Page 26 - September 2018 Disruption Report Flip Book

DISRUPTION OF TRANSPORTATION SEJAPNTEUMARBYER20210818
26. The role of malls and other shopping areas will continue to shift — to be replaced by places people go for services, not products. There will be virtually no face to face purchases of physical goods.
27. Amazon and/or a few other large players will put Fedex, UPS and USPS out of business as their transportation network becomes orders of magnitude more cost efficient than existing models — largely from a lack of legacy costs like pensions, higher union labor costs and regulations (especially USPS) that won’t keep up with the pace of technology change. 3D printing will also contribute to this as many day-to-day products are printed at home rather than purchased.
28. The same vehicles will often transport people and goods as algorithms optimize all routes. And, off-peak utilization will allow for other very inexpensive delivery options. In other words, packages will be increasingly delivered at night. Add autonomous drone aircraft to this mix and there’ll be very little reason to believe that traditional carriers (Fedex, USPS, UPS, etc) will survive at all.
29. Roads will be much emptier and smaller (over time) as self-driving cars need much less space between them (a major cause of traffic today), people will share vehicles more than today (carpooling), traffic flow will be better regulated and algorithmic timing (i.e. leave at 10 versus 9:30) will optimize infrastructure utilization. Roads will also likely be smoother and turns optimally banked for passenger comfort. High speed underground and above ground tunnels (maybe integrating hyperloop technology or this novel magnetic track solution) will become the high speed network for long haul travel.
30. Short hop domestic air travel may be largely displaced by multi-modal travel in autonomous vehicles. This may be countered by the advent of lower cost, more automated air travel. This too may become part of integrated, multi-modal transportation.
31. Roads will wear out much more slowly with fewer vehicle miles, lighter vehicles (with less safety requirements). New road materials will be developed that drain better, last longer and are more environmentally friendly. These materials might even be power generating (solar or reclamation from vehicle kinetic energy). At the extreme, they may even be replaced by radically different designs — tunnels, magnetic tracks, other hyper-optimized materials.
32. Premium vehicle services will have more compartmentalized privacy, more comfort, good business features (quiet, wifi, bluetooth for each passenger, etc), massage services and beds for sleeping. They may also allow for meaningful in-transit real and virtual meetings. This will also likely include aromatherapy, many versions of in-vehicle entertainment systems and even virtual passengers to keep you company.
33. Exhilaration and emotion will almost entirely leave transportation. People won’t brag about how nice, fast, comfortable their cars are. Speed will be measured by times between end points, not acceleration, handling or top speed.
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