Refusal from personal cars
It is projected that there will be 2.5 billion cars on the planet by 2050, most of which, of course, will drive in cities. In China, the level of motorization will catch up with the United States (840 cars per 1000 people). You don't need a time machine to imagine what kind of collapse we might face: just look at the traffic jam on the 50-lane highway in Beijing.
That said, a private car is still expensive, requires money for insurance, parking and maintenance, and is used on average only 4% of the time. Therefore, residents of large cities are increasingly switching to public transport, car sharing and services like Uber.
Jessica Robinson, Ford City Solutions Representative: “Cities are getting more and more busy and it makes us do weird things. For example, in Mexico City, you can only enter the city center with an even car number on some days, and an odd number on others. How do people get around this? They buy two cars. Therefore, car companies must look for new solutions. In the future, a change in the principle of car ownership will inevitably occur. And a decrease in the price per mile will sooner or later lead to the fact that a taxi will cost the same as public transport."
Development of flexible transport systems
City bus concept with external panels displaying an interactive map with a route
Cities in their current form, designed in the 19th century, cannot physically cope with so many cars. Obviously, it is impossible to rebuild the entire road network. Therefore, in different countries, governments are investing resources in new traffic management technologies and transport monitoring systems in order to optimize the situation on the roads.
Promotional video:
City bus concept with external panels displaying an interactive map with a route
Estiv Almiral, professor at ESADE business school: “All cities are very distinctive. For example, Barcelona is already 2000 years old - part of the center was designed in the XIV century, part - at the beginning of the XIX. For example, you will not find this in America. Although in New York no one wants to have a car, and in Los Angeles, no one can live without a car. In general, we will never have a single model that applies everywhere.
Projects that deserve interest today are on-demand transportation services. Cities need Uber for buses, trucks, and anything else that can solve basic problems. Instead of having permanent night buses that run empty, you need to have a flexible system that can adapt to the situation, the demands and specific conditions. Transport demand in Barcelona during the high season is different from the low season. It makes no sense to always run the same number of buses and taxis."
Buses and minibuses of a new type
More and more transport services appear in the world, occupying a niche between taxis and public transport. One of the striking examples is the UberPool ride-sharing service, the launch of which was announced in Russia: unlike a regular ride with Uber, a driver can pick up other fellow travelers, and the price of such a trip for each of them will be much lower. Many services appear with buses on demand: examples are German Flixbus, Indian RedBus and a startup with domestic roots - BusFor. New startups plan their routes based on user needs, including a data-driven dynamic routing system. In the future, such services will help to more effectively solve the city's transport problems.
Jessica Robinson: “The main device that gives us freedom of movement is our smartphone. It allows you to connect citizens and services. Cities are changing and growing, new areas are emerging for people to settle in, and the demand for public transport and city services is increasing. In San Francisco, we have a company called Chariot that allows people to get to work cheaper and more convenient. New hybrid vans are being tested in central London, it's economical and environmentally friendly."
Big data and traffic analysis
Collecting and analyzing traffic data is already changing the transportation industry. General Electric's US railroad workers use smart sensors to help them predict and control traffic in real time. In addition to sensors, Union Pacific also uses an ultrasonic wheel crack detection system. Large transport company trailers are no longer idle when the central automatic scheduling system knows exactly when the truck and driver are ready to go.
Building an optimal route and isolating certain patterns allows you to save fuel and time not only on land, but also on water. Maritime transport uses big data in combination with weather and traffic forecasts for optimal navigation and collision risk reduction. City officials in many capitals have begun to reflect on the damage congestion on their roads is causing to the economy, and they are now ready to invest in new technologies that can correct this situation.
Marta Joubero, Head of Sustainable Development at the Barcelona Municipality: “If transport companies with a large fleet of their vehicles cooperate with the city authorities and share the data collected by sensors on their vehicles, we could distribute the load on the roads, build new routes.
