Transportation

          One of the first things many people visualize when asked to picture “the future” is some kind of futuristic vehicle. Whether it is a sleek super-speed train or the quintessential “hover car,” it seems that one of the most universal of our collective visual symbols of the future is in transportation. But it goes beyond mere gadgetry and cool designs. Transportation is the way in which we move our very being from location to location. Getting there from here is the way in which we live and apply the thoughts and ideas we have. One of the popular ideas depicted in the Futurevisions project is that of “Mag-Lev” or “Mag-Drive” systems. Using magnetic forces that repel the vehicle from the track, great speeds can be reached with no friction from moving parts. These “mag-systems” are both silent and clean.

          Within the city of the future we will almost certainly displace private transportation in the form of cars by utilizing an efficient and fully integrated public transportation system. Although things like monorails and people-movers have been around for decades, we are only now seeing creative applications on a limited basis in the cities of the world. These systems are currently hard to retrofit into today’s cities, but perhaps in new city developments or prototype communities we can see these ideas develop more fully. Many parts of the world are already going in this direction. With these systems in place we can minimize our environmental impacts through less air and even noise pollution, reduce power drains on our infrastructure, and greatly improve personal safety from eliminated vehicle collision and the like.

          These fully integrated systems would function from what we call the “echelon of travel” using high-speed maglevs for longer distance down to mag-drive personal carrier systems and people movers for short range travel. Moving exit and entrance systems enable passengers to embark or disembark the vehicles without stopping. Transfers from one system to another would be almost instant.

          In the future, cars and other types of transportation systems will be of a modular and very lightweight construction. The power sources and various components of each vehicle would be interchangeable and easily repaired and replaced by the average person. We envision a 90% public transportation where individual transport is rarely required. Not only the vehicles, but the track systems could be assembled with relative ease in these modular applications. Vehicles constructed with components made from memory materials or nano-repairing systems could even allow a vehicle to repair itself. The vehicles would no longer be designed with an artificial scarcity in mind, but would be built to function reliably for over a decade with very little maintenance. What kinds of future transportation can you envision?