The phrase,'Unsound Transit', was coined by the Wall Street Journal to describe Seattle where,"Light Rail Madness eats billions that could otherwise be devoted to truly efficient transportation technologies." The Puget Sound's traffic congestion is a growing cancer on the region's prosperity. This website, captures news and expert opinion about ways to address the crisis. This is not a blog, but a knowledge base, which collects the best articles and presents them in a searchable format. My goal is to arm residents with knowledge so they can champion fact-based, rather than emotional, solutions.

Transportation

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Smart Jitneys

he Smart Jitney is a system of efficient and convenient ride sharing that addresses in the short-term the problem of transportation in a post-peak oil world. The system utilizes the existing infrastructure of private automobiles and roads due to the time, expense, and difficulty of building a new transportation infrastructure amongst such a dispersed population. The goal of the system is to insure that each private car always carries more than one person per car trip, optimally 4-6. This would cut auto gasoline usage by an estimated 80 percent and commute time by an average of 50 percent within two years.

The Smart Jitney system would use cell phones and the Internet for ride reservations and coordination. Riders and drivers would have modified cell phones with a Global Positioning System (GPS) function. Software experts from the military command-and-control communication systems would join engineers and programmers from the nation's airline and automobile reservation systems to create the tracking and scheduling database for a new nationwide human transport system using existing cars.

In a Smart Jitney system, every person may be a "driver" or a "rider" at different times. The system would connect drivers with riders to insure optimum routing and minimum time delays. Each person who wants to take a trip, whether to work, school, shopping, or recreation, would use his or her cell phone or web browswer to request a ride from the system. The system will locate the appropriate vehicle and driver to pick up and deliver the rider (or riders) making the request. Drivers are those who have planned trips of their own and need riders to fulfill the requirements for ride-sharing individual trips will be limited in a time of energy scarcity.

As the system develops, a huge decrease in roadway accidents and fatalities can be expected. This could result in substantially fewer insurance payouts and, hopefully, a concurrent reduction in premiums. Additionally, the nation would experience a major reduction in road construction and maintenance since wear and tear would be reduced. We expect that, as people became aware of the system's benefits, any sense of sacrifice would diminish, replaced by a sense of excitement.

A completely developed Smart Jitney Car System will take some years and some millions of dollars. Currently, a detailed 15-page specification of the Smart Jitney is available in our New Solutions report #12. This specification covers the function, vehicle and driver rules, police involvement, privacy, dispatching, reporting, benefits, societal changes, cultural barriers, and financing and implementation.

We are next focusing on developing a more in-depth specification and implementation plan. It will address the specific design issues in order to define a rough specification from which pilot projects can be developed. A similar specification must be developed for legal implications and include a summary of the changes in laws that must be made to achieve full scale implementation.

The Smart Jitney

July 21, 2007

By Pat Murphy, Community Solutions

Executive Summary
Two major world changes, Peak Oil and Global Warming, make it unlikely that the modern industrialized, urbanized, and centralized way of life focused on the private automobile can continue in the 21st century. Peak Oil refers to the depletion of fossil fuels and roughly marks the point in time when half the oil will be gone. There is general agreement that this will occur in the period of 2010 – 2020. At the current rates of use, all oil will be gone within 30-50 years. Similar peaking arguments apply to natural gas, coal and uranium although the time to complete depletion is some decades past the time for oil. Global Warming refers to increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that result from the burning of fossil fuels. There is general scientific consensus that global warming is caused by the massive amounts of fossil fuels being burned throughout the world.

The combination of these factors creates a near term crisis that brings into question the continued use of the private automobile. In the US, gasoline consumption is 140 billion gallons per year, resulting in about 3 trillion pounds of CO2 emissions yearly. Since the energy crisis of the 1970s, beginning with the 1974 Project Independence Act, billions of dollars have been spent in an attempt to find an alternative to the internal combustion engine. 30 years research in fuel cells and battery technology have been futile. Although major improvements in efficiency have been made, this has only led to increased car consumption as the private automobile replaced mass transit systems.

The private automobile as it exists today cannot be sustained. Mass transit alternative systems will take decades to develop and can have only limited utility in the cities and suburbs that have been built in the last 60 years. To develop light rail systems may not be practical within the current infrastructure of roads and buildings. And the cost will be trillions of dollars. Moving to a bus system will not be as difficult but the existing distribution of roads and buildings cannot be well served by such a system.

