There are two common definitions for the word "transport":
- "to take or carry people from one place to another"
- "overwhelm with a strong emotion, especially joy"
Today's modes of transportation are missing half of the very definition! How can we ever feel joy during transit while the following is true?
- Time: The average person in the U.S. spends more than 230 hours commuting to and from work each year [1]; that's nearly 1.5 years of our working lives spent commuting!
- Oftentimes, 25-50% of our commute is spent stuck in traffic [2]
- This results in an annual congestion cost of more than $166 billion and an extra 3.3 billion gallons of wasted fuel [2]
- Safety: Automotive traffic accidents in the U.S. result in nearly 2 million injuries and over 35,000 deaths each year [3][4]
- Sustainability: U.S. transportation accounts for 17.9 million tons of CO2 pollution each year (30% of total U.S. emissions) - threatening the long-term likelihood that there will even be an Earth for us to travel about [5]
This manifesto is not just about saving time, lives and our planet - it's about life gained through more time spent in the places that interest us and with the people we love.
Further, humans are explorers by nature. Frank Borman said "exploration is really the essence of human spirit." We're driven by a desire to explore our neighborhood, our city, our country, our planet - our universe. Yet, how can we truly explore, discover, experience, try, fail, learn, grow, share, and contribute to our daily lives and our future when all too often we're confined to our small radial corner of the world? We're limited by painfully-slow transit speeds, soul-destroying traffic and even days of lost time when traveling long distances by air.
In the words of Apollo astronaut, Michael Collins [6]:
"It's human nature to stretch, to go, to see, to understand.
Exploration is not a choice really; it's imperative."
Therefore, we cannot accept that today is as good as it'll ever be. We must make dramatic changes to transportation in order to reach the destinations we seek.
There's no single panacea mode of transport - many options are needed and all ideas are welcome. Some of the most promising opportunities include:
- Tunnels (Transit Time Calculator)
- Hyperloop
- High-Speed Rail
- Supersonic Flight
- Space Flight
- Virtual Reality
- Autonomous Electric Vehicles (AEVs)
- Supersonic Planes
- Electric Vertical Take-off and Landing Vehicles (eVTOL)
- Low Earth Orbit (LEO) Spacecraft