Mosgortrans also worked closely with big data specialists to develop new Magistral bus routes in Moscow.
Alexey Mityaev, Advisor to the Head of the Department of Transport, Head of the Magistral project: “We analyzed the population density and concentration of jobs, passenger flows of existing routes and metro stations, transfers during trips, traffic speeds and car flows. For this project, an interactive platform was specially created based on data from the Data Center, Mosgortrans, the Department of Information Technology, with the help of which it was possible to analyze impersonal information about the movement of citizens around the city. About 1,000 people were involved in the preparation of the Magistral."
The proliferation of new personal vehicles
One significant gap remains in the urban transport system - the “last mile problem”. Let's say we can quickly and conveniently move around the city by metro or bus, but this bus and metro still needs to be reached. For this, the townspeople are taming new motorized means, for example, electric scooters. Similar to children's scooters, they can accelerate to a fully grown-up 20 km / h and can travel up to 35 km on a single charge.
Josh Miller, CNET columnist: “Of course, not all electric scooters are the same. EcoReco, one of the most famous brands, makes tank-like models. But they are too heavy and bulky to be easily thrown into the luggage rack of an electric train or kept suspended in a crowded bus. But E-Micro One was a revelation for me. It is more like an electric scooter, the engine of which automatically comes to life when you step on the pedal. It is smaller and lighter than other electric scooters (7.5 kg) and allows you to ride with minimal effort, even when it runs out of battery. Unfortunately, it doesn't have a shock absorbing suspension."
There are also more original vehicles: gyro scooters, segways, unicycle, etc. For example, Honda has released the Uni-Cub - a personal seated unicycle designed for driving on sidewalks. As the editors of CNET joke, these are the first steps to the degrading humanity from the cartoon "WALL * E": according to its plot, people in the future are unbearably lazy to walk on foot and they move only on special platforms.
New types of personal transport include the TriCiti electric folding trike developed by Ford engineers.
James Neugebauer, author of TriCiti, Ford of Europe: “The first obvious use case is city driving, such as from a parking lot to your door. The ride quickly turns into a motorized wheelbarrow for carrying heavy objects, including climbing stairs. It is difficult to imagine where exactly it will find application - perhaps it will become a trolley in the supermarket of the future, transport for moving around the airport, or a wheelbarrow for carrying golf clubs."
Drone delivery straight to your kitchen
It is very possible that the urban infrastructure will soon be better adapted and the concept of drone couriers will grow into something real. Today, e-commerce giant Amazon is considered the technology leader in this area. The company already started making its first air deliveries to its customers a year ago. So, as part of the Prime Air program, a drone delivered a set-top box and a pack of popcorn to a certain Richard from Cambridgeshire, England. Now the company is developing giant flying warehouses from which drones will lower goods down to people's homes. This will make shipping cheaper.
Amazon Prime Air drone
According to unofficial information, the Russian Post is preparing to use drones to deliver parcels and mail to hard-to-reach areas of the country. Similar experiments are already being carried out by the post office of France: there the drones are tested on a 15-kilometer stretch and once a week.
Ford engineers also showed their vision of the delivery of the future. Their idea for Autolivery appears to be a symbiosis of an unmanned camper van that transports drones. When the van arrives at the delivery address, the drone with the goods is separated and rises directly to the apartment balcony
Andrei Frolov, editor-in-chief of the Arms Export magazine: “Today I see no reason to transport cargo weighing 500 grams within the city. Obviously, this is just a PR campaign for Amazon and pizzerias. All this is nothing more than a joke. Another thing is that drones should be used where there is an immediate threat to humans: in areas of radioactive or chemical contamination, natural disasters."
Autonomous vehicles
The world has long dreamed of an autonomous drone. Leaders of the automotive industry (Renault-Nissan, Ford, Peugeot Citroën, Audi, Daimler AG, General Motors, Tesla, Toyota), and technology giants (Google, Uber, Apple), and small startups (Faraday Future, Otto, Comma.ai, Cognitive Technologies).
