This article's view is a visionary one, and I applaud that: But people promote (bullet) trains, subways, etc. as revolutionary inventions when they really aren't. They've been around for 50+ years and have 'lost' to cars in the marketshare battle, in Europe, US, China, etc. I want us to focus on new technologies like the instead of continuing to push old ones like it's a 'sprawl conspiracy' keeping them down (when their use is optimized for downtowns). As uvdiv mentions, the personal vs. mass transit issue is big spectrum.
Things like the mag-lev pod transport system, flyways, etc. are awesome. We should develop all of them and try to make them the best we can. But it's a gigantic mistake to discount the car - we have something to learn from their success: People like freedom, people like privacy, not everyone wants to live in a dense city.
That's why I say better/self driving cars are the practical solution to the future, but we could easily see something else revolutionize the situation by 2060. And as for over-crowded roads, The current road network is way more than sufficient to handle traffic with self-driving cars: You can put 5-10x the number of cars on a highway and not jam it if computers are driving. Jetpacks, after all, will have the collision problem too.
Things like the mag-lev pod transport system, flyways, etc. are awesome. We should develop all of them and try to make them the best we can. But it's a gigantic mistake to discount the car - we have something to learn from their success: People like freedom, people like privacy, not everyone wants to live in a dense city.
That's why I say better/self driving cars are the practical solution to the future, but we could easily see something else revolutionize the situation by 2060. And as for over-crowded roads, The current road network is way more than sufficient to handle traffic with self-driving cars: You can put 5-10x the number of cars on a highway and not jam it if computers are driving. Jetpacks, after all, will have the collision problem too.