President Obama's new wheels are equipped to pay tolls

(via Jalopnik and the Telegraph)
The new presidential limo has many safety features. One of them is that the only window that goes down is the driver's, and it only goes down three inches in order for the driver to "pay a toll or talk with Secret Service agents running alongside." Maybe he's planning to usher in an era of congestion pricing and will lead by example, though I expect he'll want to get an EZ Pass transponder rather than use tollbooths. This is a guy who won't have to stop for a red light for at least the next four years. You'd think they wouldn't need the driver to "pay a toll."

We will soon all drive flying cars

The first flying car is going from London to Timbuktu. I doubt this will actually usher in a new era of personal transportation. I'm a bit disappointed that the vehicle is less Jetson's and more schlep car.

IBM thinks congestion pricing is good business

Congestion pricing is a politically unpopular but very effective way to reduce traffic congestion. While technological applications for administering road tolls used to be a major obstacle for implementation of pricing programs, this is no longer the case. Companies such as IBM invested a great deal of time and money developing new tolling technologies, and now they want to sell them.

I was surprised to see an IBM ad during a NFL game promoting their congestion pricing technologies as part of their Smart Traffic program. (I suspect this was the first nationally televised ad arguing for widespread congestion pricing.) The ad featured all the benefits of congestion pricing but somehow forgot to mention that drivers will have to pay for road space. Rather IBM is promoting tolls as "smart" roads. It's a clever way of phrasing the applications, though I doubt it will increase political support for tolls.

Here is the overview of their argument for smarter roads in the future. They again forgot to mention that drivers will actually have to pay money to get on the roads.

"Clogged roadways need new approaches
Next time you're stuck in traffic ground to a halt, think about this: as smart as our cars have become, our roadways are about to get a whole lot smarter.

It's certainly needed. Cities everywhere are battling an increase in demand and an inability to build sufficient infrastructure to cope. For example, in the U.S., as population grew nearly 20% between 1982 and 2001, traffic jumped 236%.

Building new roads and new lanes often just isn't possible any longer, but building intelligence into the roads and the cars—with roadside sensors, radio frequency tags, and global positioning systems—certainly is.

In Stockholm, a new smart toll system has reduced traffic and carbon emissions by impressive percentages.

In London, a congestion management system has lowered traffic volume to mid-1980s levels.

In Singapore, a traffic prediction system is helping re-route and manage traffic citywide, preventing major back-ups and congestion."

We want more congestion, not less

President-elect Obama has set forth an ambitious agenda to reshape our transportation priorities. The AP article provides some of the details. The story lays out Obama's reasoning that if we solve congestion we will put people to work. I have my doubts that this is what the President-elect said, but if he did he's got it backwards.

There are a few important points about congestion. First, it is a result of people driving around to go places. This means that when there is a lot of economic activity there is an increase in congestion. We should hope for a lot of congestion as that will signal that the economy is growing again. A second point is that we can build all the roads and light rail lines we want, but until drivers start paying the marginal costs of travel through user fees of some sort we won't see a meaningful drop in driving compared to transit. Since most of transportation money is spent on roads, that's what we are mostly prepared to build on short notice through an economic stimulus package.

On a related note, a bailout of the auto companies will further assert the primacy of autos for personal transportation for the foreseeable future. This outcome is at odds with Obama's stated goals of improving transportation choices and transit use, and may have lousy consequences for responsible urban growth. Auto use is already heavily subsidized through parking regulations and other financing tools such as sales taxes for transportation investment. Many people used mortgage products to buy cars over the past decade, representing a subsidy for the purchase of autos. Now we will subsidize the production of cars. This collection of policies favor autos as our primary mode of personal transportation, and in turn we will plan for more cars. As such, we should hope we end up with congested roads filled with all those cars we're supposed to buy.

Mobility taxes versus parking requirements

The New York City MTA is in dire financial straits, as are many transit agencies. The state has just announced a plan to avoid deep service cuts that involves bridge tolls and a "mobility tax" that equals 33 cents per $100 of payroll. This tax will be paid by businesses.

