A Blog Post on future trends and what we should do to anticipate them
The era of internal combustion engine automobiles is ending
Germany and other EU countries are banning ICE vehicles by 2030 or even 2025. Electric vehicles are becoming commercially viable and will soon be widely available. The resulting improvements in air quality, emissions reductions and noise reductions are staggering. This is good news, but it requires changing our urban vehicle infrastructure from primarily gas pumping stations to widespread electric vehicle charging stations. Some charging stations are being installed in private parking garages and some public parking lots, but we need them everywhere! How do we remake Cambridge so that it is much more EV friendly?
The era of single occupancy, privately owned automobiles is ending
With the advent of Zipcar, and more recently Uber and Lyft, owning a personal automobile is becoming increasingly less economically logical in dense urban areas like Cambridge. Uber Pool has created an easy way to share rides and safe money. While Uber and Lyft are currently limited by human labor, many companies including Uber are heavily investing in autonomous vehicles. With these changes, private vehicle ownership will continue to decline and in Cambridge may rapidly approach zero! How do we anticipate these trends correctly? There will be many benefits, including potentially fewer cars, much less need for parking and much safer streets because the cars will not fail to pay attention and can even prevent e.g. opening doors when bicycles are near. But it does mean we should create many more safe and convenient drop-off/pick-up locations similar to bus stops that do not interfere with traffic flow and do not endanger pedestrians and cyclists.
The future of public transit is mostly above ground
New concepts like TransitX and others are being explored to use lightweight above-ground vehicles to transport people in small groups via mono-rail type systems. Whether or not these concepts will work out, autonomous vehicle technology, big data and machine learning will continue to optimize bus and pop-up transit solutions like BridJ. These and other yet to be imagined solutions will continue to disrupt mass transit via heavy rail and underground subways. Existing subway lines could be re-purposed for bus rapid transit and other solutions that provide more flexibility. How do we safely and fairly transition to these new solutions without jeopardizing passengers and without increasing inequality and joblessness? These are difficult questions that we need to start wrestling with soon.
Biking and walking will be the majority forms of transportation
In a dense urban city like Cambridge, the vast majority of people should be able to get around by biking and walking. We need to make this safe and convenient for everyone, and that means seriously rethinking our streets. What happens when we remove traffic signs, traffic lights and crosswalks, and replace them with shared space, traffic calming and roundabouts? How can we reuse space now reserved for parking on the streets to create separated bike lanes, multi-use pathways and counter-flow bike paths? How can we make the streetscape more permeable to stormwater, with more trees and plantings for everyone to enjoy and derive health benefits from? The future can be amazing if we commit to it and start making the changes needed to welcome it.
Germany and other EU countries are banning ICE vehicles by 2030 or even 2025. Electric vehicles are becoming commercially viable and will soon be widely available. The resulting improvements in air quality, emissions reductions and noise reductions are staggering. This is good news, but it requires changing our urban vehicle infrastructure from primarily gas pumping stations to widespread electric vehicle charging stations. Some charging stations are being installed in private parking garages and some public parking lots, but we need them everywhere! How do we remake Cambridge so that it is much more EV friendly?
The era of single occupancy, privately owned automobiles is ending
With the advent of Zipcar, and more recently Uber and Lyft, owning a personal automobile is becoming increasingly less economically logical in dense urban areas like Cambridge. Uber Pool has created an easy way to share rides and safe money. While Uber and Lyft are currently limited by human labor, many companies including Uber are heavily investing in autonomous vehicles. With these changes, private vehicle ownership will continue to decline and in Cambridge may rapidly approach zero! How do we anticipate these trends correctly? There will be many benefits, including potentially fewer cars, much less need for parking and much safer streets because the cars will not fail to pay attention and can even prevent e.g. opening doors when bicycles are near. But it does mean we should create many more safe and convenient drop-off/pick-up locations similar to bus stops that do not interfere with traffic flow and do not endanger pedestrians and cyclists.
The future of public transit is mostly above ground
New concepts like TransitX and others are being explored to use lightweight above-ground vehicles to transport people in small groups via mono-rail type systems. Whether or not these concepts will work out, autonomous vehicle technology, big data and machine learning will continue to optimize bus and pop-up transit solutions like BridJ. These and other yet to be imagined solutions will continue to disrupt mass transit via heavy rail and underground subways. Existing subway lines could be re-purposed for bus rapid transit and other solutions that provide more flexibility. How do we safely and fairly transition to these new solutions without jeopardizing passengers and without increasing inequality and joblessness? These are difficult questions that we need to start wrestling with soon.
Biking and walking will be the majority forms of transportation
In a dense urban city like Cambridge, the vast majority of people should be able to get around by biking and walking. We need to make this safe and convenient for everyone, and that means seriously rethinking our streets. What happens when we remove traffic signs, traffic lights and crosswalks, and replace them with shared space, traffic calming and roundabouts? How can we reuse space now reserved for parking on the streets to create separated bike lanes, multi-use pathways and counter-flow bike paths? How can we make the streetscape more permeable to stormwater, with more trees and plantings for everyone to enjoy and derive health benefits from? The future can be amazing if we commit to it and start making the changes needed to welcome it.
