Lexitecture: Multimodal Transportation

Continuing from last time, Lexington traffic is bad and getting worse, and a real solution would involve redrawing the road map, or getting cars off of the road. Building roads is very expensive. In the long term, the second option makes the most sense.

If you have driven through Atlanta at any point you should be able to pick up on two things:

1) There is not a reasonable amount of road infrastructure that can solve car traffic problems. If anything, more lanes make things worse. Atlanta has 12 lanes and more, and no one is congratulating Atlanta on how smooth traffic is because more lanes didn’t solve the problem.

2) Bad traffic slows you down and wastes your time. The average American spends 5.45 years(7%) of their life driving. That’s 5 years you could be spending doing something productive, like reading, working, sleeping, or spending time with your family and friends. You can’t, though, because you have to drive.

Even if these two points weren’t an issue and traffic was moving perfectly, legally, the fastest we can safely drive is 75 mph. If we stick with cars, that number won’t rise very easily.

Just like the traffic diagrams I shared last time, in order to cut down on traffic we need different options to get from point A to point B. This is the main goal of what’s called “multimodal transportation.” In multimodal transportation, you can use different modes of transportation in one trip, or just different modes of transportation, period. For example, you might walk to a neighborhood bike-share station, and ride the bike to a metro station. At your metro stop take a bus, and then walk to your destination from the bus stop, all on one integrated system. Or you could walk the whole way, ride your bike the whole way, take a bus the whole way, or take a rail the whole way. The point is that there is infrastructure available that supports various ways to get from A to B.

Surprisingly, the SCDOT has a multimodal transportation plan for 2040. However, Lexington needs to tailor its own plan that addresses its specific needs.

In my conversations, I feel that most people are in favor of a light-rail line into Columbia. This could be installed next to the current railroad right of way, just like the CATS system in Charlotte services the suburbs south of the city.

There is even a national plan for a high speed commuter rail system, with planned service to Columbia and Greenville. Both this and a Columbia light-rail system would be great right now. My problem with investing in these systems is that we’re playing catch-up with the rest of the world that already has them(all of Europe, most of Asia). It is fairly old technology, and will be really backwards by 2040. We need something newer, smarter, and more convenient that solves more problems.

Luckily, NASA has already developed a futuristic system that combines the best of public and private transportation that could be the answer. It is called SkyTran, and it involves personal vehicles zipping along an elevated electromagnetic rail at speeds up to 150 mph using very little energy. Also, it is surprisingly cheap to build compared to a typical road. Imagine a 6 minute trip to Columbia... 43 minutes to Greenville... 48 minutes to Charleston... 80 minutes to Atlanta... 95 minutes to Raleigh. That level of safe personal speed would explode the economy and give Americans a new sense of freedom.

The community where Google is based in California is trying to build the system there, and Tel Aviv is building the first full-scale system in Israel. Why not the same in Lexington? Whatever we choose, we need to choose something that can take pressure off our roads.

Let’s build a better Lexington.