Great Magazine Reads: Flying cars are the hottest trend in future transportation, just like they were on The Jetsons

Always thinking back to The Jetsons, we keep asking whatever happened to the flying cars we were promised. I was quoted about this alongside several other transportation experts in 2016 in USA Today and wrote about flying cars in 2017 for Mobility Lab.

The question lingers, but what exactly is a flying car? One definition given in "A Reporter Aloft: Flight of Fancy," by Gideon Lewis-Kraus, in the latest issue of The New Yorker, is "the 'perfect aircraft' — something 'that didn’t require a pilot’s license, and could take off or land anywhere.'"

The flying car has been part of our collective imagination for a good 100 years. Long ago, the article notes:

The aviation company Cessna ran magazine advertisements for the Family Car of the Air, a sensible little plane that you could park in your garage, with copy like “Remember, Mrs. America likes to go places and see things. And when she finds out that she can cover 600 miles in a morning, to shop or visit in any one of a dozen cities, she’s going to fly.”

By the mid-fifties, it was almost a given that some future sedans would come with wings. If we were going to live in mile-high space needles, how else would we move about? The title sequence of “The Jetsons,” which premièred in 1962, doesn’t show the ground once; George takes his wife and children to their respective floating platforms in his domed airship, and then heads to his offce at Spacely Space Sprockets, Inc. Some of this imagery was the standard-issue utopianism of the bright-eyed mid-century, but it really wasn’t that farfetched. After all, many of the era’s predictions came to pass: portable radios, televisions with screens “the size of a pocket handkerchief,” air-conditioning, plastics.

There is no doubt that those predictions by The Jetsons and others were inspiring and have, after decades of stagnancy, taken hold again of entrepreneuers in the business startup world: 

Today, there are more than four hundred startups in what is called the “advanced air mobility” industry. The term covers everything from actual flying-carish contraptions to more traditional-looking airplanes, but it generally refers to eVTOLs (pronounced “ee-vee-tall”). For the most part, these crafts bear a greater resemblance to helicopterplane hybrids than to automobiles, and they can’t be driven on the road; they might better be described as electric aerial vehicles with the ability to hover and the no-fuss point-to-point flexibility of a car.

Those interviewed in the article make a strong and logical case that flying cars could have already been mainstream if the U.S. wasn't so hostile to innovation:

Flying cars were another victim of our unwillingness to bear the costs of progress. American society allows about forty thousand road fatalities a year but refuses to tolerate even one aviation death. “Why can’t [the Federal Aviation Administration] say, ‘If you want to develop a flying machine, go out in the desert and do whatever you want’? I remember when Amazon was trying to test drone delivery they had to do experiments in Canada.” In the sixties, a heliport was built atop New York City’s Pan Am Building. After a period of inactivity, it was put back into use in 1977, with as many as sixty-four scheduled departures each day to local airports. That May, there was a landing-gear failure. Four people were killed by spinning rotor blades; a fifth was killed by a blade that careened to the street below. The heliport was permanently closed.

Of course, heliports and eVTOLs aren't the only option. We could choose to build our transportation in other ways that actually move masses of people efficiently and effectively.

Then there’s the sheer number that would be needed. Before the pandemic, about four hundred thousand people a day crossed the Hudson River into Manhattan. Aerial commuting would require tens of thousands of drone taxis operating on regular, reliable schedules, with flawless safety records. So all of a sudden you’re into the realm of, "Why didn’t we just build a train?"

It's a good thing nobody is asking us to hold our breath for aerial mobility. I'm happy to have my e-bike for my ever-reliable 20-minute work commute across Maryland and Washington D.C. That obviously isn't the solution for everyone. But at least we all have old episodes of the Jetsons we can watch.

Talking about the future of mobility on Tech Pulse TV

I was recently on this Tech Pulse TV show about "the future of mobility."

I believe it aired on Verizon and Comcast channels in Washington D.C. and Boston.

It's a good conversation with Darnell Grisby of the American Public Transportation Association, Russell Brooks of Transportation for America, and Barry Einsig of Cisco about topics such as:

• Technology shaping transportation
• The future of mobility
• Transportation platforms
• Bikesharing
• Carsharing, and
• The sharing economy.

On-demand “flying Ubers” could ease East Coast traffic

This article originally appeared at Mobility Lab.

What would happen to congested urban traffic if some trips could simply be picked up and moved into the air?

