Frequently Asked Questions:
OnGoing’s premise is that we should not predict what may or may not be part of the final solutions before an appropriate, multi-disciplinary team thoroughly researches and develops a robust vision of future, sustainable transportation. However, the inquiring mind cannot but help consider some of the possibilities.
With this in mind, here are some typical questions that are asked:
What is OnGoingTransportation?
Have you started your mission already?
Where do you see this effort taking place? Would it be spread across the US?
What partnerships do you see happening between public and private entities?
Will this vision allow the private sector to freely compete?
What technologies do you see being used in 2050?
Will technology be the only factor in providing us with sustainable transportation?
Will cars still play a role in future?
A: OnGoingTransportation is a siren call. OnGoingTransportation is a nucleus of the movement that is calling for America to consider and approach transportation as a fundamental and critical matrix for its future economic and social progress.
Too often, America’s transportation needs are dealt with as piecemeal, band-aid fixes –– a bus-rapid-transit project here, a rail line there, another lane along this stretch of freeway –– and always to alleviate issues that really will not be solved by the fix. Each fix is applied without any connection to the larger view.
OnGoingTransportation advocates the creation of a new, transportation vision that can be seen as America’s differentiator from the rest of the world. Extraordinary transportation has always been a strong part of America’s history: covered wagons on the Oregon Trail, the railroads that opened up the west; the Model T Ford; the world’s largest freeway system; the world’s largest steam locomotives, pioneers in flight, Greyhound buses, Great Lakes shipping and big-rig trucks. These and more have all been powerful symbols to the outside world and really important components of America’s evolution and economic power. America now needs a powerful new approach to mobility and transportation to accelerate economic and social progress.
OnGoingTransportation is also an advocate for applying design and systems thinking right from the beginning of all initiatives related to transportation. All new transportation solutions need to be compelling to the end user and must be considered as part of a total, integrated, seamless system.
Now, when the global order is rapidly shifting, the USA needs to take this critical leap ahead in reinventing its transport future to underpin the next, critical phases of its economic advancement. OnGoingTransportation intends to speak loud and clear about this, while pursuing its overall goal of bringing the very best people together to create the vision and build the blueprint.
A: Yes, we have already started. Our initiative has grown out of our careers as transportation designers, as educators in the field of transportation design and our particular passion and belief in the need for a sustainable future. Our more recent activities culminating in the annual Sustainable Mobility Summits series at Art Center College of Design linked us to many different and extraordinary people all with the same sense of mission. Our opportunity to testify in front of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming last year, made us more determined to see this mission through. Until we finally succeed in procuring the significant funding it will require, we cannot start putting together the core team to build the vision. However, we do already have a plan of action for putting together that team and how it will function.
A: We think that assembling the core team and creating an all–embracing, American transportation vision will take at least two years. Following the vision, the blueprint will emerge in stages. Creating the whole blueprint of the vision in a format that will inform policy makers, companies and the public, will take several years if it is to be done to the thorough level that this nation deserves.
A: Our strategy for assembling a core team assumes that individual team members would be currently located all over the United States. It is also assumed that each of the core team would need to be quite mobile for the duration of the project (several years) and would probably be most useful if they stayed based in their current environment. It is envisaged therefore that the core team would spend so many days per two weeks together in collaborative mode in an appropriately central, accessible location such as Chicago, Atlanta or Denver.
While the core team might spend time in a particular, central location, the greater amount of activity will be located all over the country according to where the best resources of knowledge, research and expertise can be found that are motivated to collaborate.
As stated in our white paper “Futurama 2.0: Mobilizing America’s Transportation Revolution” a great many disciplines and areas of knowledge will need to contribute to the Futurama 2.0 vision and in particular for the research needed to develop the blueprint. While the core team will remain small to remain manageable, it will rely heavily on the interaction and collaboration of many other groups during the creation of the vision. It is foreseen that companies, private research groups, publicly funded research groups, universities, non-profit organizations and government agencies will all be sought for input, specific expertise, research and validation activities Just as the implementation of Futurama 2.0 will need to be a careful collaboration between the public and private sectors, so will the creation of the vision and the subsequent blueprint. Financial and knowledge investments from both sectors can leverage progress for mutual benefit.
