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PRISM Engineering NEWS

Traffic Engineering is evolving around the world




Video location:  ChongQING CHINA, 2018 BY GRANT JOHNSON, TE

Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority voted earlier this week to move forward with contract negotiations with Musk’s Boring Co. to construct a tunnel transportation system connecting the roughly two-mile-long convention center.

3/15/2019

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“What if we could create something that the rest of the industry -- in China, in Denver, in Atlanta -- said 'God I wish we had, I wish we would’ve,'” Chuck Bowling, who serves on the LVCVA board of directors as well as the president of Mandalay Bay, said during a committee meeting Tuesday on whether to continue talks with The Boring Company.

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The Boring Co. said it could build these tunnels for $35 million to $55 million and that would be for TWO MILES!  That's a very cheap price, so my guess is that they are subsidizing this cost with their own money and doing this for the needed marketing it will provide, because there are so many nay sayers in today's world when it comes to doing anything super innovative like this... or like autonomous vehicles, or space travel, etc.  But Musk has already done the space travel thing, SPACE X is a fantastic success and it was the private enterprise that actually made it happen and made it relevant again.

The Boring Company's proposal to the Las Vegas Convention Center would feature Tesla vehicles, like the one in the photo rendition to the left, would operating though EXPRESS TUNNELS that connect the convention center’s main halls with the capability to transport roughly 11,000 passengers per hour.  That's a lot of people, when you consider that one lane of a freeway only carries about 2000 cars per hour, and does it at 60 mph.  ​
This is a great idea. Give Elon Musk credit for ambition, and for being successful. He is a genius at what he does, innovating, and transportation needs major innovation now, because some people, misguided as they may be, are thinking that we need to get rid of cars and try riding bikes for a while.  Um, no we don't.  What we need are more engineers to figure out the problem, and we need that portion of government who are roadblocking innovation, to get out of the way of roadblocking innovation.  We need to let the private sector take over the innovation because when your own hard earned money is on the line, when you own sweat and hours spent taking chances that something will come of all your visions and designs, then is the time that great things take place... when you don't take it for granted.  

The future of transportation will be with cars. Not just any cars, and they might not even look like a car, such as the rendition above, they will be merely transporters that have multiple functions.  They will drive themselves, and the people inside these transportation machines will be able to multi-task.  Riding in a tunnel prevents the possibility of getting T-Boned at an intersection. Having things autonomous helps prevent rear end accidents, and other kinds of accidents. Having a tunnel to travel in, removes all of the potential hazards of say, hitting a bicyclist, a pedestrian, a kid, somebody's pet animal, or even a train.  It removes all of the elements that are now responsible for 1,000,000 deaths / fatalities in the world each year having to do with motor vehicles.  It takes away the dangers of texting, falling asleep at the wheel, distractions while driving, drunk driving, speeding, reckless driving, etc., and makes it all about getting from point A to point B.  How can this NOT be a great thing??!  It is!

Grant Johnson, TE, is a registered traffic engineer in California,
and is passionate about the future of transportation and infrastructure.

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This is Much Safer than a Human can do.

5/25/2018

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Some behind the scenes tech at how a Waymo computer system can process the world around it in full 360 degrees.  With so many eyes on the road, and each item's location and speed being tracked and predicted, how could there be any doubt that this is not just almost equivalent to what a human could do, but is actually two or three orders of magnitude more than a human could accomplish.  This tech knows how fast all the cars and peds are moving, simultaneously, on a very busy street!  It even knows if a car is about to run a red light and slows down to just miss it, and then continue.  This will save lives.  AV will save lives and should be embraced sooner, not later.  PRISM Engineering is supportive of a full adoption of implementing AV tech in Smart Cities that can take advantage of Vision AV0, where autonomous vehicles and grade separations are the answer to reducing vehicle fatalities.  We need this sooner than later.
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Bike and Pedestrian Fatalities Higher than Ever in USA in 2018

5/7/2018

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Bike and Pedestrian Fatalities Higher than Ever in USA.  Current Methods of Safety Not Working to Reduce Fatalities

The bottom line is, the needle is not moving in the right direction to make people safer. 

