Transportation & Traffic
Open Source Solutions
For All transportation infrastructure updates, we need an Open-Source Citizen-Derived Solutions-Modelling Platform, so we can increase our probability of finding the Absolute Best solutions. It is incumbent upon us to create this system like a game of sorts, a IBM Watson/Google Maps/Sims/City-Builder game, that will allow ANY citizen to create a virtual simulation of how they would design solutions for our transportation infrastructure, and then model the outcomes using past, present, and any probable future traffic patterns. These designs can be uploaded publicly for our entire community to engage with them, revise and republish, and upvote their favorites. Artificial Intelligence, quantum computing, and hive-mind awareness will help us find the most desired outcomes more easily, and most effectively minimize risk by maximizing our probabilities of finding the absolute best solution available. Through a process of full-sovereignty consensus, the community will decide exactly the solution that works best.
Zero-Emmission Vehicles
Clean air is a crucial area to focus on when it comes to transportation. We will always have a dynamic population with evolving needs, and as that grows and morphs, we must prioritize the most basic needs of our health and caring for the environment. I am proposing we develop and deploy an aggressive incentive program to help families and businesses convert their vehicles to zero-emissions.
Air quality is beyond economic measure, since it affects our respiratory system and overall wellness, our city aesthetics, and the outcomes of our soil and water health. This is a matter of imperative.
Whatever the program details, they must be aggressive enough to where it becomes a 'no-brainer' to trade your car in for a new zero-emissions model. This demand will pressure the auto manufacturers to get their act together and diversify the offerings needed to meet our citizens needs.
Autonomous Driving
As we transition to zero-emissions vehicles, we must also prepare for Autonomous Vehicle Technology.
As a matter of individual sovereignty, I do support vehicles with manual controls as well as autonomous modes. When prioritizing the needs of mobility safety, autonomous mode makes the most sense in the urban zones. This integrated, whole-system approach will ultimately overcome any congestion and will keep everyone safe, so we can finally attain zero-deaths related to transportation.
I do have serious concerns about the centralization of transportation authority, the potential for privacy abuses, and the general diminishing of transportation freedoms that may be results of autonomous driving; however, I do believe that by being proactive with our citizen engagement mechanisms, accountability measures and regulations, we can avoid any potential downfalls this system could spawn and actually get to a solution that alleviates traffic and virtually eliminates traffic fatalities.
With autonomous driving, we will be able to:
- eliminate intoxicated/erratic driving
- improve traffic with efficient flow
- increase mobility for all people
- decrease the need for as many vehicles
The City of Austin has the resources, creative capital, and the opportunity to become a leader in the development of autonomous driving, and I believe we should explore all possibilities as it relates to improving quality of life.
Public Transit
Our transportation needs are quite straightforward. We need to build an advanced urban rail system that travels along every major street and has a dedicated, non obstructed lane of travel. In fact, our entire road system needs to rearranged to prioritize non-obstructed roadways for every mode of travel. We will likely need multi-level build-outs to accomplish this. The more dense the area vertically, the more appropriately this reflects in the transportation network. Branching out from the urban rail will be a network of busses or large pods for amounts of people down lesser travelled, still major roads. Then, once we get into the home areas, we have a network of neighborhood-dedicated autonomous shuttles that take people from their homes and to the larger transit stops, and vice versa. This entire system is 24 hours, because it meets the real-time needs of the ridership. It runs on magnetic new energy technology powered renewably, so there is essentially no cost (plus our regenerative profit-sharing industries can pay for any maintenance or update costs) after the initial investment. This system essentially makes the need for a car completely obsolete, because you can literally travel everywhere in the transit network. A key aspect of this is the advent of smarter roadway design, which allows for Constant-Flow Traffic. You can imagine this like an over-under-looping network of roadways that redefine intersections. There will be no more stopping, no more red lights, only smart and safe merging. One could drive their own car, but it would be in the best interest of safety that this personal vehicle yield its control to the autonomous communication network. (this system has NO deaths) This brings us to the most pressing concern of pedestrian and bike/scooter access. Of course, the ultimately TRUE walkability is when the roads become completely free for human walking, so there is literally never a chance of a person being hit by a car, bus, or train ever, because they are always shielded from the roads where these modes transport beings. Access points will only open when vehicles are stopped. Bikes will need to follow a dedicated path, most likely separate from scooters even. The biggest caveat to all of this is that each area of the city will require different needs, and nothing should be rigidly and universally applied everywhere.
We need to use advances in transportation technology to de-commodify public transportation for all locals.
Accelerated Timeline
All of our transportation solutions need to be all-encompassing, and the key to serving all people equitably will be in our ability to rapidly complete projects. This Acceleration of Completing Transportation Infrastructure Projects will cut the construction time dramatically, so we can move from project to project without being delayed by corrupt and fraudulent contracts with ineffective building methods. It’s worth noting that across every neighborhood of this city, people have been waiting and waiting for DECADES for simple things like bike lanes, ADA compliant sidewalks and park access, and simple turn lanes at busy intersections. We don’t have the time to keep twiddling our thumbs. We need to get to work.
THE SOLUTION: Incentivized Volunteer Contributionism – Simply, we have tools, either through elimination of utility costs, tax exemptions, or any other relevant and consensus-reached benefit, to incentivize a group of people in our city to become the Greater Good Coalition of Valued Leaders in Our Community. These are people who will be given dignity, respect, and public recognition for their contributions, who will help us for ALL sorts of activities that benefit the community. In a city of roughly 1,000,000 people, we will easily find 10,000 people (0.01%of population) who want to get free utilities somehow. If each one of these people only donates 3 hours of their time per week, we could have 1,428 people volunteering each day, which breaks down to 285 people contributing each hour, if we work from 6am to 9pm. Of course we can configure this however is relevant to the task at hand. For example, if an area of road needed to be built, these 10,000 people will be organized into micro-teams, who specialize in micro-tasks, who meet over the course of 12-14 weeks (1 day a week) to learn safety, procedure, and master that one tiny little job. They will master this job. Then, once the time comes for construction, once every team is ready, every team will go in order of their task, and carry it out effectively. When 10,000 people descend on a project in a very organized manner, it will get done much quicker, and with much more community heart. We have the ability to achieve much more through cooperation and abundant mindset. Imagine the economic benefit we receive by completing a major intersection project in 2 weeks, verses 2 years.
Walkable, Bikeable, ALL-Able
When walking and biking on many streets in the city, there is not adequate safety from road traffic.
In the spirit of protecting and cherishing life, we MUST include a system of bike-only highways, pedestrian barriers and protections, and think of new and creative ways to help our disabled community access means of rapidly getting from one place to another. We are such an active and beautiful city, so people naturally want to be outside and move their body. It's important we think about the long term vision for our community, which will likely have vastly different economic circumstances than our current model of resource driven industrial servitude. With that in mind, we will have more people with free time to enjoy our landscape and engage in recreation, which means more people walking and biking, etc... So this means we need to look beyond our activities of now, and adopt a visionary approach to our city planning.
Can you transport us to an accelerated future? Please share: