Ridesharing Is the Future of Transportation, Experts Say

Well, October 21, 2015 came and went, and we still don't have flying cars, despite Terrafugia's best efforts.

But, if we're to believe the Intelligent Transportation Society of America's "Rethinking Transportation for the Next 30 Years" conference Wednesday, the future looks like highways filled with robots and one big ridesharing economy.

Outside the ITS America conference building in Washington, DC, General Motors displayed its 2016 Chevrolet Malibu, which comes equipped with parental spyware, dubbed Teen Driver Technology, that lets Mom and Dad set speed alerts, control radio volume levels, and check in via vehicle reports.

A model Delorean dusted off for the October 21 holiday was linked to the Chevrolet Malibu using vehicle-to-vehicle communication developed by the Department of Transportation. You can't tell from the outside of the cars, but they're programmed to send signals to each other to avoid collisions and improve mobility.

Both examples of connectivity are the kind of baby steps that will set the pace in transportation throughout the next couple years, Toyota's Technology and Innovation Director Hilary Cain said during a panel discussion. You'll see your expected smart tech—calling an ambulance when your airbags deploy, heating your car via cellphone—as well as more development of vehicle-to-vehicle sensors.

Besides connectivity, Cain said self-driving vehicles are next on the horizon, and she expects automated highway driving as early as 2020. Self-driving capabilities are already in the works: Uber's put energy into developing autonomous efforts with Carnegie Mellon research experts. Just this week, Virginia Tech engineers took their self-driving Cadillac SRX for a spin on a public highway for the first time.

But Thomas Dingus, the director of the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, said the future scene probably isn't an entire army of robot cars cruising down the freeway. He argues that autonomous vehicles may not resonate with the more than 50 percent of drivers whose commutes are shorter than 20 minutes, those in rural areas, and drivers who take pride in their vehicles.

"The vision is really mixed—you've got urban centers… but you've also got the whole rest of the country that will adopt this at a slower rate, or not at all," he said.

Buzzkill.

You'll still see mere mortals mixing up the self-driven fleets on the road—and that will have implications on training drivers and infrastructure investments, he added.

Then there are the opportunities for intra- city transportation. Lyft's Federal Policy Manager Lauren Belive talked about how Lyft is envisioning life as a giant carpool, and the company's dreams are made of cars manufactured with built-in rideshare apps. So, in theory, you don't have to be a Lyft driver to decide you want to take the HOV lane to work and pick up neighbors heading in your general direction.

"You would never get into a Prius with a stranger, but now people are doing it on a daily basis. And there's a safety net making it natural and normal," she said.

So it's shared rides and gradual moves in the next 30 years. It might seem like slow progress, but ITS America panelists pointed out all the headaches ahead: Integrating transportation technology into public life will require quelling cybersecurity anxieties, convincing states that new developments are safe, and coming up with procedural regulations and answers for liability issues.

Sounds like more evolution, less revolution—unless Lexus keeps working on that hoverboard.