Ford’s Future Plans May Change How We Look at Our Trucks

By Ford-trucks.com - January 13, 2018

Using Tech to Create Better Avenues for Underserved Citizens

We can envision the day when a dry cleaner relies on a self-driving delivery vehicle to smartly and efficiently distribute clean clothes to owners around the community, eliminating the congestion from multiple vehicles parking and double parking, and freeing up valuable time for customers. Perhaps those two curbside spots in front of the cleaners have a future as a parklet, providing the neighborhood with valuable greenspace.

We can create [free] up our streets…by re-envisioning how our transportation systems work, and focusing on people versus the technology we have built.

With a system optimized across technologies and transit modes, our cities will be better situated to manage the flow of people and goods, and provide opportunities to return the streets to potentially more valuable uses. Cities with highly efficient transportation systems will have shared modes of transportation operating so efficiently that commuters will be confident choosing them, reducing the number of vehicles using our streets. And in a highly efficient transportation system, cities will be able to provide greater access to mobility for chronically underserved citizens who live in transit, food and healthcare deserts.

As we continue along the path of increased connectivity, these developments should grant us the opportunity to realize great benefits for people everywhere. The ability to better orchestrate our mobility ecosystems can ensure traffic reroutes around accidents or other logjams, and can prevent rush hour from being a nightmare. By understanding how our streets are being used, we can determine the safest pick-up and drop-off spots for ride-hailing services, especially as they add self-driving vehicles to their fleets. And by connecting all our transit modes to one system, we can give people the power to access even better route planning services — either before they leave their home or even in the middle of their trip — so they can determine the best way to get where they want to be.

Our streets are where the world lives, works, moves and connects; they are dominant components of public space, generators of urban economies and social activities, and they should serve the people of our cities, not cars. We can create this kind of space again, freeing up our streets and reassessing the values we want them to reflect by re-envisioning how our transportation systems work at every level, and focusing on the people we are serving versus the technology we have built. Together, we can take back our streets.