1. 06 cost-convenience equation now favors POV.doc.lnk

The cost/convenience equation now favors POVs. A list of the factors

Cars pollute. They are dangerous. Driving brings out our worst personal traits. We have known all this for at least fifty years. Yet over that same half century cars have resisted every effort to displace them. The bottom line is that they meet our travel needs amazingly well at a very affordable price.

It takes only a glance at a list of top-selling cars to see where our values are. Hondas and Toyotas reflect economy. Vans reflect our family values. SUVs reflect (accurately or not) an interest in safety and reliability. The markets for fast and attention-getting cars are only niches. Most cars’ attractions are purely practical. Unless economic factors force us to give them up, any replacement will need to offer most of the advantages as a car. To catalog the automobile’s attractions, they include:

Availability The car sitting in the driveway or garage is ready to go immediately. The popularity of four wheel drive is testimony to worth of that assurance. Even where it snows only occasionally, lots of people are willing to pay a premium to be sure they can always get out.

Operational convenience The car does what you want. Most people like to drive until they get up in years.

Financing convenience Paying for a car involves simple transactions. There are usually a monthly car payments, periodic insurance payments, and monthly credit card bills for gas and repairs.

Freedom of movement A car represents a teenager’s freedom from parents. Giving up driving means the end of an oldster’s independence.

A car has much more freedom of movement than any other mode of transport. Roads go wherever there are people, and cars go wherever roads go. All other forms of transportation are much more limited. Public transit sticks to predefined right-of-ways. The range of bicycists and pedestrians is limited by the human factor. Boats need water and airplanes need airports.

The only alternatives that offer such freedom are other road vehicles, like taxis, rental cars and motorcycles. This fact suggests that some form of cars will be with us for a long time.

Speed and acceleration Provided the roads aren’t jammed, a car is usually the fastest way to get to any destination within a few hundred miles. Public transportation would be much more popular if it could compete with cars in terms of speed. Commuters put up with a lot of aggravation on the roads for the sake of minimizing their commute time. Conversely, bus and train passengers usually feel a need rationalize the time they spend on the commute by pointing to the reading they get done.

Comfort What can compete with an environment that you control? You can adjust your car’s seats, air conditioning and radio. Your car is seldom crowded, and only when you allow it.

Safety Cars are safe and getting safer. Almost nobody gives up a car for a safer mode of transport. The problem is the danger that cars represent to others. Lots of us give up little ones for big ones an account of safety. Most people think we bicyclists are crazy to risk our lives in traffic. While public transportation certainly has an edge once a passenger is on the bus or train, that perception of safety is probably offset by the fear involved in dodging cars on the way to and from public transportation.

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Carrying capacity How many of us remember the vanished patterns of life before the automobile? You would walk to town every day with one or two durable carry sacks and visit the baker, the greengrocer and the butcher. Those days are fifty years gone. Our shopping systems are dependent on the car. We shop in big stores that are too far to walk in the first place. We buy fifty pounds of groceries at a time that they put in plastic bags that are worthless for carrying any distance.

Reliability People have an irrational fear of things beyond their control. In commuting that means we worry that the bus will be late, the bus will break down or there will be a wildcat strike. We trust the car a lot more even though it sometimes won’t start and often gets stuck in traffic. At least we are in control. And by the way, we spend significant sums for the marginal improvements in reliability and safety that come with a new car.

Prestige The human animal doesn’t change. Two hundred years ago we wanted glitzy carriages and fast horses.

The conceit so wonderfully documented by David Brooks in “Bobos in Paradise” is that we are now guided by rationality. A look at a private school car pool would lead one to believe that the most rational vehicles in which to ferry our offspring are Volvos and Lexus and Mercedes SUVs. However, a glance at the Highway Loss Data Institute statistics shows that the advantages are marginal. Are other factors at play?

Amenities Your car has what you want: a stereo you control, your library of CDs and tapes, your cell phone, and soon to come your email and other electronic connections.

Cost Cars are cheap to drive, usually between $10 and $40 per day depending on where you live, how fancy it is, how much use it gets, and what you pay for tolls and parking.

Zero planning required The great thing about a car is that it is there. It is the default mode of transportation. The alternatives of walking to the store, taking the metro downtown, or bicycling to work all take some thought.

That’s the conundrum. Cars are killing us. It is in society’s interests for many reasons to drag us out of our cars.. On the other hand, society leaves us free to drive cars and the alternatives are not very attractive.

Within the constraints of free society, we need market solutions that will make other modes of transport more attractive vis-à-vis cars. The automobile’s impressive list of advantages makes it hard to envision a single alternative. The question is how new technologies can make cars more efficient and other forms of transportation more attractive. The short answer is to look at the technologies that are advancing most rapidly.

Our transportation machinery has been improving in a linear fashion. Every year the manufacturers have the ability to produce cars that are a little safer, a little faster, and a little bit more economical. Fashions of the moment dictate which of these get priority: in the late 1990s economy yielded to safety and performance. Gradual improvement is the rule for airplanes, buses, boats and trains.

Fossil fuel technologies are not only mature but they offer little hope of getting around the greenhouse gas issue. The best hopes center around using them to generate electricity, in the vehicle or a stationary plant, and possibly capturing and immobilizing the CO2.

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Biotechnology is a wild card for energy issues. New crops will certainly produce higher yields of fuels such as alcohol. We may some day harness photosynthesis directly for our power needs. It may be possible to have microbes decompose fossil fuel deposits into liquids and gases that are easier extract, making more of the earth’s resources available as fuel. The efficiencies biotechnology offers should apply to most forms of transportation.

Solar cells have been a long time coming. The amount of light that falls on a car is far from sufficient to ever move it at highway speeds. However, it may be possible to generate hydrogen using electricity from photovoltaics, then power cars with hydrogen. There are no obvious upper bounds on what can be accomplished with solar cells and hydrogen, though there are significant breakthroughs needed in both theory and engineering. It is an attractive field for investment.

Information-oriented technologies have seen rampant growth. A tenfold improvement in computer power doesn’t take any more silicon, just a smarter process. The same with communications. Communications and intelligence should help us make smarter use of our vehicles even if we can’t make them much more efficient. Pundits have reflected that what futurists assumed would be the nuclear age, the last half of the 20th century, turned out to be the information age. Just applying information has made any number of very physical processes, from manufacturing to airline transport to telecommunications to publishing, vastly more efficient. It would seem we are overlooking the obvious if we don’t look to information for solutions to our travel energy problem.

2. 08 Why change will be so hard.doc.lnk (combine with 06 above)

The United States and Canada are large countries that were thinly peopled when the automobile came of age. All of our western cities, and most suburbs of our eastern cities, were designed for the automobile. Designed for the automobile means dependent on the automobile:

Houses are widely spaced on large lots.

Distances to stores, schools, work and other destinations are too great to walk

Provisions for pedestrians and cyclists are minimal

Almost our the entire commercial fleet that makes up our distribution system is dependent on fossil fuels. That includes trucks, boats, airplanes and railroads. Railroads could but do not use coal and electricity; the others depend entirely on liquid petroleum.

We have a huge investment in our internal combustion vehicles. Our fleet of 126 million privately owned cars and light trucks cost about 2 trillion dollars, about a quarter of our GNP. Heavy trucks and buses and the infrastructure of dealers, repair shops, car washes and so forth that supports them represents another huge investment. Not only can these vested interests be expected to resist change, rapid change would be impossible in any case. When the price of fuel jumps rapidly, as it did in 1973 and again in 2000, we have no choice but to grin and bear it.

The design of our city infrastructures is predicated more on the car, our preferred mode of transportation, than on people themselves. Cars dictate the width of the streets. As a consequence we give a quarter of the land area of our cities over to them. They demand that we pave large portions of our living, working and shopping space for parking.

The fuel distribution system heightens our dependency on the gasoline engine. The occasional oddball who buys a diesel car soon discovers that finding fuel is at least a minor issue. The utility of a car that uses natural gas, ethyl alcohol, hydrogen or other exotic fuels is limited to the extent it is tethered to its fuel supply. Our road maintenance, snow removal, drainage and other systems are car-oriented. Ever try to ride your bicycle on a snowy day?

