Anyone who travels on the roads, whether as driver or passenger, has experienced the discomfort, inconvenience, and danger from deteriorated highway infrastructure. Traffic congestion, not only in major cities but also in small towns, is dysfunctionally severe. Besides the potholes and crumbling pavement in too many places, the level of traffic most everywhere exceeds the original road design.
Add to that the factor of drivers with different abilities and reaction habits, who brake at disparate traffic thresholds, all of which increases congestion where it otherwise might not be as pronounced. The combination of very slow drivers with those who speedily dart back and forth between lanes amplifies obvious safety risks. Pedestrians on crowded streets introduce additional chances for personal tradgedy.
I don’t want to be in the middle of that, and I’m sure you don’t either. We can do better, much better. (Separating travel ways for vehicles, bicycles, and pedistrians is desirable and doable even in the oldest populated areas. It might be the best way to preserve historic areas while simultaneously making them more accessible. But that’s a different non-conflicting discussion for another time.)
Let’s start by addressing here the situation with highways. Several proofs of concept and pilot programs have already demonstrated that fixing road travel and fixing it well is feasible and practical—right now. This article is a sketch of how this might be done on a national, even global, scale. Done right, it will be a good ride.
The solution is in designing, developing, and implmenting an integrated highway vehicle control system. This would provide automated inflow, outflow, and merges; lack of those things causes the current traffic congestion. It reduces the human factor to near zero in driving each vehicle, but this is not the use of “autonomous” cars and trucks that has been discussed elswhere.
In this solution, each vehicle is under coordinated control of a system that is aware of the status, direction, and speed of every other vehicle on the road. That may have been impractical in the past, but it’s fully possible with today’s computing and networking power and associated automated steering and speed control hardware. With this, instead of shaking your head at that idiot driver in front of you, a reliable arrival time is more assured than ever.
Here’s a preview of the salient features in this concept:
- Connectivity will be via wireless, thus easier to install everywhere
- Communication standards are already in place; we only need to establish Application Program Interfaces (API) for the control system itself
- Each vehicle would be outfitted with its unique IPv6 address and metadata
- The system will use central control and monitoring, and smart local tamperproofing, including the use of Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) for all end points
- The system design, firmware, and software will be open source. A permissive license (that allows for derivative commercial use) would be fine
- Some who are familiar with the software used in commercial Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems will think of the multi-layered complexity of these systems, and rightly also their associated expense. This vehicle flow system will be just as complex—but with the added critical requirement of functioning in near real time. The real time requirement might be serviced by pushing all telemetry and compute functions as close as possible to the network edge (see further description of this in the Vehicle Flow Concept and Architecture section).
- I think it’s fair and proper to provide developers commensurate compensation for developing this software as open source. As the software might also find use in other fields (such as aviation, aerospace, and military applications), additional support might come from separate government and industry players in these areas.
Are you concerned over surveillance with this? That train left the station years ago. Your mobile phone knows where it is at all times; and it talks (to a lot of things without your help). Not that any of us should intentionally broadcast our personal information, but living incognito is becoming increasingly impossible. Full stop. No, I don’t like that either, but it’s reality; and privacy safeguards would be integral to this system.
The result would be a highway system that gets us where we want to go safely, comfortably, and on time. And without the stress driving now creates!
This introductory article will be accompanied by the four following articles (all of which together may be considered a high level system specification):
- Vehicle Flow Concept and Architecture
- Data and Control Between Vehicles and the System (and each other)
- Communications Infrastructure for Vehicle Control
- Physical Aspects—Tires on the Pavement
Each of these follow-on articles when published will be an expanded part of this article.
No valid excuse exists for not implementing smart highways. The tech is there; just establish the communication and performance standards, and build to them. Do it now.
mcw
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