In the year 2050

by Rebekah Bovenmyer

What will our vehicles, roads, fuels, and cities be like in 2050? Experts in these fields imagine big changes. We're seeing the beginning of these changes happening right now. Whether they catch on and become our future, we'll have to wait and see.

Vehicles

Dr. Robert Bruegmann, an art historian specializing in the historic development of cities, says it's hard to know exactly what fuel we'll be using in a couple of decades. He thinks that when the fuel does change, it could be in a vastly different transportation system than the one we have today.

Bruegmann says many of the main transportation modes we currently have, like the car and train, were developed in the 19th century and may not be what we use in the future.

He imagines that more people might rely on something in between the private car and the public bus.

"I think there will be more developments in vehicle sharing, but these systems would allow you to go directly where you want to go and get there when you want to get there," says Bruegmann.

Instead of most people owning their own cars, he thinks we might use something more like the taxi or the super-shuttle involving smaller, shared pods on physical or electronic guide ways. This system could be faster, safer, and move more people.

In fact, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Smart Cities research group has developed a prototype of a small, stackable car that’s run on battery power. These cars would be placed in racks around a city and rented. People could swipe a credit card to use it, drive it across the city, and drop it off at a rack close by.

Roads

Most likely, we'll still be driving on roads in 50 years. Those roads will still be made with concrete, believes Peter Taylor, associate director of the National Concrete Pavement Technology Center at Iowa State University.

That doesn't mean that concrete will be exactly the same, though. Taylor thinks very, very small particles—called nanomaterials—will be part of the future.

Concrete is a mixture of cement, water, sand, and rock. Before it can be placed onto a road, concrete has to be wet enough to be moved into its final position by the paver. But then it has to harden quickly enough that the road can be used. Keeping that balance can be tricky.

Taylor imagines nanodevices in the concrete that monitor and report how quickly the concrete is hardening. Nanomaterials could then speed it up or slow it down so the concrete could reach that perfect consistency.

Even after cars are on the road, nanodevices in the concrete could check for cracking and other damage, so repairs could start even before it's obvious that there's a problem.

Fuel

In 2050 we could be fueling our transportation through crops such as corn, switchgrass, and sugar cane. Or we could be using hydrogen fuel cells, electricity, or something completely different. Some experts say that we'll need to use lots of different energy sources to replace oil in the future.

Dr. Robert Brown, founding director of the Bioeconomy Institute at Iowa State University, believes corn (both grain and stalks), switchgrass, and sugar cane are the strongest source of fuel for the future. These plants can all be turned into alcohol that's mixed with gasoline to fuel our cars. Fuels made from plants are called biofuels. Someday they may not need to be mixed with gasoline at all.

Why does Brown believe biofuels are the future? Corn and other plants are renewable. They can be planted over and over again so we won't run out of them like we will oil. Plants also take carbon dioxide out of the air (carbon dioxide is linked to global warming), so growing them can help stop global climate change.

And, finally, we know how to grow a lot of these plants efficiently. Farmers are already mass producing corn and sugar cane, so we don't necessarily have to learn to grown anything new.

In the U.S., the most common biofuel is ethanol made from corn. Ethanol at the gas pump combines different percentages of alcohol and gasoline. E85 is 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline, but there can be as little as 10% ethanol and 90% gasoline at an ethanol pump.

In 2007 President Bush signed a mandate that requires 36 billion gallons of biofuels be produced each year by 2022. If that happens, the U.S. would use 20% less gasoline in 2022.

City planning

Rather than imagining new kinds of transportation to get us around, Andy Kunz, urban planner and director of newurbanism.org imagines a new kind of American city based around transportation we already have: trains, bikes, buses.

In a lot of cities, businesses and residential areas are separate (think of the downtown of a city compared to the suburbs). Kunz wants each neighborhood in the city to have stores, houses, restaurants, and schools all right next to each other. This type of neighborhood with businesses and houses close together is called "mixed use" development.

Neighborhoods in the city would be connected by trains so you wouldn’t have to drive anywhere.

"When you start removing cars from city centers and bring in streetcars, bicycles, urban plazas and spaces, cafes, and shops, the entire place becomes really enjoyable, relaxing, and refreshing," says Kunz.

Portland, Oregon and Washington, D.C. are two U.S. cities that use this kind of planning, called New Urbanism or Smart Growth.

"It was the same story [in Portland] that once the new rail system was up and running, the developers started building dense, mixed use, walkable urban projects, and the people started moving into the city. Then all the great shops, services, and jobs followed," says Kunz.

More and more people are moving into cities, so city planning that helps people get where they need to go without straining the environment will be especially important in the future.

What would you like to see in the future?

Send your ideas to editor@go-explore-trans.com.

Read on to see what some others would like the future of transportation to look like.

"I would hope that there will be a body suit that will provide locomotion capabilities for those whose body can't handle moving on their own."– Jay Staker, Extension Youth Development Specialist at Iowa State University

"Self-healing concrete is on the horizon. It will be concrete that doesn't crack." –John Kevern, graduate student in civil engineering at Iowa State University.

"Ever since I was a little kid, I have thought it would be really cool to just drive onto a roadway and have it whisk me to wherever I was going......on its own without any intervention from me. Hopefully, by 2050 it will be fully functional with vehicles that simply run on oxygen in the atmosphere or water-derived hydrogen or chips that contain large supplies of renewable energy." –Larry Stevens, Statewide Urban Design and Specifications director at the Center for Transportation Research and Education (CTRE) at Iowa State University.

"I want people to use more bicycles. They are clean, cheap, flexible, and put people in contact with the outdoor world." –Susan DeBlieck, graduate student in community and regional planning at Iowa State University.

"I want a personal transporter, a la Star Trek, that will let me travel great distances, like from my house to Paris, in seconds. If I can't get one installed at my house, I'd be willing to travel to a nearby town and use the transporter there." –Michele Regenold, editor of Go!

"Flying cars with great padding (because people won't drive any better up there.)" –Dee Short, receptionist at CTRE.