With all of the billions that have been spent in the last decade to improve bike facilities and pedestrian facilities, we should see the number of fatalities each year drop. But just the opposite has been happening. 
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Isn't it is time to wake up and acknowledge this and consider current methods?  Methods like Cycle Tracks, more frequent Cross Walks, more Pedestrian Signals, Road Diets, and Complete Streets.  All of these are relatively new pushes in the USA, and we are seeing now the data that shows fatalities are UP. 

Way up.

The graph to the left shows that pedestrians are being killed in much higher numbers and rates now compared to a decade ago.


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If there are 37,000+ vehicle related deaths each year in the USA, and Pedestrians account for 15% of these, and they used to be only 11%, then this 4% increase represents 1,500 MORE pedestrian deaths each year compare to just 10 years ago.  The 37,000+ number is also at a peak.

Obviously, whatever is the mainstream safety push for transportation is not working to even bring down the number of fatalities each year in the USA, in fact, it is going the opposite direction.  Current methods are clearly not working and should be reconsidered as a whole.  Nobody quite understands this counter-intuitive result, but the Governor's Highway safety Association is aware of it. Here is what they are saying:

"IT IS ALARMING," says GHSA* executive director Jonathan Adkins, "and it's counter-intuitive." (*Governor's Highway safety Association). 



We need to pay attention to the facts, the accident history. "There's been an assumption that, because of increased safety of vehicles as we move toward semi-autonomous vehicles, that traffic deaths were going to go down," Adkins says. "We're seeing just the opposite, unfortunately, with a particular spike as it relates to pedestrians and cyclists."

from NPR's
Pedestrian Fatalities Remain At 25-Year High For Second Year In A Row:
After two years of marked increases, the number of pedestrian fatalities in the U.S. is holding steady with nearly 6,000 pedestrians killed in 2017, according to estimates from the Governors Highway Safety Association.

That's a 25-year high, GHSA says. While the rise "appears to be tapering off," the group said, the "continuation of pedestrian fatalities at virtually the same pace ... raises continued concerns about the nation's alarming pedestrian death toll."

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New traffic methods for PEDS/Bikes have not moved the needle. They LOOK good, but... Cycle Tracks and XWalks are not solving it. PED bridges are not cutting the fatalities (UP! to 40k / year in USA) ...no improvements! "Vision Zero" as currently envisioned seems beyond reach. We need new Engineered & real solutions that will eliminate mixing of vulnerable travel modes with vehicles.  J-Walkers, PEDS crossing paths with vehicles, cyclists mixing with cars/trucks assuming safety, while traveling along side some incompetent or risk-taking drivers: HUMAN factors... and not Improving.


The assumption that any kind of "new and improved" traffic control device specifically for PEDS or BIKES will make them safer needs to be questioned, since the accident fatality data does not bear this out. The needle has been moving in just the opposite direction, and we can no longer assume that more striping, different striping, or even complete streets will make pedestrians safer. What needs to happen is a realization that MORE pedestrians mingled with Vehicles on roadways where cars/trucks can hit people directly, is turning out to be a dangerous thing.
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AV is coming very fast now.  It is so competive.  Competition drives the pace in 2018

5/1/2018

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Autonomous Vehicles (AV) are the biggest disruptor to come along, ever.  Just think about it.  It will change so many industries.  It will change Traffic Engineering, and Transportation Planning, I can see that, and so I am looking at all of our technology and investment in how we see traffic, and it will all come undone. It will all become in years, irrelevant.  When humans are taken out of the equation for driving, everything changes. There is no more speed limit, for instance.  No more 85th percentile thinking. No more radar studies. No more accident history. No more guard rails, or pavement markings or signs as we now know them. No more need for signals, that's for humans too. What we will have are SYSTEMS, but these systems need to be developed with humans in mind, and transportation connectivity.  A whole new custom system for all cities, in all states and provinces, in every single country throughout the world. This is a huge industry in the making. It is not the end. It is a disruption, and we all need to adapt.  Taxi drivers, bus drivers, truck drivers will very soon be a thing of the past.  Schools will be different.  Cars will be different, will be a service industry.  Safety and security of these new systems need to be worked out. We would not send our kids on buses where we knew they might be kidnapped.  We would not want a woman to be alone in a AV POD with a group of menacing men, on a long ride to somewhere. We need to think all this through, in how to make this safe and harmonious.  There is a LOT more to think about and plan for, when we are talking about society.  Its not just about getting from point A to point B.  Soccer moms will no longer be driving their kids to the games, but maybe that introduces new problems.  Will the kids behave on the way? Will they get lost or miss their stop?  Who will help them in an emergency? Will the parents just ride with their children in an AV POD, or will they have their own AV POD?  There are thousands of questions on HOW it will roll out.
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Ford's Executive Chairman Bill Ford says Not so Fast...

