Tomorrows Transportation: Changing Cities, Economies, and
Lives |
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Tomorrows
Transportation: Changing Cities, Economies, and Lives
by Authors:
William L. Garrison , Jerry D. Ward
Released: 01 March, 2000
ISBN: 1580530966
Hardcover
Sales Rank: 657,306
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List price: $87.00
Our price: $87.00
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Transportation: Changing Cities, Economies, and Lives
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Average Customer Rating: 
Tomorrows
Transportation: Changing Cities, Economies, and
Lives > Customer
Review #1:
Save your money for
better books
This is an easy-to-read book, with some
interesting ideas about the future of
transportation and good references. Although, some
ideas are exciting, the future of
telecommunications and transportation issue is
largely neglected. The ideas presented in the book
are hardly new, and anyone in the field can easily
think about these ideas after a short session of
brainstorming. In brief, I suggest that you save
your money for better books.
Tomorrows
Transportation: Changing Cities, Economies, and
Lives > Customer
Review #2:
View of future too
constrained
Garrison and Ward do an excellent job of
relating transportation to the rest of our social
fabric, and cover a wide range of possible future
transportation pathways. Style is light and
non-technical, and their life times involved in
transportation shows in the depth of coverage.
Given the authors backgrounds in the world of ITS
(Intelligent Transportation Systems) it is
understandable that 95% of these pathways are of
an evolutionary nature. Still, they open the door
a tiny crack for revolutionary transportation in
the form of PTS (Pedestrian Transport System) to
allow construction of "minicities" that are
automobile free. PTS allows small driverless
vehicles to go anywhere in the network without
stopping.
As good as the book is, it was a frustrating
read. They document well the "needs" for
transportation in the future - lower costs of
small batch movement - lower trip time for goods
and people - lower overall costs, yet they cannot
bring themselves to speculate on the most dramatic
future possibility - the overlaying and
interconnecting of cities with a fully automated
transportation network. They dont make the mental
leap from having PTS inside their minicity to the
possibility that it could escape to cover a whole
city, thereby creating a city that is largely
autofree. Since PTS has the pontential to meet all
their needs criteria the oversight is all the more
surprising. For all that the book has the flavor
of thinking outside the box, their thinking is
decidedly trapped inside their minicity box.
Lastly, there was a dearth of discussion about
the current status regarding the many niches in
which fully automated transportation systems are
evolving.
Tomorrows
Transportation: Changing Cities, Economies, and
Lives > Customer
Review #3:
Tomorrows
Transportation:Chngng
Cities,Economies,andLives
This is a remarkable book
about the future of transportation and its
interactions with the economy, society, and
technology. The authors obviously have an
encyclopedic knowledge of the transportation
sectors covered here, but the material is
presented in a lighthearted way that is both
informative and entertaining. The chapters are
short and easy to absorb. I so enjoyed reading the
book that I was disappointed when there was no
more to read. I solved this easily; I began
reading it again. The authors have a knack for
discussing what might be called the architecture
of the transportation system and its major
tradeoffs while at the same time exhibiting a
mastery of potential technical, procedural, and
organizational options and innovations. They quite
creatively avoid the perils of advocacy, of
prediction, and of specification of future
requirements. Instead, the book indicates a range
of potential future pathways that offer
significant promise in expanding individuals and
societys range of choices. The book would be an
excellent supplementary text for almost any course
on transportation. It approaches the subject from
a very broad perspective but where appropriate
delves into pertinent technical, economic, social,
organizational, historical, and geographical
details. It leaves the reader with a much better
understanding of the significant role of
transportation in history, in the present, and in
its potentialities for the future.
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