Caditz/Newman

Our thoughts about autonomous vehicles and traffic flow

Life at Free Flow

Lessons from life in a small town

 

 

 

My first position out of graduate school was a postdoc in the Physics Department and Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana. Having grown up in Los Angeles and spending years in Boston and the San Francisco Bay Area, life Bozeman felt like a breeze. I clearly remember getting my Montana drivers license at the DMV with no line at the clerk’s window. There was never an issue finding parking (my parallel parking skills were completely lost during my years in Montana), and the concept of traffic congestion was not even on the radar. I could go anywhere at any time with no ‘resistance’. Life was at free-flow speed.

I eventually returned to San Francisco for a job in a high-tech startup company doing research on satellite packet data networks. Living again among city congestion was a shock and took some emotional adjustment. Being stuck in traffic trying to get over the Golden Gate Bridge on a beautiful California beach day, or waiting in line for 20 minutes just to find a parking space at the supermarket, adds to the already high level of stress to big city life.

Research shows that driving-related stress is one of the largest contributors to high blood pressure, anxiety, sickness, resentment, worry, and fear in modern city life. It seems that the best parts of city life – good restaurants, cultural activities, social connectedness – go hand in hand with this mobility-related stress. But what if we could enjoy the social and cultural benefits of the big city without stress? What if we could live at free flow in San Francisco, New York, Boston and Los Angeles the same way I lived in Bozeman in the 1990s?

I believe this is possible. Having a career reducing congestion and increasing throughput on satellite packet data networks, I am keenly aware that similar ideas can be applied to road networks to reduce congestion and increase passenger throughput. Stress-free mobility will be made possible by fleets of connected autonomous vehicles using smart routing algorithms based on real-time information awareness.

I look forward to life at free flow!