We are under no illusions about the hurdles to be cleared with this public/private approach. Equally though, there should be no illusions about the consequences of failure.
A: Absolutely! It would be unimaginable for there not to be competition in the private sector in the United States of America. The principle behind our initiative is to create a future transportation blueprint that has the general acceptance of the American people, its elected government, business and industry so that clear, coherent and highly effective policy can be created. Having established the operating guidelines, the private sector is free to compete for all it’s worth on a level, transparent playing field.
A: With technological progress seemingly accelerating exponentially, it is very difficult to predict what technologies will be available in 50 years time. New technologies will emerge that seem unimaginable now. It will be important that a transportation vision and blueprint both allow for such emerging technologies. As many people are brought into the process of developing this vision, no doubt some will bring to the equation nascent technologies not previously considered.
We are fairly sure that some of the currently emerging technologies will contribute significantly to our mobile futures. For instance:
Information Technology (IT): Even today, our journeys using public transport would be greatly enhanced if we had more immediate information about our real-time progress. How long will I have to wait for the connecting subway train? Which street corner should I go to for the connecting bus? How do I get from the subway to the bus stop? If my bus is going to be 10 minutes late, how can I modify my whole journey to minimize my delayed arrival time? Cell phone applications can already provide travelers in some cities with answers to questions like these. When the information becomes ubiquitous and without the need for a cell phone, our journeys will be more stress free.
Smart technologies: Our ability to track objects can help provide more convenient and accessible ride share systems, rental vehicles at a greater number of locations or accurately forecast arrival times of buses and subways. Already in its early stages, the inevitable application of smart technologies will allow us more convenience and choices about how we travel.
Artificial Intelligence (AI): The advancement of computer power and robotics is going to enhance the ability of systems to make rapid and smart decisions without human intervention.
Materials Technology: There is much talk about new materials that have extraordinary properties such as durability, high strength-to-weight ratios, ability to capture solar energy or the ability to self-heal. Such properties will no doubt be extremely important to enable the development of highly efficient and robust transportation hardware and infrastructure. However, there is another very important property that will also need to be developed: engineering grade materials that come from entirely renewable sources and create zero ecological toxins during their manufacture, use or disposal. A tall order but in reality an imperative for true sustainability.
New materials will need to be developed that also allow for new, localized manufacturing systems.
Manufacturing Technology: How we make consumable products whether they are refrigerators, beds, bottles, vehicles, tables or electric drills is likely to change dramatically over the next decades. As energy becomes more and more expensive, it will no longer make economic sense to make products in one global factory and transport them all over the world. Instead, we are likely to see many familiar products, large and small, be manufactured in multiple places. It might well be that most of what we buy will be manufactured quite close to where we live, even though identical products will be available to people all over the world. Desktop manufacturing technologies are already being experimented with and the race is on to develop new kinds of engineering grade materials that can be used with these new systems.
Connectivity: Connectivity is nothing new but how we use connectivity as a tool in the future has huge potential. Allowing objects to share information without human interaction can add enormous benefits to our experience of using transportation systems. For instance, we will be able to travel on public transit systems and be kept informed about expected times of arrival, wait times between modes and any perturbations likely to occur – although hopefully, if transportation systems are designed properly, perturbations will not be an issue!
Autonomous vehicles will use connectivity, perhaps in the form of multiple sensors and cloud computing to talk to each other. In this way they can constantly share information to map their immediate, changing environment as they move along, without any human interaction at all – and perhaps without needing any “central-command” to refer to.
Already, early forms of these concepts are being incorporated into some production automobiles. Sub-systems will automatically adjust the speed of the car if it gets too close to the vehicle in front; alert the driver if he or she tries to change lanes while there is a vehicle in their blind-spot; or optimize seat-belt tensions and seat positions milliseconds before an impact occurs. So far the information is kept within the one vehicle.
