Context: What will travel look like 80 years from now? There are undeniable dynamics in play today that mean the way people experience the world will be so different.
Let us look at some important drivers of change in how we experience the world that have already happened:
1. Space tourism. We have three billionaires who have turned their focus to making space travel not only affordable, but profitable.
a. Richard Branson has undertaken the first space tourism flight to the outer atmosphere.
b. Jeff Bezos has a grand plan to build a grand space station capable of sustaining a human population.
c. Elon Musk is committed to die on Mars. Re-useable spaceships make space travel more affordable.
2. Rapid increases in sophisticated micro satellites the size of a toasters will transform the ability to see and measure everything on Earth.
3. Congestion, population density and pollution in major cities demands new transport solutions. The emergence of electric scooters, bikes, cars, and drones has become popular. Building more roads is becoming less attractive. Public transport and shared transport is becoming more important for short duration and short distance travel. American airlines have announced their intention to use flying vehicles to take people from home to the airport within a decade.
4. Covid 19 has shown that many people can earn their living working from home. During lockdowns the normally congested roadways of major cities have been eerily empty. Yet the economy seems to have found ways to function.
5. Hyper loops: The same space travel billionaires see hyper loops as the future for longer commutes. Pods carrying passengers travelling through tubes or tunnels where most of the air has been removed to reduce friction could support travel at up to 750 miles per hour.
Will people travel less in future? Burgeoning population and the need to reduce our ecological footprint may be a factor. Consider the potential of virtual reality technology so advanced, with a full sensory experience so close to the real thing that it is difficult to tell the difference. Why would you need to leave home?
Purpose: To consider how the transportation needs of the world will changed in 80 years.
Discussion: One thing is certain, travel will be markedly different 80 years from now. Technology available now with added pandemic complexities has reduce the need for people to travel.
With climate change due to human activity being accepted by most governments as real. The race is on to find zero carbon solutions to meet the seemingly ever-increasing human population. Perhaps coincidentally, the transport technological has entered a transformative stage.
Transport is currently the single largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. How much of this transport is discretionary? Probably more than 70% can be considered discretionary. Much of the trade in food is driven by privilege rather than necessity. Live lobsters in China from Australia being one example and there are many illegal trafficking of goods and exotic fauna.
It is possible to grow more of what we eat in and around our own home. Convenience and desire drive many of our decisions to source goods from afar.
Given the average utilisation of personally owned cars is estimated to be less than 16%, why aren’t shared transport options more popular? In the USA data shows the trend is changing to more shared rides and more use of more nimble cheaper solutions like electric scooters. Part of the problem is choice. The freedom to decide what you want to do when you want to and restrictive public transport solutions is part of the puzzle.
Is it possible that speed, convenience, and cost of public transport could be so good as to make driving your own car obsolete? Image hopping on a share drone that takes you to a high-speed train at the cost of less than a cup of coffee and avoids hours of commute time. Australia currently spends an estimated $50 billion dollars a year on roads. There is a lot of money to divert into better options. Brisbane 2032 Olympic Games committee announced they were considering building a flying taxi terminal.
What if every journey was tracked, authorised, and facilitated by a central control room using advanced AI capability? Large cities must get the thinking right. The goal is to make a centrally controlled transport service so much faster, cheaper and more convenient than millions of random journey plans made by people using their own vehicle which then sits idle and parked. One central system (with obvious backups and redundancies) will also vastly improve safety of transport( as it has done in .
· A flying vehicle has potential to transport me from my home to the CBD in around 5 minutes at a cost of less than $5.
· A self-guided, centrally scheduled small (5-seater) electric vehicle could take me to the city along bikeways in 15 minutes.
· I could ride my push bike to the city in 30 minutes.
· I could drive my car to the city in 30 minutes to 45 minutes. Look for a park, adding 5 to 10 minutes.
Why do we travel so much? Some say it broadens your horizons. Some say it connects people and allows ideas to be shared. Some say it is a human characteristic; people find it interesting. The communication technology we have today allows us to connect and find information faster than ever before. Humans have always valued face to face communication, however, there are successful businesses with a distributed workforce that has only interacted through virtual means.
What if we can experience an interactive simulated experience that is good or better than travelling thousands of kilometres to see the real thing? I already can ride a route of the Tour de France with other virtual riders without leaving my home. We have only just scratched the surface of what is possible with simulated virtual experiences. The memorable experiences from travelling are made sense of by our brain; the need to physically move ourselves over large distances is only because we cannot create a similar experience where we live. Being able to avoid sitting on an aeroplane for hours, avoiding airports and avoiding the annoying aspects of travel sounds attractive.
What about space travel? It seems inevitable that more people will travel to outer space and that the moon will be colonised within 20 years.
2101: Spark of Hope provides insights to how travel may change over the next 80 years as we navigate an era of transformation.
Summary It seems that our transport needs will change dramatically. Particularly considering sustainability and consumption demands. Short distance centrally controlled commuter solutions that include low altitude flying offer attractive advantages if developed intelligently.
Some interesting quotes:
The auto industry must acknowledge that a rational transportation policy should seek a balance between individual convenience, the efficient use of limited resources, and urban-living values that protect spaciousness, natural beauty, and human-scale mobility. Stewart Udall
If we drive down the cost of transportation in space, we can do great things. Elon Musk
For every $1 billion we invest in public transportation, we create 30,000 jobs, save thousands of dollars a year for each commuter, and dramatically cut greenhouse gas emissions. Bernie Sanders
As the Internet of things advances, the very notion of a clear dividing line between reality and virtual reality becomes blurred, sometimes in creative ways. Geoff Mulgan
Flying cars could be commercially available in 2024, but rules for managing this form of air traffic are still a concern, said Hugh Martin, chief executive officer of Lacuna Technologies.
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