The basic premise of the article is that commuters love the flexibility and privacy of individual cars, that private auto commuting creates growing and unacceptable congestion and environmental costs, and that a hybrid solution, a "SMART Commuter system", can resolve these conflicting interests. The author's proposal suggests transporting small cars along congested highway corridors via tractor trailer trucks equipped with photovoltaic chargers on designated, exclusive lanes where possible (see images below). This would, he claims, reduce highway congestion, greenhouse gas emissions, traffic accidents and foreign oil dependency. It would also, I presume, be of great emotional and psychological succor to the commuting masses sipping lattes and reading newspapers in their new smart cars, secure in the knowledge that not only are they saving time, stress and energy, but also the environment as the photovoltaic panels charge satellite radios, air conditioning, and electric batteries. While I sympathize with the proposal's intentions, the actual idea makes little to no practical sense. Disregarding the absurdity of convincing Americans or any other people that they should all drive the same expensive, tiny cars -- a two-seater coupe Smart Car currently starts at around $18,000 -- without some sort of massive financial incentives or heavy handed State regulation, the proposal still fails to deliver on its proposed objectives.
(Photo, model and drawing by Alexander Pollock)
First, it won't reduce congestion. Even if we just consider traffic along the corridor without thinking much about city streets, exit ramps or vehicle loading stations, the tractor trailer trucks will cause as much traffic as the smart cars they are transporting. Passenger Car Equivalents (PCE) -- a figure used by transportation engineers that represents the number of private vehicles that would take up the same amount of road capacity -- for tractor trailers vary based on terrain and road conditions, but fall somewhere between 1.5 and 6. Given hills, general traffic in urban areas and the size of the vehicles proposed in the article, an average PCE of 3.0 seems reasonable. Thus a truck, carrying 14 vehicles can take up the space of just three. This sounds like a pretty good deal even if the trucks carry an average of 10 to 12 vehicles per trip -- full capacity on all trips is unrealistic. Given the size of the transported cars, however, the 12 foot wide highway lane could be divided into two 6-foot lanes, if it were exclusive to the small vehicles that the trucks carry. This extra lane would more than double capacity by allowing for passing and preventing a single breakdown or accident from choking up the lane. Thus for the 10 to 12 smart cars carried by one truck, 6 to 10 could be driving and using the same road capacity. Given the congestion caused at truck loading and unloading facilities, the plan would likely increase commute times along the corridors it intended to free up, when compared to another system which assumes a massive switch to small two-passenger vehicles.
Second, it won't help the environment. Switching from normal passenger vehicles to electric powered smart cars will help the environment no doubt. Dragging these cars around in large gas-powered trucks will not.
Third, it's a logistical nightmare. Every car would have to arrive at and depart from some sort of designated truck loading station. Each car on the same truck would have to have the same rough origin and destination. The more the trucks stop at different destinations, the slower the commute will be and the more congestion the trucks will create. The trucks would also have to load and unload at the same time and have regular enough headways so that cars didn't sit waiting in a loading station for a truck to come along for excessive periods of time. These loading stations would also require significant new space and investment to operate. If this does not seem impractical enough, imagine the headache of 400 cars entering a suburban loading space to drive onto and get secured to 40 tractor trailer trucks with several different destinations throughout the city. Now 1200 cars arrive at an urban unloading station on 120 trucks, get unfastened and drive off to their varying destinations. The congestion and collisions and wasted space of these loading stations would more than offset any gains made by the system.
Finally, it's a political non-starter. Special lanes and subsidized trucking for the drivers of mini cars is as unrealistic as it sounds. Even if politicians did not realize the infeasibility of the transport system, giving favors to suburban commuters in two-seater European cars through massive investments in loading and unloading infrastructure and rights to use exclusive lanes will not play well with everyone else no matter the level of greenwashing.
Unfortunately, in trying to provide the benefits of both private auto use and mass transportation, the scheme would fail to provide either. While the intention of the scheme is admirable, add this one to the scrap bin of thought-provoking but mercifully non-implemented modernist fantasies. Given the amount of work put into this -- as evidenced by the models, drawings and article -- perhaps my reaction comes across as a little bit cruel and dismissive. Then again, history smiles fondly on the designers of the modernist fantasies to the left (Top to Bottom: Le Corbusier's Plan of Paris, Frank Loyd Wright's Broadacre City, and Buckminster Fuller's dome over Manhattan). All were considered geniuses and, at the very least, their ideas are historically important and, more importantly, pretty damned cool in a retro sci fi kind of way. One of my biggest concerns with the "SMART Commuter system" is that it was developed by the head planner for the city of Detroit.Of the 181 American cities with populations of more than 125,000 in 2003, none lost more residents than Detroit between 2000 and 2003. Only St. Louis and Cincinnati lost a higher percentage of their resident population; 4.59 percent and 4.20 percent, compared to Detroit's 4.19 percent. According to American Community Survey estimates, Detroit lost nearly 75,000 residents, a further 8 percent of it's population, between 2003 and 2005 to 2007 (counts are taken over a three year period). Unsurprisingly, median commute times for residents of Detroit dropped 8 percent from 28.4 minutes in 2000 to 26.3 minutes in 2005/2007. In San Diego, which has gained roughly the same population as Detroit lost, median commute time decreased less than 1 percent from 23.2 to 23 minutes over the same time period. While changes in commute times have to do with many factors, particularly the increasing suburbanization of employment centers, these figures reinforce the fact that commuter congestion is low on the list of Detroit's many urban problems. With American auto-manufacturing on the brink of collapse and one of the fastest decreasing populations of any world city, the last thing Detroit, one of the original post-urban "doughnut" cities, needs is another modernist vision of its transportation future.
So long as the "SMART Commuter system" remains on paper, it's really not much of a bother. Although it may distract certain individuals from more pressing affairs, let him that doesn't engage in personal hobbies or fancy the occasional wild idea cast the first stone. My problem is that by publishing it, the professional body of planners in the United States has to some degree endorsed it. While Le Corbusier's vision for Paris is known by every planner and architect, a visit to some of Paris' banlieus quickly shows the painful divergence of modernist fantasy and the realities of implementation. Let's be glad that when Buckminster Fuller's famous dome caught fire it covered an empty exposition center in Montreal rather than a third of Manhattan. As planners, we need to do better.