Andrey Chernogorov, CEO of Cognitive Technologies: “The market for unmanned vehicles will soon be estimated at $ 100 billion, and there will be a fundamental change in the consumption model. Different concepts are discussed: personal vehicles, taxi services, public transport. For me, it doesn't make much difference whether it is a bus, a truck or a car. We made a prototype, presented it at a state competition, received funding, and KamAZ became an industrial partner."
Ken Washington, Vice President of Research and Advanced Engineering at Ford Motor Company: “We've been in software development for over a decade. Over the past year, we have rolled out 30 self-driving test vehicles onto roads in California, Michigan and Arizona. But we have a lot of work to do. No one in the world has yet created a truly autonomous machine that operates according to its own scenario, is fully oriented in space, etc. We continue to improve software, develop new sensors, and conduct research. Our goal is to create a Level 4 Autonomous System by 2021.
How does our system work? First, we create a high resolution 3D terrain map, mark it up and load it into the car. Our drone system has different sensors - two lidars, long-range and short-range radars, and several wide-angle cameras. The software collects data from all devices, compiling a characteristic of what is happening around, identifying each object in the field of view. These data are superimposed on the map of the area - if this object is not on it, the system assumes what can happen to it further, and chooses the safest route."
Work and play in the salon of the future
The Internet in transport is no longer surprising. But with the development of multimedia systems, it can come in handy not only for flipping through Facebook or Instagram, but also to spend time with benefit. It's easy to imagine how a personal car turns into an office or a coworking space, so you could start your working day right on the way to the office. Or imagine a bus school that takes classes right in the city, with drop-offs at different locations related to the lesson program.
This is how designers envision entertainment in the car of the future
Andrey Chernogorov: “A separate market that will begin to develop with the advent of unmanned vehicles is in car entertainment. Now you can neither play nor watch a movie in the car, because you have to steer. And the maximum that can be done is to insert screens into the headrests so that children watch cartoons and do not distract the driver. But soon it will be possible to turn the car into a full-fledged cinema hall, a meeting room, a relaxation area with pleasant music and a place where you can sleep. The car interior will be equipped in the same way as living rooms."
Don Butler, Executive Director, Connected Services and Connected Vehicles, Ford Motor Company: “First we connected our customers to the car using SYNC, now we connected the car itself to the cloud in partnership with Vodafone. If we envision a future with autonomous cars, then we don't need to drive and monitor the road. Therefore, we can use windows and all other surfaces in the cabin as displays. You can watch a movie, concert or TV show on a large screen or participate in a virtual conference: presentation slides are projected to one side and participants on the other. Plus this environment needs to be flexible. For example, if you are driving through a park or historic building, the car can become a virtual guide, telling you exactly what you see in the window."
Unmanned city cleaners
The proliferation of unmanned systems is likely to affect not only personal and public transport in the city, but, for example, city services. Municipalities are eagerly awaiting these budget-saving technologies.
Futuristic garbage truck concept
The proliferation of unmanned systems is likely to affect not only personal and public transport in the city, but, for example, city services. Municipalities are eagerly awaiting these budget-saving technologies.
Marta Joubero, Head of Sustainability at Barcelona Municipality: “Today we produce twice as much waste as in the 1960s, which is about 1.3 kg per person per day. And this is a big problem. Street cleaning and garbage collection are key services, accounting for 65% of the municipal budget. In Barcelona, they spend somewhere around € 270 million a year. In the future, with autonomous garbage trucks and sweepers, we could cut this budget by more than half. We could spend about € 140 million on healthcare and education.
With the advent of artificial intelligence and the spread of the Internet of Things, we will have access to real-time data. The municipality will be able to monitor every aspect of city services. Usually these services are provided by private companies that have won the tender, and it would be easier for us to control the execution of contracts with them”.