The fifth transportation era

As a person fascinated with the impact technology or systems can have on society, I am deeply curious about what new technologies in transportation will harbor. The printing press helped create the nation state, the streetcar created business corridors, and the automobile enabled sprawl. If the era of new freeways are over and we enter a so-called fifth era of transportation, I would argue the technology that will guide this era is not new, not sexy, but critical to understanding the choices we make: math. Math will guide this era because, while math is at the core of the impacts of previous eras (the automobile decreases travel time, enabling sprawl), math is actually driving the choices of the fifth era. To demonstrate, I am going to look at a couple key areas in which math is changing the transportation choices we are making.

Pedestrians
As cities strive to create walkable communities, the layout and design of our streets and neighborhoods makes a difference in whether the city is walkable and for who. If a person is able and willing to walk 1 km, how far can they actually go on a given street layout? As planners and engineers employ math in ways that prioritize pedestrian and cyclists, this will lead to changes in our built form on the basis of that math.

Cyclists
Math will drive the form of cycling infrastructure in a number of ways. First, planners will continue to prioritize bicycle infrastructure because (a) evidence shows that good infrastructure induces cycling demand and (b) cycling is a more efficient use of urban space than the automobile. In terms of the infrastructure built, attempts to achieve Vision Zero will drive planners to choose evidence-driven solutions such as protected bike lanes.

Public transit
Innovations in public transit will likely happen on the margins, but that is not to say there is not major progress to be achieved. As math drives new models that increase efficiency in schedules and advanced geographic information systems improves routing, these improvements will increase ridership. More importantly, math will drive the reallocation of urban space for transit. The Portland Rose Lanes Project prioritizes bus travel at key junctures, improving bus speeds and reliability while operationalizing equity to more fairly allocate that space. While these changes seem marginal, research on ridership elasticity show that speed and reliability can make significant impacts on choice riders.

Automobile
Lastly, the future of the automobile is driven by math perhaps more than any other mode. We are leaving the automobile era because of math: ultimately, there is not a solution that will ever fully accommodate everyone’s car in an urban area. The geometry and math just do not work. Expanding freeways induces new ridership and congestion does not improve in the long run. There is not enough parking in urban areas unless heavily subsidized parking garages are built. But while math explains the limits on the automobile, math also offers a path forward in this new era. Congestion pricing, the only tool shown to lower congestion over the long term, is increasingly being explored and implemented nationwide. It works by addressing the elasticity of demand and shifting peak travel numbers. And while some argue the smartphone as the technology that defines this fifth era, while I agree it is important, its usefulness comes from math! Ride-hailing apps work in part because of algorithms that efficiently connect supply and demand while determining the route. All this is to say that while the automobile is not going anywhere, innovations in electric vehicles do not change the basic math undergirding these transitions.

The unknowns
There are surely unknowns for this era and maybe this speculation will be proven entirely wrong. Still, I think it somewhat unlikely, as math is already affecting potential new technologies. The hyperloop and the Boring Company are both realizing that math limits their potential to be as transformative as hoped. Time will tell.