Aug 17 2010
What Came First, the Road or the Automobile?
The reinvention of personalized transit into a multimodal car-like system is the first sign that the vehicle industry senses new limits. The “morphing” has begun but the industry lacks a motive to produce standards sufficient to release its full potential. The changes to date offer little more than an alternative to the “bumper-cars” system we have now. Books like Reinventing the Automobile indicates this weakness, as the policy to date continues to focus on engines instead of movement. This is backwards and needs to change.
Why the “morphing”? The refinement and distribution of a limited commodity such as crude oil occurs through private and reasonably competitive markets that set the price of energy. These markets limit the purchase to buyers willing and able to pay the price not only for the fuel, but also for the engine and vehicle the fuel demands. It is a form of rationing and morphing is a mere extension. When scarcity occurs, public authorities impose rationing very differently. It begins by imposing force with the appearance of fairness to preserve order but it does not end there. The reason is quintessentially human, our wants and needs do not sense limits, only opportunity. The failure to establish new limits is in effect a failure of governance.
Cyclists not only confront the fear of injury, but the horror of handing a charge of vehicular manslaughter to the driver of a car. The roads are not ready for bikes, let alone a new variety of bumper cars no matter how smart they might pretend to be. A Brooklyn Paper reporter, Andy Campbell identified a Williamsburg resident who was squirting superglue into bike locks because they littered the community for blocks around the Bedford Subway Station in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Now he is stuck with them. The design response on the streets wherever a new vehicle occurs is pathetic. The ability of these new vehicles to assimilate into existing movement systems is the next step in horror.
So Why Point Out This Book?William Mitchell runs the Smart Cities research group at MIT’s Media Lab. He got together with Christopher Borroni-Bird, GM’s Director of Advanced Technology Vehicle Concepts to run innovative projects. It is mutually beneficial as it encourages and discovers talent at MIT. Lawrence Burns, the third contributor also hails from GM as its former Vice President of Research and Development at General Motors. The book is presented here for its insight, and you are encouraged to peruse it for intent. They look to the “electric-drive” and wireless systems as new kinds of engines hoping to encourage public investment in some kind of guidance and shared use system. Read this book to see how backwards it presents the case.
The road is made by walking. It would be a good idea to start there first, and for the thoughtful people at MIT to consider the purpose of investment capital must be to re-invent the road not the automobile. This is not putting the cart before the horse. It prioritizes human life.
