Bright Ideas for Transportation in the 21st Century
Okay, let's admit that we can learn from the past. One transportation idea that looked good in the 1970s was dial-a-ride transit: computer-routed vans that would give travelers the convenience of taxis at the cost of regular buses. Today, few people use dial-a-ride except elderly and handicapped passengers.
Another nonstarter from the 1970s was personal rapid transit. Something like a horizontal elevator, PRT was to deploy small, computer-controlled vehicles around a network of narrow, elevated guideways. The automated people movers that operate at some U.S. airports are the closest analogy today. But these systems mindlessly travel back and forth or round and round rather than navigating complex networks.
Ride-sharing and congestion pricing were also duds, doomed by a lack of popular support. . . .
Now for the winners. Light rail is one. Twelve systems have been built in the U.S. since 1970, and five more are under construction. Six are in final design, and another 18 are in the preliminary engineering phase. . . .
And here's what's on the horizon: Congestion pricing has been resurrected in the latest federal transportation law, the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century; only now it's called "value pricing." Most of the demonstrations now in the works involve high-occupancy toll lanes that allow solo commuters to buy into the fast lanes, and certain toll facilities are beginning to charge peak-hour premiums....
Intelligent transportation systems already claim an entire industry of university researchers, software developers, and hardware manufacturers. . . . Yet, after almost a decade of effort, the return on a huge investment seems pretty low. . . .
A more basic, low-tech solution is "traffic calming." A few years ago, the idea was unknown to traffic engineers. Yet it's now a priority of the Institute of Transportation Engineers and is called for by name by communities across the country. . . .
As for alternatives to the automobile, don't expect far greater use of carpooling or even transit. But but walking and bicycling will gain market share among a newly health-conscious population.
This material was excerpted froma story in the December 1999 issue of "Planning" magazine. To download the full text, see http://www.planning.org/pubs/dec399.htm
Contact: The story author is Reid Ewing, [email protected]. Copyright by Reid Ewing.
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