One alternative is to use the current road and automobile network to provide a form of mass transit. The average car trip in America contains 1.5 passengers, in vehicles that could contain 4-6 passengers. Car pooling and ride sharing systems attempt to address this issue but are largely ineffective in a world optimized for the private automobile. A reservations system analogous to that of air travel is needed. Such a system is possible only because of the now widely implement cell phone network and the common use of the cell phone itself.

The Smart Jitney will use this cell network and existing automobiles to provide an average passenger capacity of 4 or more per trip compared to the current 1.5. This will reduce gasoline consumption from 140 billion gallons per year to less than 50 billion gallons per year, saving approximately $270 billion per year.

The Smart Jitney – A Solution for Depleting Fossil Fuels

General Specification

Introduction:
In the film “The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil, Miguel Coyula, Cuban Architect, Urban Planner and Community Development Specialist, “The car will be a historical object. One day the car will appear and one day it will disappear”

Such a statement sounds incredulous to Americans. Get rid of the car? “Mad, impossible, a horrible thought, a threat to the American Way of Life” people might respond. Yet today the world is faced with problems so serious that the continuation of the species is now in question. The implications of Peak Oil, a concept unheard of until the last few years, seem to be a prelude to the next Great Depression. The Global Warming crisis, predicted for decades and becoming more certain each year, portends problems much more serious than a Great Depression. Worst case events may imply a Great Starvation.

If there is a single machine invention of the 19th and 20th century, the use of which has the greatest responsibility for the unfolding disasters, it would be the private automobile. More people have died in automobiles accidents in the US than in all the wars. There are about 720,000,000 cars in the world today, about 200 million of them in the United States. As the rest of the world attempts to duplicate the American way of living, 100s of million more cars will be added. And each one is a portable factory whose output is poisoning the atmosphere earth and threatening all life.

It is not only the environment that is being destroyed but the communities in which people are born, live and die. Since the advent of the automobile the classic centuries old way of living in harmony on a face to face basis in a place is declining. It is being replaced with huge extending suburbs within which one can only move by private automobile. People no longer know their neighbors. Their friends are scattered far and wide. The sense of a place is gone. Mobility has replaced conviviality.

The long range prospect for the automobile is not good. Fossil fuels are finite. Many may want to believe that Earth's cache of oil is limitless, but fact tells us otherwise. Careful scientific study now predicts that world oil production will peak – that is, reach the point at which half the world's oil is gone – probably within a decade.

The consequences of declining oil production and, eventually, depleted fossil fuel reserves, are perhaps catastrophic, in the industrialized nations, especially the United States. Americans must begin to design and implement a transportation system that greatly reduces the depletion speed of the remaining reserves of oil.

America could significantly slow oil depletion by significantly reducing, not the number of people, but number of vehicles on the road. The goal is to curtail the current redundancy of so many people driving individual vehicles to the same destinations.

The solution is to make the sharing of cars both convenient and efficient. One way to do this is by using the nation’s advanced communications technology to compile and disburse information about individual vehicles, their destinations, and their riders so vehicles can be shared.

A convenient, efficient, widespread ride-sharing program can slow oil depletion enough to buy the time – years and years of additional time – needed to make the transition from a centralized, city-based, fossil fuel intensive culture to a culture of decentralized smaller communities far less dependent on fossil fuels.

Getting Started
When the country feels the real pinch of declining oil production, it can be expected that the techniques of early generation transportation methods that exist in other parts of the world will be applied in America. This includes car pools, ride-sharing, well-managed and maintained mass transportation systems and better vehicle gasoline mileage. But for now, a state of denial prevails in the industrialized world, particularly in the United States. People refuse to heed the predictions of rapidly decreasing oil production. The nation’s failure to address oil depletion will bring a crisis that allows no time to develop something new and elaborate, something costly and slow to implement. For many Americans, the crisis may appear sudden, since most of us want to believe in a limitless supply of fossil fuels. Americans may attack and control other nations in the Middle East to sustain their belief. But when the nations finally awaken to the reality of depleted fossil fuels, quick action that results in systems that use existing infrastructure and widely available technology will be needed.

