Data-Based Insights Suggest Transportation for the Future Without Private Cars
Professor Emeritus Avishai (Avi) Ceder, of the Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Technion, proposes decision-makers consider synchronized public transport as a sustainable solution for global transportation problems.
While the damages of private transportation are no secret, a new article [in this link] in Scientific Reports (Springer Nature) presents a more disturbing picture, yet suggests sustainable solutions. The author, Professor Avi Ceder, artfully demonstrates the extent of confusion, worldwide, resulting from current development plans and application of automatic vehicles. His four-part paper addresses the magnitude of traffic and transportation damages, provides a comparison of private and public vehicle travel times, designs a model of autonomous transportation based on the first two parts, elaborating on its significance, and concludes with a discussion envisioning the decision-making necessary for its realization.
Fig from the article. Contour maps of fastest or equal driving time between public transport (PT) and private cars (PCs). PCs are faster than PT (represented in pink); PT is faster than PCs (represented in blue); and the case of equal travel time (represented in green). a, Contour maps for the Lower Manhattan zone of New York showing the fastest modes for reaching destinations within 30, 45, and 60 minutes between 5:00 and 6:00 PM from midtown. b, Contour maps, similar to (a), for Guomao zone of Beijing between 5:00 and 6:00 PM from Yintai Center. c, Two strong and two poor PT-related cities in comparison to PC travel times using 30-minute contour maps between 5:00 and 6:00 P.M. The selected starting points are from Chicago’s CBD area, Tokyo’s Bunkyo, Sydney’s CBD area, and Singapore’s city center.
