Culture and Coexistence into the Great Unknown
Urban sustainability depends upon reducing energy from automobile usage and maximizing transportation efficiency through public trains, streetcars, electric buses, and people movers. The companies developing autonomous cars could not care less: they offer on-demand private transport for the masses, with specific intent to move people back to cars.
The age of the pod car might be upon us, but not necessarily as the long-envisioned Personal Rapid Transit. Good for amusement parks and Google’s main campus, as well as small newly-built cities or airport shuttles, PRT systems have too many limitations in dense urban areas. The real future for the pod car, like it or not: Autonomous (Self-Driving) Vehicles.
Across the US, inspired by the success of Portland’s streetcar and a movement toward downtown revitalization and expanding public transit alternatives, projects enhancing place mobility move forward despite controversy.
WIN:WIN “The Future, a Sustainable Los Angeles” – How does Los Angeles – its people, buildings and infrastructure establish a restorative, long-term relationship with the environment that hosts it and the financial systems that supports it? Read Jack Eidt’s Essay on Poly-Human Los Angeles
The Rail~Volution Conference rolled into Los Angeles to illustrate how transit projects energize neighborhoods, meeting a significant demand for multi-density housing walkable to restaurants, offices, and shops. They can transform the landscape and mindset, in this case, of auto-addicted Southern California. One stop at a time.
The movement toward revitalization of downtown areas in the United States with streetcars brings 19th century urbanism together with 21st century sustainability, despite the usual fossil fueled detractors.
One method to rescue this unsustainable, fossil-fuel-addicted, disease-inducing polluted mega-metropolis from its sterile streetscape of cars, exhaust, and non-descript sidewalk-life, is to provide alternative transportation that cuts out the need for parking and forces people to walk.