3. Legacy system adaptations to weather and geography will be hard to duplicate

Rubber-tired internal combustion road vehicles dominate the landscape for good reasons. They are reasonably cheap to build. They can be made to work well in every conceivable environment: pavement, dirt roads, beaches, deserts, ice caps, snow, ice, rain and mud. Even the U.S. Army is migrating from tracked to rubber-tired vehicles. What they lack in impenetrability they make up for in mobility.

It is surprising, and certainly disappointing to conservationists who dislike cars on other grounds, how economical, even ecologically economical, cars are compared with other forms of transportation. Cars, airplanes, commuter trains and city buses all take an average of between 3000 and 4000 BTUs of energy per passenger mile.

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That equates to between 28 and 38 miles per gallon of gasoline. The efficiency of commuter trains and city buses is offset by their varying passenger loads. They are wonderfully economical at rush hour, when they are full, and often grossly inefficient the rest of the day when they run almost empty but have to stay in operation regardless because people depend on them. Intercity buses and trains are the only modes of transportation that are consistently much more efficient, often under 1000 BTU per passenger mile. These vehicles are quite efficient when they are running full and maintaining their speed. Greyhound and Amtrak generally don’t schedule buses and trains unless they can come close to filling them.

4. Psychological commitment to the legacy system.

Practical or not, people want cars. We want them the same way young men centuries ago wanted horses. Cars are freedom. They are an outward manifestation of the self. They display our status wherever we go. Young men want fast cars. Old men want the cars of their youth. Many people just love to drive: Jeeps, Harleys, snowmobiles, ATVs, motorboats, private airplanes. It is a very human impulse.

Marketing reinforces our desire for cars. I laugh when I see commercials showing SUVs parked on top of mountains or passenger sedans doubling the speed limit on a highway, but it is obvious that the marketers know what they are doing. Almost anybody that can afford something more than basic transportation rationalizes doing so. We need a Chevy Suburban for the room, or a Jeep Grand Cherokee for the four wheel drive, or a BMW for the handling, or maybe a Boxster just for the fun of it.

The world has abolished dictatorships, at least in most countries with enough money that cars are an issue. We can’t compel people to “do the right thing” when it comes to transportation any more than we can make them exercise or stop them from smoking. The naked desire to have a car will work against the environmentalists’ efforts to clean up the air, conservationists’ efforts to save our diminishing fossil fuel reserves, and planners’ attempts to relieve congestion.

The questions to answer, then, are how to make cars themselves more efficient, and how, without coercion, to entice people to leave their cars for other modes of transportation.

5. 07 Inefficiencies of current system due to lack of information

Human factors make our highways vastly inefficient. They could handle hundreds of times the people if one master brain that knew every person’s destination coordinated all the traffic.

How much of the road is actually used by cars? A six-lane freeway may have three 12’ lanes and two 9’ shoulders in each direction. That is a 54’ wide stripe of concrete to accommodate 18’ of car width (three at six feet each). Normal traffic only takes up 1/3 of the width of the asphalt.

Cars should be separated by one car length for every ten miles per hour. At 70 MPH, we use at most 1/8 of the available lanes. The maximum effective use that cars can make of the space reserved for the highway, then, is 1/8 times 1/3, or 1/24. Putting it another way, auto traffic moving at highway speeds cannot cover more than about 4% of the available road surface.

Casting the issue in terms of people makes it look even worse. Being generous, we might say that there are on the average about 1 1/2 people per car. Together they make takes up maybe 6 of the car’s total footprint of 90 (15x6) square feet, or 10%. In terms of people, then, the maximum efficiency of the highway is about .4%. Local Area Network or Internet traffic, by comparison, is usually able to use more than 50% of an available electronic pathway. Not to mention the fact that the capacity of each of those pathways has been growing exponentially.

Other forms of transport suffer most of the same problems. Because buses and trains are still a long way from being automated, the same human factors continue to dictate that they be spaced fairly far apart on the road or the rails. They make more efficient use of their right-of-ways mainly because they can carry more passengers per vehicle.

Lack of information is the primary reason for the inefficiency in every mode of surface transport. Individual operators don’t know what each other are doing. They have to factor in the unexpected. Traffic control systems such as stop signs and stop lights delay traffic in the interests of ensuring that each operator has time to make the necessary decisions. Traffic management systems are built upon the lowest common denominator: people with the worst eyesight, hearing and reaction times, driving the slowest cars likely to be on the roads.

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Many drivers are not content to be constrained by the lowest common denominator. Most of us frequently exceed the speed limit. A goodly number also follow closer than one car length per 10 MPH, roll through stop signs and enter intersections on the yellow light. Differences in driver behavior and vehicle capabilities lead to chaotic situations on the road. Letting each driver acting out of self-interest is not compatible with the best interests of everybody on the road. A smooth merge is in the best interests of traffic flow. Not letting the other guy in is in the best interest of an individual driver. Which sentiment wins?

6. Elements of Potential Solutions.doc.lnk

Elements of Potential Solutions. Don’t talk about a single “magic bullet” solution. Good minds have been working on this for a long time. There is none. But we do know the components of an eventual solution.

The personally owned car, driven by its owner, is so versatile and so well entrenched that there is no way it will be displaced by a single “magic bullet” solution. It does not need to be. The needs are so varied, and the individual transportation market is so large that there can be a number of solutions. Each solution may be made up of several parts, just as today we may walk to the bus, drive to the ferry or take a bicycle to the metro. Elements of the solution have to include:

Less use of individual transportation

More efficient vehicles

Less damaging fuels

More efficient use of vehicle fleets

7. 1.1.2. Change the amount of mileage we need to cover

Why have we become such insatiable consumers of individual transportation? Driving has certainly become more of a chore than a pleasure for most people. We are stuck in the ruts laid down by our parents and grandparents earlier in the century. Our sphere of activity has been redefined to the operating radius of a car. It used to be the neighborhood. This change has a number of implications.

We choose the optimal place to work based on the work, not the place.

In shopping we browse as widely as time permits for price and selection

We choose schools and extracurricular activities for our children based on the quality of the offering.

We establish social affinities by common interests more than geography. Our friends are scattered.

We want and need to get out for entertainment and restaurants because there is no longer much to do in our communities.

There is progress. We are actively using technology to cut down on some of our travel needs. The trends listed below have resulted in less total growth in transportation usage, and in skewing personal transportation away from the necessary towards the discretionary.

High speed Internet access lets more and more people work from home.

Teleconferencing cuts down on the amount of travel needed for meetings.

We make more use of delivery services. The Internet is an ideal tool for choosing what we want: books, take-out food, clothes, groceries, rental movies or whatever. Since we no longer have to go to the store to make our choice, we can have goods delivered to us.

We use electronic delivery for mail and computer packages. It is increasingly useful for delivering whole books.

We can count on these services to increase as personal transportation becomes increasingly more expensive and less convenient. They will be especially useful in the third world. Developing countries are acquiring communications infrastructure, especially wireless, relatively quickly. In contrast the development of road infrastructures has been quite slow. Where the alternatives are sufficiently attractive, it may be possible to keep people from ever acquiring the car addiction.

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Example: The Less-than-truckload trucking industry has formed a consortium. Plan is to know where the trucks are, know where the orders are, and plan the most efficient way to get goods from Point A to Point B.

Local distribution companies, most notably department stores, UPS, etc., have used vehicle scheduling programs for ages. These manage deliveries from a single central depot, usually at scheduled starting times. What is needed is software with two more degrees of freedom: anywhere to anywhere, and any time. It can be adopted from the LTL industry software.

8. Use More efficient vehicles

Cars are inherently inefficient. Moving a person involves moving two tons of steel as well. Those two tons of steel have to overcome wind resistance and rolling resistance. In town they have to give up a lot of kinetic energy every time they are required to stop.

Efficiency goes up by improving any factor. Putting six people in a car makes it almost six times as efficient. Making the vehicle itself bigger, like a bus, and filling it to capacity makes the process even more efficient. Vehicle weight, wind and rolling resistance per passenger is proportionately less, efficiency proportionately more. Letting the vehicle travel at a steady speed makes it more efficient. Putting it on tracks cuts rolling resistance. Running vehicles in a convoy, or in a series like the cars in a train, cuts wind resistance.