A well-designed ride-sharing program could be quickly implemented. "The Smart Jitney" would use the existing transportation infrastructure of private vehicles but insure that each car always carries more than one person per car, optimally 4-6. This country has no shortage of automobiles or roads. But the present average rider load of 1.5 (quote the OTA source) people per vehicle per trip demands a huge consumption of fuel. So few people in so many cars causes massive traffic problems – dangerous rush hours, huge traffic snarls – which further increase consumption.

The Smart Jitney would utilize the existing cell phone network as the interface between drivers, riders, and the routing system. Software experts from the military command-and-control communication systems would join engineers and programmers from the nation's airline and automobile reservation systems to create the tracking and scheduling database for a new nationwide human transport system using existing cars. Military satellite specialists would learn how to provide real-time information about traffic and weather conditions. Even the National Security Agency "listening systems" could be modified to offer information to the new transportation system.

Working in concert for the national good, all of the above can help avert the crisis or crises that dwindling fossil fuel reserves portend.

A Brief Description
The Smart Jitney system would use cell phones for ride reservations and coordination. Riders and drivers would have modified cell phones with a Global Positioning System (GPS) function, a technology already available in many cell phones because of federal emergency response mandates.

A special "vehicle cell phone" would become a permanent part of each vehicle. It would include a fixed identification code for the vehicle as well as readout capability for location and speed (modified GPS), which could be triggered by satellite systems or police and other emergency vehicles.

The Smart Jitney goals would be to reduce auto gasoline usage by 80 percent and commute time by an average of 50 percent within two years. As the system develops, a huge decrease in roadway accidents and fatalities can be expected. This could result in substantially fewer insurance payouts and, hopefully, a concurrent reduction in premiums. Additionally, the nation would experience a major reduction in road construction and maintenance since wear and tear would be reduced. It is expected that, as people became aware of the system's benefits; any sense of sacrifice would diminish, replaced by a sense of excitement.

The Cultural Barriers
In terms of technical effort, the Smart Jitney is not difficult. There are many computerized reservations systems, from the oldest – airplanes – to car rentals to tickets for sports and entertainment. And the benefits are obvious: less commute time, less cost, and less environmental harm. Some benefits could already be achieved simply by buying smaller cars. Unfortunately, the current trend is in the opposite direction, mostly because the private automobile provides psychological benefits that outweigh the simple need or desire to get from one place to another.

There are three main cultural barriers to rapid, easy change: privacy, individuality, and personal choice.

Privacy – In the following sections, note that a police patrol car could ticket the driver of a moving vehicle without stopping it, since the license number would allow a quick search of the data base to determine the driver. By simple extension, the patrol office could also identify the passengers. The potential misuse of the system will lead to fears of Gestapo-like practices and privacy invasions. People planning questionable liaisons or activities might worry that parents, spouses, bosses, or others could search the files for their location.

Americans are very sensitive to invasions of their privacy. Other cultures are less so. Japanese friends report that neighborhood police kiosks give them a sense of safety; providing their reasons for being in an area to a questioning police officer is not a concern. (Japan, of course, has a much lower crime rate than the U.S. and far fewer crimes of assault or passion.) On the other hand, most Americans seem to have passively accepted the invasion of their privacy by intelligence agencies and corporations. Each citizen has multiple dossiers held by businesses and government agencies, the contents of which they have no knowledge. In early 2006 it became know that phone conversations are being monitored by the National Security Agency.
It has become apparent from recent investigations leading to severe penalties to the finance industry that deleted E-mails are not eliminated: anything anyone sends by E-mail is available to some agency or corporation. The population seems to accept this.

But accepting the potential invasion of one's privacy by local law enforcement or employers or family will probably not be accepted so passively. Why the population in general might fear "local" intrusions more than those of big business and big government is a phenomenon not analyzed in detail. It is projected, however, that the reasons are quickly identifiable and that fears of invasions of privacy because of a program like the Smart Jitney can be alleviated.

Individuality – America is home to the "rugged" individual, the person who knows and insists on his or her "rights." People stroll through malls exercising their "right" to play boom boxes at maximum volume. Corporations and businesses have the "right" to run ads on TVs in public places and airlines to run them in their planes. The latest "right" is the right to talk on cell phones in public places, regardless of how others may be affected.

