What will U.S. transport look like in 2045?
IMAGE: FLICKR, MATT LEMMON
In January 2014, the U.S. Department of Transportation tasked a team of experts with producing a comprehensive report on the state of the country's infrastructure. The resulting report, at more than 300 pages, paints a sorry picture of systems designed and implemented as much as 80 years ago, when planners had far fewer people to consider.
But it also reveals high hopes for America's future.
"This document's really focused on breaking open a conversation we need to have as a country," said Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx, in a Q&A with Google's Eric Schmidt at the company's headquarters in Mountain View, California.
The report has three parts: The first on the major trends shaping the transportation system (such as population growth and increasing freight traffic), another on the implications of those trends for each mode of transportation (highways, public transit, pedestrian, aviation, freight) and finally a discussion of future scenarios and policy options.
The report stresses the importance of approaching the future — specifically 30 years from now, in 2045 — with a new perspective on what transportation in the country should look like.
"The U.S. transportation system is still proceeding under a 20th century model in which our policies, practices, and programs are presumed to be sufficient, as are the resources devoted to them," states the report. "Beyond Traffic is offered to the public ... to objectively frame critical policy choices that need to be made."
How will we move? America’s population will grow by 70 million by 2045. How will we build a transportation system to accommodate a growing population and changing travel patterns?How will we move things? By 2045, freight volume will have increased 45 percent. How will we reduce freight chokepoints that drive up the cost of owning a business?
"The numbers are so much larger than I thought," said Google's Eric Schmidt, referring to both population and freight.
Indeed, the report's projections of what the country would experience without major adjustments to the highway infrastructure make present-day traffic jams in Atlanta, D.C. and Los Angeles look like a drive in the country.
IMAGE: DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION
Growth isn't the only problem, according to the report. Much of the existing infrastructure is crumbling — and not just metaphorically. In 2013, the American Society of Civil Engineers gave the country's bridges a C+.
"One in nine of the nation’s bridges are rated as structurally deficient," the society wrote, "while the average age of the nation’s 607,380 bridges is currently 42 years."
IMAGE: FLICKR, MIKE WILLS
Public transit, from subways to buses to light rail, is likewise aged and in need of preservation, according to the report. The DOT suggests significant investment in expanding systems so mass transit can grow to more than the 2% of all U.S. trips it currently represents.
"When these cities were built, somehow they were willing to build the subways," said Schmidt, adding that new subway systems are next to impossible to get approved and funded.
Freight is also a focus of the DOT's report. Foxx said Monday that many Americans may not realize the transportation infrastructure required to get them the products they order online.
Google, as host to Secretary Foxx and his staff and a stakeholder in a future of driverless cars (and Uber), is more than an observer to the government's transportation projects.
Technology, and the automation it makes possible, are a major part of what the report outlines for the future.
Foxx — who arrived to the event with Schmidt in a driverless car — was a vocal proponent of autonomous vehicles and transit-hacking startups.
“You’re going to see public transit agencies behaving more like Uber,” Foxx told BuzzFeed. “Who is to say there aren’t joint ventures with some of these on-demand services to provide transit services ... it may seem like a wild idea today, but you don’t know.”
Although the report outlines a wide array of problems and possible solutions, Foxx emphasized its purpose is to be a starting point for a conversation.
"[The report] does not advocate for specific policy solutions," the DOT said in the announcement. "Rather, it underscores critical decision points facing the country, by means of data-driven analysis, research, expert opinions and public engagement."
The DOT plans to produce a final version of the report, which was released as a draft Monday, later this year.
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