That’s a question players from Uber to Airbus to NASA are seriously studying. But to Bruce Gunter, who often has to take unnecessarily long car trips from his home in Virginia Beach to Richmond to visit family, some of the pieces of this “on-demand urban air transportation” puzzle are missing.

“I’m frustrated because most of the research is being done in California and there’s nothing in Virginia along the Interstate 95 corridor. It’s almost comical because almost all the work is being done by NASA [from its offices in] Langley, Va.,” Gunter laughed.

Gunter has more than a passing interest in what can no doubt be simply referred to as flying cars. He is managing director of Veetle, a company that is producing these VTOLs (vertical take-off and landing vehicles). But he also has deep knowledge of lengthy Federal Aviation Administration processes, especially from his days working at Cirrus, which has gotten extensive news coverage about its parachute-deploying small planes.

“We’re a very small company, with big ideas.” Gunter said Veetle is operating on about $1 million in its first year but that once it starts marketing and gathering investments, it could be a $200 million to $300 million effort. “Unless you’re a legacy company like Boeing or Airbus, this is all about putting tons of companies together to put the planes together.”

On-demand air travel in Virginia

Uber, in a report it released last year, predicted:

Daily long-distance commutes in heavily congested urban and suburban areas and routes under-served by existing infrastructure will be the first use cases for urban VTOLs. VTOLs will have greatest appeal for those traveling longer distances and durations [and] a small number of vertiports could absorb a large share of demand from long-distance commuters since the “last mile” ground transportation component will be small relative to the much longer commute distance.

Along Virginia’s stretch of I-95 or in other congested nearby cities like Richmond, Virginia Beach, and Washington, D.C., flying cars could certainly be an option worth exploring.

“This could broaden the scope of how people get around, even more than what Uber has shown us already with cars,” Gunter said, adding that passengers would reserve a plane just like an Uber, but would instead, unlike an Uber, head to a designated rooftop to jump in.

He added that it’s great Uber is one of the few players in the market, but that the ride-hailing company can’t do much until it has an actual product like the kind Veetle is developing. “Logistically, we could be the aerial Uber, for lack of a better term.”

Keys to making flying Ubers a reality

Some of the bigger keys, besides simply getting the public to change long-ingrained travel habits and developing policy guidelines, include making trips inexpensive, reliable, and shared in the sense so they would be more like transit than personal vehicles.

Uber further predicts:

In the long-term, VTOLs will be an affordable form of daily transportation for the masses, even less expensive than owning a car. Normally, people think of flying as an expensive and infrequent form of travel, but that is largely due to the low production volume manufacturing of today’s aircraft. The economics of manufacturing VTOLs will become more akin to automobiles than aircraft. Initially, of course, VTOL vehicles are likely to be very expensive, but because the ridesharing model amortizes the vehicle cost efficiently over paid trips, the high cost should not end up being prohibitive to getting started.

Another matter is whether the vehicles would create noise and air pollution. Gunter said the battery technology is still at least a decade away to make them powered fully by electric propulsion. Until then, they would need to be “some kind of hybrid” of gas and electric. But he added that the noise would be minimal because they would operate somewhat like drones, which the public already largely understands as being relatively quiet.

Also, would we simply be displacing traffic jams on the roads for ones in the sky?

“I’ve got 6,500 hours of flying and, in my experience, it’s rare if you ever see another airplane. If you do, it’s near the big airports by places like New York and Atlanta,” Gunter said, adding that VTOL traffic is mainly a matter of being managed effectively.

As science-fiction-y as it seems, we may indeed be hearing more about on-demand urban air transportation soon. Uber is sponsoring an invitation-only conference April 25-27 in Dallas.

Photo by Uber.

Fully autonomous vehicles may make us safer, but could add to traffic

This article originally appeared at Mobility Lab.

Just what a future transportation system with autonomous vehicles looks like isn’t completely clear-cut.

However, Kara Kockelman, a University of Texas-based leading academic on the subject, has predictions for their economic impacts. In a South by Southwest presentation last week, she put forth a rapid-fire, yet nuanced, synopsis of the numerous studies she’s completed with UT students on an approaching autonomous future.

“I don’t think these cars are going to help us with congestion. I think they’re going to make it worse,” Kockelman said, adding this this will be an area that will require crucial legislation. “But I think they will save us on safety.”

Safety is certainly a top selling point upon which auto and tech experts will rely as they push autonomous vehicles as a future transportation solution.

