The Three-Minute Thesis (3MT) Competition invites young TRB participants to present their research within three minutes in a way that workshop attendees from wide areas in Transportation can absorb key objectives and findings of the research. The presentations are followed by a discussion forum with a panel of judges who provide tips on communication skills, comment on presentations, and answer questions in an interactive environment. The competition is open to young members/professionals attending the TRB annual meeting.
Please visit the link for details of the event and this link for the rules for participation.
Fueled by a multitude of factors: technological advancements and rapid urbanization, e-commerce sales ratios have nearly tripled globally between 2014 and 2019. There has never been a time of greater change for the “last mile”. Consumers order more things online, expecting more control and faster deliveries. This desire is currently satisfied by an increasing number of delivery vehicles, with an estimated 36% increase in these vehicles among the top 100 global cities by 2030. Consequently, emissions from delivery traffic will increase by 32% and congestion will rise by over 21%, equaling an additional 11 minutes of commute time for each passenger every day.
As a kid, I loved watching cartoons. One of my favorites was the “Jetsons”. Flying cars, drones, high rise buildings and robots, this futuristic vision of the world of 2062 was simply fascinating. Today, as we witness the breakthroughs of the digital era, it seems the Jetsons future is here sooner than ever.
Jetsons Show 1962
Transportation industry constantly thrives to make transit faster, safer and more effective for its passengers. The improvement in transport technology has come in terms of enhancing the existing modes or expanding through new innovations. Self-driving cars, robo-taxis, flying cars, air-taxis, and driverless buses or trains are recent innovations which are transforming the travel experience. With advances in lightweight material, computer modeling and artificial intelligence these innovations are turning into reality.
The increase in vehicle population has lead to gridlock traffic. Road infrastructure is already stretched out, there is not enough space to expand anymore. Thinking outside the box, the idea is to expand the infrastructure vertically. On one side Elon Musk’s boring company explores the world below while many others aim to soar high with flying cars. From the “Jetsons” show to “Blade Runner” and “Back to the Future” movies, flying cars best symbolize the future. It is the most anticipated innovation of the century whose roots of development are dating back to the early 1900s.
In 1917, Glenn Curtiss built an Autoplane with three wings spanning 40 feet. Airphibian designed by Robert Fulton (1946) was the first flying car to be certified by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) which could drive at 50mph and fly at 120 mph. The wings and the tails section of the plane could be removed and it took 5 minutes to convert to a car. The most successful car to date is the AeroCar designed by Moulton Taylor. It cruised at 120mph in the air and received approval from the FAA. In 1970, Ford Motor Co. considered marketing this vehicle which was later called off due to the decade’s oil crisis. Although these pioneers were unable to develop a viable flying car, they inspired a group of enthusiasts who carried the work further.
AeroCar (Source: eaa.org)
Airphibian (Source: Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum)
Autoplane (Source: aerofiles.com)
Today, automobile giants and Silicon Valley startups are partnering with avionic industries to populate the skies with their flying cars. One of the forerunners in this race is Terrafugia, a U.S. based (Chinese owned) corporation whose road-able airplane model Transition is set to hit the markets in 2019. The development of this prototype began in 2006, from wherein it has undergone several tests and received exemptions from FAA and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). It is a light-sport aircraft model which will require a licensed pilot for operation and can carry up to one passenger.
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Boeing has started its efforts to develop air taxi prototypes which it expects to test later this year. Last year, Uber revealed its prototype for air taxi program and aims to conduct test flights in Dallas or Los Angeles by 2020 and begin commercial service by 2023. Airbus is working with Volkswagen’s Audi to design a flying car. It is also separately developing autonomous single and four seated aircraft. Hence, the future with flying cars is coming soon and the real question is whether the consumers and infrastructure are ready to accept it.