You need more than just AV tech on the road, you also need smart cities... trust and ethics, job displacement, etc.
PRISM Engineering is also looking at the big picture from an Infrastructure Engineering and Transportation Planning standpoint, and understands the following:
1) In order for AV to be effective and yield safety results (VisionAV0) for cars, bikes, and peds, you need a new roadway INFRASTRUCTURE, a smart one, and that also separates the modes of travel.
2) No longer is it safe to mix pedestrians, bikes, and cars / trucks in the same real estate on the roads, without barriers or grade separations. Our accident rates and data prove this.  They are going up in recent years despite new traffic controls, and are currently unacceptable.  40K fatalities each year in the USA is a terrible statistic, unacceptable, and status quo is no longer acceptable especially when we CAN find a solution(s). 
3) New solutions are required. It will require planning and engineering coordination at all levels of government... civil engineering and transportation planning to bring this together in a meaningful and effective way.  While I don't necessarily agree with Bill Ford's assessment that this will take lots of time, it doesn't have to...because as a Traffic Engineer who's main goal is the safe movement of people, I want to see safety first, capacity and throughput second.  We have a huge safety problem NOW.  We need to take action for safety's sake, use the latest technology, not put lipstick on a pig, but redesign and retool our infrastructure in smart ways... and AV can help and is in fact, the answer to our safety problem.

Daimler Mercedes Benz is one of the leaders in AV.  Thinking away ahead, and planning, implementing. Thinking society too.

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Mercedes SMART car (AV) https://electrek.co/2017/08/30/mercedes-daimler-unveils-new-all-electric-autonomous-smart-prototype/

"Who's afraid of defining the future?" asks Wilko Stark, the man tasked with pulling Daimler and its flagship brand, Mercedes-Benz, into the future.

from the article:
"Part of Daimler's future plans include an onslaught of 10 new electric models by 2022, and a fair bit of autonomy to with them.

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Wilko Stark, in charge of this at Daimler says "We have a clear rollout plan in which kind of cities we’re going to enter. First of all, for self-driving cars, the weather conditions should be pretty good. It’s probably more in the South. And we have to build up a good relationship with the city; that’s quite important. They are all, everywhere, interested in self-driving cars. Everybody is knocking on our door, but they are of course looking for electric vehicles. And you have to build up a different approach from Lyft or especially Uber, because we want to define and develop a future together with the cities. In the next decade we will begin to see self-driving cars in major cities in Europe and the US."

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GM is Launching Robocars with NO STEERING WHEELS or PEDALS next year in 2019.

In case anyone is wondering how fast this is coming...  GM is also in the running.  But there many others.  In fact, ALL car companies are in on the action and are attempting to define how this is all going to play out, because their very existence depends on it.  And in their defense, they own it, they are in the driver's seat. They have the vehicle technology which is so advanced, that companies like Apple and Google are literally playing catch up. While Google and Apple think about and work on making software that controls some robotics in the car, the real tech is in the engine,
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from the WIRED article:
"After more than
a century making vehicles for humans to drive, General Motors has ripped the heart out of its latest ride, and is now holding the grisly spectacle up for all the world to see: A car with no steering wheel. And it plans to put a fleet of these newfangled things to work in a taxi-like service, somewhere in the US, next year.
And no, this robo-chariot, a modified all-electric Chevrolet Bolt, doesn't have pedals either. This is GM's truly driverless debut, a car that will have to handle the world on its own. No matter what happens, you, dear human passenger, cannot help it now.
Terrifying? Maybe. But it's also a major step in GM’s aggressive bid to maintain its big dog status as the auto industry evolves away from individual ownership and flesh-and-blood drivers. And it’s just the beginning for the Detroit stalwart. “We’ve put together four generations of autonomous vehicles over the course of 18 months,” says Dan Ammann, GM’s president. “You can safely assume that the fourth generation won’t be the last.”
While Waymo, Uber, and others in this..."
  (read more at WIRED.COM)

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Autonomous Self-Driving Cars and Trucks and Transit

3/9/2018

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Often depicted in way over simplified conceptual drawings, the Autonomous Vehicle is consistently misunderstood.

