Yesterday I indulged myself and took a personal look backward. It was New Year's Eve, after all, the end of a year. Today is New Year's Day, the day we look to the year ahead. Is this the Year of The Big One (pandemically speaking)? Or another year of Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop? If we can't figure out what will happen over the next year (who will be President-elect?), how about the next hundred years? That will average out the inconsequentialities and get down to The Big Things. The New York Times did a story the other day where they interviewed a bunch of alleged experts about what New York would be like in 2108. Pretty crappy stuff, although I did sort of take to one response of a 12 year old girl:
You'll no longer have to worry about finding a bathroom; you'll just carry a small chip with you that can expand into a private portable toilet. (Kate Kaplan interviewed by The New York Times)
This says a lot more about finding a bathroom in Manhattan today than the world of 2108, but I have to admit miniaturization has gone a lot farther than I would have dreamed. Most of the responses seem to assume the world of nation states will look pretty much the same in a hundred years as it does now -- that is, that there will actually be sovereign nations. I see no compelling reason to believe there will be a United States of America in a hundred years. You think countries last forever? My guess is that people living on the current soil of the good old USA will be citizens of some much larger regional or global federation. The EU is a foretaste of things to come. But hey, if I could really tell the future I'd be rich. Since I won't be around in 100 years I also don't have to worry about being proved wrong.
Not that people's guesses are always wrong. From the same NYT story, the guesses of 1908 about today:
"We may have gyroscopic trains as broad as houses swinging at 200 miles an hour up steep grades and around dizzying curves," the newspaper went on. "We may have aeroplanes winging the once inconquerable air. The tides that ebb and flow to waste may take the place of our spent coal and flash their strength by wire to every point of need. Who can say?"
[snip]
"When the expectations of wireless experts are realized, everyone will have his own pocket telephone and may be called wherever he happens to be," one magazine predicted in 1908. Equally farsighted was a prediction made by Dr. Simon Flexner, the first director of the Rockefeller Institute. The same New Year's Day that The World was conjuring gyroscopic trains, Dr. Flexner declared that human organ transplants would someday be common.
Well, tide power still isn't a big deal (maybe the coal barons were more powerful than anticipated) and trains don't make 200 mph, but it's not too far off. Cell phones, Organ transplants. Nice call.
But transportation always seems to be the place where we are too optimistic:
New Yorkers were besotted with the possibilities. Architects and visionaries imagined a "cosmopolis of the future" with thousand-foot towers connected by webs of tall bridges and served by aircraft.
So we aren't flying around with jetpacks or personal helicopters or automatically controlled ground vehicles. A hundred years is a long time to project, of course, but so, it turns out is a mere fifty years. Here is a Disney film from 1958 that predicts the Highway of the Future [8 minutes 47 seconds; you don't have to watch it all. You'll get the idea pretty quickly. But it's fun.] (hat tip, UrsiSblog):
I thought about these predictions of 50 and 100 years ago when I read that yesterday the prime contractors of Boston's Big Dig officially delivered the largest public works project in the history of the country to the City. In a recent visit to Boston I drove through it. It's another big highway on it's way to obsolescence and gridlock.
It's a natural tendency to imagine the future to be like the present. So my prediction for the future of transportation in Boston? Obsolescence and gridlock.
Here's wishing you a prosperous and happy 2008.
France's TGV has a top speed of 200mph in regular traffic. Shinkansen goes to up to 185mph at the moment, but they're preparing lines for an increase to about 200mph in a few years as well. Also, just this week a decision was made to proceed with a maglev train line between Tokyo and Nagoya (but not extending it to Osaka for the time being, unfortunately).
Janne: Didn't know that the TGV was that fast. I thought it was around 160. Thanks.
The issue about Shinkansen is, that it is in duty since decades. The real time savings are not the trains speed which is not remarkable but mainly: fast acceleration and fast deceleration, absolutely civilized loading and unloading (passengers have seats assigned and stand in line at the right spot to get in, very orderly, one to two minutes and the train is ready to leave), vey very few stops. So Tokyo - Kyoto for example is but a little longer by Shinkansen than by plane (that is also because getting to the airport and security takes time).
I used the Shinkansen in 1987 - and it was not new then either - and ever since I am wondering why we do not manage to install a superior train system like that.
The TGV has far more stops, and longer stopping time so the faster train is not faster rather much slower in the long distances, but faster than conventional trains.
The Transrapid (German, my country, bragging) does 450 - 500 km/h. We built one in China. The next one, if it ever comes true, will be built Munich-Munich Airport. Thats about 40 km distance. Its a shame, the technology is there for a decade now, tested, running.
The Transrapid (German, my country, bragging) does 450 - 500 km/h. We built one in China. The next one, if it ever comes true, will be built Munich-Munich Airport. Thats about 40 km distance. Its a shame, the technology is there for a decade now, tested, running.
Although still simply too expensive.
The Deutsche Bahn ICE service is a fine example of wheeled high speed rail. It should be ranked up there with the Shinkansen and TGV.
What strikes me when I travel in some countries is how smoothly the high speed rail, lower speed regional rail, and urban light rail (or other urban mass transit) integrate with one another.
Doing any one component well has only minimal benefit. When they are all done well, and interoperate easily, the benefits are greatly magnified. But that would take skills Americans do not have (honest, operationally competent public administration) and investable capital which America now lacks.
People in the US say, "Why don't we have high speed rail?", which is a question which makes me laugh. There are only a few major US cities with good internal mass transit. If I were pushed, I would have to rate Portland as the only one which is close to the best world class cities for transit.
And without the local loop being covered, much of the rationale for interurban high speed rail goes away. Much easier to fly to an airport and rent a car.
I note as well that in Europe, the TGV and ICE lines are dedicated ones. The air loads when 300kph trains pass in opposite directions are formidable. Open bed freight, in aerodynamic compatibility testing, was actually lifted off of the bed. Ouch. Bad news.
In Europe, it was possible to acquire the right of way to create new lines for the high speed trains. Doing that in the US would be virtually impossible. Lawyers would tie up the whole mess for decades, and siphon off enough of the budget to make it untenable.
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I beg to differ with regards to the ICE. Hardly any ICE does reach speeds above 200 km/h. The once with special technique might be built for more speed but the train tracks are not. So it is still next to two hours for a 200 km distance. Only a few inter-city routes where the tracks are indeed built for higher speeds.
Neither TGV nor ICE (with "Neigungstechnik") is comparable to the really old Shinkansen.
Cost is relative to the investments in other infrastructure (airports, highways) so it is more political will/choice than actual cost.