The constant exercise of "rights" in public places has led to an atmosphere of rude aggression. "Good manners" are a thing of the past, to be ridiculed and avoided so as not to be ostracized by one's peer group.

The loss of regard for others – of the failure to recognize when your "rights" are treading on the "rights" of somebody else – can be a severe cultural limitation on a ride-sharing system. Should a passenger be allowed to make sales calls on his or her portable phone during a Smart Jitney trip? What happens when a bubble gum popper shares a vehicle with other riders? What about smokers, drunks, the over-perfumed or under-washed?

For the Smart Jitney to work, people are going to have to re-learn how to behave towards others in small spaces.

Personal Choice – Americans lead "busy" lives; the stresses associated with that "busy-ness" are well known. When advertisers stoke America's love affair with the automobile, they often use images of sexuality, excitement, and adventure. But many a driver feels relaxed, at peace, when alone in the car. Consider the busy parent who, after a hectic morning, drops the children at school and now looks forward to the 30-minute commute to the office where pressure and activity will again dominate. Maybe she goes through the drive-thru for coffee and rolls, loads her favorite CD, and begins her commute with the knowledge that this is her best "alone" time of the day. It may be a hard habit to break.

But much of this is based on the absence of community in modern times. In a culture where competition is the watchword, simply the absence of other people can be restful. Yet in more community oriented culture, the experience of meeting the other is fundamental to their enjoyment of life. People can learn to be at ease with other people in social circumstances so that commuting with strangers can be viewed as an opportunity rather than as a conflict.

The System Specifications
In a Smart Jitney, every person may be a "driver" or a "rider" at different times. The Smart Jitney system would connect drivers with riders to insure optimum routing and minimum time delays.

Each person who wants to take a trip, whether to work, school, shopping, or recreation, would use his or her cell phone to request a ride from the system. The system will locate the appropriate vehicle and driver to pick up and deliver the rider (or riders) making the request. Drivers are those who have planned trips of their own and need riders to fulfill the requirements for ride-sharing. Individual trips would no be severely curtailed.

While discussing the myriad social and physical aspects of the system, nine sets of parameters were defined which are referred to as "rules." The classes of rules are: Function, Vehicles, Drivers, Riders, Police, Privacy, Dispatching, Fleet, and Reporting.

A. Function Rules
The Function Rules list the capabilities required for the system to work. The main functions available would be:

A1. Ride request - entering time, location, and destination or using information stored in the rider's phone memory for Most Frequent Destinations. The request would include the rider's special needs or wishes, if any, and space requirements, such as for luggage or packages or for extra large physical size.

A 2. Ride commitment - rider accepting time, location, and destination or an alternate ride if the requested one is not suitable.

A 3. Ride arrival notification - alerting the rider that the vehicle will arrive in, say, 2 minutes, allowing time to get to the street.

A 4. Check in - assuring that the correct rider and driver have found one another.

A 5. Check out - notification of the rider leaving the vehicle.

A 6. Emergency - asking for police assistance in case of accident or illegal/improper confrontation.

A 7. Transgression report - reporting smoking, drinking, or harassment violations.

A 8. Radio turnoff/other special requests - requesting no music, smoking, news radio programs, or other unwelcome stimuli.

A 9. Random ride request - available for pickup immediately at listed GPS locations.

A 10. Non-emergency accident notification - contacting dispatcher for towing services or accidents not requiring emergency service.

A person wanting a ride would enter the preferred time of departure and destination into his or her cell phone. Often, the request would be pre-programmed, including the typical time and destination for work or school. A short cut option would be to simply enter two telephone numbers – one being at the location of the pickup and the other at the destination location. The system would locate a nearby vehicle with available seating going close to the desired destination at close to the desired time. The driver would receive and accept the request and receive directions if needed. The rider would be told the time of pickup and get information about the driver and vehicle. The rider's phone would ring when the driver is getting close to the pickup.

The rider would be delivered at or near his or her destination. If direct ride scheduling is not possible, the rider could be dropped at a place closer to the final destination and request a second or third ride. A rider suddenly needing transportation could request a ride based on the GPS location given automatically by his or her cell phone.

