General Motors Futurerama shows in the 50s really excited me. The most memorable exhibit for me was GM's idea of what the highways of the future would be.

They envisioned a highway system that was totally automated. You provided the system with your destination and somewhere between your garage and the freeway you would be put into the system and guided to your destination by a guidance system embedded into the highway. Let go of the steering-wheel and let the highway do the driving.

Because all autos on the highway were controlled by a central system more cars could travel at greater speeds and with maximum efficiency and safety.

Can we do this today?

I don't think there is any doubt that the technology is there to design new cars with this automated capability. I also believe we could retrofit older cars too. The problem will always be us morons behind the wheel.

Since the maturity of all drivers drops to the level of a six-grader when we get behind the wheel it will be difficult, if not impossible, to implement such a system.

So instead of seeing computers and other high-tech devices being used to reduce accidents on the highway to zero, or near zero, we use the inventions of science to keep gas guzzling behemoths of today on unsafe highways; at unsafe speeds; with immature individuals risking their lives and ours to get to their destination on time.

50 years of advancements and still at the same place. Still using petroleum base combustion engines. Still using highways that are in chaos with average speeds dropping every year.

Orange County, CA. solution for this problem: Toll Roads. Please. That's paying double, gas tax and toll fees, to get nowhere. Toll roads are only a temporary solution that needs a permanent one.

The permanent solutions will arrive the day we use the last drop of gasoline. I, for one, am looking forward to that day.

Then again I should maybe move to a large metropolitan city that has an adequate public transportation system. That leaves out any city in southern California. San Francisco would be good if it didn't require the resources of a millionaire. Oakland? Portland - no jobs. Seattle - not very nice these days.

My two predictions for the next 100 years

One: By 2050 the slums will be in the suburbs. With no public mass-transit, and long computes between home and job, living in the hinterlands will be difficult, if not impossible.

We all know that a private auto is required to do anything in the suburbs. With no gas, or very expensive fuel, this will become very impractical. But with no public transportation because this bring in minorities, and we can't have minorities in the burbs, people will move back into the cities leaving the whites-only types all alone in the suburbs with all the minorities that will move into all that cheap housing.

Two: Airlines will be needed for long-distance travel only. Maybe anything over a 1000 miles and transcontinental flights. High-speed ground-based systems will replace the plane for most, if not all, transportation needs.

This means that the airport that the Orange County, California establishment craves for El Toro will be under used and probably abandoned by 2050.

So there you have it. Urban cities will return, they already are, and passenger airlines will be to the 21st century what passenger trains were to the 20th century.

Happy Chaos.

December 20, 1999

If you happen to get, find, or steal, the Sunday, December 19, 1999 issue of the LA Times then read the article in the magazine: 'Requiem for the Suburbs?' Some of us really do like the urban environment.