Bill Ford: A future beyond traffic gridlock

http://www.ted.com Bill Ford is a car guy -- his great-grandfather was Henry Ford, and he grew up inside the massive Ford Motor Co. So when he worries about cars' impact on the environment, and about our growing global gridlock problem, it's worth a listen. His vision for the future of mobility includes "smart roads," even smarter public transport and going green like never before.

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. Featured speakers have included Al Gore on climate change, Philippe Starck on design, Jill Bolte Taylor on observing her own stroke, Nicholas Negroponte on One Laptop per Child, Jane Goodall on chimpanzees, Bill Gates on malaria and mosquitoes, Pattie Maes on the "Sixth Sense" wearable tech, and "Lost" producer JJ Abrams on the allure of mystery. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts. Closed captions and translated subtitles in a variety of languages are now available on TED.com, at http://www.ted.com/translate.

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[calebd87]

Cmon TED for over a year I've been seeing comments about your unnecessarily loud intro...

[Vivek Rajcoomar]

1. Communist cars? :P

2. Search "bicycle rush hour Netherlands". That's how you do it. Watch and learn.

3. If we're going to have more people, the obv sol'n is not increased personal transit efficiency, but increased mass transit.

I know this might come as a shock to Americans, but you really don't need a car in some European countries. Cars are just seen as inconvenient and expensive compared to the public transit options, bike & walk.

Their cities r designed to make it convenient.

[Kevin Cameron]

"Frankly"  He keeps using that word. I don't think it means what he thinks it means.

[Gipsland Ferryweather]

well shit, look how long THX has been getting away with it

[SoundAboutRight]

The primary problem with traffic today is we're using 50 year old business models of the 9-5 work day. With technologies available to us, such as high-speed internet, e-commuting needs to be the next immediate step in addressing these issues. Most offices can remain fully functional with a worker being there only two days a week for primary meetings. Work shifts need to be staggered, to relieve rush hour traffic. It's really simple to bring some immediate relief to traffic congestion.

[6543R]

Nice to hear that Mr. Ford isn't all about making sure his business is the only solution though if he wouldn't be so bias towards car manufacturing he might have gone a few steps further with his ideas.

[6543R]

I live in Finland and this is exactly what we have. The problems are that traffic jams occur twice/day, outside those times road congestion is minimal. Of course this alone isn't much of a problem but the ripple effect on near-by crossings because the congestion rates vary makes this thing harder than you would think.

[John Petticrew]

Make the traffic lights communicate with each other and have more sensors and cameras and a computer system running them all.

[John Petticrew]

I think a real problem today that could be fixed easily with the technology we have abailable today is to fix the traffic lights. In a world with smart cars and smart phones and smart tv's everything is smart now days. Why not traffic lights? In fact I think traffic lights are dumb. Think about how many time you pull up to a light and its green for no traffic and or then switches green for a lane with no vehicles in it while you are left sitting there waiting for it to turn green.

[sig P]

So how do you public transportation geniuses figure I get from the country into town and haul 500 pounds of livestock feed back to the barn? A commuter bus?

One size fits all doesn't fit all.

[Mike Bosak]

That lisp is kinda too noticeable.