9. Switch to non-damaging fuels

The “energy problem” does not ultimately lie in the amount of energy we consume but the way we generate that energy. The earth is more than capable of sloughing off all of the pure heat we are likely to generate. The real issues are environmental. We are using up our non-renewable resources at a tremendous rate and polluting our world in the process.

An ideal vehicle would be something like the GM sunraycer concept car of ten years ago that crossed Australia on solar power alone. Nobody even pretends that would be a viable solution; the vehicle was super-lightweight, the course avoided hills, Australia has nothing but sunshine, the car didn’t run at night, and the driver didn’t have to carry groceries.

Capturing solar power for later use is a more reasonable solution. There are a number of alternatives, all with significant drawbacks in today’s technology. They include:

Using electricity from solar cells to charge storage batteries for automotive use

Using solar power to separate water into hydrogen and oxygen, then carrying compressed hydrogen as fuel. Using current technology this involves converting solar power to electricity, then using electricity to separate the water. It is not very efficient.

Using photosynthesis to capture solar power in organic compounds, then converting the organics into a transportable form of energy such as alcohol or an electric charge.

Capturing the energy of wind and waves, which themselves are caused by the effects of solar heat, as electricity. The various windmill and wave-motion generation schemes now in use are niche applications, only economical in under highly specific conditions.

Almost all renewable energy sources are ultimately powered by the sun. The minor exceptions include tidal energy, driven by immense forces of inertia and gravitation and geothermal energy, drawing from the earth’s primal charge of internal heat. God help us if our appetite for energy ever brings us to the point of exhausting either of these!

The same challenges face all of the above energy sources. They need to be economical enough to compete with fossil fuels, abundant enough in total to satisfy our huge energy needs, and transportable enough to be brought to where energy is needed. These are huge problems. There will be a correspondingly huge payoff for the companies who succeed.

An examination of the efforts that have gone into alternative fuels, and the relatively limited success they have achieved to date, suggests that a large component of any immediate solution to the energy / global warming crisis has to come from reducing consumption.

10. Human-powered transport

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Our own bodies offer a very efficient mechanism for getting around. An active person burns about 3500 calories a day. If we do it ourselves, that energy, equivalent to about 1/8 gallon of gasoline, will handle all our transportation, computation, housekeeping and other energy needs. For a perspective from the other end of the telescope, consider that the average American uses the energy equivalent of the metabolism of a sperm whale. In our hunter-gatherer days we were equivalent to chimpanzees. It’s a whale of a difference!

Even relatively low-level technology makes it easier for us to get around than our hunter-gatherer forebears. I, for three years in my 50s, made a daily 34-mile round-trip commute by bicycle. It would not have been possible without the mechanical efficiency of the bike operating over a good road system. If I had had to drink those 3500 calories as gasoline I would have gotten 260 miles per gallon.

Human power, whether walking or bicycling, could make a significant contribution to reducing the demand on mechanical transportation. Most people believe in the benefits of exercise. We enjoy walking and biking enough that we often do it for pleasure. City dwellers happily walk tens of city blocks; it is more fun, cheaper, and usually faster than driving.

There is a natural propensity towards human-powered transportation waiting to be tapped if we can only relieve some of the negative factors:

Problems of physical conditioning.

Perspiration problems. The need to shower and change so we can look presentable once we arrive.

The perils of wet and icy roads

The lack of cargo capacity

The dangers posed by cars and bad neighborhoods

There is little technology can do about problems of physical conditioning. Cultural changes have already had a major impact and can have more. It has become chic for women to walk to work in athletic shoes. It is now common commute in biking clothes, then shower and change at work.

Bikes are so light that just a little outside power can reduce the perspiration factor significantly. The Swiss firm Mobility, Inc., whose core business is the systems to support car sharing, sponsors a one-day, 420KM (250 mi) solar bicycle tour through the Alps. They claim the solar panels can make the bikes up to 50% faster.1 Conversely, it might make the bike easier to pedal. For the moment it is a sunny day solution. Limited as their contribution is, the solar panels on the bike rack make for a fairly wide and unwieldy vehicle.

It is not likely we will change peoples’ minds about walking and biking in bad weather. It is still common in Flanders and the Netherlands, flat countries that had a tradition of bicycling before people could afford cars, and of course in developing countries where people cannot afford cars. I don’t think it is likely that people will voluntarily give up the comfort of their cars for the bracing pleasure of riding in a cold rain.

If they didn’t have to bring a change of clothes, most commuters would not be terribly limited by what they can carry by hand or on a bike. A briefcase is usually sufficient. Shoppers need more carrying capacity. A car is the only practical way to carry $100 worth of groceries. The alternatives to having a car are to shop often in stores close to home, as in New York City, or to have everything delivered. Both alternatives only work in densely populated areas. One of my observations is that improved communications effectively bring us closer together. Improved information makes it possible to get goods to people efficiently even if they don’t live chock-a-block.

It is risky going on the roads without the armored protection of your automobile. Cyclists, who certainly account for fewer than 2% of vehicle miles, nonetheless represent about 2% of traffic deaths in the U.S. Pedestrians account for about 12%. Pedestrians and cyclists are also easy prey for muggers. Fear is an important factor keeping us in our cars. More people are likely to walk and bike if we can make it safer. While there is no way a bike will ever stand up physically against a car, improved communications may make bikes and pedestrians more visible to drivers. They might eventually be able to get the identity of whoever caused an accident electronically.

1 Velos Solaires – Journal de Jura, Switzerland August 18, 2000.

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11. 10 Automated vs semi-automated systems.doc.lnk

1. Automated vs. semi-automated systems

A number of project under the Intelligent Highway Systems seek to improve highway traffic flow by automating the vehicles. Fully automated transportation systems work well in a number of controlled situations. Elevators, mile-for-mile the safest available form of transportation, have been fully automatic for decades. There are shuttle trains in airports and automated picking systems that run up and down the aisles in warehouses. All these vehicles work almost flawlessly with computer intelligence.

Our roadway systems, on the contrary, are dependent on human intelligence and turn out to be somewhat chaotic. Drivers as a group cannot do the kind of figuring that would be automatic for an elevator system. An elevator computer is smart enough not to stop for more passengers after it is full. Its computer will figure out how to divide the workload among a number of different cars to achieve maximum performance. People don’t have the intelligence to reliably figure out when it is safe to merge or even when it is their turn to merge.

Today’s automated systems are limited to simple patterns of motion. Computers are probably not up to such a massive problem as managing all the traffic on a highway. Ever if they were, who would take responsibility if something went wrong? The government doesn’t want it. Lawyers have fought no-fault insurance. Imagine the resistance to no-fault driving.

Imagine the issues involved in platooning cars on the highway. The advantages are obvious. Allowing groups of cars to travel in platoons, tailgating one another at a distance of a few feet, would make room for lots more cars on the highway. It would also improve their gas mileage. The idea is that the whole platoon is coordinated by electronic signals. When the lead car slams on the brakes, so does everybody else. When he accelerates, so does everybody else.

Platooning does not appear to be a terribly difficult technical challenge. Most cars already have cell phones and they could easily have global positioning systems. We can easily assume that cars will know where they are and they know how to talk. Some master computer could presumably know where all the cars are and coordinate them.

The difficulties are in the exceptions. What happens when one car gets a flat tire? Or runs out of gas? Or just wants to leave the convoy because its destination is coming up? That one driver has to assume manual control of his car. At that point either the convoy has to break up to let him out, or his merely human ability to control his car put the whole thing at risk. That is the crux of the problem with having a master system to control traffic. If it isn’t smart enough to handle all traffic, how does it share liability with individual drivers? There is no good answer.

It will be many years from now before computers are ready to totally manage traffic. Managing air traffic is a much simpler problem. There are only so many airports, there are many fewer airplanes than cars, and each airplane knows exactly where it is going and when it needs to get there. And nobody is yet talking yet about automating this “simple” problem. In fact, the air traffic controllers will be pleased as punch just to make human decisions using data from something more modern than their 1960s era systems. From the USSR to the FAA, centralized government decision making does not have a good track record.

