How social networking could help reduce traffic chaos

Eight billion people - as much as 80 per cent of the world's population - will be crammed into mega-cities or urban conurbations by the middle of this century, scientists believe. In the same time frame the number of vehicles in the world will have tripled to nearly 2.5 billion, according to Volkswagen estimates.
But people will still need to travel to work, school, the shops or for leisure, putting pressure on infrastructures which already cannot cope. The problems will be worst in Asia and Latin America, home to most of the cities with populations of 10 million or more. In Manila, capital of the Philippines, three million people commute from outside areas every day, adding to the 12 million inhabitants. Outside the Chinese capital Beijing in 2010 a 60-mile traffic jam took 10 days to clear.
One solution, according to Swiss automobile visionary Rinspeed and premium infotainment group Harman, is to harness the power of social networking to car-sharing. This would allow commuters to continue to enjoy the door-to-door convenience of the private car with the traffic-reducing, fuel-saving benefits of public transport.
Rinspeed has developed a microbus-sized concept vehicle, the microMAX, which could take advantage of Harman's Cloud-based urbanSWARM technology to put people who want to travel in touch with vehicles on the road to create efficient ride-share systems.
Once registered, users would only have to enter where they want to go and when. Because the Cloud stows information about where vehicles in the swarm are going, the routes they are taking and the spare capacity they have, it would unite the two in a need-based, flexible, efficient and environmentally friendly way.
Harman's infotainment division technology marketing director, Hans Roth, believes a scheme such as this could be up and running somewhere within five years. "It could be made a reality. From a connectivity point of view everything is there," he says. "We would need a trigger to get the vehicle manufacturers interested and there must be a service behind it, but the swarm is maybe closer than we think."
The microMax features "standing seats" with three-point belts, allowing quick and easy boarding and rapid transfer between vehicles. Because there are no fixed routes or stops, the vehicles could choose the fastest route, using the Cloud to scan for potential hold-ups or traffic jams, and for parking spaces at journey's end.
Benefits that swarm users could enjoy on board might include coffee machines and access via a smartphone to individual film or music collections or to their work desktop via pre-installed tablet computers. The microMAX concept includes high definition 19-inch touch screens with 4G-LTE connectivity.
Users could even receive a wake-up call via the Cloud. The system would take into account traffic flows and allow people to go through their the morning routine and have breakfast before delivering a microMAX to their door just in time.
"If we continue to pursue the current model of personal mobility the world's streets will soon be hopelessly congested," Ford executive chairman Bill Ford said in 2011. "While people are trying to get from A to B we are wasting time, energy and opportunities for economic development."