A successful system will deal with accidents and transgressions by drivers or other riders. Having a "transgress" button on each cell phone to contact the authorities would prove a powerful deterrent to inappropriate behavior. Using the button would be a request for police to begin monitoring the vehicle as a further discouragement of aggression or other unwanted behavior.

B. Vehicle Rules

The vehicle rules apply to the vehicles in the Smart Jitney program. A Smart Jitney Vehicle's (CCV) role in the system includes:

B1. Rider Reporting - reporting rider arrival and departure times, and pickup and drop-off locations.

B 2. Vehicle Reporting - reporting the RSV's location, average speed, and load factor changes.

B 3. Other Vehicle Reporting - through use of radar or other technology, reporting other vehicles in unsafe proximity or otherwise being driven unsafely.

B 4. Police Response - responding to all police requests.

This reporting would be done via each RSV's cell phone. The accumulated telemetry would aid the central system in planning and dispatching.

C. Driver Rules

Drivers would be volunteers in the community with excellent driving records who would be paid a stipend to cover auto expenses and depreciation. Accidents, police records, or moving violations would be considered potential grounds for suspension of driving privileges. The drivers would:

C1. Pick Up-Drop Off scheduled riders

C2. Report No Shows and any relevant information (tardiness, confusion about location).

C3. Report Rider Behavior violations.

C4. Pay Penalties and Collect Bonuses based on his or her success.

C5. Accept Random Change - try to incorporate unplanned riders, those needing spur-of-the-moment rides, and unscheduled stops when requested to do so by the system.

C6. Insure Schedule Integrity – Drivers have the responsibility of keeping to the schedule of riders. In some cases random change would be acceptable to optimize convenience. But in many cases, people will be on tight schedules for work, doctor’s appointments, etc. The priority must be to maintain a level of service so that people can count on fulfilling time commitments.

The driver's reporting responsibility would work to weed out those riders who are rude, are habitual no-shows or late arrivals, or otherwise act as a drain on the efficiency of the system – and perhaps serve to encourage those riders to modify their behavior.

D. Rider Rules
Riders would go through an elementary screening process to determine their needs. Records would be kept for each individual, including records of complaints or commendations from other members of the ride-sharing community, both drivers and co-riders. Excessive violations would result in suspension or restriction of ride-sharing access.

The technical problems associated with such a vast new system are trivial compared with the human element. Americans are so isolated in their lifestyles that they avoid interactions with strangers, resulting in the need for a prescribed ethic of conduct. Some rules might be simple, such as no smoking. Others would be more controversial but necessary, such as a limit on perfume and a requirement for basic hygiene.

The rider's part of the bargain would be:

D1. Promptness - arriving promptly for pickups.

D2. Decorum - maintaining conversational decorum and basic politeness.

D3. Behavior - not smoking or playing personal media if it bothers others.

D4. Consideration - not wearing perfume and being reasonably clean.

D5. Reporting - reporting violations of safety or dangerous conduct by drivers or other riders.

A central database to correlate the upkeep of vehicles, misconduct by drivers, and notations about riders could result in a community that is mostly self-policing through access to information and subsequent peer pressure. Fair but rigorous reporting would tend to limit the traveling options of those who insist on their right to act in a manner not acceptable to all.

Such self-policing communities already exist. For example, technology workers restrict access to online information through peer complaints – a rudimentary model upon which to base Smart Jitney's protocol.

E. Police Rules

The Smart Jitney Program would greatly simplify traffic control and vehicle law enforcement. Traffic accidents and injuries would certainly decrease significantly if fewer cars used the highway system. Law enforcement responsibilities would include:

E1. Ticketing – of moving vehicles remotely.

E2. Enforcement - stopping vehicles, making arrests, investigating system violations.

E3. Investigation - performing corollary investigations involving use of the system for criminal activity.

The reporting functions built into the system will allow law officers to ticket a vehicle, without stopping it, for speeding or other offenses. The driver would be notified immediately via the vehicle cell phone. Witnesses would be automatically available from the rider records. Since the driver has his or her own identifying cell phone, the police could match the driver with the vehicle and access a database of driving and other records – in seconds, with a properly designed system. The police could initiate status readout from the cars under observation, with the vehicles easily identifiable visually from existing satellites.

