Japan

From being overhyped in the early 1990s as some kind of unstoppable force that was destined to conquer the world of business, Japan is now being ignored or excessively downrated by many Americans. The country has its problems – which country doesn’t? – but it is still a land of great human creativity that does many things better than any other. For example we predict there is a good chance of Japan leading the world to an automated highway system (AHS). The Germans are good at making expensive systems work on test tracks but hopeless at choosing technology that can be mass produced at a price that will allow the stuff to be actually sold. The US had a shot at the AHS a few years back and it failed so badly it will be another decade before there’s a renewed push. In any case we’re too in thrall to trial lawyers to be able to get companies to take it seriously. And our risk-averse road managers aren’t going to deploy the stuff until someone else (preferably several others) have done so first. We’re begging someone else to take the lead.

The Japanese on the other hand have a lot going for them. They have enormous technological depth in electronics, unparalleled manufacturing capability, worldwide marketing skills, and a legal system not beholden to hyper-litigious nuts who want millions of dollars from Nescafe because they spilled some hot coffee in their lap.

Toyota has a system on offer with the acronym IMTS where up to 10 buses travel in convoy, maintaining a fixed distance between one another to comprise a train. The vehicles can be put on “automatic pilot” by means of a computerized control system. Each vehicle has radars and other sensors, and communications equipment to keep each vehicle updated on the others’ speeds and staus. The buses are able to start and stop or slow and accelerate in harmony with one another.

The greatest advantages of the system are the economies of doing without drivers. Existing vehicles can be retrofitted with the AHS equipment, Toyota says. And driven normally off the automated track. The infrastructure consists of magnetic guide markers along the lanes for steering, similar to the UC Berkeley system that sank with the with withdrawal of USDOT funding in 1997. The Toyota system is flexible, able to handle at present up to 10 vehicles in a group.

Toyota has sufficient confidence in the IMTS system it is proposing it be placed in service handling crowds at the World Exposition in Aichi Japan in 2005. It should work a heck of a lot better than Atlanta’s disgraceful ITS fiasco during the 1996 Olympic Games when the so-called advanced traffic management system couldn’t even count vehicles or sense speeds on the main roads, and the shuttle buses were manned by schoolbus drivers from out of town who made a specialty of getting lost between the hotels and the sporting venues.