Why Do We Need A New Infrastructure?

Story: Last summer the town of Tupper Lake, New York, in the Adirondacks, needed to replace the storm sewers in a 200-yard section of road. The project took over 3 weeks, with dozens of people working eight hours a day ripping up the road, digging down 8' to the storm sewers, removing the old pipes, installing new ones, replacing all the other utilities they had disrupted, refilling the giant hole, repaving the road, and of course constantly directing disturbed drivers. This two-lane road is the main route north from town, and there is only one smaller alternative for many miles. Lest you think this is an isolated situation, the previous summer a residential road was dug up for a month to fix leaks in a one-block section, and then they had to do it again a few months later. Imagine if we had to replace all of our obsolete infrastructure! And it isn’t just aging infrastructure, a few months after we moved into our new home in New Jersey, I noticed bubbling in a puddle in front of our home: the landscapers had driven a stake through the natural gas pipe – we had previous had a whiff of gas, but couldn’t localize the leak.

The American Society of Civil Engineers assessed the State of US Infrastructure in 2013, rating it a D+ overall and estimating $3.6 trillion additional investment needed by 2020. The report gives details on each of the categories, including economic impact, individual state analyses, and actions needed.

We literally can’t afford to just fix these obsolete technologies – we need better alternatives. Seven of the 16 categories focus on transportation, so let’s start there, and then cover Energy, Water, Waste, and the others later. 

Why Is Transportation So Important?

Challenge: Our current car-centric transportation system is dangerous, expensive, inefficient, and is impeding the development of our society and our economy. One big challenge is that roads and cars are so deeply embedded in our society that replacing them will require not only ingenuity, but also an enormous advantage both for our economy and each of us personally. Hopefully, the set of Ideas and Innovations illustrated here will surpass these thresholds, and the Transition Opportunities will show compelling ways to get started, leading to an avalanche of advances.

Goal: Move people and items rapidly, inexpensively, safely, equitably, pleasantly, and sustainably.

Transportation Triggers Revolutions in Society

Transportation defines what we can eat, who are our neighbors, who we can trade with, who we can fight with, and where we can live: try living where you don’t have ready access to water and food.

Traveling on foot limits our everyday horizon to a few miles. However, we shouldn’t sell our feet short: our ability to run tirelessly, at least our ancestors could, allowed us to capture animals that are faster but lacked our endurance. Feet also enabled long seasonal treks to follow food.

Taming horses expanded our horizons both in distance, and in the weight of goods we could move, starting about 4,500 BCE. Mongols conquered an entire continent practically living on their horses. Horses are the symbol of the American West, and we still measure our cars in horsepower.

Horseback Riding About 4,500 BC 

The invention of the wheel further expanded the loads that could be carried for food and other resources, and also redefined war. The earliest evidence of wheels is about 3,500 BCE, and is clearly documented in Sumer about 2,500 BCE.

Wheel in Sumer About 2,500 BC

The next big step in transportation was harnessing steam as the tireless engine of railroads. Suddenly, you didn’t have to live near cows to get milk or mines to get coal. Cities boomed and train stations attracted population centers. The US continent became a week’s trip instead of a season’s ordeal.  Of course steam power also transformed water travel, and all manner of production.

Stephenson's Rocket 1826

The modern age of everyday transportation began with Otto Benz’s invention of the automobile. Now people can decide on a whim to travel hundreds of miles in a day. Trucks bring goods of all sorts from across continents. Teenagers were suddenly liberated from parental oversight. Of course most people in the world don’t have access to a car, but many lust after one, and this is a major driving force in the “progress of civilization” with its benefits and tradeoffs, including suburbs and urban sprawl.

Benz Patent -- Motorwagen 1885

Air travel began with Wilber & Orville Wright’s 1903 flight, realizing a long held human dream. Now you can cross the continent in a few hours. Aerotropolis: The Way We’ll Live Next, by John Kasarda / Greg Lindsay, describes the dramatic growth of some cities and whole areas, and the decline of others, due to airplanes and airports. For example, “Dulles is America’s wealthiest invisible city”; LAX turned LA from a small city to “a culture capital rivaling New York, Hong Kong, and Tokyo, otherwise it would have remained … a Fresno or a Sacramento, minus the Hollywood”; Memphis and Louisville burgeoned as centers for FedEx and UPS airplanes. 

   Wilber & Orville Wright 1903

What's Next?

In the 74 years from 1829 to 1903 we went from horses being the most advanced form of transportation to airplanes. What’s happened in the 133 years since? No new forms of transportation.

By contrast, the transistor was conceived in 1926, but first practically implemented in 1947. Now 66 years later you probably have over 1 billion of them in your pocket, hiding on a tiny chip inside your smartphone. Even though my great-grandfather died 60 years ago, I imagine that he could climb into a modern car and drive away; however, hand him an iPhone and he wouldn’t even know what it was.

Story: When I was growing up in the 1950’s, magazines were full of personal air cars, and I envisioned that in a few short years we would all be flying around in our own personal aircraft, or helicopters, or some clever technical transportation innovation. Here we are 60 years later and no one travels in a personal air vehicle, except gliders and ultra-lights for recreation. Given the carnage we wreak in 2-dimensions on roads, it was probably dumb to predict traveling in 3-dimensions, but it illustrates the challenges of predicting where technology will take us.

What if you could have your orders delivered in minutes for pennies, instead of days for dollars? What innovations and services would we have? How much would that improve our lives, not to mention save the planet? That’s what we’ll explore here.