12. 1.2. Semi-automated

The airlines charge their pilots with total responsibility for the plane even though the pilot makes decisions based on a rich stream of information provided by others. The same is true of train engineers and ships’ captains. Likewise, we can provide drivers with information to make better driving decisions without relieving them of responsibility.

13. Better use of existing right-of-ways

There is no magic-bullet solution to our multi-faceted transportation problem. To recap:

Cars are about as efficient per passenger mile as mass transit, trains and airplanes. Getting people out of cars is not a complete solution.

Gains in vehicle efficiency will come slowly. We will continue to see incremental gains as vehicles grow lighter and engines more efficient.

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Electric, fuel-cell or whatever, the ultimate source of power for most vehicles will remain carbon based until there are major improvements in the capture of solar energy.

Carbon dioxide is a necessary product of even the cleanest carbon-based energy, and CO2 is at the heart of global warming

Carbon-based fuels such as coal and tar sands will remain abundant for centuries. Though a forced shift away from oil and natural gas will be a wrenching economic dislocation, the environment's ability to absorb carbon is more likely to limit energy consumption than running out of fuels.

We are increasingly forced to stay within existing right-of-ways. The cost of new right-of-ways is increasing exponentially in developed countries. The land suitable for new roads is already in productive use. There is monumental "not in my back yard" and environmental opposition to almost every new transportation project.

The one approach that addresses all of these limitations is to make better use of the transportation resources we already have. We can make better use of right-of-ways by moving more vehicles over existing right-of-ways and putting more people in those vehicles.

Making better use of vehicles is not a new idea. We have been encouraging car-pooling for years. The Washington D.C. area's implementation of High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes to encourage car pooling has resulted in an improbably "slug line" system. It looks like hitch-hiking. Commuters gather on selected curbs to wait for ride offers from drivers. The "slug" gets a ride, the driver gets to use the HOV lane.

Monumental inefficiency is the price we pay for convenience. And ignorance. As efficiency goes, a farm family twenty miles from town has the discipline to do all their errands in a single trip. First the barber, then the hardware store, post office, grocery store and so on. Most people can't or won't do that. We run our lives by more rigid schedules. We make two trips to the piano teacher, at 3:15 to drop our daughter off, 4:00 to pick her up. We run to the grocery at 6:00 to pick up a pre-cooked chicken once we see who will be home to eat.

Ignorance costs us in not knowing that our neighbor's kid has a lesson with the same teacher from 4:00 to 4:45; we could take him at the same time we drop out daughter off. If we knew, we would ask our older son to pick up the roast chicken on his way home from basketball practice.

The cell phone has already been a significant help in improving our use of our cars. Better communication means that salesmen can skip a call when the contact is tied up, drop in on another prospect when his time suddenly clears up, and get the call from home to pick up the chicken. This is still the tip of the iceberg. We are still pretty at the point where we need to initiate the call and the other party needs to answer before we can exchange useful information. "Always on" internet phones can improve on that.

12 What is the real need Transporting people and things.doc.lnk

14. What is the real need? Transporting people and things (combine with first chapter)

It is a good discipline to describe a fully identify a need before trying to fill it. If we phrase our problem in terms of cars, the answer is likely to sound like more roads. If we cast it as a need to move people the answer will more likely resemble mass transit. If we define it even more broadly, as the need for people to communicate we might even imagine that improved bandwidth will make the problem go away.

We can and increasingly do substitute electronic for face-to-face interactions. Telecommuting is on the increase. Conference calls and videoconferencing have become more effective now that broadband Internet connections make it possible for everybody in the group to see and share the same documents or video. The technical limits to electronic communications, mostly related to bandwidth, are vanishing quickly.

People like doing business face to face. An employee in the office will do better with the boss than a telecommuter. The salesman in a client’s office has a similar advantage over the salesman on a telephone or teleconferencing hookup. As these cultural factors take their time to fade we will continue to see travel that appears unnecessary from the standpoint of pure utility but remains essential from a human perspective.

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Just as we can count on technology to reduce the need to travel, we can probably count on the human propensity to consume to increase the demand for travel so long as it is affordable. As we reduce the use of cars for commuting we may see an increase in driving to golf courses, ski resorts and amusement parts. The incentives will always be with us to make better use of our roads and eliminate the harmful effects of energy consumption.

People issues in transportation

Why is the car an improvement over walking? Modern man demands some amenities and comforts in the process of getting from one place to another.

1.1.1. People don’t want to get wet

On a rainy day it is awfully nice to be able to enter your car in a dry garage, drive to work, and park in a dry garage under your office. You still don’t get very wet during a short walk under an umbrella at either end of the trip. On the other hand, you can usually count on getting wet walking, bicycling or taking public transit. Snow and ice are cold and dangerous as well as wet.

The weather is a consideration in getting people to consider any alternative to the private automobile. There is nothing better. The question is how much worse.

1.1.2. People don’t want to exert themselves

Just as a walk to the metro or a bicycle exposes you to the weather, it requires a bit of work. Although more people are disposed to like exercise these days, many still resist. The problem is compounded by the fact that our animal bodies get sweaty from exertion and our clothes can pick up dirt from the streets. We love the fact that cars insulate us from those uncomfortable realities.

1.1.3. People don’t want to get dirty or sweaty

1.1.4. People want security

A pedestrian in a world of cars is at a tremendous disadvantage. Cars can splash, threaten and even hit pedestrians with no risk to themselves. Bicycles, because they compete for the same roadway space, are even more at risk. Cars are remarkably safe given the fact that they are operated by fallible human beings. Factoring in the pedestrian risks getting to and from public transit they are probably as safe a way to commute as any.

Neighborhoods matter a lot to people on the street. A pedestrian is vulnerable to mugging, shooting, stabbing and kidnapping. Drivers, carjackings and road rage notwithstanding, are much safer from violence.

1.1.5. People are in a hurry

If the roads are halfway free there is no faster way to get through town than by car. Even in New York City, Paris or London a taxi is usually about as fast as taking the subway. It is tough to get people to give up cars when time is a major consideration. The time it takes to park is often the major incentive.

1.1.6. People need to carry things

How much can a businessperson carry and still look dignified? The limit appears to be about fifteen pounds, the outsized briefcase favored by some lawyers or a techie’s portable computer ensemble. The number may be greater for a student with a big backpack, less for a chic businesswoman.

Life in the big city illustrates the limits imposed by not having a car. You buy groceries closer to home, more frequently, at higher prices. Your comparison shopping is limited. You have a lot of goods delivered. Still and all you schlep a lot and use taxis quite a bit. City dwellers accept these limitations. The suburbs are not built that way. Living without a car makes shopping tough, a fact to take into consideration in any discussion of alternatives to personally owned vehicles.

1.1.7. Some people want to avoid crowds

Our cars serve the same social purpose as horses and buggies a century ago. They distinguish and isolate the nobler members of society from the hoi polloi. When you arrive in a Lexus you at least imagine that onlookers register it as something other than just another imported car. You like to suppose that they regard you as person of taste, a cut above. Such a conceit is harder to pull off on a city bus.

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1.2. Mass transit issues in getting around

There are usually three stages to a commute by mass transit: getting to it, riding, and getting from it to work. The ride itself is sure to be safe and dry, free of the cares of traffic. Reading or conversation can actually make it pleasant. Mass transit is an easy sell once the issues of getting to and from it are resolved.

1.2.1. “The last mile” problem: getting out to the suburbs

Getting to mass transit poses a "last mile" problem similar to that in cable or telephone communications. Serving low-density suburbs is expensive. Rapid transit planners fight the delicate tradeoff between how far people will walk to a bus stop and the expense of running meagerly used buses.

The way bus systems currently run it is often impossible. The bus scheduler only reworks the routes every few months. A route is served by a given kind of bus, running on a given schedule, regardless of the demand.

Perfect information could make this problem almost disappear. Imaging knowing

Where the rider was departing from

How many riders there were

When they wanted to depart

Where they needed to go

What, if anything, they were carrying

The maximum they were willing to pay for the ride

If you had that information about people's transportation needs the problem would be similar to the ones that Federal Express and UPS work with daily. They have computer programs to figure it out. They do best when they know the requirements in advance, before they put their fleets in motion, but they are improving their ability to modify their routes on the fly. The less than truckload (LTL) freight business deals with the same issues. A company's objective is to have its trucks on the road all the time. This in-motion system has to accommodate new requirements on the fly. It identifies trucks that are close to the source, have enough room, and are heading towards the destination.

