A quick look at some of the things that will make future urban mobility work (or not):
Reinventing the Automobile – Personal Urban Mobility for the 21st Century:
The Ultra Small Vehicle
First self-propelled vehicle: 1769, Nicolas-Joseph Cugnot
First gasoline-fuelled vehicle: 1885, Karl Benz
Number of vehicles in US today: 850 million
Number of times vehicles would circle planet if parked side to side: 100
Number of US jobs tied directly and indirectly automobiles: 14 million
Reason for lack of uptake of electric car: “Range Anxiety”
Range of first steam engines invented: 30 miles
Conventional automobile: 300 miles
Electric vehicles: 100-400 miles
Percentage of commuters travelling less than 50 miles a day: 80%
Percentage of travel under congested conditions in 2005: 32%
Percentage of traffic congestion caused by bottlenecks: 40%
Percentage of day a vehicle is parked: 80-90%
Average urban driving speeds: 15-25 miles per hour
Solution: Ultra Small Vehicle (USV)
Length: <100 inches
Number of cars a typical Manhattan block can accommodate: 80
Number of Ultra Small Vehicles: 250
Size of parking lot holding 100 Ultra Small Vehicles compared to 100 conventional vehicles: 4x smaller
Weight of USV: < 1000 pounds
Weight of conventional automobile: 20x more than driver
Cost of driving mid-size sedan in US in 2008: 55 cents per mile
Cost of rechargeable battery-electric vehicles: 2 cents per mile
Average weekday capacity for Toronto’s Yonge Subway: 26,000 pphpd
Potential Ultra Small Vehicle capacity: 45,000 pphpd
*Note: Unlinked stats referenced from book: Reinventing the Automobile
3 Comments
These sort of tech dreams seem to show a path where there is a tech fix to solve urban/congestion/environment/resource problems associated with the car. It’s unlikely that these gadgets will actually bring about a solution – but it allows people to ignore the reality that we have to shift away from a car based (individual transportation based) society. So in a way, this acts to enable our car-addicted society, to continue the denial.
@ ant6n: Great points. Society definitely has a problem with car addiction. Although these small urban vehicles might not completely solve congestion/environment etc issues, transit by itself will not accomplish those tasks either. If this USV technology truly takes off and all the kinks are worked out, it could be a wonderful, indispensable addition to existing urban transport systems – however, that will probably take a some time (if it happens at all).
I doubt that society will ever move significantly away from an individual transportation society. People want to go where they want to go, when they want to go in a point to point fashion. US census data show that the commute time for the average transit rider is about double the commute time for the average person commuting in there car. This why the automobile has been such a successful invention in the past 80 years.
That said what does this new vehicle bring to the table that a bike, moped or a motor scooter doesn’t already provide for a lot less money? Electric batteries are still quite expensive yet seem to last only about 3 to 5 years.