Tomorrow's Transportation: Changing Cities, Economies, and Lives (Artech House Its Library)

This is an easy-to-read book, with some interesting ideas about the future of transportation and good references. Although, some ideas are exciting, the future of telecommunications and transportation issue is largely neglected. The ideas presented in the book are hardly new, and anyone in the field can easily think about these ideas after a short session of brainstorming. In brief, I suggest that you save your money for better books.

Garrison and Ward do an excellent job of relating transportation to the rest of our social fabric, and cover a wide range of possible future transportation pathways. Style is light and non-technical, and their life times involved in transportation shows in the depth of coverage. Given the author's backgrounds in the world of ITS (Intelligent Transportation Systems) it is understandable that 95% of these pathways are of an evolutionary nature. Still, they open the door a tiny crack for revolutionary transportation in the form of PTS (Pedestrian Transport System) to allow construction of "minicities" that are automobile free. PTS allows small driverless vehicles to go anywhere in the network without stopping.

As good as the book is, it was a frustrating read. They document well the "needs" for transportation in the future - lower costs of small batch movement - lower trip time for goods and people - lower overall costs, yet they cannot bring themselves to speculate on the most dramatic future possibility - the overlaying and interconnecting of cities with a fully automated transportation network. They don't make the mental leap from having PTS inside their minicity to the possibility that it could escape to cover a whole city, thereby creating a city that is largely autofree. Since PTS has the pontential to meet all their needs criteria the oversight is all the more surprising. For all that the book has the flavor of thinking outside the box, their thinking is decidedly trapped inside their minicity box.

Lastly, there was a dearth of discussion about the current status regarding the many niches in which fully automated transportation systems are evolving.

This is a remarkable book about the future of transportation and its interactions with the economy, society, and technology. The authors obviously have an encyclopedic knowledge of the transportation sectors covered here, but the material is presented in a lighthearted way that is both informative and entertaining. The chapters are short and easy to absorb. I so enjoyed reading the book that I was disappointed when there was no more to read. I solved this easily; I began reading it again. The authors have a knack for discussing what might be called the architecture of the transportation system and its major tradeoffs while at the same time exhibiting a mastery of potential technical, procedural, and organizational options and innovations. They quite creatively avoid the perils of advocacy, of prediction, and of specification of future requirements. Instead, the book indicates a range of potential future pathways that offer significant promise in expanding individuals' and society's range of choices. The book would be an excellent supplementary text for almost any course on transportation. It approaches the subject from a very broad perspective but where appropriate delves into pertinent technical, economic, social, organizational, historical, and geographical details. It leaves the reader with a much better understanding of the significant role of transportation in history, in the present, and in its potentialities for the future.

Having just finished reading this excellent primer on what has and will continue to be one of the linchpins of our social fabric, I go away a thoroughly engaged and enlightened reader. I must say, I always thought that transportation was simply about getting there and getting back! How simplistic I was! From the story of the first forms of transportation to the gridlock that is seen daily on our nation's urban roadways, Ward and Garrison present a cogent argument for proper planning and anticipating what we will need--well into the 21st Century. They also make it clear that with the right market emphasis, all things are possible. In fact, they go on to point out that much of the technology is available right now, if policy-makers will develop the courage and vision to pursue this well- structured course. I salute them for their fine effort and recommend this book to all who care about or work in the public policy arena.