Ford Considers Metro Transportation of the Future
Ford Motor Company is really reinventing itself. Ford is not just concentrating on delivering cars with greater mpg and lower emissions, but transportation in general for growing population centers.
Ford, in partnership with U of M, has been studying congested cities worldwide, tracking growing populations, and the migrations of these populations in order to offer solutions for metropolitan traffic. Their answer is a network of hubs within big metro cities that suffer the most traffic congestion. According to an article on world-wire:
- By 2015, about two-thirds of the world will be living in urban areas, which will exacerbate traffic congestion and present major challenges to basic transportation and personal mobility.
- “Ford Urban Mobility Networks” is a pilot program that is exploring how to coordinate a variety of transportation options and provide vital real-time information to individuals living in densely populated urban centers.
- The program is the result of Ford’s ongoing collaborations with University of Michigan’s Sustainable Mobility and Accessibility Research and Transformation (SMART) initiative.
Ford’s Urban Mobility Network considers all types of transportation, buses, trains, taxis, car-share fleets, mopeds and bicycles. All or some of these modes of transportation transfer at the hubs. The hub idea looks to me like a way to converge and disperse smaller packs of people all over simultaneously, rather than allowing everyone to herd along in one big jam pile of traffic until individuals peel themselves out of the pack as they near his/her destination.
Well good luck with this one if our populations grow out of control that badly. The article said some 35 cities worldwide would have populations of over 10 million. In honor of George Carlin’s death, and his wonderful truths, I think he would say something like “wouldn’t a better solution be a little abstinence so we don’t have population explosions? I mean if we have to really gear up for all these people that are going to be born, wouldn’t it be a lot easier to forgo that big growth and just maintain for awhile. Afterall, population is something we can control.
And I would add, if we can’t control our garbage, can’t sustain ourselves comfortably, can’t help ourselves let alone someone else, why are we still procreating like it’s 2,000 years ago?
Before I digress farther, the article is a good read to get a idea of what our transportation future might be: http://world-wire.com/news/0806110002.html.