Updates

I made substantial changes to the "Why We Can Do Better Than Cars" list in response to feedback. I consolidated many of the list items to reduce redundancy and I added a few new items. Thank you for your suggestions.

The Subsidized Road Problem

This post will be continually updated as I think about the subject and respond to your comments.

As I discussed in the introductory entry there haven't been dramatic, revolutionary changes in technology in at least fifty years. Why? You might be tempted to suggest that the technology just doesn't exist. There is a grain of truth to this, there aren't any complete systems radically better than anything we have now ready for prime time. However, many underlying technologies have improved dramatically in the same time period. In particular computing, communications, and material science have each leaped forward. Why hasn't anything radically new evolved on top of the amazing computing we now have available?

I think the answer lies in the economic incentives. Transportation is heavily subsidized: airports, air traffic control, train stations, train tracks, bus stations, marine ports, subways, buses, and roads receive direct subsidies from federal, state and local governments. In other words, your tax dollars pay for these things regardless of how much you use them. This is very problematic, because this means that any new technology has to compete against the entrenched status quo at a heavy discount. This makes it virtually impossible for something new to take hold.

I'm not against subsidies, they are an important government tool. The world is full of things that do more good than their market value suggests: schools, basic research, parks, etc. These things deserve subsidies, and I think some public transportation funding is well deserved. However, there are some things that do more harm than their price suggests and I think roads are an excellent example. In short, cars pollute, kill people, and waste their time. Congested roads are more dangerous, so each extra person that drives increases the risk of everyone else on the road. Each car contributes to the cancer rate and global warming. Finally, big city commuters know all too well that traffic adds huge time to their work day. By driving you impose a cost on all your fellow drivers, but you don't pay that cost. This is on top of the absurd direct subsidy, which gives you free roads! Before you argue that you pay for the roads in taxes, remember that everyone that walks to work pays the same taxes as 150 mile commuters. You do pay, but you don't necessarily pay your fair share and if you increased your use you wouldn't pay more. This leads to the unfortunate consequence, that the cost of roads does not affect your driving related decisions. All of this makes it very difficult to replace roads even though we can do better.

Those of you that know a little economics know that I'm alluding to externalities. It's a fascinating topic and pretty central to my political philosophy. Read up on them, you won't regret it.

Air Car

Thank you to Sol Schulman for alerting me to this story.

Moteur Developpment International (MDI), a French company founded in 1991 by Formula One engineer Guy Nègre, has released a prototype of a car whose only fuel is compressed air. The car will have a maximum speed of 110kmh (68 mph), and a tank range of 200km(125 miles). Both specs certainly meet the needs of Joe Commuter. The car will cost only €3500($5200 at current prices) and refueling is almost free at an estimated €1.50.

The company also plans to compete for the Automotive X-Prize, a highly publicized, multi-million dollar competition of green cars. The prize will be awarded based on a diverse set of criteria, but all cars must be travel at least 100 miles per gallon of gasoline energy equivalent(MPGe) and emit less than 200 grams of carbon dioxide equivalent per mile. MDI's entrant will be an air/fossil fuel hybrid.

Links: BBC News Video | Air Car Project | Photos | Wikipedia | Auto X-Prize | Prize Rules | Edmund's Summary of Prize Entrants

Vehicle to Vehicle Communications

GM CEO Rick Wackoner delivered a keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show. He spoke about Boss, but he also discussed a new GM initiative that is of particular interest to me. GM plans to dramatically expand OnStar with vehicle to vehicle communications(V2V):

One of the next big developments in automotive electronics is connecting cars with other cars.Connecting them electronically, that is… to keep them from connecting physically.
In recent years, advances in electronics have allowed for technologies like anti-lock brakes, traction control, electronic stability control, and obstacle detection. At GM, we’re working our way up this advanced technology ladder to help our drivers avoid accidents and improve traffic flow. In fact, we’re now offering a Lane Departure Warning System and a blind-spot alert system on the 2008 Buick Lucerne and 2008 Cadillac STS and DTS. We’re preparing to take it even further through the use of GPS and advanced transponder technology that we believe will revolutionize the driving experience.
We call it V2V, or vehicle-to-vehicle communications.V2V starts with collision avoidance and builds from there. And the key difference between V2V and sensor-based “vision” systems is in the electronic communications. Today’s vision systems send out a signal that determines the speed and location of the vehicle ahead of you, and directs your car accordingly.
It’s excellent technology.
These next-generation systems promise to be considerably better… because they’ll be significantly less costly, yes… but more importantly, because they’ll use transponders to “talk” with other vehicles within a quarter mile of your vehicle. So, if six cars ahead, somebody in a transponder-equipped vehicle steps on the brakes… in your lane or the lanes on either side of you… your transponder will immediately know that, and start slowing down your car before you’re even aware you may need to stop. This type of technology, unheard of 15 years ago, has the potential to minimize traffic jams and, more importantly, greatly reduce highway accidents and fatalities… with minimal or possibly even no roadway infrastructure required.

I think the key to building a scalable computer controlled transportation system is vehicle to vehicle communication. I don't think it will be possible to centrally control millions of vehicles. Each vehicle will need to decide for itself when to speed up, slow down, or turn. It might be possible for a central controller to coordinate traffic, but even that looks too difficult considering the problems facing the much smaller air traffic control system. In order to support each vehicle's decisions, the vehicle will need to communicate heavily with its peers. As Mr. Wagoner notes, it is much easier to get a message from the car in front of you that it has slowed down then to figure that out with heavy duty computer vision.