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Autonomous Vehicles: In order for there to be compelling reason to incur the impact and expense of potentially retooling the entire vehicle industry, there would need to be compelling improvements to safety, capacity / efficiency, as well as the environment.  The autonomous vehicle has in principle, the capacity to improve all three, but the conceptual illustrations one can find today on the internet when searching for "autonomous vehicles" leave much to be desired... they generate more questions than answers in one's mind.  They are confusing.  Such as why does a picture show all this "connectivity and sensors" from each vehicle, but the traffic pattern on the freeway is identical to existing conditions?  Where is the benefit?  Capacity increase? Or why would one think that it would be a good idea to show vehicles criss-crossing past each other at right angles in an uncontrolled intersection, narrowly missing bumpers, as if that is a safe idea or design?  Logically, it's not.  A roundabout would be a much better idea, lower speeds, and significantly reduced conflict points (goes from 9 potential conflicts down to just 1).  In fact, it doesn't make any sense to introduce such a fallible and dangerous situation where serious injury can take place if technology fails in any way.  Also, what about bikes and pedestrians in such a situation? Its as if there were no serious thought put into these concepts when it comes to having Complete Streets.
UBER Autonomous car hits pedestrian.  news makes it look like autonomous is not safe
In my view, to be fair, a pedestrian was walking their bike across two lanes of a four lane boulevard that had a large median, in the dark, no crosswalks, becasue it was nowhere near an intersection opening (she was crossing a left turn bay first, an area where pedestrians are never expected.  Technically, the pedestrian walking her bike was jaywalking in a high speed area, in the dark.  In the video the bike is visible at a distance of about 60-100 feet (only three dashed stripes visible, 72 feet distance) .  However, for a 45 mph roadway, the Safe Stopping Sight Distance is 360 feet.  The car was traveling 40 mph, and a human would need 300 feet to stop in time. There is no way this was possible for a human driver to avoid even if they had seen her 200 feet back instead of 100.  By the time a human's foot lifts from the floor to press the brake pedal, at least one second has gone by.  They would have already hit this pedestrian before the vehicle even had a chance to slow down.   Thne formula for this is dPRT = 1.47 Vt (US Customary), which means there is at least 60 feet of travel distance at 40 mph before the driver would even PERCEIVE that they need to hit the brake. Then there is the time for the foot to lift from the floor to the pedal and hit the brake.  The pedestrian in the mean time, in this case, is hit, with or without an autonomous vehicle.
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The cyclist/pedestrian did not look at the approaching car, until the last second, it was as if they were oblivious to the dangers of crossing a street, a straight street, where it would be extremely easy to see oncoming headlights.   Who is at fault?  In my view, absolutely the pedestrian.  Because it was dark, this pedestrian was not readily visible with headlights.  Yes, the UBER car's lidar or radar most certainly should have picked this up in the dark as it does not need light to function, but it failed on that.  This is irrelevant as to why this accident happened, it would  have happened with a regular driver and a regular car.  A human would not have been able to react in time based on our most basic standards of road design.  This is a completely unfair story and writeup, painting some narrative that driverless cars are more dangerous than human drivers.  Not if this accident would have happened otherwise.  How often pedestrians in the path of moving vehicles at night, have been hit.  How dangerous it is for a pedestrian to cross a street in the dark, with oncoming traffic, and fail to yield the right of way, while remaining mostly invisible?  
what components are in an autonomous car ?
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Stopping Sight Distance = PERCEPTION TIME + REACTION TIME + BRAKING TIME
​Autonomous vehicles theoretically change this equation to: SuperFast PERCEPTION TIME + SuperFast REACTION TIME + BRAKING TIME where the braking time remains the same because it is a function of tires, speed, friction, etc., but the Perception Time is a fraction of what humans need to make a decision that they need to brake...theoretically, and the Reaction Time is greatly shortened because no human foot has to move from the floor to get above the pedal to push it.

