The future of urban transportation

According to the article, personal vehicle ownership is not anymore a viable method of transportation, due to growing urban populations. The externalized costs from driving (air pollution, accidents, traffic congestion, noise pollution) are just too high. According to a study,indirect driving costs are about $13/day for a 16 mile commute, so if we take as an example Silicon Valley which has about 98.000 car commutes a day, it means that the societal tab for car commuters comes to an annual sum of $309M.Some of the solutions proposed by the author are: Googles Driverless Cars, car-sharing platforms, and private commuter shuttles, saying that the trend nowdays is not owning a car.Googles Driverless Car: on May 27th, Google announced its newest iteration of the self-driving car, without steering wheel or brakes.Its just a very tiny car which doesnt consume a lot of fuel as a normal car, operating solely with just a start and stop button. Instead of car ownership, self-driving vehicles could be hailed by smart phone as a means of on-demand, shared, personal transportation within cities. This vision has the potential to change the transportation industry as we know it.Ridesharing, Carsharing and Resource Efficiency: Transportation Network Companies (TNCs) connect non-commercial drivers to passengers via an online platform, enabling drivers to provide rides with their personal vehicles. Through a membership model, urbanites can have access to cars on demand, without incurring the costs of owning a car. This resource efficiency eliminates the opportunity cost of parked vehicles. It fills the user need of transportation by car through a service.Private Commuter Shuttles: Private Commuter Shuttles have emerged as a solution to this last-mile transportation need. Large companies, such as Google, Apple, Yahoo, etc. are investing in fleets of large buses that connect urban dwelling employees to the office. This alternative removes cars from the road, allows employees to be productive on the commute with wi-fi enabled busses, and reduces the stress of sitting in traffic. Such innovative companies are capitalizing on the benefits of employees not commuting by car, further divesting urban transportation from personal vehicle ownership.

Source: http://cityminded.org/Author: Shaina Kandel