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15 August 2010My Kingdom for a Horse!Tag(s): SustainabilityIn the closing scenes of Richard III by William Shakespeare King Richard, having bravely fought on the battlefield at Bosworth but facing defeat by the future King Henry VII, cries in despair “A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!” But no horse is forthcoming and he loses his head as well as his kingdom. All of us can no doubt relate to that. We have been stuck in some godforsaken place, regular transport providers seem conspicuous by their absence, the buses are no doubt grouping themselves in threes somewhere, and we desperately seek an instant escape route. The writers of Star Trek tapped into this with the perennial cry of their heroes “Beam me up, Scotty!” as they got out of some intergalactic scrape. Dr Who could always escape the Daleks in his Tardis which not only took him to a different place in the galaxy but also to another point in time. The makers of the James Bond films understood it too as the eponymous hero, content with a second hand Bentley in the books, was given ever more exotic cars and other mechanisms to get out of trouble and keep his date for the night.
Suburban towns were transformed by the networking of railways and in the past 50 years the motorway network has had a similar effect. Retailers moved from the High Street to out of town locations provided they were well served by the road network.
New models of ownership, of housing density, of sustainable mobility are required and much of the glue for this will be provided by intelligent transport systems. According to the European Commission which has just approved a new Intelligent Transport systems directive traffic congestion costs 1% of Europe – wide GDP. Installation of intelligent technology in cars and trucks it is estimated will save 5,000 lives per year.
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