Any Autonomous Vehicle solution MUST also take into consideration the entire body of transportation modes, especially pedestrians and bikes.  A pedestrian or cyclist will never be in the autonomous category, so these are mixed transportation use situations.

Good examples of extreme traffic situations can be found in China where density is consistently very high throughout urban cities.  n Chongqing China there are residential and business skyscrapers that go on and on for miles and miles, averaging 30 stories tall.  ​
Sidewalks are necessarily very wide, from 10 to 20 feet, to accommodate numerous pedestrians. The video to the right shows an area of the massive City of Chongqing where vehicle traffic has been completely separated from pedestrian traffic as a need.  There are so many pedestrians in the area of skyscrapers, that it was not practical to have these interact with vehicles via crosswalks controlled by signal.  There is not enough capacity. 

​The solution in this video was to literally BURY the traffic in a submerged roadway, and build a pedestrian square that extended numerous blocks and built on top of the submerged four lane road.  The pedestrians never hear the traffic below, and safety is greatly enhanced.  
THIS is a compelling reason to implement such an expensive change for the benefit of all, including drivers of vehicles.  90% of residents in Chongqing do NOT own or drive a car.   As one watches the video of regular drivers on these massive 9-lane roadways, one can think of what benefit would come to the system if all vehicles were autonomous.  In my view, safety would not only improve, but efficiency as well and capacity could be tripled as vehicles perfectly coordinate the merging, with tighter headways, and regulated speeds.

So What will an Autonomous Vehicle transportation system look like? What must it look like?

First of all, it must be safe for pedestrians.  In the China video above, the pedestrians are completely separated from the vehicle traffic, because it is not safe or practical to ever have these meet in such high numbers.  So there must be separation. There must be grade separation (or in the case of the China video above, a complete separation of vehicle traffic by tunnel if necessary). Grade separations are expensive, but to have a truly autonomous system and remove the human error factor that introduces accidents, often fatal accidents, a separation is needed.  If a car is going 60 mph autonomously, and a child runs in front of it, the car no matter how automated, cannot stop in time, and fatality may occur, traffic will come to standstill, etc.  We grade separate freeways, and now all roads with autonomous vehicles will need some method of separation in order to achieve the desired levels of safety, of capacity, of efficiency, even the environment and air quality.  Fences.  Ped and Bike bridges.  Even signal systems tied in to the autonomous computer system, coordinated and optimized for safety of peds and bikes.

​The future of traffic engineering will be to develop solutions that actually make sense, are safe and efficient, and which can take existing right-of way and turn it into a system where cars are separated from the pedestrians and bikes to improve safety, capacity, efficiency and air quality.
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FORD has NIGHT DRIVING CAR in Arizona

5/6/2016

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The USA is once again Leading the World on the forefront of auto-technology!

from USA TODAY: "SAN FRANCISCO - Call it a car with night vision goggles.
​
Ford engineers working on the company's autonomous car technology recently succeeded in making a self-driving Ford Fusion lap its Arizona Proving Grounds in complete darkness, using laser radar, or Lidar, as its guide.

OK, so obviously they are making a point, and a great one at that. 

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It is possible, NOW, to have a car get around without any lights and so the cameras on board are not really cameras at all. They are LIDAR devices, a kind of radar that many engineering firms use to survey terrain, buildings, and all conditions of the environment.

It's not just Google doing this stuff.

  • The car drove with no headlights, and no driver.
  • It collected environment object and terrain data by beams of laser light shot out into the desert.
  • On-board computers instantly concluded where the car was in relation to the landscape data provided by those laser scans.
FORD DRIVERS wore military-grade night vision goggles in order to monitor the car's behavior.  See how this went down with the Youtube video below:
 Ford is testing dozens of these vehicles all over.  So are other car companies.  This phenomenon is happening all over the world. The auto makers know it is coming, and being pushed by Google they are moving quick to implement.
Google is also expanding its self-driving car test program, but Google lacks the car manufacturing capability, for now.  