The nearly 33,000 U.S. traffic deaths and 6 million crashes in 2014, according to Kockelman, created a cost of more than $500 billion. Driver error caused more than 90 percent of those crashes, and she said AVs would dramatically reduce that number, since at least 40 percent of those deaths resulted from alcohol, drugs, fatigue, and/or distraction.

With 100 percent adoption of AVs, the country would gain $488 billion annually in “pain and suffering” avoided from car crashes. That equates to $1,530 each year per person in the United States.

The congestion side may be a much trickier message for auto and tech experts to pitch to the public. Kockelman calculated that, in 2014, traffic created 7 billion hours of delay and caused $160 billion in economic loss.

On top of that, the bonus of “productivity en route” would be a $645 billion gain to the economy each year.

Add together the two economic gains – pain and suffering plus productivity – and the country would save a whopping $1.4 trillion in costs. On the per capita side, that comes to $4,419 per person in the country.

However, Kockelman balances the positives with the many consequences that would likely domino throughout society, including:

• Longer travel distances, including people more likely to take induced driverless trips to destinations they currently wouldn’t drive to due to stress or other factors
• More driving trips by people who are presently unlicensed or have barriers to driving
• Less air travel by passengers
• Less rail travel by freight
• Possibly larger, less-efficient vehicles for longer trips, and
• More sprawling land use

Kockelman continued, saying these side effects could, in turn, increase congestion and infrastructure damage in many places. This would create a need for “systems to be operated more efficiently, equitably, and sustainably, including incentives for ride-sharing and non-motorized travel, route guidance, credit-based congestion pricing, and micro-tolling.”

“We’re going to see a lot more travel, but hopefully we’ll travel together, so that will avoid congestion,” she said. Kockelman added that improved technology should make tolling more efficient and that better public transportation and true ridesharing (as opposed to Uber- and Lyft-like ride-hailing) will be keys along the autonomous path.

Perhaps most importantly, she and her co-presenter Lisa Loftus-Otway, also from UT-Austin, said AVs offer a momentary chance to have a national conversation about transportation in the U.S. – something that has never truly happened on this scale.

“We’ve never really had an honest discussion on what transportation costs us,” Loftus-Otway said. “Terminology matters and [for example, we] shouldn’t call it a gas tax. It’s really a usage fee. Growing up, I never really knew how we paid for transportation. I guess I used to think the road fairy paid for it.”

Hopefully the AVs that appear in the near-term will help people better understand how transportation works. And then again, it may take some deliberate, and creative, outreach to help people understand the issue.

“Hopefully you all have been inside [an autonomous vehicle],” Kockelman told the audience, before laughing, “I have … and it’s pretty boring.”

Photo: Busy freeway (Rafael Castillo, Flickr, Creative Commons).

Breaking the mold in the quest for the ultimate connected city

This is part 2 of a two-part series at Mobility Lab on how advocates can create connected cities. Part 1 examined public agencies reshaping their transportation priorities. 

Pinellas County, Fla., just west of Tampa Bay, is one of several local governments in the nation to essentially embed Uber and Lyft into the local transit system. Transit riders can get $5 back if they use those ride-hailing companies to connect to a bus stop.

Such a program from the Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority encourages a healthy public-private relationship and, more importantly, should make it easier for more people to not rely on private car ownership or be left in isolation because of their distance from transit.

Transportation should be viewed like a smartphone. It should allow everyone to be connected to opportunities throughout the rest of society, at reasonable and low cost. And this ride-hailing partnership with transit is a crucial example of how local governments can catch up and be responsive in a fast-moving world of technology-driven transportation options.

No longer should agencies partition buses and rail from all the newer private solutions. Simply put, shared services can be complements to transit. But this is just one way that cities can look beyond traditional thinking in their mission to better connect their transportation systems.

Public agencies must engage with private service providers

Like the auto companies that have begun aggressively investing in ride-hailing efforts, many transit agencies are ramping up efforts to form partnerships with providers like Uber and Lyft. Paratransit is one area ripe for cost savings and real-time service (rather than having to book rides days in advance) through transit agency use of private services like Lyft.

