There is no magical solution because urban traffic congestion arises from the fact that a lot of people want to be in the same place at the same time often.
William J. MitchellImagine a kind of system where you have lightweight electric vehicles relatively small battery capacity, and then picking up charge wherever they park. You never have to worry about filling up your car, never go to the gas station, never plug it in, never do any of these things.
William J. MitchellThat's not a utopian vision. It is a set of ideas that we think are important to discuss. Those ideas largely have to do with sustainability of cities. The ability of cities to, over time, remain in balance with the resource streams that are available to them, and they have to do with social justice and equity of the fundamental conditions of satisfactory citizenship.
William J. MitchellMost automobiles spend about 80 percent of their time sitting around doing nothing. They're gasoline powered; they go to very high speeds, which in fact, under urban conditions, you don't need. These high speeds generate enormous safety requirements and so on and so forth. Now you can incrementally tweak the automobile. You can make the power train more efficient and you can enhance safety and all of these sorts of things that are very worthwhile.
William J. Mitchell