ICVS: A Paradigm to Address Urban Traffic Gridlock and Associated Problems

Abstract

For the metropolitan setting, we propose the introduction of (mostly) one-seater electric vehicles and a sparse road network dedicated to them. These "intelligent commuter vehicles" (ICVs) would be bimodal: human-driven on standard roads, and computer-guided in the network (ICVN), which also charges and powers the vehicles. The commuter would drive to the nearest entry/exit terminal, from where the vehicle would be guided to the terminal closest to the destination, the trip being completed by human driving. The sparsity of the network, combined with the vehicles' narrowness and lightness means that it can be constructed relatively painlessly.Network-charging both removes the need of a separate urban charging infrastructure and leads to short range-requirement for the vehicles, hence existing, cheap lead-acid batteries can be used; the controlled environment of the network makes the guiding of the vehicles realizable with existing technology. Hence the paradigm does not need any technological breakthroughs; is backward-compatible, since existing roads are still utilized, and a partlycompleted network can be used; and forward-compatible, since the vehicles can easily be converted to be fully self-driving, if and when we are technologically and socially ready. We believe that these features make the paradigm the most reasonable solution to the metropolitan gridlock problem.