The major caveat here to work out is whether ride-hailing vehicles – with drivers who can spend lots of time driving in between fares – are actually making traffic in cities worse. The only place this has been measured, New York City – which has a unique, data-sharing contract with providers – shows that Uber and Lyft are worsening congestion. The research from the American Public Transportation Association, the University of California-Berkeley, and others have said the jury may still be out on the traffic impacts, but this is an area for local governments to concern themselves. Uber at least has taken steps to help the greater cause, having entered an agreement with Washington, D.C., and several other cities to share data with transportation planners in an effort to better manage traffic flows.

Once ride-hailing arrangements are smoothed out, the next great frontier is autonomous vehicles. In 2016, the U.S. government announced a $4 billion program for self-driving cars, and Pittsburgh took steps so Uber could use the city as an AV testing ground. How can other local governments feel comfortable and confident when considering to do what Pittsburgh has done? Or what Local Motors with its mini-bus Olli – formerly operating outside Washington, D.C. – is doing? For starters, cities need to map out all the pluses and minuses (especially financially) that AVs will bring. From there, they can implement regulations, policies, and plans to safely integrate in this mode of the future.

Don’t forget about transit

“The first thing we need to do is talk with our public institutions to try and make more partnerships, more connectivity, between the different modes, new and old,” said Paul Lewis, vice president of policy and finance at the Eno Center for Transportation, at a panel I moderated at this year’s TransportationCamp DC. “It’s not an easy task. Transit is one of the biggest areas we can do this.”

Indeed, the cities that create connections best will do so basing it off the existing core infrastructure of roads and mass transit. But we also can’t forget that to truly make this ultimate city work, people need to buy in to the concept of multimodalism. To help get there, companies like Ford  are leading the way toward one interactive pass or app that allows people to book, pay, and communicate with all travel options from anywhere. This seamlessness is key for the commute of the future.

Broadening the possibilities of the transit ride is also key. Where partnerships for transit might make the most sense is to have private companies “get people to transit from in-demand areas during off-peak hours,” according to Mobility Lab Director Howard Jennings, quoted in APTA’s Passenger Transport. This can reduce costs to transit agencies for pricey, low-ridership routes and bring in a wider customer base – a prospect that should be a more aggressive part of the mission for transit agencies. So-called “first-mile, last-mile” options are an area ripe for transit agencies to get involved, and some places are even going so far as to subsidize rides to and from transit. Orlando suburb Altamonte Springs, Fla., became the first city, about a year ago, to subsidize Uber rides to transit.

Another APTA report finds convincing evidence that on-demand modes, in many cases, complement – not replace – public transit. Transit consultant Jarrett Walker notes, “Many people who work inside of big companies [like Uber and Lyft] understand perfectly well how the profit motive conflicts with what you’d do if you were just trying to foster a better city, and many welcome regulation precisely to plug that gap.” As evidence appears that Uber may not be the answer to traffic dilemmas, the necessity for companies like it to work within a congestion-reducing framework grows even stronger.

And pricing itself will need to be worked out between all travel modes, which means car travel and parking prices need to reflect their true costs. When it’s cheaper to drive and park downtown than it is to take the bus or train or Uber, the multimodal, connected city goal will remain a fantasy. But there are signs of creativity to balance incentives: some European cities are paying residents to bike to work rather than drive.

Ideas for breaking molds

There are many directions cities could go to become “connected.” And while it could take larger cities with more staffing power to be able to do everything well, smaller cities could at least focus on a handful of these ideas, and do them well.

And as ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft get even more attractive as alternatives to transit, with dynamic in-ride app entertainment and cheaper casual-carpooling options, more and more transit agencies are examining how to use software like TransLoc that can make it easier to take services like Uber and Lyft to and from transit stations. Journalist Esther Dyson, who also spoke on my recent TransportationCamp panel, thinks this general idea can succeed far beyond city centers. “[Uber and Lyft] would have a real opportunity in small, less dense communities where there are people without jobs but with cars. They can dynamically schedule themselves,” she said, adding that hubs like hospitals and campuses could be ride-hailing hubs.

Parking is a ripe place for innovation, as it is generally overbuilt and underpriced. Santander, Spain, has become “the most connected city in Europe” because it’s focused on installing “smart” infrastructure such as sensors that monitor parking spaces. Sensor infrastructure can improve information about parking, and help people choose whether to drive or take other options.

