Instant Genius - Future of transportation, with Paris Marx

Episode Date: March 10, 2023

Will we soon see self-driving cars and fancy city automation? Or will existing transport finally improve? We spoke to Paris Marx, author of the book Road to Nowhere to find out what the future of transport will look like. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Music just as the artist intended. Visit name audio.com. to learn more. From BBC Science Focus magazine, this is instant genius, a bite-sized masterclass in podcast form. I'm Alex Hughes, staff writer at BBC Science Focus magazine. This week we're talking about the future of transportation, both in cities and rural areas. Will we soon be seeing self-driving cars and mass automation? or is the future all about improving the existing infrastructure that's already available?

I'm joined by Paris Marx to discuss this topic. They are the author of the book Road to Nowhere, what Silicon Valley gets wrong about the future of transportation. They tell me all about what to expect from the future of transportation, weighing up both future innovation and the power of what is already out there. For years, we as a society have been told that the future of transport, will be flying cars, self-driving vehicles, and these crazy high-speed tunnels running through the city. Is this actually how the future of our cities looks, or is that all just a bit of a pipe dream?

Yeah, I think that's a bit of a pipe dream, unfortunately. Sorry to throw some cold water on those grand visions that we've been told over the past number of years. I think the future of transportation is really up to us to decide, but it's going to look much more kind of mundane and basic. It's not going to have all of these flying cars and things like that that the tech industry has told us. But it's up to us to decide, you know, are we still going to be as reliant on, you know, personal vehicles as we are today? Or are we going to try to kind of re-center on things like public transportation, cycling, and these other means of getting around that, you know, are less energy intensive that can be more affordable for people that can provide good connectivity if we make

the kind of social investments in ensuring that there's strong infrastructure there. But I think that the notion that the tech industry is going to swoop in and save us with all of its grand visions for transportation is not a reality. And over the past decade has really been shown not to work out. So do you think the focus should be more on improving the existing public transport like buses and trains or looking into these innovations that the tech industry is sort of pushing, or even is it just a combination of all of these things? I would say to a degree it's a combination, right? I don't want to say that I'm like anti-new transport technology, but I think the problem

has been that we've been a bit too distracted by the potential for technologies to solve the various problems that we recognize exist in the transport system, you know, whether that's the time that we spend stuck in traffic, whether that's the emissions that come from, and transportation, whether that's the number of deaths that happen on our roads from, you know, crashes and things like that. There are a number of issues that we recognize exist within the transport system today. But unfortunately, it's not going to be so easy to fix them as just kind of putting some new computers in our cars with, you know, advanced algorithms and things like that. It's going to take, you know, real kind of political decision making and political will to

change those things. And that means that there might be technologies that we can implement that will help us, you know, to that goal, but ultimately it will be about political decisions. And that's why I think, you know, investing in transit, investing in cycling, thinking about how we build our communities much more fundamentally is really going to be how we tackle those challenges rather than just implementing some new technologies. And this is somewhat of a wide question, but when we're talking about these problems, what are the key issues that emerge with our current system of transport. And I know there's no easy way to solve them, but what is the way that we go about changing things? Yeah, you know, I think one of the reasons that these visions that the tech

industry has put out there, things like self-driving cars or flying cars even or, you know, tunnels under our cities that have really gotten people's attention, I think part of the reason that has happened is because people do recognize that there are problems in the transport system as it exists today, right? People do spend a lot of time stuck in traffic. We do know that people die and are injured on our roads because we're so reliant on personal vehicles, right? People do recognize that we need to do something about the way that we get around because it's contributing to climate change and we need to start reducing those emissions. And I think people also recognize that just the way that we've built our communities for a long

time has left us kind of really far from the things that we depend on from the people that we want to see. And maybe that wasn't the best choice to kind of build our communities in such a sprawling way. especially here in North America where I am. And so these are a number of things that need to be addressed and that I think people want to have addressed. And so then the question is how we go about doing that. And I don't see how just implementing a new technology is going to be the way that we address those fundamental problems, right?

