Google’s self-driving car. Image from Treehugger
I’m under the overpass. There’s a motorbike carrying two people and a huge box. Behind that there’s a van carrying one person and nothing. I wonder. Traffic is bad and the more roads you build, the more traffic you get. At some point, somethings got to give. I wonder if there are other ways of thinking about the problem. I’ve often wondered, what if you made cars that were thinner, four people in a row. But that would be odd. What if you made cars that were modular, take one pod out for one person, four for the whole family. Also odd. At this point, also, the investment in current technology means you’d have to clamber down this evolutionary peak to find another one, something that rarely happens. Then I wondered, what if you kept the same technology and just switched road traffic like internet traffic, in packets.
Internet traffic is sent in packets. This is called packet switching because the stuff doesn’t all travel together. One bit might go through here, one through there, but the computer checks the labels at the end and puts it all together. This works. What if we did the same with human traffic?
What if, for example, there were a lot of self-driving cars on the road. This is not sci-fi, Google has tested a fleet of self-driving cars that have already travelled 140,000 plus miles by themselves. A lot of the technology is already in consumer cars like the Toyota Prius. Then, what if, you could simply hop in and out of those cars as needed. You might be sitting with different people, but the you’d all be packets, eventually reaching your destination.
Finally, to the point, what if that package on the overloaded motorbike was in the van with plenty of room beside it. That van drive would get a bit of credit and things would move around more efficiently. A bit of a stretch, perhaps, but not an implausible idea.
A complicated solution to a complicated problem.. Hmm.. A public transport service that is on time, comfortable and rid of the local Jacksons would get my vote..
All this is fine if cars are all about travelling from one place to another. But that’s not the case.
If that was the case, I’d just take a bus (provided that the bus is the kind of bus you’d see in Japan).
The buses you see in Sri Lanka are exactly the buses that you’d see in Japan. Only 20 years older and with the maintenance levels of a disused mine.
Indi’s solution (been watching iRobot recently?) might theoretically work for an incredibly developed country with sound infrastructure were they willing to pump more money than they have into it, but it would be too impossible to even contemplate here. You would need everybody to have these automated cars, because of the crazy driving (not least out of town) and poor road network. Furthermore, lots of people simply like to drive, especially in countries with good roads. They don’t want to be driven, even for short periods of time.
More practical solutions do exist, for example car sharing clubs:
http://www.citycarclub.co.uk/
They have a network of cars parked around the city, you have a swipe card and ‘book’ a car for a period of time. No ownership costs, no car clogging up the road when it’s not in use by the owner, basically each shared car replaces many owned cars. Or how about this elegant solution to road space and economy:
http://www.gordonmurraydesign.com/t25.php
Ignore the Nano (little more than an update of the 50-year old Mini), built to cost, not efficiency of purpose. The T25 is revolutionary in its size and scope. Two cars can fit side by side in a conventional traffic lane, for example, and it sits three.
Nevermind the argument that building more roads causes more traffic, which may well be the case where the starting point is 3, 4 or 5 lane highways. Sri Lanka doesn’t have highways, and it desperately needs them. The stress (by the frankly terrible driving practices), the delays (every major road drives right through the centre of each town), the poor quality surface (improving, but still poor by international standards, and inconsistent), the low speed limits (most buses have no working brake lights, cows walking on the road etc make this essential) and the lack of safe opportunities to overtake make travelling a tiring and very long experience, over what are very short distances.
One instant improvement would be for all bus stops to be to the side of the road, not on the road itself. This causes huge delays all over the country. It never ceases to amaze me when Sri Lankan friends comment on how good the roads are now: there might be huge improvements relative to the past, but the network here’s not even close to even the low standard of somewhere like Thailand.
Recent quotes from a UK minister on the radio indicate that for every £1 spent on well planned road infrastructure improvements, £4 may be generated in the wider economy. In that light (and provided the road improvements are well-planned!), the following news should be a good start:
http://www.adaderana.lk/news.php?nid=10453
However, I fear the commentators are correct and the roads will not be built with much planning, certainly not to last (especially as the money is mostly coming from evil Western governments and so the GoSL isn’t accountable to taxpayers for how it’s spent) and back-handers will eat into the donated funds. But it is a start.
Either iRobot or Minority Report…
There’s also the issue of how successful a car sharing program would be in Sri Lanka. There probably wouldn’t be much left of these cars after a while.
We’re not a polite, civilized country, we’re a bunch of stupid selfish bastards who don’t give a damn about anything or anyone else as long as we get our shit done. From the guy at the top to the three wheel driver who blocks your way just to move a few feet forward despite being on a clearly marked yellow hatched area.
TATA and Ashok Leyland in Japan? Is this Quantum Mechanics? Hah
Ha! I was referring to the imported (private?) mid/large a/c coaches. Not the 1960s Ashok Leylands or delightful Tatas. Strangely enough, I find the drivers outside of Colombo to have little clue about driving per se, but to have far better road manners than the out of town Colombo set. Rule of thumb: if it’s a LandCruiser it will force you out of the way.
And when will people stop driving with their lights on full beam all the time!
Rant over… ;)