Autonomous vehicles seem to be the elephant in the room. Cities want to prepare for them, but they don’t know how. Federal regulations and standards would certainly be a help in order to even the playing field, but there will likely be large shifts – more people might drive, parking and signage will need major reconfigurations, housing patterns will need to change – involved for the least-prepared places. A draft manifesto from several Cal Poly professors examines how AVs interact with pedestrians and people on bikes, but what about how AVs work with and complement mass transit? I’ve asked before: When cars can be summoned with a button and don’t require attention from humans, will it become even more difficult for transit to compete with the experience of autonomous vehicles? Grush Niles Associates have noted that planners should start mapping out various scenarios in which AVs could be linked into the existing transit foundations, including loops, small areas, large areas, cities, megaregions and routes where buses negate the need for AVs.

Biking, bikeshare (which increasingly see slight increases in travel share thanks to better bike parking and street infrastructure) and walking may soon have some company from electric additions: battery-powered people movers. Electric skateboards and hoverboards and electric bicycles could all soon close a lot of gaps in connecting people to transit options. It helps that 67 percent of those surveyed say they need a shower after a conventional bike trip, while 74 percent say they don’t after an e-bike trip, according to Portland State University’s Transportation Research and Education Center.

And last but far from least, transportation demand management – which includes clear information about options – presents an inexpensive, effective path for forging and solidifying those connections. Arlington Transportation Partners in Virginia works with 221 local organizations in its Champions program to make sure residents and employees know about the many transportation options throughout the county. Places are also learning that their front-line transit information – maps – simply need to be clearer, because most of us don’t understand them. And, finally, to catch up with the allure of the personal car, TDM and marketers can promote these options to connect in more exciting ways that portray transit as the norm.

Having the freedom to walk from home to take bikeshare to the subway to get to work, then maybe take a Zipcar on the way home, should present an exciting opportunity for cities. Racing towards the ultimate connected city could allow for places to provide innumerable benefits like improved traffic, health, safety, environmental conditions, and overall quality of life for many more people.

Photo by Sam Kittner for Mobility Lab, www.kittner.com

Tech is Good, But We Need Transportation Planning for the City of the Future

This article by Howard Jennings and myself was originally published by Expert Sure, CleanTechnica and Mobility Lab.

What does transportation in the U.S. city of the future look like?

Mobility Lab gets asked this a lot because it’s clear that people have had it with the crushing traffic that dominates most of our cities, and 3 out of 4 people are frustrated by their lack of transportation options.

As Forbes recently pointed out, the average traffic delay – time spent in stop-and-go traffic – per commuter is 42 hours each year, up from 18 hours annually in 1982. We’re losing patience, getting less healthy, being unproductive, wasting money, and polluting the air. And from the flip-side perspective, a new report has found that reducing the time employees spend in cars is one of best things a business can do for itself, for a whole host of reasons.

So people and businesses are slowly getting around to realizing they need to change their transportation habits, and this mindset is starting to have a huge impact on the way people everywhere – but especially in dense cities – take their daily trips.

IT STARTS WITH TECH

It’s safe to say technology has been the top enabler of this trend. And all the talk about the on-demand economy and electric and autonomous vehicles is actually a lot more interesting and sophisticated (and realistic) than the many years we all spent infatuated with flying Jetsons cars as our vision of a transportation future.

Traffic smartphone apps such as Waze suggest the most efficient route from point A to point B, adjusting along the way based on real-time speed and traffic information from other “crowdsourcing” users.

Dozens of transit agencies have apps that offer real-time travel information. And after a media investigation discovered that nearly 10 percent of buses are late to Boston’s public schools, a new app called Where’s My School Bus? was designed so parents could know if their kids were missing class.

And when package-delivery drones like those proposed by Amazon get off the ground, they hold the potential to decrease the number of truck trips on city and suburban streets.

Austin is creating an app that connects cyclists to traffic signals, which the Texas city hopes will encourage more bicycling by making lights turn green faster as bicycles approach them.

Zurich, Switzerland has long had success alleviating traffic in this realm. If too many cars are coming into the city, sophisticated traffic signals are timed to vastly discourage people from driving in. With commuter rail strategically running alongside these roads, people can bail out of their cars and jump onto transit. It’s highly rational, it works, and the city is way more enjoyable because of it. More and more places – like New York, London, Paris, Copenhagen, and Buenos Aires – are utilizing car-free zones.

uberPool and Lyft Line have a huge opportunity to play a role in reducing the total number of miles driven on U.S. roads. While these new offerings are similar to traditional carpooling, which has been around since the need to ration rubber in World War II, the ability to hail a ride with more certainty from a smartphone is proving popular.