As I said, they can probably help, but they're not going to be the single thing that really kind of upends the way that we get around, as we've been told for about a decade now, right? and rather that's going to take decisions by government to look at the various decisions that they've implemented over decades now that have put us in the position where we are today to start to unwind those, to start to put in different policies that are more focused around building communities that are more oriented around transit and walking and cycling so that people are not so far from the things that they depend on. but also we're making more investments in those public infrastructures rather than just saying we're going to build the roads and then you can go buy a car and that's how you're going to get around. So I think that that is kind of the key way that we're going to need to address this. And that's obviously, you know, governments are not just going to do that automatically.

That's also going to require pressure from the public to kind of push them to do those things. And you touched it a little bit there. I think it's an interesting point. In a lot of parts of the states, it's a very spread out system of cities here in Europe. it's for the most part very tightly packed together, lots of small roads and buildings everywhere. Is it a question of for each location there having to be a different way of addressing this? Absolutely. I think each place where we're looking at implementing these solutions is going to look a little bit different, right? In North America, as you say, we have the legacy of kind of a more

sprawled urban and suburban environment that we're going to have to deal with as we try to address these problems. And so that means that the solutions that we're going to have to take are probably going to look a little bit different. But, you know, that's also not to say that the UK doesn't have communities that are, you know, built to be quite spread out as well and quite oriented around cars. So, you know, there are still issues that need to be addressed in that context. I think it's just luckily, you know, there aren't as many high barriers that we face over here to address those sorts of those sorts of challenges. But I do think that like, you know, I think it can sound like a really kind of negative or even kind of difficult thing to do, right? Oh, no, we need to like upend how we get around.

We need to try to change everything. This is going to be so difficult. I actually see it as more like an opportunity, right? We already recognize that things need to change right now because, you know, there's a lot of focus on the climate crisis and what we're going to do to reduce emissions in the transport system. And a lot of the focus has been on, you know, we need to move to electric cars. And that is part of the solution. But I think it also kind of opens up an opportunity for us to think more deeply about the way that our communities function right now, the way that they're working and how they're not working, and how we start to make some decisions to start to change those things that have communities that are more oriented around what we want to see, where transportation is more

affordable, is easier to access. You know, there's less inequity in how we get around. And, you know, if there's ever going to be a moment for us to address these things, I think the moment of this transition, the recognition that things already need to change because of the climate crisis, This gives us an opportunity to change things on a more fundamental level, too. And with any kind of change like this, I guess there needs to be some sort of prioritization. So when we're looking at this future of the cities, is it the pedestrian, cyclists, the public transport user, people in personal cars, or is it a bit of everyone that we need to be trying to redesign a city for?

Yeah, I think it's certainly a bit of everyone, right? I think if you're going to leave particular people behind, that's probably not going to be very popular, right? But I think it's also about putting out a different vision for what the city is, how we get around in the city, how this is actually going to work into the future, and making sure that we signal to people and we explain to people how this is going to be beneficial to them. I think if you're saying, you know, we're going to make more investments in cycling infrastructure, we're going to make more investments in the public transport system. for some people that's going to show them very clearly that they'll be able to get around more easily. You know, I know there's been a lot of challenges in the UK with the bus networks, especially outside of London. And there's a lot of opportunities there to improve those. So a lot of people can see improvements in how they get around, right? For some drivers, that might not be as clear to

them. And so the messaging, you know, shouldn't be that, you know, we're just going to get rid of all cars overnight because I don't think that that is a realistic expectation. But to say, you know, you can still get around with your car, but there's going to be a lot more options for you to be able to get around in a reliable way. So if you want to take your car less often, or maybe you want to consider not having a car at all, that is going to become more realistic to you if you're living in a place right now where maybe that's much harder to imagine. Because around the world, there's quite a lot of cities now that are introducing diesel bans or charging larger amounts for driving your own car in cities. Do you think that's part of trying

