Among all the many innovations in transportation, the car still thrills us the most.
It’s the tops. It’s the dream.
As Virginia Woolf put it, driving allows you “to see the heart of the world uncovered for a moment.”
Nothing beats having your own car, and we love that unique freedom and utility of hopping behind the wheel with some good tunes and a state like Colorado to roll around in.
Of course, just driving to work is hardly the fascination Woolf celebrated. And too often that simple task gets marred, ruined and turned to rage come rush hour. So, as we’ve said recently in these pages, we want to see some out-there George Jetson solutions to keep Denver moving.
We need to be multimodal, but let’s not just stick with buses and trains. Let’s fully embrace technology.
Now firmly into the 21st century, the inventiveness and capabilities of our techno entrepreneurs is truly miraculous. Some tinkered-with older ideas can work as well.
Let’s put the techies to work freeing up our roads so we can drive!The Last Mile
A central challenge facing the usefulness of mass transit is that many commuters need to get around once they leave the light rail station — to go that last mile. Some of them might have offices too far away to walk. Others have places to go and people to see throughout the workday.
How about a 100-miles-an-hour solution? Urban Light Transportation technology, so-called ULTra systems, are right out of science fiction, except they’re actually being built today.
Imagine a downtown, a Denver Tech Center or sprawling university campus ringed with elevated rail and sleek electric pods roomy enough for a handful of passengers zipping along at speeds of 100 mph.
The ULTra cars wait for commuters at conveniently placed stations and if on the rare occasion the one you need isn’t there, another arrives at your bidding in less than a minute.
Once the computer-guided system shoots you to your destination, its electric battery begins to recharge while it waits for another passenger, or to be redirected to another station for a waiting passenger.
And ULTra systems cost only a tenth per mile of what it costs to build light rail. London’s Heathrow airport is putting in such a system presently, and some U.S. cities, like Atlanta, are considering going ULTra.
A new twist to an old solution
Once upon a time, gondolas were the stuff of ski resorts and tourist climbs up to spectacular heights for photo-taking and gawking.
But new technology allows gondolas to snake around obstacles and no longer travel simply in straight lines. Their many cars can now drop off and collect passengers at multiple stations while still allowing through-riders to keep on moving.
Some congested cities outside the United States are using these new gondolas to solve the last-mile problem.
Imagine, says Jeff Peterson of Glenwood Springs’ Tramway Engineering, if an elevated horizontal gondola line replaced the shuttles on Denver’s 16th Street Mall, or linked student parking at the University of Colorado at Boulder to campus.
“The standard eight-passenger cabin gondola can transport 2,800 passengers per hour in each direction,” Peterson explains. “This is equivalent to 70 40-passenger buses in each direction or a bus every 52 seconds.”
The electric-powered systems cost a fourth of light-rail construction per mile and, once built, glide quietly along on but a tenth of the energy buses and light rail consume.
There are other benefits. They’re almost silent. And used on the 16th Street Mall, for example, the constant financial headache about the upkeep of those street pavers goes away. What’s more, the overhead gondolas would free up space for more kiosks and carts full of goodies to ogle and buy.
And pedestrian vs. shuttle accidents would vanish.
Virtual high occupancy vehicle lanes
Building extra lanes for carpoolers can cost a fortune. Why not make them out of techno wizardry?
New Zealand’s Trip Convergence, for example, has a system that rewards those who carpool with payments deposited into an electronic account after sensors read participants’ information, much like the E-470 tolling authority uses the express transponder, though across all lanes and not specific express lanes.
The rewards can be calibrated according to time of day, numbers of carpoolers and other considerations, Trip Convergence’s Paul Minett tells us. The more occupants a car has, the more they get paid. City planners could even choose to reward off-peak carpoolers greater rewards to encourage fewer cars at rush hour.
Add dedicated areas of park-and-ride lots for carpool meet-ups arranged by destination, and such a reward system could greatly reduce the rage.
Something for the high and mighty
One of the constant quandaries facing public transportation advocates is how to lessen the stigma attached to hopping on a bus and going to work. Or in other words, how do we get some of the Lexus-driving set out of their cars?
What we need are more environmentally friendly snob shuttles — spacious buses that allow commuters to use Wi-Fi, watch the news on flat-screen plasmas, enjoy overpriced coffee, take a nap, hold a virtual meeting and generally avoid the riff-raff and crowded conditions of standard public transportation.
FrontRange Express is one Colorado company that already offers riders “high-back cushioned seats, luggage racks, individual reading lights and air vents, bike racks, and free wireless Internet service,” but it’s largely limited to out-of-town commuters. Colorado should find ways to reward others who can offer snooty alternatives that help alleviate congestion.
Let Jack and Jill be nimble and quick
Across the country, locals are opening kiosks so that tourists can rent personal transporters, like Segways, to catch some of the local attractions without getting sucked into the local traffic quagmire.
But why stop there? Why not build “low-speed roadways” in cities, which allow those on bikes, or other slower moving transportation — “vehicular pedestrians” — to move about the city without adding to the congestion?
Prices for these nimble rides are still not exactly competitive, but one day Denverites may take a snob shuttle downtown, use a credit card to rent a Segway or an ULTra, run errands, attend meetings and get lunch without ever having to worry about traffic.