Flying cars are truly exciting to imagine but bringing them to reality means there are many challenges to overcome before they can truly help improve the transportation today. At a time when self-driving cars are facing the heat of safety concerns, the concept of self-flying cars may fail to impress the consumers. Uncontrolled air traffic can lead to mid-air collisions which are dangerous to passengers as well as pedestrians on the ground. Land pad infrastructure has to be well designed to regulate the landing and take-off of flying cars to ensure smooth air traffic. While flying there have to be “air” rules to ensure smooth and safe traffic flow. To tackle these safety concerns, rigorous testing must be conducted. Laws and regulation are required to control the vehicles from converting erratically and taking flight.
Flying cars can be manually controlled or be autonomous. For manual control by humans, they will have to be trained appropriately and given authorization via license to fly. Autonomous flying cars will reduce human-induced errors and remove the burden of flying training and licenses. Autonomous flying cars will be safer with higher passenger capacity. A fully autonomous system can be better trained to travel through harsh weather conditions and crowded air traffic. Coupling this technology with navigation systems can provide a comfortable and hassle-free ride.
Flying cars have to be environment-friendly. They should have minimal contribution to air and noise pollution. Companies are aiming for a hybrid or pure electric fuel technology with flying cars with less charging times. To make flying cars a competitive transit mode to others such as rail, bus or ridesharing services means they have to affordable. The cost of a Terrafugia Transition is expected to be over $300,000. The advanced and expensive technologies used for manufacture increases the market price for these flying cars. Similarly, in the case of air-taxis it will be difficult to provide a competitive price for air ride as compared to the land ride or provide flying cars to own at a modest cost.
2019 is an important year for mobility with many innovations such as air-taxis, flying cars and robo-taxis all set to start their ventures. The advancements in technology show true promise for flying cars but they are still a few years behind in helping the transportation industry. Flying cars demand a lot in terms of infrastructure and market to facilitate their vision. Flying cars is one element in the big system of travel network that needs to be designed vertically to support them. To live in the world of Jetsons, inclusive growth of vertical infrastructure, transportation network and vehicle technology will be required.
After venturing into space exploration, electric cars, solar cities, and Hyperloop, Elon Musk decided to transform the transportation industry with his next venture “The Boring Company”. It all started with the worsening traffic conditions in Los Angeles, which he describes as, “moving from 7th level of hell to the 8th level of hell”. With high risers scrapping the clouds, a stratified transportation system below ground is his solution to the never-ending traffic congestion. Starting from a conventional tweet from being stuck in traffic, The Boring Company has come a long way in conducting its first test run in Hawthorne, California. The Boring Company intends to develop tunneling machinery, which could be faster and efficient in reducing the tunneling cost. Using this machinery the company aims to create a 3D transportation network below ground to relieve the traffic burden above ground. Given Elon Musk’s past reputation some welcomed his initiative, which could revolutionize the tunnel construction industry. While others considered this was one more of Musk’s amusements and doubted the prospects of the idea.
Multistoried Tunnel Transportation System (Source: Boring Company)
Among the various solutions for congested traffic flow, Musk chooses to bet his money on the underground system. He believes that underground tunnels pose a safer transport system as opposed to flying cars which are guillotine waiting to fall over people’s heads. He backs up his idea with some critical points. The space below the surface is limitless, can be built to any number of layers and equipped with vehicles. It is completely weatherproof and free from street closures and construction hinderance. Hence, he is strongly rooting for his company to develop machinery which can bore holes faster and build tunnels that can help transport people across places at high speeds.
The first video depicting this vision of the boring company is truly fascinating. Taken right out of a sci-fi movie, it presented a picture of a techie world below ground. Cars moving down elevators to skate through at high-speed in tunnels which evolve into a network just like one above ground and the autonomous high-speed pods that pedestrians can hop into at street ends for hassle-free travel. Such a vision set-forth high expectations for the company. When the news broke out that Musk was drilling a test trench in his Space X office at Hawthorne, the tweets weren’t boring anymore.
