Motivation

``The racing stand still'' from the German magazin ``der Spiegel''.

Capacity problems Increasing individual mobility. Urban sprawl. Globalisation of markets. Decentralization, out-sourcing. Social problems Safety, health and well-being. High quality mobility not available to everybody. Isolation.

The graph shows the total person km per year in the European union from 1970 to 1996 [1,2].

Reasons for Capacity problems:

• Mobility doubled from 17.2km/year per person in 1970 to 34.7km/year per person in 1996. Also the quality of mobility improved considerably as cars became affordable for most families: 24h availability, individual door-to-door service.
  
• annual growth =4.7% until 1989 and =5.5%. This may be due to the opening and economical activities of the east European countries.

• Specialization in production processes requires new infrastructures: the trends of decentralization and out-sourcing increase the importance of transport in industrial production. On the other hand, transport and logistics represent in average approximately 30% of the total costs of a product. Therefore, new transport concepts are required that are flexible and that can be better integrated into production processes.
  
• Pre industrial cities where mono centered or developed along corridors (usually main roads or railway lines). Then cities grew rapidly and became poly-centered. As private cars became largely available, the places to live, to work, to purchase goods and to do other activities became separated. The consequence is an enormous increase in transport demand for which present, corridor oriented public transport is no more suitable. It appears that the car has increasingly problems to cope with the required amount of traffic as road building is limited and provocates resistance of local inhabitants. Public mass transit like trains, metros or busses work only efficient in the above mentioned corridor-oriented city structures. In todays poly centred cities, they can only be operated with a large amount of subsidizes.
  

Social problems:

• road traffic is not only a safety issue, it scares also non-users and stresses users, resulting in a decrease of life quality.
• the danger on the streets prevents many parents from letting their children play outside with their friends.
• children, elderly persons and handicapped have only limited access to cars (they often rely on other persons who drive). In Germany, approximately 35% of the population is younger than 18 or older than 65 years, with an increasing trend.
• not having access to individual transport means for many persons living in isolation. Furthermore it is more difficult to carry goods from more remote, but cheaper shopping centers.
• to drive a car is more and more often a requirement for an employment. However a part of those who are seeking for a job do not have the financial resources to by and maintain a car, in particular liquids.

Environmental problems pollution global warming noise waste land-use intersection of wildlife

Here the accumulated amount of CO₂ is shown with data from  [3]. For the global warming the total amount of CO₂ in the air is decisive and not the production per year. However, even the CO₂ production per year is expected to increase. The background image is an infra-red photography of the earth, which has been used to indicate an increase of the average earth temperature.

Costs costs of slow and unreliable transport. medical costs. insurance. inefficient use of transport infrastructure and vehicles. restoration of buildings. Costs that are difficult to estimate: (external costs) reduction in the quality of life, damage to the environment. loss of arts and historic monuments.

The economic impact of the transport sector is usually underestimated in terms of direct contribution to the cross domestic product (approximately 3% in Germany [1]). However, the statistics above shows that an average German household spends more money on transport and communication than on food which account for 17% of all expenditures [4]. The reason for this difference is that the production of cars, petrol and car-insurances are not directly produced in the transport sector. Other indirect costs are

• the part of the medical insurances that are dedicated to cure injuries (1999: 521 thousand in Germany [4]) or other health problems caused by road traffic (like lung diseases).
• costs caused by people who arrived too late plus secondary costs if goods cannot be delivered because workers and components have arrived late.
• buildings that got covered with a layer of soot or destroyed by acid rain-falls need to be restored.
• inefficient use of transport infrastructure and vehicles: infrastructure is not used at night, most vehicles are not used during the greatest part of their life-time. Most streets are built for trucks, but mostly used by cars.

External costs are all costs that are caused ``outside'' the accounting of a particular transport system. Even though the existence of these cost are evident it is often difficult to determine the quantity of damage caused by traffic and the value of these damages. For example:

• what is the value of the damaged gargoyle in Paris shown on the picture ?
• how much would we pay if we could get stress-free to and from work ? What are the alternatives ?
• How much would a city increase in value if there were parks and playgrounds instead of streets and parking ?
• What are the costs of a damaged forest, a polluted sea and air (including animals) ?

However, one can agree to prefer a transport system that is reducing these costs compared with the present alternatives.

Evolution or Revolution ?

Can the problems be solved by introducing new technologies? How to apply Information technologies (ITs), automation or electrical engines to transportation systems?

Evolution:

These ``new'' technologies are applied to present transportation systems. However, cars are not very suitable for ITs, automatic control and electrical engines. The train on the other side is not suitable to respond to today's mobility demand and is in most cases not profitable.

Revolution:

A new transportation system is designed that incorporates perfectly ITs, automatic control and electrical engines and responds to today's mobility demand i.e. inherits the flexibility of a car.

Any new transportation scheme that is going to supersede a substantial proportion of the present transport systems must: have a high problem solving potential. be cheaper for users and profitable for operators and manufacturers. be compatible with present transport infrastructure during a transient phase.

``science and technology do not develop seamlessly, but rather by major and painful changes in accepted wisdom$\ldots$ $\ldots$Such changes are preceded by a period of profound uncertainty as the accepted solutions become plainly unsatisfactory at solving the problems.'' Thomas Samuel Kuhn, Philosopher (1970)

Quotation from Thomas Kuhn: ``The Structure of Scientific Revolutions '' [5].

The new transportion paradigms

The new paradigms are:

• driver-less, automatically guided, individual vehicles with a size of a larger car.
• small, mass produced and therefore cheap electrical engines.
• small, light and inexpensive guideways.
• network with off-line stops and stations closer to origins and destination of trips. This allows a lower capacity in each branch of the network compared with a corridor oriented mass transit.