"The future is coming folks. And this is going really be neat. It will be fun watching it develop. As for you young people - pay attention. One day your grand kids will ask you if you remember the days when we had to operate our own cars. Our brave new world awaits us all..."
Reading the morning paper was like seeing an episode of the Keystone Cops, with the Met Council acting as the Keystone Cops. There are so many things wrong with this Southwest LRT project right now, it almost reads like a case study back in business school. For example, here is a real messed up situation - can you find ways to fix it? Most students would have thrown up their hands and gladly taken an "F" on the project.
For all the reasons to cancel this thing, and there are legions (like it will cost a mint an very few will benefit), there one reason which stands out above the rest. Time and technology have passed this era by. Just in case the Met Council has not noticed this as yet, our society is now the "on demand" society. Relying on trains which run on a fixed route under a fixed schedule is antithetical to "on demand" thinking.
I started to learn about this whole "on demand" thing when I was at IBM in the early 2000's. This was long before Comcast started using it for shows. IBM was going to use it for software. If a customer needed a type of software, he could poke the request up on his laptop and, BOOM, there it was! Today if you notice, we expect everything to be on demand. Check out Amazon if you don't believe it. Our patience to wait has all but evaporated.
Back to the choo-choo trains. I have been reading more and more about how fast the HUGE new revolution of driver-less cars is approaching. By the way, some of that future is already here. The market for this new technology is going to be so big, so sweeping, the car manufacturers are moving up their integration plans. Bottom line - by 2020 (a whopping two years and change away), seeing a driver-less car will no longer be a head turner. It will start to be commonplace.
One article I recently read said the revolution of driver-less cars and trucks will do to the transportation industry what the computer did to the information industry. Yes, the article said, this coming change will be that profound.
Here is the nexus - the upcoming collision of the old and the new. We have AI and auto makers rushing pell mell into 2020 to try and capture a nice share of this alluring new market. At the same time, if it ever gets built, we will have the new shiny Southwest LRT coming online around 2022. And all this will be happening right in the middle of a whole pack of "on demand" millennials.
If we had a normal Governor, rather than an impaired statist, he or she could end this nonsense. As the former valley girls would say, "Trains are so, so yesterday". Take the money allocated to trains, and reallocate it to roads. Like how to integrate this technology into our infrastructure.
The future is coming folks. And this is going really be neat. It will be fun watching it develop. As for you young people - pay attention. One day your grand kids will ask you if you remember the days when we had to operate our own cars. Our brave new world awaits us all...
I hear that train a-coming...............
ReplyDeleteLegislation that could help usher in a new era of self-driving cars advanced in Congress on Wednesday after the bill’s sponsors agreed to compromises to address some concerns of safety advocates.
The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee approved the bill by a voice vote, a sign of broad, bipartisan support. It would allow automakers to apply for exemptions to current federal auto-safety standards in order to sell up to 15,000 self-driving cars and light trucks per manufacturer in the first year after passage. Up to 40,000 per manufacturer could be sold in the second year, and 80,000 each year thereafter.
Action by the full Senate is still needed and differences with a similar bill passed by the House would have to be worked out before the measure could become law.
I don't like the idea that congress should legislate consumer demand, but I suppose, for safety, the Transportation and Safety Dept must have it's say.
Probably won't pass with bipartisan b.s. controlling congress.
Just a little 45 talk.....
ReplyDelete45, through his own personal viciousness and carelessness, abusing and alienating his top deputies, publicly as well as privately.
This obviously creates an extremely difficult if not downright hostile work environment in the White House.
The consequences can be hard to see on a day-to-day level, but experts say 45’s repeated humiliations of his staff destroy staff White House morale, suck up valuable time better spent on policy, and drive away top talent.
This makes the White House function less effectively as an organization, weakening its ability to deal with real crises like North Korea and Puerto Rico and potential opportunities, like tax reform, infrastructure and healthcare reform.
You voted for what looked like a swamp-draining cheerleader and got a juvenile a-hole. Thanks, Dave
Have some respect brother! He is older than we are. Remember? We were taught to respect our elders.
DeleteA year younger than me and I know I'm smarter, more literate, a better public speaker and have a better memory than he does. His brain processes at the speed of light but contains no filters.
Delete