As a regular commuter, I spend a lot of time thinking about traffic.  I speculate about the causes of traffic jams, how traffic patterns emerge over time from specific human behaviors, and the technologies that could be implemented to better control or reduce this flow.    I often arrive at two broad potential solutions to eliminate traffic woes.

The first involves removing the human element from driving entirely.  If the technological infrastructure existed for humans to simply specify a destination to which their car, controlled by an unerring computer, would take them, drive times could be significantly reduced.  Imagine how much money would be saved if existing roads were used more efficiently rather than physically expanded to include more lanes.

Now imagine sitting in a line of computer driven cars at a stop light.  Each car is aware of all the others and every action each car takes is pre-planned and computed for maximum efficiency.  Instead of each car accelerating in sequence after the light turns green, as is the case today with human controlled cars, every car in line would accelerate at the exact same rate as soon as the light turned green – moving as a collective system instead of individual machines.  Cars at the back of the line would begin moving at the same time as cars in the front of the line.  The efficiency of intersections would increase dramatically as computer driven cars nearly eliminate the idle time intersections currently require – time during which no cars travel through them as a buffer for errant human drivers.

This level of traffic efficiency isn’t humanly possible, but it is possible with the help of advanced navigational computing.  Unfortunately, the infrastructure for an entirely computer controlled car transit system is expensive and must earn the trust of the public during deployment – thus I usually eliminate it as a possible solution to this problem.

Terrafugia Transition

Dazed by the impossibility of the first solution, the allure of flying cars soon sets in as a second solution.  Being able to simply “take-off” from the drudgery of a traffic jam and fly like a bird to a destination has unending appeal.  While this exact scenario is likely years away, the folks at Terrafugia have created an airplane with folding wings that drives like a car and fits into a standard car garage.  The car recently received an exemption from the FAA that classifies it as a “light sport aircraft”, thus only requiring its pilots to amass 20-hours of flying time before applying for a license.  At $194,000, the Terrafugia Transition has several features you’d expect to find in a car, like airbags and crumple zones.  It can also fly at up to 115 mph to a maximum range of 460 miles and only requires 1/3 of a mile to takeoff.

While the FAA’s decision is in no way a sanctioning of flying cars, it’s an indication that technology is advancing enough that this scenario may require close examination in the near term.  If enough people are willing to spend nearly $200,000 on a flying car and 20-hours of training, futuristic “sky roads” may be paved whether or not the agency wants them.  And if people’s ability to drive in two-dimensions is any indication of our ability to cope “en masse” with a third, its likely that the development of the first solution explored in this article will be more important than ever.