Modern mass transportation makes things easier for travelers, especially with the latest wireless interconnection technologies. Many buses, commuter trains, shuttles, and even trolleys now have wireless access to computers over WiFi, so no one is out of touch during travel time. This is now being done on trains from Baltimore to NY and on trains from Sacramento to San Francisco thanks to Amtrak. After all, we now have WiFi hotspots at McDonalds, Kinko’s, Bookstores, Starbucks, Airports, and hotel lobbies.
By having these amenities, we can get people to stay out of their cars and enjoy the commute or take a high-speed train on their next trip; Not to mention the gas savings approaching $ 3.00 per gallon. Once the system is built, operating costs are relatively low considering the costs of airport expansion which tend to have cyclical trends during boom and bust years and therefore difficult to manage your ROI, with gates that are emptied and then new doors that must be built up the cycle. One just has to follow the airline industry sector rotations and take a trip through the California desert and see billions of dollars worth of hibernating airliners that may never be used again. Between fierce price wars, bankruptcy tactics, and now the age of international terrorism, we must rethink our transportation strategy to include other methods of redundancy, which can provide the speed and convenience that we used to have in commercial aviation.
We only have a couple of bus companies nationwide that transport people across the country. We need to ensure that buses are safe also in the age of international terrorism, and at the same time, we must increase the use and the number of passengers. New interconnected wireless technologies can do both. Since it is already on the Internet, you can send video information to the command and control of the mass transit system and constantly monitor.
Providing commuter convenience and safety at the same time will keep passengers coming back, and let’s face it, no one wants to pay $ 85.00 every week to fill their SUV with gas. Now is a good time to convince the public to go back to the mass transit systems we have already established and improve economies of scale to make those old ornate forms that were used to float the bond measure a reality. Can technology really do all of that? Maybe I can. Think about it.