstates that day.
As our automobiles become increasingly intelligent, some analysts wonder whether we are headed toward a world of autonomous vehicles. They imagine a network of driverless cars that provide on-demand taxi-like services for a fraction of the cost of owning a personal vehicle.
“It’s a game changer,” says car researcher Alain L. Kornhauser of Princeton University. “What I think is going to happen is that nobody will own a car.”
A recent study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology estimated that Singapore could eliminate 60 percent of its automobiles if it adopted a universal network of driverless cars. In essence, these vehicles could provide a form of “personal-public transportation,” solving the “last mile” problem that plagues existing public transportation systems by providing door-to-door service.
Driverless cars have the potential to be the first transformational technology of the 21st century. The Eno Center for Transportation recently estimated the annual benefit from autonomous cars could approach a half-trillion dollars.
Big investments are already underway. IBM has partnered with European auto supplier Continental to develop a cloud computing platform to deliver a range of new mobile services to cars. Things like software updates and vehicle control functionality will be delivered over the Internet. These and other developments could make automated driving a reality.
Before long, the cars versus trains debate may seem as relevant as the “horses versus cars” debate a century ago. Cars that behave like trains may be where we are headed.
David Edwards, a former chief policy officer for Atlanta, is global offerings manager for IBM Smarter Cities.