Public transportation really needs to catch up. Once trains, light rail, streetcars, and buses become interconnected services on our smartphones, we’ll see an uptick in ridership. One of the major drawbacks to transit is that it is perceived as unreliable. But if we can check real-time arrivals, pay, ride, and transfer to all the other transit possibilities from the comfort of our smartphones – or “smart wallets,” as San Francisco transit innovator Tim Papandreou calls it – the need to own a personal vehicle will decrease.

Singapore has an “ez-Link” card that travelers can use to pay for buses, trains and taxis, while London’s Oyster card does some of the same things.

RideScout recently announced its plan to launch something called RideTap, which will be a pilot in Portland to demonstrate on-demand rides to complement the existing transit infrastructure. In other words, TriMet users will be able to book a Bcycle or Lyft on their smartphones to connect them from the end of their train ride to their destination.

THE PLANNERS ARE A’CHANGIN’

Speaking of bikeshare, that is one of the major innovations helping planners see that cities are changing before their very eyes. Since 2009, when there were virtually no bikeshare systems in North America, more than 50 cities and towns – speaking conservatively, since there are also so many systems on college campuses – have added them to their transportation networks, most recently Birmingham, Ala. Even planners in smaller jurisdictions are finding flexible bikeshare options that best work for their size and resources.

One of the many presenters for Mobility Lab's Transportation Techies in the Washington D.C. region

Planners regularly attend Mobility Lab’s monthly Transportation Techies events (highlighted here in this Washington Post feature) and help advocate for governments to open their transit data to make systems more usable for more people. And events like our TransportationCamp – which is now happening in various cities around the country and world – and grass-roots planning by groups like ioby and Cards Against Urbanity are opening old-school planners’ eyes to the creative thinking about what people want from their cities of the future. (Like welcoming and enjoyable bus stops, for instance.)

Mayors in cities all over the country are listening and beginning to be less afraid of saying “yes” to pilot projects that can often become bigger when constituents see success and private partners assist with funding.

DRIVERLESS CART BEFORE THE HORSE?

Then there are driverless cars – the supposed answer to all our transportation troubles. Transportation-demand expert Todd Litman projects that these won’t fully impact traffic congestion, automobile accidents, and car ownership until 2060.

But we think that is wildly conservative. Large numbers of people will be using these vehicles over the next decade, and we hope to see good data soon thereafter on whether driverless cars are taking trips off the road and reducing vehicle miles travelled.

Equally important is that so much of the focus on automated cars has been on the tech, while not enough attention is being paid to what the impacts will be on people and our built environment. If these vehicles remove the stress of the commute, then that’s likely to induce a lot more people to ride in them, in turn taking them out of transit modes like buses, subways, and bikeshares. The trend might actually create a net increase in vehicles.

The cars will be able to cluster closer together in platoons on roadways and urban streets. The likelihood is that we will have much greater density of cars in urban environments, which could potentially diminish the quality of the environment that so many of us are striving for with transit-oriented development, complete streets, walkable activity centers, and livability and sustainability initiatives. This area needs to be studied, and good policies need to be put in place before the driverless cars hit the road en masse.

A good thing about our newfound sharing-economy mindset is that it sets the stage for fleets of autonomous vehicles to succeed, since many people are no longer automatically thinking they have to have their own driverless cars. Potentially there might actually be fewer cars on the roads.

INNOVATION WILL DRIVE SLOWER-MOVING POLICY

We know these are the innovations that will shape our transportation in the city of the future. The question is how it will happen.

If the right people aren’t at the table – like idea man Gabe Klein, for example – cities could end up looking like Cairo, Egypt, where people drive bumper-to-bumper, making the streets look like seething, inhospitable rivers of metal. That’s a worse-case scenario, but if we have the ability for cars to travel two feet apart, it’s also pretty realistic.

How we plan affects how quickly we get market absorption. For the most part, we don’t have the space to build new roads and highways in cities. And as the abyssmal level of federal transportation spending has gone on for many years now, and our infrastructure crumbles, we don’t have the money to build new roads.

So creative spending on relatively inexpensive throughways like bicycle infrastructure and walkable communities makes a lot of sense. And the intangible benefits of refocusing on modes other than drive-alone cars make spending in those directions even wiser.

Photos courtesy of Warren Antiola and  M.V. Jantzen.