by Roger Bourke White Jr., copyright July 2014
Driverless cars will be the most visible part of the transportation revolution, but far from the only part. As all vehicles go driverless, the distinctions that currently exist between them, such as cars, buses, and trucks, will change. There will be new distinctions. There will remain a distinction between carrying people and carrying other kinds of cargo, and there will continue to be many distinctions between various kinds of cargo, but things will change.
One of the decisive losers is going to be light rail. It is so rigid in the car size and the routes that must be followed that it will once more become an anachronism, and discarded. In the 2000's the concept was revived as a symbol of being green, but as driverless cars take hold it will once again transform into a symbol of anachronism and other symbols are going to replace it on the green venue.
The current system of big airports and big commercial jets servicing them will change. Into what, I'm not sure, but the current system is quite cumbersome. It survives in the current form mostly because of the deep fears of flying that many people have. The symptoms of this fear include TSA-style airport security and the huge media circuses that spring up whenever there is a commercial airliner crash.
What will replace the current system are methods that are first of all more convenient -- the current airport rituals are much more cumbersome than they need to be. Beyond that the replacements will also get faster, more flexible, more redundant, and cheaper. One example will be smart luggage: the luggage can travel to a destination independently from the traveler. Call a driverless car for it, and from there it will travel on its own to the destination -- no need to check it or baggage claim it. This will alleviate the too much carry-on issue as well.
Because of the flying fear, general aviation-style flying will experience most of the early changes and benefits. As these benefits become more obvious and widely experienced, the desire for them will slowly spread to commercial fliers.
The changes will involve the whole system -- airports, air traffic control and plane design. As air traffic control gets more sophisticated it will allow the skies to get more crowded, and allow planes to fly more directly from point to point. When planes can fly more directly from point to point, and can land on shorter runways, it will allow airports to proliferate -- there will be many more everywhere and they will be much smaller and simpler in design. With more airports and more crowded skies possible, smaller planes can become economical and getting people and cargo into these smaller planes can become simpler and more convenient.
In sum, moving to and from a plane can get a lot simpler, and as that happens air travel and ground travel will mesh much more closely and smoothly.
There is a human thinking catch that slows up the flying side of this transportation revolution a lot: The one I mentioned earlier, the instinctive fear of flying that many people have. This fear currently supports TSA-style cumbersomeness and a lot of other forms of inconvenience. For the flying revolution to fully flower, people have to learn, as in, be trained, not to be scared of flying -- this is an instinct which must be unlearned. Part of this is formal and informal schooling, and part is not letting the media turn commercial accidents into three-ring tragedy circuses. The twin Malaysia Airline accidents of 2014 are textbook cases of what shouldn't happen in media coverage if we want people to lose their fear of flying.
Today's large cruise liners are an example of traveling just to be traveling. They travel from place to place but the destinations are not as important as the experience on the vessel itself.
This style of travel will proliferate in the Post-Snap environment. In addition to elaborate cruise ships, other forms of transportation may be transformed into cruise-style experiences. And another possibility as the cyber revolution goes into full-swing is avatars taking the place of humans on these vessels. The avatar advantage is being a lot cheaper -- if a cruise liner doesn't need to stock food and other human necessities it can sail around on a much lower budget. We may have avatar cruise ships, an idea I first wrote about in my book Child Champs.