1.2.2. “The first mile” problem. What to do when you get downtown. Walk?

The "first mile" problem is less severe than the "last mile." Commuters accept the fact that you have to walk downtown. Cars are slow. It is usually necessary to park some ways from your destination. Taxis and subways are available if you need to go someplace more than a walk away.

Even at that, the better the "last mile" solutions, the less people will depend on cars. People are happier to walk in a city with an extensive downtown underground like Montreal than in Boston or New York. More willingness to walk equates to more willingness to leave the car behind and take public transportation.

1.2.3. Not enough density to justify scheduled routes in the suburbs

1.2.4. “Last mile” connection to other modes

The "last mile" had better be far less than a mile if the average commuter is going to walk it. There certainly are countries where people would do it, but in the U.S. the car is usually too tempting of an alternative.

1.2.4.0. Drive to metro

Rapid transit systems built in the last half-century were generally designed with cars in mind. San Francisco's Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) and Washington D.C.' s Metro are spindly and octopus-like compared with the robust older ones like London, Paris and New York. If you live anywhere in London or within Paris' Boulevard Peripherique you can pretty much expect to be able to walk to a subway stop. With BART and Metro you drive. The outermost stations all have parking spaces… thousands of them, but never enough.

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13 Jitneys.doc.lnk

15. Jitneys

MODERN COMMUNICATIONS CAN BRING INTELLIGENCE ABOUT RIDERS TO PUBLIC TRANSIT

Big city mass transit is “dumb” in that the vehicles usually run according to a schedule that is set long in advance. I can look at the schedule to know that Montgomery County’s 29 bus will be at the corner of Goldsboro Road and MacArthur Blvd at 7:09 and 7:29 weekdays, 7:45 on Saturdays. Whether there is nobody or there are fifty people waiting for it.

“Dumb” is perhaps an unfair word. The scheduler decides on the size of the bus and how often they will run based on historical data. The system is intelligent, but the intelligence is old. The county does a good job of making its schedules available in leaflets on the bus, posted schedules at bus stops, by phone and over the Internet.

Bus systems have never been able to know or take advantage of actual transportation needs: real people with real schedules. How could they? Ask riders to call in advance? Put a phone or push-button system at every bus stop? Methods like this would have been expensive, clumsy, and very open to abuse. Besides, the number of workers, the work hours and the number of vehicles are all fixed in advance. There was not much flexibility to take advantage of real-time information if it had been available.

Cell phones can change that assumption. A cell phone can identify the person using it. Mere possession of the cell phone establishes credit. With GPS (Global Positioning System) circuitry it can tell where that person is calling from. The caller can provide additional useful information, such as where he or she is going. If you could require that all public transit passengers in an area have a cell phone, you could be a lot smarter about how you used your vehicles. Drivers, buses and fuel are expensive. You could certainly save enough to pay for the phones, and improve service at the same time.

Rand McNally has already implemented much of this concept in their MileMaker software package for scheduling Less-Than-Truckload (LTL) freight. Their system uses GPS to keep track of the exact location of vehicles on the road. Vehicle data shows the weight and cubic foot capacity of each vehicle, as well as special features such as refrigeration. A real-time manifest lists all the cargo on board the truck at any point in time. A vehicle itinerary shows the truck’s scheduled pickups and drop-offs. Using all this information, MileMaker can identify the truck that is best suited to suit each new transportation request. It can also ensure quality of service. Overriding questions of his fleet efficiencies, a shipper needs to be able to guarantee his customers delivery within a certain amount of time.

Substitute seats on a passenger vehicle for space in a truck, and you have a system for flexibly scheduling transit vehicles. There are some differences, of course. MileMaker does not have to run in absolute real time; it can afford to accumulate requests for a few hours before recomputing the routes of the vehicles in its fleet. People, on the other hand, often want an immediate response.

It will be a fair while before we can assume that every rider has a cell phone with GPS. In the meantime, however, there is a lot of infrastructure already in place that could be used to launch jitney service:

Riders can use telephones and the Internet to provide information such as their pickup location even if it can’t be deduced automatically.

Reverse directories can establish the location of residential telephones. The telephone account in turn serves to confirm the legitimacy of a call for service.

Rapid transit smart cards, like Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Area’s (WMATA) SmarTrip, both identify the rider and establish his credit.

Jitneys are not a new idea. The Federal Transit Administration discussed it in a 1992 study entitled “Computer Dispatch Technology in the Paratransit Industry.” What is new is the communications and computer technology to make it work and the impetus that increased congestion, fuel shortages and global warming have given to the issue. The time will soon be ripe for the private sector to profit by implementing a solution.

WHAT IS A JITNEY?

A jitney is an unscheduled bus that runs a more or less predictable route. Jitneys are popular in poorer countries. In post-war Manila they built them on jeep chassis and baptized them Jeepneys. The proud owners painted signs on top to indicate their route and did the bodies in lavish tropical colors. In Panama City and Managua they are

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built from small Japanese pickups. The posh Hampton Jitney ferries New Yorkers to and from their weekend digs in eastern Long Island.

The jitney concept provides the needed cross between a taxi and a bus. By taking just one passenger exactly where he wants to go, a taxi sacrifices economy for the convenience of the passenger. By forcing passengers to use its routes and schedules, public transit sacrifices convenience for economy. When not enough riders decide to make the compromise, as is often the case in the U.S., it is not even economical. A jitney is like an ad hoc car pool. You pick up a number of people who have requested trips along more or less the same route.

Today’s mode of operation is similar throughout the third world. Passengers line the streets and flag jitneys as they approach. The jitney stops if he has room -- and since each passenger represents another fare, no matter how crowded they always seem to have room. There is a short conversation with each stop; where are you going, how much will it cost? Though it is most often a competitive business among owner-operators, there are usually standard fares to common destinations. The jitney driver decides where to go. For a price he will take a detour right to your house. For more money he may forget his route tomorrow and take your party sightseeing.

These third-world jitneys are not very safe or comfortable. Given the number of stops they make they are not very fast either. They are, however, quite efficient on a passenger-mile basis and therefore quite cheap. The small pickup engine may carry an average of ten passengers or so day in and day out.

In the U.S., airport, hotel and parking lot shuttle buses have some of the characteristics of jitneys. They work a given area, though the exact route depends on the passengers, and they pick up whoever flags them down. Some shuttles, such as for auto rentals, are radio dispatched. They go as needed to pick up passengers at a specific airline or rental company.

Better information is the key factor in bringing jitney operations into the mainstream. Pickup by a third-world jitney amounts to the driver seeing a passenger flag him down. The driver reworks his route based on what the passenger tells him. The toney Hampton Jitney’s reservation system is now on the Internet but still not real-time. The challenge for a modern jitney system will be to be able to constantly schedule and revise drivers’ routes to accommodate a continual stream of transportation requests. It will be a huge programming challenge, but it doesn’t have to have 100% of its eventual function in order to be useful.

HERE I AM, HERE’S WHERE I’M GOING. GET ME THERE

Intelligent mass transit will put the commuter in charge. The key will be to have the same kind of flexibility as a taxi: take the rider where he wants, when he wants. Riders will have to compromise to the extent of sharing vehicles with other passengers. Total flexibility is of course incompatible with mass transit’s other objectives of minimizing the number of vehicles on the roads, the use of fuel and the output of polluting gases. However the trade-offs of not having to fight traffic or park, and probably save money over owning a second car, should make it worthwhile.

North Carolina State University2 enumerated the essential and desirable features in for scheduling software for jitney-type operations that go by names like “Dial-a-ride” or “Rides Unlimited” in different parts of the country. Generalizing their findings, it means the system would need to include the features shown in Table 1

Table 1 Features Required in a Jitney Management System

Feature Description and rationale

1 Advance registration of prospective passengers

Passengers need to pre-register with a system in order to:

Ensure that requests for transportation are from real people, and that the people do not present credit or physical threats to the system.

Enable credit, debit or “smart card” payment instead of cash. A billing-type payment system can accurately compute discounts and surcharges and handle periodic billing.

