Expect Smart Cars, Levitating Trains

The 21st Century is almost upon us. The march of technology that we experienced in the 20th Century has shown us that the next one will produce still more spectacular changes in the way we live, work and move about.

Cars will continue to dominate the transportation scene. We have invested too much in our infrastructure, and our social fabric could not exist without the freedom provided by them. Tomorrow’s automobiles, however, will be much smarter than today’s. They will, for example, have devices to tell you exactly where you are and to guide you where you want to be in the shortest possible time.

Practically any information a motorist desires will be available at his touch or on oral command. Where is the nearest gas station? Where can I find good seafood in this town? How much longer will it take to reach my destination? Much of this technology already exists; its use, however, will be more universal. It also will be possible to talk to almost anyone from a car telephone, with satellite technology extending cellular phone service to every remote corner of this country and perhaps the rest of the world.

Cars will be more aerodynamic and fuel-efficient and will be able to use a variety of energy sources, including electricity. Electric cars, around for a long time but never commercially successful, should become an everyday reality.

In addition, we will be able to pack more cars onto existing highways. By using radar or laser technology, cars will follow each other at exactly the distance you want--almost like a car-train on the road. They will brake and accelerate automatically to maintain a desired distance.

Accident on the highway? No problem. Each car will provide alternate routes to prevent congestion. We may also see completely automated highways on which you can relax while an underground cable guides your car to your destination.

Safety will continue to be one of the most important elements of transportation. However, the emphasis will be on preventing an accident rather than merely surviving one.

What about public transport? Although each car will be smart enough to know where it is and how to get to its destination, bear in mind that there will be thousands of others trying to do the same!

We can expect to see personal rapid transit, or PRT, systems built in city centers. Already there are designs on the drawing board to provide on-demand, personalized transportation in these centers. Such a system will be aesthetically pleasing, work on an unobtrusive guideway built above the road and permit you to leave your car outside the city without having to ride with hundreds of other people on crowded subway trains. Should you want a ride, you would go to one of numerous PRT stops, purchase a magnetic ticket for your destination, hop into a transit vehicle waiting for you, insert your ticket, and the vehicle will weave through the maze of guideways and deliver you to your destination.

Several cities in this country could be connected with high-speed rail transportation--eliminating the need to fly within such extended metropolitan areas as Boston-New York or Los Angeles-San Diego. Conventional trains are already operating at more than 150 m.p.h. in Europe and Japan, and the French TGV has made a trial run at an astounding 300 m.p.h. These trains will be the prime candidates for operation in the United States along several transportation corridors.

In addition, it is possible that magnetic levitation trains will start providing service along some of the corridors. In this type of train, there are no wheels--the train is suspended on the guideway using electromagnetic forces that, in theory, permit the train to travel at speeds limited only by aerodynamic forces. Prototypes of “maglev trains” already exist in Japan and West Germany, and serious plans are under way to build maglev systems from Orlando, Fla., to nearby Disney World, from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, and within Las Vegas.

For those who prefer to fly, “wayports” could be available in which to change planes. Why fly all these people to congested airports in Chicago or New York if all they want to do is change planes to go somewhere else? A “wayport,” situated in the middle of, say, a cornfield in Iowa, could be built to provide such a switching service.

Airplanes also will change in the future. They will continue to get larger, since a few large planes instead of many small ones is one of the ways to prevent congestion in our skies. A modular plane may also emerge, in which cargo or passenger modules are attached to an aircraft chassis. Then entire modules can be switched between airplanes at wayports (much like the railway junctions of old times), saving time and hassle.

Finally, we may literally go into outer space when we fly, say, from New York to Tokyo. A space plane dubbed “The Orient Express” is being designed in the United States by a group called the National Aerospace Plane Consortium led by McDonnell Douglas. Flying at more than 10 times the speed of the supersonic Concorde, this type of plane will get you halfway around the world almost before you finish your dinner.

These are some of the innovations in store for the traveler--although predicting the future is always difficult and fraught with dangers. After all, we do not travel in personal flying cars as futurists of the earlier part of this century predicted. Therefore, at the risk of looking foolish in the year 2010, the preceding is an educated guess as to how our personal and public transportation may look in the next century.