When information can be shared between vehicles a large step towards avoiding accidents in the first place will be taken. When vehicles, not their drivers, can predict and then decide how to avoid accidents, accidents could become rare occurrences. At that point, vehicles can be designed to be significantly lighter; heavy, crash proof structures become redundant.
Bio-mimicry: Throughout the Industrial Revolution, we have designed and engineered most things according to human generated theories, formulae and algorithms. Meanwhile, nature has evolved its own solutions over hundreds of millions of years, usually very elegantly and definitely using systems thinking at its highest level! When it comes to advanced transportation solutions, there is no doubt that we can learn many things from observing natural phenomena, systems and methods of communication.
Distributed Energy Production: Just as we will probably see goods being manufactured locally rather than centrally, so we should see a much greater use of distributed energy production. Why build huge solar collectors in fragile desert ecosystems and then waste much of the electricity generated as we transmit it hundreds of miles to the cities? We must start generating our electricity needs as close as we can to where it is used. This would greatly reduce transmission losses, serious disruption from cascading brown-outs, potential sabotage, major ecological impacts and eyesores across the landscape.
The potential use of many battery electric and hybrid-electric cars will offer an excellent electricity storage capacity to buffer peak demands for domestic and industrial electricity. Such technologies and concepts, in combination with smart electricity grids will be important elements of future transportation systems.
A: We currently live in a very technology focused era. The truth is that there will be many contributions to achieving truly sustainable transportation and living, besides technology.
A principal contribution will be a collective change of how we regard our way of life. For many of us, a large proportion of our travel is not voluntary, nor welcome. We do not choose to commute many miles each way to work, for instance. A variety of individual circumstances require us to do this. We would rather not have to frequently travel hundreds of miles for one business meeting or take a three-hour journey to see a medical specialist. These are patterns that have become unwittingly normal for a variety of complex reasons. Certainly technologies can and will help us to avoid many involuntary journeys in future, as are already beginning, for example, for online conferencing or remote surgery procedures.
Similarly, partly because of the artificially low cost of energy, we think nothing today about consuming food or products that originated thousands of miles away. While certainly manufacturing and computing technologies will help to regionalize the production and distribution of goods, other developments such as economics thinking, the realities of climate change and availability of natural resources will change each of our priorities in our day to day lives – in some cases, quicker than we anticipate.
The metrics of energy cost, economic principles and information about the world about us are frequently based on some truth but not always the whole truth. To achieve a robust, sustainable, mobile future, we must get into the habit of basing decisions and development of systems on proven scientific fact and human-centric principles.
Some might argue that our relentless pursuit of technological development has exacerbated our predicament. Technology will undoubtedly continue to develop but a huge help towards sustainability and choosing the right technologies will be our future attitude to nature. We live in an age where nature is regarded as something for human beings to conquer and master. We must return to an attitude that regards nature as our partner; a partner that must be treated with respect and value.
There are an infinite number of lessons that we can learn from nature at every level: from molecular level to galactic level. It might well be that our ability to live graciously and sustainably in 50 years’ time will be because our technology looks to nature for solutions. Swarms of birds, the connected intricacies of ecological cycles, the emergent patterns of weather all hold fundamental truths, relevant to sustainable mobility and transportation. We need to seek to understand these natural principles and emulate them in our “technologies” rather than assuming that we must always invent our own principles.
So technology will be important but only as part of changed ideals, respect for the elegant solutions that nature has already developed, re-mapping of economics fundamentals and insistence on thoroughly validated data and information.
A: Undoubtedly, the car has had a more profound effect on American’s mobility than any means of transportation invented so far. The majority of people still prefer it as their first choice for journeys from a quarter of a mile to a couple of hundred miles. The perceived journey control and privacy that an automobile gives is highly valued. It is difficult to imagine a future without cars.