Automatically identify people with special needs, such as wheelchair access.

2 http://www2.ncsu.edu/eos/service/ce/research/stone_res/tahmed_res/www/

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Identify redundant reservations.

Any such system must accommodate a fair percentage of first-time riders. Even after it achieves a stable ridership there will always be out-of-towners to accommodate.

Pre-registration could be as simple as giving a credit card number or calling from a cell phone capable of accepting a PIN or performing voice analysis to insure the identity of the caller. Chapter 20 goes into the mechanics of such a system.

2 Accept Transit Requests The chief characteristic that defines a jitney service is that it is driven by passenger demand instead of preset routes and schedules. Passengers need to be able to enter their requests easily.

Internet (wireless or otherwise)

Land-line or cell phone

Linked vehicle (request jitney transportation from a conventional bus or metro station via a terminal within the conventional system)

Visual (bus stop). The use of bus stops would have to be modified to reflect the fact that a jitney driver needs to know the passenger’s destination, not merely his direction of travel.

Public transportation has traditionally served the less affluent members of society. Even in the United States the expectation that passengers make their transit requests by phone could pose a hardship. That segment of the ridership will surely include people who speak foreign languages and who have difficulty mastering automated systems that work over the telephone.

At some point the cell phone will become ubiquitous in the U.S. Until then jitney service will probably be no more than an adjunct to scheduled, high-density rapid transit.

3rd world issues.

General ownership of telephones may never be a given in the third world. The model in the poorest countries such as Uganda and Bangladesh is for some member of the community to own a phone and resell service on a per-call basis. That could be effective in areas sparsely served by jitneys.

Most third world transit customers do not have a car as an alternative. They often have to be satisfied with a level of service below what would be acceptable in the United States. Batch scheduled jitneys that demand several hours’ advance notice would probably be more than acceptable. They could represent a significant increase in the level of service in some countries.

Here’s how it works now. A man working in Managua will take a country bus to the provincial center nearest his home. From there he will take a local bus if there

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is one or taxi if he can afford it. Walking is a common last resort. In any case the trip involves a lot of waiting.

The ability to make advance arrangements, in Managua, for travel from the bus center home would be a huge improvement. It would not have to be real time at all; the scheduling and routing task could probably be done on a PC.

3 Maintain passenger trip profiles

The majority of jitney trips will be of a repetitive nature, such as commutes to work or school. A passenger should be able to request a standard trip very quickly, with dialog such as:

“Press the pound key followed by the trip number, or say the number, for a standard destination”, then, after having looked up the record:

Press 1 or say “yes” to confirm that you want to go from Connecticut and Upton in Washington, D.C. to Briarhill Road at Lakewood in Kensington”

The system needs to offer several ways to accept an itinerary. One will certainly be the Internet.

4 Full-time network Connectivity

Jitney-type vehicles will continuously transmit their geographic position and passenger data and continuously receive transit requests forwarded from a central dispatching system.

5 Realtime passenger data capture

For billing purposes the system must identify the passenger as he enters and leaves the conveyance. It has to be done quickly and efficiently, by a smart card or bluetooth type device that automatically undertakes an electronic conversation as the driver enters and leaves the bus. See Chapter 28 for a discussion of Bluetooth.

6 Realtime vehicle data capture

The automated system will need to take into account the remaining fuel and vehicle condition in the scheduling operation. The system should take into account problems such as overheating, low oil, low tire pressure and the like in order to get vehicles to service as early as possible.

7 Passenger Performance analysis

The system should be able to produce performance reports comparing the actual time it takes to deliver passengers to their destinations against the minimum possible time if the passenger were picked up right on time and driven directly to his destination.

8 Vehicle performance analysis

The system will of course print reports on:

Average passenger load

Average speed

Average fuel economy

Maintenance schedules and costs

Mean time to failure for breakdowns

9 Realtime route updating The automated dispatching system will have more access than the driver to the information needed to pick the best route. It can be aware of traffic conditions and road closures. It can take into account time-dependent factors such as reversible and HOV lanes. A good system should be able to figure the optimal route to handle the pickups and dropoffs scheduled for the vehicle at any point in time. A really intelligent system should be able (someday) to tell exactly where a vehicle is and redirect it in real time to satisfy a new transportation request.

10 Priority passenger handling

The system may be able to provide different levels of service for different prices. It may offer guaranteed levels of service, such as, no more than 20% slower than

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driving a car, with some sort of liquidated damages if the bogie is not achieved.

11 End-to-end scheduling The jitney scheduling service should be able to schedule trips using other modes of public transportation, including light rail, city bus, and commuter rail. For instance, it should be able to route a passenger going from the leafy suburbs of Potomac, Maryland to Georgetown, on the basis of passenger preferences. The jitney might take the passenger to the Washington Metro station in Rockville, from which he could take Metrorail to DuPont Circle and a city bus to Georgetown.

More than simply routing the passenger, the system should be able to take into account the passenger’s travel preferences. A more upscale passenger might want to schedule a jitney or taxi for the ride from Dupont circle to Georgetown. Somebody carrying suitcases might want to ride a jitney all the way in from Potomac.

The jitney is a concept, not a specific type of vehicle. At least initially, jitney fleets would presumably be made up of conventional cars, vans and buses. Higher occupancy would be the major factor contributing to higher efficiency. The optimum size would probably be on the order of a 7 to 15-passenger van. It would be small enough to fit on city streets. It would accommodate few enough passengers that threading through neighborhoods to pick up and drop off passengers would not make the trip unduly long.

The factors that are available to all fleet operators today for efficient operations would be open to jitney operators. They would obviously choose vehicles appropriate to their operating environment.

Jitney vehicles might be selected to use a more efficient fuel, such as natural gas. They might seek improved mileage using a hybrid drive system, like the Honda Insight and the Toyota Prius. Fuel cells would be a possibility. Commercial operators would select the vehicles with the lowest lifetime costs of operation. Operating expenses would depend on the costs of fuel, maintenance and the time to refuel -- a significant factor with limited-range vehicles such as today’s electric cars.

SCHOOL BUSES

School buses in America are a luxury that has evolved into a necessity. Our wide open spaces made them a fixture for decades in rural areas. In the cities and suburbs, however, children used to get to school on their own. Most would walk. Some would ride bikes or take public transportation. Lucky ones got a ride with their parents.

In the postwar years increased traffic has made the streets a bit more dangerous, parents have gotten much more protective, and judges have mandated that children to attend schools far from home – programs aptly called “busing”. Parents, who are after all voters, are not only concerned about exposing their children to physical exertion and the elements. The 11:00 o’clock news has us all worried about criminals and perverts. We are scared to let kids walk or bike to school. Whatever the reason, the U.S. can afford school buses and we have them. According to the department of energy they account for more energy consumption than transit buses3.

School bus routes are fixed, planned at the beginning of the school year to accommodate the children enrolled for the term. The first morning circuit starts at the garage and ends at school. The bus may leave from there to make a second trip ending at a second school. The afternoon trip is the reverse.

The process is inefficient for several reasons. The bus travels empty from the garage to the first stop. Average capacity usage is less than 50%; it cannot be full until it picks up the last passenger, and many routes do not serve as many children as will fit on the bus. The ride time could be excruciating for the first kids on a bus scheduled for a full load.

After school activities make afternoon scheduling a nightmare. Sports, plays, club meetings, detention and many other factors mean that only a fraction of the children go home when school lets out. The buses have to run in

3 Transportation Energy Data Book, Version 20.

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any case. The other kids can be served by late buses, which adds to the cost, or they can be picked up by their parents. A brave few might even walk or take public transit.

The schools could save considerable money letting children ride on public jitneys. Here’s how it would work.

Start with the most difficult element. There would have to be a way for the jitney system to automatically recognize a child. The most obvious approach would be to have them carry something with them, like a smart card or a cell phone. Let’s see why it is necessary be before addressing the obvious fact that it won’t work -- kids lose things.

School bus drivers know the kids on their route. Jitney drivers would not. These are generalizations, of course: there are substitute school bus drivers, and jitneys would tend to run similar routes every day. However that is, as things stand children generally do not need any form of identification to board the bus. Payment is not a concern because the school district picks up the tab.