One year and six months, the test trench has expanded into a 1.14-mile tunnel running 20-40 feet beneath the streets of California. It runs through the neighborhood between 105 freeway and Hawthorne Municipal Airport. It incurred a cost of $10 million excluding the cost of equipment, research, and development. On 20 December 2018, the audience was in for quite a surprise at the opening event of the first test run by the Boring Company. The reviews suggest that the tunnel ride was not as “epic” as its visionary Elon Musk terms it to be. The car elevators were also unveiled which are the size of two standard parking spaces, transporting the car to the mouth of the tunnel where the ride is set to start. The ride was completed by a Tesla Model X equipped with special guide wheels as opposed to the expected “autonomous electric skates”. The guide wheels can be attached to any autonomous electric vehicle and will be hidden (fold inwards) when not in use and will incur a separate cost estimated about 200-300$. The ride itself was neither smooth gliding nor fast as promised. The rough edges of the tunnel resulted in quite the rattle and the car skated across the tunnel touching only 35-55 mph speeds nowhere near the promised 150 mph.
The test run has left the company facing some not-so-boring questions on whether this underground loop transportation system is really the way ahead. Although Musk doesn’t agree the entry and exit points of this system are perceived to encounter severe congestion. The vehicles will queue up at the entry points waiting for their turn to enter the tunnel system. The queue can spillback and aggravate the traffic congestion on roads. A possible solution could be the garage car elevator prototype, another idea from the boring company. This can help cars from their origin point to directly enter the tunnel traffic system and travel straight to their destination. The huge amount of dirt production from all the tunneling needs to be handled. This dirt has been reused into making the boring bricks, which are showcased by the watch tower construction at Space X Hawthorne facility. In the long run, there are other factors such as ground structure and environmental reviews which could pose problems to this project. In a city like Los Angeles, there are many geographic features such as oil wells and earthquake faults, which need to be considered as the company plans to dig deeper for more layers. Environmental reviews are time-consuming and hard processes, which can push the timeline of the project by three to four years. The company could run into legal battles if they do not abide by these reviews like the one in Westside LA which caused them to abandon their project entirely [3].
Watchtower by Boring Bricks (Source: TESLARATI)
There is one fundamental question the Boring Company fails to answer convincingly – conceptually, in what respects the underground system of tunnel transport for passenger cars is radically different from the underground mass rail transit? In terms of passenger capacity, how pale the Boring Company looks in comparison to the underground mass transit? No doubt that the transportation planning community would embrace a transformative idea to avoid urban congestion. However, the planning community is very skeptical about this concept altogether. The idea is appreciated but the prototype is severely criticized for not meeting the expectations set forth. The poor performance of the prototype raises several questions on the plausibility of such an underground 3D transportation network that can ease the burden of traffic above ground. Having said that, the boring company still has four projects up its sleeves to prove its point.
References
A First Look At Elon Musk’s Plan To Beat Traffic By Digging High-Speed Underground Tunnels. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/blakemontgomery/elon-musk-just-posted-a-concept-video-for-his-new-tunnel.
The Boring Company’s ‘Monty Python’ Watchtower Is Real, and It Looks Great _ Inverse. https://www.inverse.com/article/51827-the-boring-company-s-monty-python-watchtower-is-real-and-it-looks-great.
Lawsuit prompts Musk’s Boring Co. to abandon plans for tunnel. https://www.dailybreeze.com/2018/11/28/sepulveda-tunnel-1st-ld/
I Took a Ride through Elon Musk’s New Tunnel in California – The Verge. https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/19/18148061/boring-tunnel-test-drive-hawthorne-tesla-elon-musk.
ATPIO is pleased to announce that Sarakki Associates has sponsored a supplementary travel-scholarship grant for students. ATPIO would present five of these scholarships at the Annual Meeting to be held at TRB on January 2019. Each scholarship is for $100. The following are the eligibility and selection criteria for the award.
The recipient must be an eligible student member of ATPIO.
The student must be currently registered in, or a recent graduate from a US university and plan to pursue a career in transportation.
The recipient must have a paper accepted for presentation (podium or poster) at 2019 TRB annual meeting
The recipient must be present at the ATPIO annual meeting and register for the scholarship
Selection will be made at the ATPIO annual meeting by random draw
Please begin by registering as a student member by clicking here.