A high-level traffic monitoring and reporting system would have effects on crime not vehicular in nature. When automobile escape routes from crime scenes are monitored as a matter of course, the criminal's options become limited. Smart Jitney's personal cell phones, all equipped with emergency signal capacities and GPS transmitters, would give crime victims a chance to summon assistance quickly. With traffic no longer clogging transportation arteries, emergency personnel could respond much more quickly. A drastic drop in crime rates with minimal invasion of the privacy of the law-abiding can be expected.

F. Privacy Rules

Since 9/11, government agencies have increased the monitoring of civilians, challenging their right to privacy. Smart Jitney's tracking services must be used for traffic efficiency and crime detection only, and not by any American secret police agency that arises. The current political situation, including Congressional approval of expanded wire-tapping powers by the Office of Homeland Security, makes privacy a sobering issue in the implementation of Smart Jitney. Privacy laws would be needed to maintain:

F1. Confidentiality - keeping trip records confidential except for criminal prosecution.

F2. Data Security - allowing compilation of data to better manage the system while protecting people's privacy.

Smart Jitney records must only be made available based on appropriate requests from law enforcement personnel. Unfortunately so much information is being gathered on people even now that Smart Jitney's requirements are less radical than they might at first appear.

G. Dispatching Rules

Smart Jitney will require large start-up costs, including vast amounts of human capital. Dispatchers, particularly in the early days, will make or break the system. Dispatchers will need to be responsible for:

G1. Monitoring Equipment - monitoring automobiles and trucks.

G2. Monitoring People - monitoring for troublemakers and criminals.

G3. Responding - responding to drivers and riders.

G4. Dispatching - dispatching vehicles and drivers and clearing status of vehicles and drivers upon trip completion.

G5. Contacting - contacting police/highway patrol/towing as necessary.

G6. Rescheduling - rescheduling riders because of problems or sudden destination changes.

Dispatchers would bear the brunt of making the system work in the early stages but could eventually become a supplement to properly functioning technology. With real-time operating experience to draw from and a fluid design, most functions could eventually become automated. Dispatchers would become troubleshooters instead of the active schedulers.

H. Fleet Rules

Having the populace at large sharing private vehicles will require standards of care and maintenance, including:

H1. Checkups every few thousand miles.

H2. Certification for use within the ride-sharing system.

H3. Maintenance Records kept in stringent detail.

H4. Logging of accidents and damage.

Stringent rules would be set for all CCVs. Most important would be periodic safety inspections, which would become more extensive and frequent if the vehicle is in an accident. Vehicles with expired certification or failed safety tests would be reported and removed from the system.

I. Reporting Rules

A traffic system as complex as Smart Jitney must be able to quickly adapt, which requires information from all parts of the commuting community. Reporting and analysis would allow the system to respond to regionalized travel phenomena, such as rush hours or weather disruptions, and to generalized transportation trends, such as summer vacations. Reports compiled from the databases could include: personal travel, driver travel, vehicle travel, average waiting time, average gas mileage, and many others.

The system would automatically maintain and update the extensive records to help optimize travel efficiency and maintain a high quality of driver and rider satisfaction.

Expected Results
Smart Jitney will change the ways people socialize as individuals and groups. The nation’s dependence on fossil fuels has stifled the citizen’s innate ability for cooperation. The result is a walling off, a distancing of one person from another that mirrors people’s increasing geographic isolation. This pattern can be broken by re-socializing people to interact with others and by making relationships more important than possessions.

The things Americans say they want – more time with family, shorter work weeks and commutes, better quality and more carefully prepared food – used to be in greater abundance. They're still available. Creative ways must be found, perhaps ways from the past, to get them into people’s daily lives.

The transportation system of one car-one driver is going to change radically. Other systems and social institutions will be forced to change at the same time. The social landscape will change into something different, hopefully a better way.

Smart Jitney has tangible savings, such as money, time, and safety. And these savings, brought about by conservation measures, will result in great changes in how people work, live, and play.

Beneficial Changes in Transportation
The far-reaching effects of minimizing car transportation are many:

Accidents - Car accidents are the leading cause of death for many age groups. Almost 50,000 people a year die, and more than 1 million are injured annually in the United States alone. World traffic deaths are approximately 500,000 yearly. Fewer traffic fatalities and injuries, along with fewer deaths from automobile-based air pollution, would save us tens of billions of dollars. There are cities in the world where infants and the elderly die from smog, mostly produced by vehicle emissions. The human savings in pain and suffering would be enormous.