Children boarding jitneys would need some sort of pass so the jitney could bill the school system for the ride. Identification also provides protection. Children would share jitneys with adults and, of course, with the drivers. Drivers authorized to pick up children would need to pass the same sort of background check as school bus drivers. Even at that it would be essential to be able to account for children within the jitney system.

The form of a physical pass is sure to evolve. It could be as simple as a bar-coded or magnetically striped badge. Fortunately new technologies are coming along; those devices are quite fallible. A smart card would be more reliable. A bluetooth device could see the child coming and say “Good morning, Suzy” as she boarded the bus. The WMATA SmarTrip card mentioned above just needs to be passed near a reader.

Jitney drivers would have to assume the responsibility bus drivers now have for the safety of children after they leave the bus. That means using flashing lights to stop other traffic and to some extent keeping an eye on the children as they walk towards home. Jitneys would be at an advantage in that they could drive right to the child’s house. Stopping traffic on a side street is not so big of a disruption as the current practice of stopping on main streets.

Now to the fact that children do lose things. A voice recognition system could serve as a backup. A child who forgot his smart card could speak his or her name into a microphone in boarding the bus. Since each child is an expected passenger, scheduled either explicitly or by default (they ride the route every day), the jitney system could validate what the passenger says against a list of expected passengers and voiceprints for those passengers. Presumably there would be a voice response system that answered something like “Welcome aboard, Joe” or tell the driver to check the student out depending on whether or not it recognized the passenger.

If jitneys can replace school buses they can also take a big load off of soccer moms. Mothers spend an incredible amount of time driving children from appointment to appointment. It is a bad use of mom’s time as well as mom’s car. The jitneys that take kids home could just as well deliver them to the orthodontist’s office. All it would take is an Internet transaction to change the transportation request from the default to another destination. Another jitney could be scheduled to pick the child up. Big city moms already use taxis for some of these chores, but taxis are expensive, they usually require cash payment, and they are not as accountable as the jitneys envisioned here.

SMALLER VEHICLES DON’T NECESSARILY MEAN LESS OCCUPANCY

Drivers are the biggest cost factor in a jitney system. That should not be too significant of a factor in the tradeoff between scheduled buses and jitneys. The jitneys’ smaller size would be offset by a higher occupancy factor and the higher rates they could charge for offering door-to-door service. They may not make big inroads replacing cars as long as gasoline remains cheap and mom’s time is free. On the other hand, jitneys will pay for themselves quickly if using them eliminates the need for one household car. There may be a significant market as well for commuters who can be satisfied with most of the efficiency of driving their own car while reading the paper and avoiding the fights with traffic and parking.

Private ownership could be a significant advantage of a jitney system. Systems could evolve out of taxi companies. Hacking laws would have be modified. Many taxi laws prohibit now picking up multiple passengers, which of course is the core concept with jitneys. Taxi laws generally require a hack to pick up any passenger who telephones or flags them on the street. A jitney system would have to pre-identify the passengers to establish credit, whether via a credit card or prepayment option, and to know their destinations in advance.

Demand for jitney transportation would peak during rush hours just as city transit demand does now, and probably to a greater degree than current demand for taxis. The impact on drivers’ work hours would be even greater.

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Instead of driving mostly empty buses around town to satisfy the preset schedule, most jitney drivers would simply not work when they were not needed. The intelligence in their scheduling system would make jitneys much more efficient during off-peak periods than our current transit systems.

The reality of rush hour would make it hard to schedule jitney drivers for 8-hour shifts. The biggest need would be for half-day or shorter shifts in the morning and evening rush hours. It would require flexible scheduling and probably permitting drivers to take the jitneys home with them. That could be a workable solution. Assuming that they would be smaller than 15-passenger vans, drivers could park them on the street or in a driveway.

Since its economy is in the number of people who ride it more than the efficiency of the vehicle itself, a jitney would not have to be exceptionally expensive. They might range in size from mini-vans to 15 passenger vans. At that price the jitney would not have to be in service all day to be economical. It might make sense to use commuters as drivers. If the routine is such that the drivers have to fill the tank they could use gasoline or diesel fuel. Let them work a two-hour shift starting in their suburb and ending up at their place of work, do the same thing in reverse on the way home, and earn a second paycheck during the time they would be commuting in the first place.

SPECIAL EVENTS

Jitneys would offer an excellent alternative to driving to mass events such as concerts, football games and the like. They would effectively create ad-hoc car pools taking people from one or two neighborhoods straight to the game and back again. It would cut down on parking problems and congestion on the roads. They could offer even more flexibility than driving. They could handle the situation if one member of the party had to leave early.

Most stadiums are well served by bus and rail systems. Jitneys could equally well be scheduled to take passengers home from their nearest rail station after the game.

TECHNICAL CHALLENGES

The technical challenges in a jitney system are primarily related to communications and data processing subsystems:

A travel request and scheduling system needs to accept requests for transportation and identify the traveler. It will have the ability to provide real-time feedback from the dispatching system as to how soon a jitney can pick up a given passenger. This system would be designed to ask the passenger for the minimum necessary information, obtaining as much as possible from archival files.

If the requester is calling via a cell phone that was already registered, the system would know in advance the passenger’s name. If it is GPS-equipped it will know the location as well.

If the requester is calling from a wire telephone, the system can use caller-id and a reverse directory to determine the location and a short list of possible passenger names.

If the passenger is making the request via the Internet, his login will establish his identity.

The system will store standard itineraries for regular passengers. The transaction can be as simple as automatically identifying the caller and having the caller select a trip request from his standard list using voice recognition or touch tone over the phone, or a pick list on the Internet. This will be an extremely natural application for the wireless Internet.

A routing system needs to maintain a computerized map of the service area, monitor the geographic position of each jitney, constantly update its records of traffic conditions, keep records of reversible lanes and other time-dependent phenomena, the driver’s shift schedule and ultimate destination, and the fuel and maintenance needs of each jitney.

Rand McNally, Mapquest and other commercial firms already have computerized road maps they use for providing real-time driving instructions, scheduling LTL shipments and other such tasks.

ITSA’s 511 program and related systems monitor traffic conditions and relate them to the automated road maps.

Commercial fleet management software keeps track of driver schedules, fueling and maintenance needs, mileage and other considerations.

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A dispatching system needs to put passengers going the same general direction at the same time on the same jitney and get each to his destination within an agreed amount of time. It will use information from the travel request and routing systems to do the best job it can with the available fleet. It will have the ability to call a passenger’s cell phone some minutes before the jitney arrives to remind them it is coming, and will have the ability to tell the driver when to stop waiting for a no-show.

A billing system needs to recognize the passengers as they board and leave the jitney and present credit customers with a monthly bill and tell cash customers when they need to put more money on their account. Since the jitney system depends on the passengers’ punctuality, it will have the ability to bill people who are not available to be picked up when the jitney arrives. The billing system will also offer a sort of proof of custody for school children and seniors riding the system. The driver will be responsible for them while they are on board and in some cases between the jitney and their final destination.

A full-time wireless internet connection between the jitney and the central system that handles all the above functions. Since “full time” will never be achieved in reality, the jitney itself will need a computer to remember what it was doing during momentary outages and maybe a radio dispatch system for backup.

There are already operating models in different industries for all these components. Taxi dispatching system have certain of the features. The Less Than Truckload (LTL) freight industry does many of them. They don’t have all the features described above, and they don’t have the ability to react in real time. It will take a significant amount of computing power to handle these tasks. Computing power, however, is cheap compared to the costs of people and vehicles.

BUSINESS MODELS

A jitney system is likely to evolve from existing forms of business as the pieces of the system fall in place. In fact, “Ride share” systems already exist in rural areas such as Mendocino, California. On snowy days taxis will turn into jitneys on an ad hoc basis because the number of passengers far exceeds the number of hacks on the street.

Increasing maturity of the systems components listed above will drive the evolution. Another factor will be public policy. Will the vested interests such as taxi drivers, transit unions and such permit a jitney system to get started? The transition would be a lot easier if a taxi company itself proposed the idea as a means of improving service. Its drivers would perceive opportunity instead of a threat.

