Hungry? Weary? Gridlocked? Look to Car of Future

You are on the road and have a hunger pang. Hit a button on the dash of your Model Year 2010 Ford and, faster than you can say Ronald McDonald, a slightly metallic voice comes over the car’s stereo speakers and lists the nearest restaurants.

Feeling tired in the midst of rush hour? Put your feet up and take a snooze as radar in the nose of your car keeps you safely separated from the guy ahead while sensors electronically steer the auto.

And if you want to leave the car at home, hop aboard a monorail whizzing through Irvine or a magnetic levitation train that literally floats as it zooms to its destination.

It all may sound like something out of a Buck Rogers episode, but such examples of how we may get around in future decades were the front-seat topic Thursday for more than 150 transportation experts and policy-makers at an Orange County conference dubbed “Technology for Tomorrow’s Transportation.”

The conference, which concludes today at the Red Lion Inn in Costa Mesa, featured such transportation big wheels as Caltrans Director Robert Best and state Sen. John Seymour (R-Anaheim), a leading member of the Senate Transportation Committee.

But it was the engineers and other technological hotshots who stole the show, unveiling the concepts that they have developed in hopes of easing the gridlock that has seized roads and highways in Orange County and across the country.

Their message was simple: If California is going to retain its role as one of the preeminent places in the world to live and do business, changes will have to be made in the state’s transportation system.

“The private car has played a vital role in the development of our state . . . but it’s simply not going to cut it in the future,” said Paul V. McEnroe, chairman of the California Engineering Foundation, the group sponsoring the two-day conference. “The patterns of success that worked so well in the past may not work in the future. . . . We don’t want to become the rust belt of the 21st Century.”

Eager to head off such bleak prognostications, a variety of transportation gurus strolled to the microphone in the crowded conference room and discussed projects that make a Corvette seem like a Model-T.

Several even brought along examples. Outside the hotel lobby, the curious got a gander at a pair of vans, a car and a bus featuring some of the new technologies--from alternative fuels to radar-tipped front grills. Among the best and brightest of the proposals:

Slim little cars that have been nicknamed the “Lean Machine” by designers in Detroit. These one- or two-passenger cars, barely bigger than a motorcycle, would offer high fuel economy and allow motorists to drive two abreast in a single lane of a typical city street, according to Al Sobey, a Detroit-based transportation consultant.

Dash-mounted display screens with an electronic map that shows a motorist the best routes to take. Armed with such high-tech advantages, a driver could easily skirt traffic accidents, which cause 50% of the congestion on freeways, according to Ed Rowe, general manager of the Los Angeles City Department of Transportation.

An electric bus that would rarely have to be recharged. Instead, it would periodically pass over a sort of jumbo-sized battery charger implanted in the pavement along its route. The bus, which will be tested at UC Berkeley early next year, gobbles electricity through the air as receptors on its undercarriage pass about three inches above the charger.

A device for cars that would allow motorists to get information on everything from nearby gas stations to restaurants and upcoming off-ramps. By hitting a button, tourists might get a running commentary on the history and points of interest of the country as they roll by, or a rundown on what parking facilities still have room. The system--featuring oral messages in English, Spanish and Chinese--would determine the car’s location by reading roadbed sensors, each one carrying its own “signature.” Once its location is pinpointed, the car would refer to a computer memory bank of pertinent information.

“Smart Streets” featuring well-synchronized signal lights and closed-circuit television cameras that would provide up-to-the-second information to operators in a central traffic command post.

A radar warning system for cars to, once and for all, prevent fender-benders. The system, a small black box on the dash attached to a radar dish on the front grill, shouts warnings in a human voice if a driver gets too close to the vehicle in front. And if the driver fails to brake in time, the car does it for him. The radar, its designers boast, may eventually allow platoons of cars to roar down the freeway at high speeds with as little as three feet separating the vehicles.

Stephen Shladover, an expert at UC Berkeley’s Institute of Transportation Studies, said the radar and guidance systems planned for cars of the future would allow a “five-fold increase” in traffic volumes along congested routes.

Unfortunately, he said, the “motor vehicle industry is ambivalent about these new technologies, and that’s being generous. Skeptical is a more appropriate description of the industry’s attitude. Detroit hasn’t seized the initiative.”

Some participants insisted that it will not be the advent of new transportation technologies that dictates whether California remains stuck in traffic into the 21st Century. The hard science to build most of the futuristic monorails and automobiles exists today, they assert.

A more pivotal question, they contend, is whether political leaders and the voters want to finance such breakthroughs.

“Transit technology is not the issue,” said Tom Stone, a representative of Bombardier Inc., a firm that has proposed a monorail system in Orange County. “The real issues are funding and politics. . . . As soon as we select the technology, we can get on with the real issues.”