Flying cars won’t solve the problems
June 29th, 2007
Current thinking is that our cities are gridlocked, we need to go up and exploit all that 3D airspace by creating cars that can hover and fly. True, we need to exploit the spaces up (elevated highways and monorails) and down (subways) to move people around, but flying cars isn’t the solution.
Here’s why…
First, once you command a vehicle in 3D space, you’re no longer driving it, you’re piloting it. The transition from car driver to pilot is far too great of a leap forward. The stakes are way to high, there’s winds and weather to contend with, no fixed lanes, obstacles like buildings and power lines, high speeds of travel and 3D sensibilities that don’t come naturally.
Imagine the problems we have today with drunk drivers, car jackers, car bombs, leaking oil, drug smuggling and police chases taking place above our cities… no way, it’s not going to happen.
3D cars will happen. There will be highly versitile low cost hovering aircraft that have shared capabilities of automobiles, light airplanes and helicopters. Families in rural areas will use them. There will be many micro-airports in and around cities, there will be designated flight routes in and out of these zones, computers will guide the pilot to these zones, computers will stabalize and help fly the car with relative ease. This will happen, but it’ll only solve a small piece of the overall puzzle.
The total solution will consist of the following other components:
- Commercial airlines will expand both wide and deep, getting much more granular with commuter flights addressing smaller local regions; this is already happening in the Florida panhandle.
- Automobile manufacturers will start designing cars made for cities rather than cities being made designed for cars. As new eco-friendly personal vehicles for the city become more frequently used, cities will eventually ban older gasoline automobiles. These new eco-friendly personal vehicles may be something like the current Smart cars made by Mercedes. Heavy taxes will be applied to heavily trafficked streets of the city just like exists in Singapore today, drivers will be taxed per the size of their vehicle, naturally making smaller vehicles more dominate.
- The average family household will have city smart cars as well as a long distance vehicles and/or flying cars which will be so heavily restricted that they won’t become ubiquitous. Rather than just one car for all purposes, families will own multiple cars (or vehicles rather) for distinct purposes.
- Elevated freeways and subways will continue, expanding public transportation in more efficient ways. Mobile phones with built in GPS will provide urban transportation designers with massive amounts of data to track flows of people, allowing them to design public transportation that best serves these paths.