Like any revolutionary technology, jitney systems would appear most likely to get their start in areas that are not well served by existing modes of transportation. New bedroom communities, the kinds of places so hostage to the automobile that there are no sidewalks and nothing within walking distance, would be a likely first choice. Expanding existing ride-share systems would be another.

The Washington D.C. metropolitan area has many of the elements that would make it an excellent testbed:

Traffic congestion and average commute times are second worst only to Los Angeles.

There are a large number of sprawling bedroom communities that lack the housing density necessary to support efficient public transit. The public transit that does serve them often loses money.

The ridership in these bedroom communities is relatively affluent. They can afford to pay for a service that improves their commute. They have the infrastructure elements such as cell phones and credit cards needed to drive the system.

The regional transit authority, WMATA, is a progressive organization that has already implemented a smart card system.

Washington is home to the Department of Transportation and the Intelligent Transportation Society of America. Jitneys could be a showcase system, just as Washington’s Metro was.

Culturally, Washington is quite liberal. There is broad support for public transportation and a desire to see improved systems.

Private citizens could implement elements of the jitney concept to improve on the “slug line” system. A slug line is a ride sharing system designed to take advantage of HOV (high occupancy vehicle) lanes at rush hour. See http://www.slug-lines.com/ for details. That site’s etiquette page indicates some of the shortcomings of the system. It is point-to-point with a few well-defined pickup and dropoff points. An Internet-based system of matching rides with

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riders could extend further into suburban neighborhoods. It might be able to address driver gripes about passengers, such as that they smell of smoke, and women’s preference for female ride-mates.

SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS

Cultural, financial and infrastructure issues would affect the way a jitney concept would be implemented in different countries. The Japanese and Western Europeans are already more used to using taxis and public transportation than Americans. They are also farther along with wireless Internet service, and are generally plagued with worse roadway congestion. The European market would appear to be a logical place to start. All that is needed is the software and the entrepreneur.

Developing countries could eventually benefit tremendously from a jitney-type system. Traffic becomes truly horrible once the middle class can afford cars, as is the case in Bangkok, Mexico City, Cairo and many other megapolises. An alternative to the car would be very attractive. On the other hand, however, the communications infrastructure necessary to support jitney operations will not exist for some time. Automobiles are very much a reflection of status. Pragmatism may be enough of a motive to get them out of their cars.

Truly underdeveloped countries would not appear to be good markets in the short term. They lack the communications infrastructure to support a jitney system. They are mostly countries of haves and have nots. The haves have cars and the rest are mainly too poor to pay any premium over the cost of a country bus simply for the convenience of a jitney.

IMPLEMENTATION BY DEGREES

The jitney concept is to increase vehicle utilization by assembling multiple passengers with different starting points and destinations on an ad-hoc basis. Information and communications are the keys to success. Jitney systems can be implemented by degrees. Some work now with limited geographies, limited communications and limited automated systems support. Jitneys will be economically feasible in more and more places as these limitations are overcome, and other limitations such as highway capacity and the cost of fuel begin to pinch more.

If jitneys take off there will be infrastructure and operational investment opportunities. The software to run a jitney system will be very complex. The first company to bring a powerful system to market will have a considerable advantage. It may be an outgrowth of existing systems. Rand McNally capitalized on their national highway and street map database in designing their Milemaker routing & mileage software systems for the commercial transportation industry. They could expand it to serve jitneys. Oracle Corporation has built a business software empire on its database management and transaction processing software. There are many, many companies in the electronic transaction billing business.

There may be operational opportunities in existing transportation companies. While the taxi industry itself is highly fragmented, some transportation industry companies such as the Yellow Corporation have considerable experience and resources. It is quite conceivable that truck fleet operators will buy taxi companies and expand their operations to include jitneys.

Chapter 6 (cost convenience) identifies the attractions of owning your own vehicle. A jitney system will be attractive to the extent that it satisfies them:

Availability Jitney service will entail a wait, just as if you call for a taxi. Users have to plan their trips in advance.

It should be possible to have a standing order with the jitney service, so they come every day at a specified time unless otherwise notified.

The speed with which a jitney can respond to a request, and even the availability, will depend on the amount of demand in a neighborhood. Distant and sparsely populated areas may have only rush hour service or no service at all.

Operational convenience Using a jitney involves minimal work on the part of the passenger. Enter a service request, probably via a wireless or regular Internet connection. Identify yourself as you board the jitney and again as you exit.

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Financing convenience Jitney service would present credit users with a monthly bill. Cash customers would need to carry a smart card that they periodically replenish through a cash payment.

Freedom of movement Jitney service would be limited by geography and service hours. The economics suggest it would offer more coverage than bus service but less than taxis.

Because it follows the roads, jitney service would be especially useful over heavily traveled corridors that do not have good public transportation. Many suburb-to-suburb commutes fit this description.

Jitneys fit well with public transportation. They can efficiently serve the suburbs, dropping passengers off to board rapid transit without worrying about parking.

Speed and acceleration Jitneys would have about the same speed and mobility as city buses. Their effective speed would be diminished by detours from the line of travel to make pickups and dropoffs along the way. The commuter would save time when the jitney could use HOV lanes, and by not having to bother with parking. To be attractive, a jitney service should offer travel times almost as good as cars and better than public transportation.

Comfort Jitneys should be somewhere between taxis and buses in terms of comfort.

Safety Size offers protection for vehicles of the size envisioned for jitneys. The seat belt situation would probably be the same as taxis. They would be provided, and a majority of passengers would wear them. The seat configuration would be more conducive to seat belts than on a city bus. For one thing all passengers would face forward.

Carrying capacity Jitney passengers would naturally be entitled to carry as much as would fit on their lap. They would probably have to make special arrangements to carry luggage.

Reliability A jitney fleet should be as reliable as a taxi fleet. The telematic connection would notify the system manager immediately and send other vehicles to pick up the passengers in case of a breakdown. In this respect it should be better than what happens now with city buses. Several jitneys could be rerouted, each picking up the passengers that fit best with the routes of the people already scheduled.

Prestige It is conceivable that there could be multiple levels of service in densely populated or very wealthy areas, but it is not likely.

Amenities Jitneys would be something like buses. Passengers could read or listen to headphones. Being somewhat more intimate and serving people from smaller neighborhoods, they might encourage more conversation than public transit.

Cost The per-mile cost of jitney service would be significantly less than taxicabs but probably more than buses or rapid transit.

Planning required Jitney trips have to be scheduled in advance. The passenger has to think about it even if there is a standing order: it has to be cancelled on those days when he has other plans.

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Jitneys could radically improve transportation in poorer neighborhoods. They would be cheaper than cabs, they would know their customers in advance and they would not use cash. The risk of robbery and murder would be comparable to that of bus drivers, which is to say almost nothing compared to what taxi drivers experience today. The situation would be even better in that the dispatching and control system would know the identity of everybody who called for jitney service and everybody who boarded the jitney.

Public transit schemes such as interstates, subways, bus systems or intelligent highways involve massive infrastructure investment and some abrupt changes. A highway opens and local business wanes. A bridge opens and the approach roads are suddenly crowded. A subway opens and immediately all the on-street parking is taken.

A major advantage of jitney systems is that they can evolve in a more natural, organic fashion. They will use the existing infrastructure of roads and communications. The primary new infrastructure elements they require are electronic, computer systems and smart cards, and even these can easily evolve out of existing elements such as metro cards and credit cards.

Whereas a bus and metro system needs to blanket a service area from the beginning, a jitney service can be implemented in a piecemeal fashion. Among the most logical areas to serve initially would include the outer suburbs where population density does not support scheduled bus service; slum neighborhoods, where taxi service is expensive and where taxi drivers fear to go; affluent suburbs, where commuters will pay a premium for door-to-door service.

Jitney operating companies could evolve from taxi companies and private bus companies. There will be nothing to distinguish them significantly from other fleet operations. The most unique and expensive element of a jitney infrastructure would be the scheduling and dispatching software and databases. Those would have elements of present-day less-than-truckload (LTL) scheduling software, Federal Express and UPS delivery scheduling software, and taxi dispatching software. The software could be developed by a new company or evolve from existing packages. A likely author would be Rand-McNally, whose geographic database serves as the basis for their MileMaker LTL scheduling package.

<<Note: boston coach stuff goes here>>

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