That’s right, four hours. According to BBC:
the technology would allow the launch of satellites into space at a fraction of the current cost and allow passengers to fly anywhere in the world in four hours…
According to Reaction, an aircraft using such engines could take off from a runway and accelerate to more than five times the speed of sound, before switching to a rocket mode which would propel the aircraft into orbit.
It appears Uber may be having a small effect on the number of people who want to own cars. This article also says they are working on self-driving cars.
In a recent survey of 2,000 adults ages 18 to 64 conducted by Frank N. Magid Associates, 18% of respondents said they had used Uber in the past year, and of those people, 22% said they are likely to hold off on buying a new car because of the availability of the service.
What did I learn in September? Let’s start with the bad and then go to the good.
Negative stories (-11):
Positive stories (+9):
We’ve been told self-driving cars might be commercialized on a wide scale by 2025 or 2030. Only in Japan, they are saying 1-5 years. How many years behind is the U.S. typically? Well, if we take the example of high speed rail, Japan started operation in 1964, and projections are that the U.S. will have it…never.
In all seriousness though, this is different. U.S. politicians representing rural areas have power out of proportion to the populations they represent, and because high speed rail can never efficiently serve those sparsely populated rural areas, it is politically nearly impossible. But we have designed our entire country around cars. U.S. politics also support big business – including auto, tech, and insurance companies – and opposes public transportation, all for weird incomprehensible ideological reasons. So the self-driving cars will come.
From Amazon:
In this book we propose the welcome notion that traffic–as most people have come to know it–is ending and why. We depict a transport context in most communities where new opportunities are created by the collision of slow, medium, and fast moving technologies. We then unfold a framework to think more broadly about concepts of transport and accessibility. In this framework, transport systems are being augmented with a range of information technologies; it invokes fresh flows of goods and information. We discuss large scale trends that are revolutionizing the transport landscape: electrification, automation, the sharing economy, and big data. Based on all of this, the final chapters offer strategies to shape the future of infrastructure needs and priorities.
We aim for a quick read–and to encourage you and other readers to think outside your immediate realm. By the end of this book (today, if you so choose) you will appreciate the changing times in which you live, what is new about transport discussions, and how definitions of accessibility are being reframed. You will be provided with new ways of thinking about the planning of transport infrastructure that coincide with this changing landscape. Even if transport is not your bailiwick, we like to think there is something interesting for you here. We aim to share new perspectives and reframe debates about the future of transport in cities.
There’s a somewhat skeptical review of this book on Planetizen, with a ton of links you could drill down into.
What’s the busy, car-free urban soccer mom (or dad) to do when they occasionally need to pack the kid off to a remote inaccessible (except by car) suburban area? Here’s an idea for an Uber-like service where the drivers are certified in childcare.
Parents schedule a ride with a ‘CareDriver’ and are sent a short bio for that driver, a picture, and are required to enter in a code word for the ride. The parent then relays that information to the child, and then to the school or daycare organization from which the kid is getting picked up. That way, little Tommy or Patty knows how to identify their ‘CareDriver’ through both the photo and the code word.
Parents can track the ride in real time through the app and have multiple methods of contacting the driver at any time…
All of the drivers on the platform go through a rigorous, 15-point certification process. They must have at least five years of child care service experience, alongside passing a number of background checks, criminal background checks, as well as getting fingerprinted. HopSkipDrive also ensures that their drivers are TrustLine certified, which cofounder Joanna McFarland describes as the gold standard of childcare certification in the state of California.
Recently I was talking about passive house, an extremely innovative energy standard that has taken root in Europe, Germany in particular. What I was surprised to learn was that the genesis of the idea was in the United States. There seems to be a pattern where innovative ideas come out of the United States but get implemented elsewhere. For example, here are a couple surprising articles about bike (cycling) lanes in the U.S. For example, protected bike lanes were all the rage right around the turn of the 20th century, before automobiles became the dominant technology. The historical images in this article are fascinating – it was not unusual for the bike lane to be paved and the horse and buggy lanes not. The layout of some of the bike lanes looks very familiar from today’s recreational trails.
Much more recently, the U.S. Federal Highway Authority had a serious standard for protected bike lanes in the 1970s, and it seemed like they were likely to move forward. Of course, we all know they did not. But again, in Europe, they did on a large scale. I don’t know whether the Dutch and Danish designs were copied or inspired by the American designs, but they did start to take off right around that time.
Here’s a long article on some projects to integrate smart phone-like technology into cars. Basically, either you plug in an actual smart phone, or your car itself gets software updates. The former makes more sense to me, because why would you want to invest in technology that is trapped inside a car, when you don’t want to be trapped inside a car any more than absolutely necessary?
I’ve also been thinking for a long time about the contrast between innovative, nimble companies in Silicon Valley vs. the old-guard Detroit auto companies. I’ve wondered if the auto companies would evolve to be more like the tech companies, find ways to team with them effectively, or just fade away and be replaced by them. I see the third option looking closest to reality. I don’t believe cars are the technology of the future (at least, not one of the dominant technologies), but even when we do see car companies integrating technology effectively, it is not the old-guard Detroit companies doing it. I wonder if they will fade away or go out with a bang. Remember, during the financial crisis they survived only with a government bailout, and that happened because they made a decent case of their importance to the larger economy. Will they be able to make that case next time if our transportation system has evolved to use a wider range of technologies produced by a wider range of companies?
Negative stories:
Positive stories:
