Buscar: 

Ideas for a profound change

In 2006, the French ministry of l'Ecologie, du Developpement et de l'Amenagement durables published a report titled Demarche prospective transports 2050 in which it presented four possible socio-political scenarios for transport in that year. As far as the evolution of means of transport is concerned, the analysis remains so limited that only seeing the cover’s illustration says it all: A great high speed train, a motorway crowded with vehicles, a large truck; that is to say, no forecast on the influence of the computerization of transport. Nothing on the combination of supply and demand data nor on the diminution in size of public transport vehicles, nor on door-to-door trips, nor on light elevation, automatic guidance or separation of merchandise by narrow conduits.
This lack, no longer of imagination, but of trend analysis, is comparable to the one of somebody who in 1980 considered that in 2020 people would continue watching TV on a few channels and would continue receiving calls on landlines. Now we understand that within a short time television and the Internet will be integrated in the same device that will allow the user to see the news or a certain film at the hour at which he/she wishes. With regards to the mobile phones utilities, aside from the strict telephone conversation, whatever we can imagine is little compared to what can be done.
How is it possible to think that the great technological changes that we see applied to communications, as well as to all types of industrial, commercial or administrative processes, are not going to affect transport with the same intensity?
The book THE COMPUTERIZATION OF TRANSPORT and the web page www.futurtrans.com constitute a cluster of ideas combined to arrive at the final consequences. They are easily understandable ideas, nevertheless they have to cross the barrier of the routines formed after seventy years with the same transport model.

 

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