to improve that issue to incentivize people to take other routes where possible? Yeah, it depends, I think, on how it is implemented. I think some of these policies can be implemented well. I think in other cases, maybe they're not as beneficial as we might hope to expect. And so I would say, you know, where they are implemented well, it's not just that you kind of put a charge on driving a diesel vehicle or driving a vehicle in a particular part of the city. But as that happens, you know, there's a lot of investment made in those alternatives too. So there's a clear kind of option for you as you are, as it's made more difficult for you to drive your car, right? But then on top of that, I would say that the focus shouldn't only be on pricing. I think that, especially, you know,

with the kind of market oriented mindset that our governments have had for several decades now, like, you know, very focused on price signals and things like that. It can be very easy to think that, okay, all we need to do is put a price on this thing, and then that will solve the problem. And that's not necessarily the case. And so there are a lot of cities, you know, cities like Paris or Oslo, for example, that are making progress on these things as well and haven't brought in the same kind of prices that, say, London, for example, has. And in those cases, what they do is they still make those investments in the alternatives. And there's much more of a focus on kind of reallocating street space, right, and how we think about who should have the right to that

space. And so instead of having so many lanes for cars, things are switched over to bicycle lanes or to bus lanes and less of that space is given to the car. So there's less incentive then to drive your vehicle because that becomes more difficult. And there's much more of a focus on getting people to get around in these other ways that we might think are more environmentally beneficial. That might be more affordable for people. And that might fit better into the vision of the future of the city that we have. Ambition comes in all shapes and size. At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank.

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Name audio pushes cutting-edge technology to ensure digital precision whilst sustaining Pratt, pace, rhythm and timing, the elusive quality that makes music feel alive and gives it, emotional texture. Today, in partnership with French acoustic specialist focal, name audio creates systems that deliver exceptional sound and unforgettable listening experiences at home. Try it for yourself at a focal powered by name boutique. Visit focal powered by name.com for more information. You mentioned a couple of examples there, but in your mind is there a city or even a country as a whole that exemplifies what good public transport and good transport around a city can be. I would generally not point to a specific example, in part because of what we were talking about

before, where I think that this is going to look different in different contexts, in different cities, in different countries, right, that have the legacy of different decisions that have been made over a long period of time. And so how we address these problems is going to look different. I was in Amsterdam last summer and someone said to me, you know, would you just like the United States or Canada to look like Amsterdam? And it's like, well, maybe. Like I'm sure that there's things that our cities can learn from what Amsterdam has done, but it's going to look quite different as well, right? Because the legacy of how that city is built is quite different. And so I think, you know, depending on the city, the way that the solution is going to work is going to be different. You know, there's still many opportunities to invest in public transportation, to think about how we build communities, how we build housing. and things like that in a different way to encourage more public transit use, more cycling, you know, to make it more possible for people to walk around their cities rather than just having to drive. But I generally prefer not to point to a specific example as like, you know, this is, you know, the one that everyone should be trying to emulate or model because I think ultimately there are many

different types of cities around the world and ultimately how they respond to these problems is going to look a little bit different. It's fairly clear that whatever happens in the future of transport, based on the way that a lot of other industries are going, there'll be, I guess, an increase in automation and possibly the self-driving functions and a removal of, I guess, human error from the process or that's what the believed intention is. Would this also mean a change in laws and considerations for how we go about moving in a city? Yeah, it certainly would. And I would just kind of caveat the point as well that, you know,

certainly we've been told that a lot more things are going to be autonomously driven. I would say so far those promises have not really been realized. Certainly there are tests and trials and things happening on the roads of certain cities around the world. But we have certainly not seen the kind of broad rollout that we were promised a number of years ago, right? When the tech companies and some of the auto companies were kind of saying to us that in just a few years, all of the cars are going to be able to be autonomously driven, you won't have to pay attention, and all these sorts of things, right? That has really not come to pass. What we have seen is that more and more vehicles do have assisted driving functions within them. So there might be things like