In the interest of full disclosure, my research focuses on programming languages for peer to peer communication. I may very well be a victim of the old adage "if you have a hammer everything looks like a nail," but I don't think so.

Links: GM Keynote Transcript

Why We Can Do Better Than Cars

I want to make a list of reasons why cars, roads, etc. are really bad for the world. I don't mind if the list is very long, but I'm hoping each of the items will be short, easy to understand, and convincing. The list will be in order from most to least important. Obviously, it is very hard to assign "importance," so I'm going to use my estimate of economic impact as a proxy. Eventually, I'd like to find some real data/analysis for as many items as possible. I think some of the items are virtually impossible to assign a value to, so I'm going to make some pretty arbitrary judgment calls. I do think the top three are in the correct order. Also on the to do list: write expanded posts for each item, make a dependency map between items, expand the list, refine the list, and make the list into a huge poster to bring with me as a prop when I'm on Oprah.

1. Dead and maimed people
2. Traffic
3. Global warming
4. Expanding roads after buildings are built around them requires herculean effort
5. Roads are hard to build above, below, or through the ground this makes many common things significant obstacles: water, mountains, canyons, gorges, valleys, other roads, and buildings
6. Emissions related health problems
7. Cars don't drive themselves, wasting the drivers time
8. Cars sit unused most of the time
9. Cars are expensive to own
10. Cars do not age well
11. Parking lots and garages waste space and money (thanks Elnatan)
12. Time is wasted searching for parking
13. Maintenance of heavily trafficked roads causes delays
14. Cars do not adapt well to harsh weather
15. Cars are noisy
16. Low maximum speed
17. Roads divide wildlife territory
18. Cars kill wildlife

Please send additions, refinements, or questions via the comment link below.

Blog Purpose

I'm sure you may be wondering why I've started this blog. You might be thinking, "Josh has a 3-month old and he's in a very demanding PhD program, does he really need to be wasting time blogging?" As many of you know I've had a longstanding obsession with transportation. I've decided to start an organization that advocates for radical, new transportation.

New forms of transportation are long overdue. If you compare the transportation we use today to the transportation of fifty years ago there are only insubstantial differences: cars were heavier and less fuel efficient, planes were much more expensive and couldn't fly as far, and there were no bullet trains. However, all of these changes are incremental, not revolutionary. Compare that to the changes in computing, pharmaceuticals, and communications.

The status quo has left the American transportation system in crisis. Traffic in most major metropolitan areas worsens every year. At the same time the bridges, tunnels, and even standard roadways are in disrepair. The congestion in major airports is so bad that the FAA is imposing flight caps. The air traffic control system hasn't been modernized in decades and is stretched well beyond capacity. Global warming has alerted us to the stupidity of burning fossil fuels. We need to do better than even the best hybrid technology to reduce global warming in the face of the fast rising energy needs of emerging nations like China and India. Finally, cars are just too dangerous. They are the leading killer of young people and that won't change just by adding more airbags. These are all huge problems and they need huge solutions.

I think the crisis demands a massive investment by either the federal government or very wealthy philanthropists into transportation research. I believe the advances in material science, mechanical engineering, and in particular computer science leave us tantalizingly close to safer, cleaner, and faster transportation systems. However, a tremendous research effort is needed to get us over the hump. I hope you don't think I'm talking about science fiction in the form of flying cars, "beaming", or warp drive. I'm talking about tangible efforts that have real prototypes, like:

1. Autonomous vehicles like Boss (see previous post).
2. Personalized public transportation like ULTra being developed for Heathrow airport.
3. New Supersonic Jets
4. Space Elevators
5. Tunneling Machines

I plan to spend this blog linking to and discussing advances in projects like those listed above. I also hope to interview a diverse set of experts: scientists and engineers working on transportation projects, economists, Department of Transportation employees, Environmental Advocates, Airline executives, etc. I'm also going to write opinion pieces, that will serve as drafts of letters and op/eds that I will send to newspapers, magazines or academic journals. Finally, I would like to discuss organizational, publicity and fundraising ideas.

The comments will be off for the vast majority of posts because I don't have the time to sift through spam. Occasionally, I will open up a topic for discussion and I STRONGLY you encourage you to stay on topic. I plan to moderate all comments, so personal attacks and the like will NOT appear. If you write obnoxious posts you won't be proving how smart you are or how dumb the other guy is, you'll just be wasting my time.

Thanks for reading!

Links: Tunnel Boring Machines | Space Elevator | Supersonic Jets | ULTra | Boss

Boss at CES

GM is showing off Tartan Racing's Boss at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. For the uninitiated, Boss is an autonomous vehicle (i.e. it is controlled by an on-board computer). A few short months ago it was the decisive winner in DARPA's urban challenge -- a race of autonomous vehicles through an urban environment. The Chevy Tahoe's computer vision technologies were developed at Carnegie Mellon's Robotics Institute. It is getting a ton of coverage in the mainstream press. I'm happy for any publicity autonomous vehicles get, but I'm surprised/upset by three things: 1) The press coverage is much heavier now then it was when it won the urban challenge. 2) Most newspapers seem to be focusing on GM and CMU seems to be almost a footnote. 3) Aside from the Today show story today most articles seem to be missing the point. They don't mention any of the benefits of autonomous vehicles (safety, traffic reduction, environmental impact, everyone can be chauffeured!, etc.) . Instead they focus on GM's "investment" or "gamble" on technology. Where's the boyish enthusiasm? The headlines should be something like "COOL! CAR DRIVES ITSELF!"

Links: Today Show | Wall Street Journal | NY Times