The Commute of the Future? Ford Is Working on It
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Google Maps already does all of this. A wordy NYT article describing a meandering and expensive process to build a very obvious piece of software isn't a realistic portrayal of the capabilities of the developers, but makes me feel like they're idiots, out of touch, and incapable/incompetent.
If you're going to do submarine PR, at least make it make you look good.
An outmoded company that loses money on all its cars save the F-150? Rather than being bailed out, it should have been left to rot on the vine.
I don't think $10 is representative. A 30-day CTA pass is $100 and a 1-year Divvy pass is $99. For people that use these transit options regularly, this trip sound like it would have been easy. The train was really so hot and rank on a brisk October day?
I agree that subways, bikes, and buses are not ideal. They are what we have in mass quantities right now. I do want better transit in the future. Tell me the story about that grand future. I don't want to bash the present non-car transit, when there are no alternatives yet.
Once I pushed through, I did appreciate the categorization of 3 commuters: Time Trumpers, Everyday Improvers, and Experience Seekers.
Plenty of pubic transit systems are clean, punctual, and well mapped to the point that plenty of citydwellers don't own cars. I've even toured DC and Boston without a car, first time visitor both times.
I'm also somewhat worried about what the decline of individual car ownership will mean for the ever increasing power of surveillance that governments and corporations have on our lives. Rideshare apps will probably track every single ride whether you like it or not, a hundred times more accurately and comprehensively than cameras on streets. More and more public transportation networks are also transitioning to electronic payment systems that can record all of your trips and mine that data; gone are the days of anonymous paper tickets. And I wouldn't be surprised if bicycle renting services of the future equipped all their bikes with always-on trackers.
Sure, we already carry iTrackers all over the place with us, but this is a whole new level of virtually unavoidable surveillance. My parents' old car might have been expensive to maintain and massively harmful to the environment, but at least it was too dumb to report your every movement to Big Brother (especially on cameraless rural roads).
Only if cities relax height restrictions on residential construction.
I hate commuting, but I love riding my bike to work. But because I need to drop off or pick up the kids, it means I have to drive on some days.
My wife and I choose our house for a number of factors and due to the fact that DC has some of the worst traffic in the country is commute is about 50 minutes to and hour each way.
If you read the article, they are only talking about 4 miles, as mentioned in the first paragraph:
"On a brisk October day in Chicago, a few employees from the design firm Ideo left their office and headed to Knife & Tine, a restaurant about four miles away. The goal, besides lunch, was to complete the journey within 45 minutes, on a budget of just $10 for the whole group, all while carrying bulky shopping bags."
However, there are some fundamental design changes that we can and should make that will dramatically improve the situation versus a typical city of today.
Please see my http://tinyvillages.org which has most of it. But I will mention a few things.
One, most office work can and should be done over the internet with increased used of voice, video and other collaboration.
Secondly, most metropolitan areas are actually largely suburban. My design improves land use and density by about 800% over current suburbs, which means much shorter distance between business and home and therefore much shorter commutes.
Thirdly, automated single passenger (self-driving) vehicles can dramatically reduce commute times by reducing waits to near zero and massively improving traffic efficiency.
Fourth, a sane urban design will have a law and information system that distributes operating/commute times evenly along morning and evening windows to effectively mitigate rush hours.
A failure of thought process on every level; ideas this facially bad should be recognized immediately.
If you want to live close to work then fine, that's your choice. But some people want different things. An hour-long commute each day is for many an acceptable price to live where and how they like. From a sustainability and productive angle it would probably be best if we all slept in the room above the shop. That was the 18th century and we got rid of it for good reason. So give Ford credit for seeking to improve the commute when so many today seem bent on its eliminating.
I think most people being vocal against commuting and working in offices will agree that's it's up to you, but at the moment the issue is society is very much optimised for people who like commuting. Poor public transport, remote office parks with nothing around, offices in the city centre where even tiny apartments are unaffordable, etc.
If you like commuting then that's great, but the idea of commuting an hour+ each day is my idea of hell :D
The other argument that gets thrown around is that managers want to make sure people are working. First, this is hugely insulting, as it implies that the company doesn't trust people to be capable of managing their time. Second, it's completely ineffective as people are perfectly capable of finding ways to waste time at the office. There are far better ways of doing performance metrics than making people sit in the same room together.