Lane Keep Assist and other things that the vehicle can do to take over more of the function of driving, you know, kind of like an enhanced cruise control that we used to have in the past and that is now just, you know, a bit improved on what it used to be. But I think, it's unlikely that we see self-driving functions become kind of ubiquitous in the near future. And that's why I say that I think we were a bit distracted by those visions for, you know, about a decade, you know, with the tech companies saying that's what we could expect. And that left us less willing or less able to respond to the challenges that we faced. You know, it gave a lot of kind of political decision makers, I think, the option of saying, you know, we don't need to address these problems because

self-driving cars will be here in just a few years. And that has set us up for a case where these problems that exist in the transport system keep getting worse. And now we, you know, even have more reason to address them when we could have been taking more of these actions earlier if we had not been so distracted by what the tech company was telling us the future of transportation was going to be. But, you know, even with these assisted driving functions becoming more common, that doesn't mean that there won't need to be regulations on them, that regulators won't need to be paying attention to the potential effects of these things. We already see right now regulators are paying a bit more attention to what Tesla has been proposing with its autopilot and full self-drive features in its

vehicles. And in particular, how the way that they were promoted does not really align with how they are used in practice. And so there's a lot of opportunity there for regulators to look at that. And I think that they should be doing it to make sure that these functions are really safe, you know, as they're being implemented in these vehicles. But I don't think that self-driving cars are going to become ubiquitous in the near future. I don't know if it's the same anywhere near where you are, but in the city that I live, we had bikes that you could rent for an app for a while. And then when they disappeared, it moved over to e-scooters using the same sort of function. As these are popping up in more cities around the world, do you think that's actually a practical solution?

Is that helping or is this looking the wrong way for improvements? Yeah, I think that the one positive thing I would say about those services is I do think they help kick off a discussion around the streets and the transport system that we have and who should be allocated this space and who should receive more attention when we're thinking about transport policy and where we're putting our efforts, right? But I think that ultimately the kind of app-based scooter and bike rentals were probably the wrong way to go about solving this problem. You know, there's certainly a need for more effort to promote cycling and things like that in our cities, but just kind of rolling out all these vehicles on an app and having them kind of take over the sidewalks, I don't think was the best way to do it. And at least in North America, I didn't see much evidence that they kind of pushed local governments to make more investments in cycle lanes and safe parking and things like that, right? I think ultimately, if we're looking at expanding the use of bicycles and even scooters, which in some case, I think, can be worthwhile, can be a good thing to allow people and encourage people to do,

depending on the uses that they have, where they're using them, as long as they are regulated properly, that these things do potentially have a place in the transport system. But I think that the real key is having governments make these investments in cycling infrastructure, in safe parking spaces so that you know that if you're going to park your bike somewhere, it's not going to get stolen while you're in a shop or going to work or anything like that. And then on top of that, I think, is just encouraging people to really have their own bike or scooter. You know, and we see a number of governments around the world offer things like subsidies. If you want to buy a bike or an e-bike or even like in France during the pandemic, they had a subsidy to get your bike repaired if it wasn't working properly.

There are many different ways to encourage people to try these things to adopt these options. And one of the things that I think many people found if they started to use these app-based bicycle services was that if you use them regularly, at all, it quickly became much less expensive for you to just have owned your own in the first place, right? And that's just to say that I think there are many different ways that we can approach the problem. I think that the app-based services probably help kick off an important conversation, but I think ultimately if we're going to try to encourage people to use these things more often, to use bikes and scooters and things, the real solution looks a little bit different. I think for most of this kind of conversation, we've been talking about cities and

larger areas. What could be done to improve, I guess, the more rural areas around the world that aren't near major train lines or bus routes and cycling and other kinds of forms of transport take too long to get anywhere? Or is this just kind of an area where reliance and personal vehicles has to come in? Not necessarily, right? I would say that, I think that, especially in rural areas, we're definitely always going to see more reliance on personal vehicles than, say, in a city or something like that. But I do think that there is kind of not enough attention paid to rural areas when we talk about public transportation, right? We talk about it as something that happens in the cities and maybe kind of on the edges of cities, but then the rural areas, we don't talk so much about