Reduced Crime Rates - A dramatic drop in crime rates would result from the de facto monitoring of vehicles necessary for the Smart Jitney program. As discussed earlier, Smart Jitney limits escape routes after a crime has been committed, and citizens' cell phones would allow immediate calls for emergency assistance. Additionally, fewer fender-benders mean more police officers concentrating on crimes instead of traffic accidents.

Gasoline Savings - As families use cars less, they will see a reduction in their gasoline, auto repair, and auto purchase budgets. The reduction in family transport spending can be reinvested to enhance local vacations. The current style of vacation – a plane flight to a far away place such as Hawaii or Disneyland – will be too resource intensive to continue. But Americans, like all people, are adaptable. They can easily build local amusement parks and recreation facilities. A county fair can be as exciting as Disneyland for some of us, and a vacation week in the mountains or at a lake is fully satisfying for many rather than a trip across the continent or to a foreign country.

Other Savings - Further savings would be realized when people no longer require an entire car for themselves. Innovation can produce new designs for many one-person vehicles: bicycles, motorcycles, scooters, powered skateboards, powered wheelchairs, and golf carts.

The facilities previously used to manufacture cars could produce such devices in mass very quickly. This sort of quick adaptation of America's physical plant occurred during wartime and could happen again with the proper impetus.

Changes in Play and Recreation - The human is a playing animal. Without recreation, productivity and satisfaction decrease. How much oil is now used to alleviate boredom, to satisfy people’s need to be with others?

With reduced availability of fossil fuels, the way people play will be different, with more focus on the quality of the interaction rather than in distances traveled or options taken. The personal interaction now lost in car travel would be reversed. Community life would blossom in public spaces. Restaurants would relocate to neighborhoods and distant malls would be a thing of the past as neighborhood trade increases. Massive amusement parks would give way to local ones. Hotels and motels would be less necessary, less expensive, and more amenable to lengthy stays. Once people have invested the time and money to travel to another town, they would be more likely to stay longer.

Recreation plays an important role in a healthy community. Americans will certainly create new ways – or re-create old ones – to play and to entertain themselves at home.

Changes in Social Interaction - Depleted fossil fuels will force people to change, throwing them together, physically together – providing them opportunities for community building.

Social interaction will change as people try to maintain their American standards of privacy and personal distance despite the increased proximity resulting from the Smart Jitney system. Like the Japanese, American will gain the ability to keep their own sense of privacy in crowded places without the need for physical distance. In particular, the nation will see a greater sense of personal reserve as interaction increases. This reserve, this formality, is already present in the world's more physically crowded cultures, where people lead compartmentalized lives despite close physical proximity.

Americans will adopt a "lower profile" of less individualistic manners of dress and speech when interacting. Personal noise and scent pollution might become misdemeanors. Outdoor radios without headphones will be banned, along with other offensive and noisy media in public spaces. Visual or aural assault by commercial advertising will be reduced or eliminated. Obnoxious or overly loud speech, especially into a cell phone, will be discouraged. A code of conversational ethics and silence-keeping that will make modern life far more tolerable will be developed.

Changes in Work - What will jobs be like with less access to private cars? At first glance, not owning a car may appear to be less convenient, but maybe the reduction in commute time will make up for this. Less traffic congestion and no rush hour might be well worth it for many people.

Some people will lose jobs, particularly those who depend on driving. Jobs will also be eliminated in the military and in auto insurance and other auto-related industries, although the oil companies, possibly reduced in size, will be around for a long time packaging and selling energy. Making bikes and scooters for the American population could keep factories in work for years.

With fewer, more efficient vehicles, gas stations will begin to provide services such as charging batteries. Autos will still need repair, and mechanics will be needed for small engine repair and the maintenance of mechanized transportation devices and bicycles. But much skilled labor will move to retrofitting, repairing, and remodeling buildings for the optimum use of renewable resources. Companies which manufacture and install alternative means of heating and cooling will proliferate, as will manufacturers of bikes, buggies, and other simple transportation devices. The number of agricultural workers will increase because of the need to reduce the use of fossil fuels for fertilizer and machinery. The large retail chains dominating America today will break apart, resulting in smaller, locally-based suppliers. Specialty items will still be available via US mail and the Internet.