Some may scream about this, but this tax does get to the heart of how we pay for our transportation systems. In addition, it's a far better way to finance transportation than the current "mobility tax" on businesses, which is minimum parking requirements. Consider that the proposed tax on payrolls is .0033 percent (.33/$100). Compare this tax rate with what an employer has to pay in order to supply their employees with a parking space. For instance, a reasonable (and conservative) estimate of the cost of constructing a parking space is $75,000 in an underground garage. Not including any maintenance or financing costs, that parking space amortizes to $2,500 per year for 30 years. Now that space is provided to an employee making $50,000 per year. That works out to a "tax" of 5% on payroll ($2,500/50,000). Under this scenario, the employer would save $2,335 per year per employee! And because of network effects the overall transit system would improve due to higher ridership and investment as opposed to the problems associated with people driving everywhere by themselves. Everybody wins! And it's a much better way to pay for transportation.

Experiential marketing or better bus stop design?

Kraft Foods is trying to recreate the warm feelings of goodness that people get when they eat stuffing by blowing hot air at people waiting for the bus in Chicago. This seems like a good idea to increase transit use during a cold Chicago winter by making the waiting time, which is perceived by riders as lasting much longer than it actually is, less daunting. Though if the air smells of stuffing they should probably let people eat on the bus.

As for the experiential marketing, they should probably hire a new advertising company. Bus stop ads are not directed at people waiting for the bus. They are designed to attract passing traffic, who will be nice and toasty in their cars with or without the hot air.

DARPA wants flying cars

DARPA just put out a notice soliciting inventive types to build a flying cars. This is a very promising development for airborne personal transportation. DARPA has been successful in moving automated vehicles forward. Hopefully they can do the same for flying cars. I think DARPA is a good leading indicator of new technologies, and a few months ago I suggested that the best thing for flying cars is for DARPA to take on the challenge. Maybe this is an opportunity for the American automakers to regain their prominence throughout the world.

Here are the DARPA guidelines:

OBJECTIVE: Define new and innovative technology components that enable building a vehicle which can either be used as a 2-4 person ground transport that can both drive on roads or be changed into a flying craft with vertical take off capability. Identify selected technologies providing propulsion, morphing wings, and/or flight controls that provide core elements for this multi-person vehicle. Identify issues to be resolved via trade studies and define demonstrations establishing the feasibility of the identified core component technologies.

DESCRIPTION: A personal air vehicle that could transport 2 to 4 personnel either by driving on the ground or by flying would be suitable for many military scouting and personnel transport missions. This personal air vehicle should also have a vertical take-off capability that is not restricted to prepared surfaces for the most military utility. Desired personal air vehicle characteristics would be the ability to fly for 2 hours carrying a 2 to 4-person payload on one tank of fuel and can also safely travel of roads. The vehicle must be no wider than 8.5 feet and no longer than 24 feet, and no higher than 7 feet when in the road configuration. Vehicle control must support manually driving the vehicle on the ground and fully automated flight with manual flight control inputs that can override the fully automatic system. The challenge is to define the major components of such a vehicle that would be suitable for military scouting and personnel transport missions, yet are small enough, inexpensive enough, and easy enough to operate that it can be widely used. To achieve this it will be necessary to explore new and innovative technologies in one or more of the following areas:

- Propulsion concepts that include vertical take off and vertical landing, optimized disk loading for the combined fly/drive mission, size, weight, and power suitable for a road drivable vehicle, efficient power plant and energy management combined with low specific fuel consumption, and installation considerations related to safety, vehicle controllability, and passenger/payload carrying on a vehicle. The optimized disk loading should allow safe take off/landing at unprepared sites.

- Morphing wing/surfaces considerations including safe and rapid deployment and retraction, rugged construction, and ease of operation for a vehicle that can drive at up to 60 mph and fly at up to 150 mph.

- Flight control considerations include human interfaces to autopilot, flight director, and/or auto-navigation systems, automated navigation/ positioning, automated sensors, automated fight planning and de-confliction with other users of the airspace. Size, weight, and power must be paramount as well as redundancy and reliability suitable for human passengers.