However, it is also difficult to imagine a sustainable future with cars that will perpetuate the gridlock, environmental impact and consequent health and safety issues that have grown with the car’s popularity.
If cars are to continue to play an important role in our future, they must adapt to a new set of criteria. They must reduce their individual and collective ecological footprint to as close to zero as possible. They must flow down our existing roadways smoothly, quietly and without accident. They should only consume renewable energy. These three requirements imply major advances in lightweight materials; a high level, if not total, degree of automation; and breakthroughs in renewable energy production, distribution and storage. Some of these requirements might seem unrealistic or unpalatable but the reality is that they have to be a prerequisite for future automobile systems.
Cars that reliably drive themselves will rarely crash. This will allow them to be dramatically lighter in construction and reduce death and injury to a fraction of what they are now. Automated driving technologies will also allow robust, smooth and efficient flow of vehicles down our infrastructure. As vehicles will be able to travel swiftly in close proximity to each other, the width of current freeways and highways can be significantly reduced giving room for other modes of transportation to share the rights of way. In some urban areas, these reduced widths or totally redundant traffic corridors can be repurposed for solar energy capture, parkland, development or urban agriculture.
The emergence of automated, lightweight, non-crashing, free-flowing vehicles along with a reduced need for personal mobility in the first place have the opportunity to make gridlock unknown.
There are still some technical hurdles to clear on the road to automated vehicles but the “effort-to-sustainability reward” ratio is very much in its favor compared to some other futuristic modes of transportation.
Nevertheless, when alternative means of transportation are properly conceived and designed as part of a complete integrated system, we will frequently find them more convenient, efficient and enjoyable than cars.
So, yes, the car probably does have an important future role to play but only if it and its industry adapt. It is probable that there will not be the need for so many cars. This should only be good news for car enthusiasts, who can possibly look forward to a future when cars can be driven on uncongested roads again for pleasure rather than necessity.
A: Over the years, plenty of research has been done to try to solve transportation issues, whether they were environmental concerns or trying to reduce urban gridlock. The conclusions and recommendations of the research are usually well intended, based on excellent scientific data with logical reasoning and development. Unfortunately, the results are frequently presented as very scientific documents, full of data and at best boring to read by the intended audience, who are often not well versed in the subject matter. However, they are often responsible for making big decisions. This is not a good recipe for moving proposals towards implementation. Not only that but during the research, little or no consideration is given to whether the public will actually like using the end result.
When contemplating the creation of huge transportation and infrastructural projects, it is really important that all stakeholders understand the implications at every stage of the project. It is equally important to ensure that when completed, people will be so pleased with the new solutions that they will use them sufficiently to warrant the investment. This is why it is crucial to have designers involved right from the beginning of a project – not just in the traditional role of making everything look cool and stylish but to ensure that objectivity is balanced with subjectivity, every step of the way.
Design is about: defining and understanding the problems to be solved, facilitating open-minded inquiry, exploring abstract ideas early in the process, spotting opportunities that are not at first obvious, working with diverse stakeholders, balancing the needs and expectations of end users with those of enterprises or providers, and presenting complex ideas in a format that anyone can easily comprehend.
The working culture of design offers unrivalled levels of facilitation that allow multi-disciplinary teams to develop valid solutions for the future. Design processes can provide the special leadership, skills and environments within which diverse disciplines and cultures can function properly.
A: Sustainable transportation solutions for the future will undoubtedly need to function as seamless systems for the total convenience and pleasure of the public or, in the case of goods for optimal logistics. Therefore, right from the outset, new transportation solutions must be considered as part of an overall system. This adds extra levels of complexity to the design and development of future transportation. Fortunately there are effective methodologies to deal with this, particularly by adopting systems thinking.
Systems thinking considers how a complex entity operates as a whole and how it interacts with its surrounding environment. This way of thinking helps to identify emerging patterns, cycles and structures in the whole system rather than just focusing on the individual subsystems. The successful realization of a complex national transportation network will require a full understanding of how the individual systems interact to create a seamless whole.