Businesses that provide a new American technological infrastructure will flourish. Communication companies that manage transportation will arise. Good communication will be vital. America must gain the ability to project people and interaction and speech over distances without having to spend resources relocating the physical body. Reliable networking systems, video phones, phone bridges, and integrated instantaneous document and photo transmission are needed.

Medical care costs will shrink because of fewer auto accidents and because people will become healthier from a more active lifestyle and organically grown food. Yet with medical care made available to everyone, the number of health care workers will not diminish. With the decrease in the conflict caused by trying to control oil-producing countries, resources of time and money will be channeled into new jobs in energy, health, and other research.

Conclusion
The idea of Smart Jitney may seem farfetched, but all the basic elements of the system already exist. The European model of standardizing the work day for carpooling purposes is effective and will be implemented. To make the system work, managers pay penalties if they make employees stay late, something that, at least for now, is unthinkable in America. But this and other measures will be implemented for greater satisfaction in the work force.

Without access to oil, the country will change – hopefully for the better. Self-reliance and a cheerful willingness to face a challenging future will result in the Smart Jitney, or something very much like it.

Sample Questions and Answers
1. Who can be a Driver? Any person can apply to a local government agency, typically the Department of Motor Vehicles. A good driving record is important.

2. How can I report offenses of drivers and other passengers? Each person entering the vehicle will have a nickname applied as they enter by the driver. The time of day and passenger nickname allow the offence to be assigned to a particular person. Simply call a special number, give the time of day and the nickname and report the offense.

3. How can I ride in silence? Any passenger may decide not to hear commercial radio or cell phone conversations. Every passenger and the driver must agree for commercial radio. The technique for avoiding embarrassment involves requiring the driver to shut off the radio as each new passenger is picked up. Upon entry he or she is asked if radio is acceptable to them. If they reply no, then the radio is not turned on again. Of course, negotiation is permitted.

4. What about very large people? People who are large or heavy will be identified in the system. Registration will include such information. Should the information be initially false, the drivers will comment on the specifics and records changed.

5. What about enemies – people with whom I cannot be in the same space? Each person can retain an enemy list. The system will insure that ride matching does not occur. However, if a person seems to have a tendency towards a large number of enemies, they may have to vacate and find another ride. Algorithms for this will be easy to develop.

6. Can I have a preference list? This would be the opposite of the enemy list. The system would allow grouping of preferred co passengers in this way. This could lead to a quasi permanent car pool in some circumstance.

7. Will smoking and drinking be allowed? Imbibing questionable substances implies a possibility of offensive behavior. Since most commutes are short, it is expected that doing without will not cause severe harm.

8. What about long distance travel? Would you have to keep picking people up? Long distance travel can be accommodated by the system. Pickup and drop offs would be less frequent and there would not be drop off at a home but along the central traffic route. The person would then move from drop off point to home or business using the local system.

There are hundreds of questions and answers to be developed as the system moves toward implementation. These are just a sample.

Financing and Implementation
A completely developed Smart Jitney System will take some years and some millions of dollars. Like most such projects, the time for design and specification is relatively long but not relatively expensive. The Community Solution will focus on this stage of the project.

It will address the specific design issues as discussed in the preceding sections in order to define a rough specification from which pilot projects can be developed. A similar specification must be developed for legal implications and include a summary of the changes in laws that must be made to achieve full scale implementation.

Additional work must be done to obtain support from communications companies, road building and maintenance and automobile manufacturers. It is important that such organization support the effort or, if not able to do so, at least give considerations to the national rather than parochial issues.

The concept involves radical change. The changes are being forced on us by circumstances such as Peak Oil and the Climate Crisis. Nonetheless, it is important that people see this as something that may be beneficial to them in the near and far future. This is a major marketing challenge, but not an impossible one. A little known fact is that most parent’s greatest fear for their children is not teen pregnancy or drugs but that the children will be killed or hurt in an auto accident.

The Smart Jitney specification has been placed in the public domain. However, funding is necessary to develop the concept for the product as well as the concepts for legal changes and culture changes.

The developer of the concept has a high tech background in energy, scientific computer applications and software development, insuring good practical design.

Source the Community Solution

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