it. And I think it's an important thing to discuss, right? Because I do think that there are a lot of opportunities there as well to ensure that people have access to a good transportation service without having to own their own vehicle. That doesn't mean that transit in a rural area is going to look exactly the same as in a city, right? There are different considerations there. There's less population density and less population overall. And so one of the, or some of the things that I would like to see if we're thinking about rural areas is a much greater investment in intercity or intertown bus services so that it's easier for people to kind of get around and connect to different communities, because often in many cases, you know, people will have friends or want to visit

stores or things like that in other communities that are nearby. And so I think that is something that's really important to have. In the past, trains probably would have served that function, but in many cases, train systems have been kind of rolled back a bit so you don't have those train services as much. So at least having a bus to kind of fill that, those routes would be really important. And then if we're thinking within communities in rural areas, there are many different ways to approach the potential kind of function of having a public transportation service available. In some cases, it might make sense to have a bus in a rural community, depending on, you know, the size of the community, right? But in other cases, it might make more sense to have more of

like a dispatch service where they can call to get a ride somewhere because that will make more sense for the population density and the number of people who'd be using the service, right? So I don't think that we should like write off rural communities at all. I think that there are many ways that we can address their transportation needs with public services. And we should definitely be looking into that. And yeah, I would love to see more of it. So if we were to say, jump forward in time, you know, 10 years from now, for example, what do you see as being the transport of the future, I guess? Yeah, it's a good question.

And, you know, I think that we'll still kind of be in flux in a sense, right? I would love to see us adopt more electric vehicles by that point, so we're less reliant on vehicles that are using fossil fuels. But I think that on top of, you know, having that focus on electrifying transportation, we also need to have a focus much more on trying to reduce the. amount of personal vehicle use, you know, overall, right? And that means making more investments in public transportation so that those options are available for people so that a frequent, affordable, reliable service is available to people and they don't need to buy their own car. Also, that we make

more investments in cycling infrastructure and encouraging people to give that a shot, you know, to try cycling around their communities to see if that will work for them. And then also thinking about more broadly, and obviously this is a longer term sort of thing to think about, but how we build communities like at a much more fundamental level, right? To think about how they are close to the services that people need. You know, there's a lot of discussion around 15-minute cities right now. Some people think that is controversial. But I think the idea that you should be able to reach, you know, the services that you rely on close to your home and where you live isn't something that should be controversial and actually seems like a very basic kind of tenant of how we build our communities. And so I think

that there's still a role for more technologies in thinking about how we make them work well. But I don't think that we're going to have the ubiquitous self-driving car that we just kind of get access to from our phone. And I don't think that we're going to have, you know, a lot more kind of flying vehicles in the air that we're taking to skip over traffic. You know, I think that these are kind of big ideas that haven't really worked out so well, you know, repetition of ideas that have been around for many decades and just kind of were revived by our modern tech industry.

But I think that the real solutions to these problems is much more basic and much. and kind of investing in the things that we know work well if we just make the right investments, give them the resources to be able to provide a good service to people. And that's what we should be focused on, I think. Thank you for listening to this episode of Instant Genius. That was Paris Marx, talking about the future of transportation. The Instant Genius podcast is brought to you by the team behind BBC Science Focus magazine, which you can find on sale now in supermarkets.

news agents, as well as on your preferred app store. Alternatively, you can come and find us online at tientfocus.com. This podcast is sponsored by Name, Audio and Focal. The texture and emotional depth of music can be lost through digital sources or poor signal. Name Audio believes you can have digital precision with analog warmth. Alongside French acoustic specialist Focal, Name creates high-end audio systems, combining innovation with craftsmanship so you can listen to music, just as the artist intended. Discover more at name audio.com.

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