FORD / GOOGLE ALLIANCE  last week

a week ago... Ford and Google Teamed Up (alliance) to Support Driverless Cars!

In an April 27 New York Times story it was reported that:
​DETROIT — In an unusual alliance between a traditional automaker and a technology company, Ford Motor and Google on Wednesday joined to lead a coalition of companies that advocate federal approval of driverless cars in the near future.
By teaming up to promote regulations that favor fully-autonomous vehicles, Ford and Google may be moving toward closer cooperation on the actual development of driverless models.
Ford’s chief executive, Mark Fields, has said in recent months that his company is evaluating potential partnerships with other firms on autonomous vehicles, but has not made any formal moves in that direction.
Still, by forming a public policy coalition that includes Google, Ford is aligning with Silicon Valley’s most prominent supporter of cars that can operate without a driver.
Source:  
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/28/business/ford-and-google-team-up-tosupport-driverless-cars.html?_r=0
The nation’s top auto safety regulator, Mark Rosekind, said the federal government wants to reduce the death toll in auto accidents, and thinks driverless technology could help reduce the annual death toll from traffic accidents: 32,675 people died in auto accidents in 2014!  He said 90 percent of vehicle accidents are human error.

It seems like a no-brainer that computers can do a better job at reducing these mistakes, many of which are from distracted driving, something a computer has no problem with.

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SELF DRIVING CARS: A New MODE of Travel

5/4/2016

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Self driving cars will change everything, for the better. They will increase capacity of the roadways by three times minimum, and that means more room for bike lanes, ped lanes, and medians and rail.  It means a lot of good things.  Its not just Google pioneering on this, far from it.  Giant Tech companies are way ahead in my opinion, because they actually BUILD cars, and Google is making things from scratch, hence the little bug like cars.   Recently, Google announced that it would be testing its prototype of a driverless car on roads in the summer of 2016 inside of California.  Many still think that Self-driving cars are a futuristic idea, decades out.  This simply is not true. Numerous car companies are ALL working on it, all independently.  Ford, Mercedes, BMW, and Tesla, etc. all have self-driving features in the works.

I believe we should be embracing this technology because it is going to vastly improve the quality of life and help lower vehicle miles traveled, lower or eliminate congestion, eliminate accidents, reduce the death rate of 30,000 dead each year by significant margins.  They will also enable the idea of shared vehicles with businesses like UBER leading the way in changing the culture of vehicle ownership vs. shared vehicles.

But Bullet Trains are still the rage in some countries, like China where I lived for 2.5 years. I rode these fantastic trains. They are awesome and useful and BEAT the car ride HANDS DOWN because you go much faster and also don't have to have the stress of driving.

But let's bring that to the USA and see how it fits here.  First of all, 100% of the people here have a car, or two, or more. In China, only 10% have cars and in very poor cities, even less.  This is such a huge and significant cultural difference in how we move about.  So the transportation market to choose to ride a train is much much higher in China than in the USA because of this little talked about demographic:  Car ownership.   If those people without a car in China want to travel to a nearby city they have to take a train, or for more money, a bus.  If they can afford a Bullet Train ticket, they will take a Bullet Train and get there 4 or 5 times faster, but for a corresponding increase in price.  Most ride the cheap trains out of necessity.

Once a bullet train gets installed in California, China will be another decade ahead of us in terms of infrastructure installed and possibly technological advances in HSR. They already have, right now, these trains connecting at high speeds between ALL major cities in that country, and we have nothing like that. In fact, we have nothing even similar because the antiquated AMTRAK train is just that.  The Bullet Train in California when finally fully constructed in 20 years will be a start but it will serve a very small demographic of people who live here, and it may be less than state of the art in the world. 

How Googles Self Driving Car WORKS--

TWO YEARS AGO: One of Google's safety drivers takes a ride in their second generation vehicle, the Lexus, to understand how Google's self-driving technology works on the road.

Now they feel they are READY FOR THE ROAD!

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    Grant Johnson, registered Traffic Engineer, shares insights and experiences from around the world.

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