What a driverless world could look like |

 Some people are obsessedby French wines. Others love playing golf or devouring literature. One of my greatest pleasuresin life is, I have to admit, a bit special. I cannot tell you how much I enjoywatching cities from the sky, from an airplane window. Some cities are calmly industrious, like Dusseldorf or Louisville. Others project an energythat they can hardly contain, like New York or Hong Kong. And then you have Paris or Istanbul, and their patina full of history. I see cities as living beings. And when I discover them from far above, I like to find those main streetsand highways that structure their space. Especially at night, when commuters make these arterieslook dramatically red and golden: the city's vascular systemperforming its vital function right before your eyes. But when I'm sitting in my car after an hour and a halfof commute every day, that reality looks very different. (Laughter) Nothing -- not public radio, no podcast -- (Laughter) Not even mindfulness meditation makes this time worth living. (Laughter) Isn't it absurd that we created carsthat can reach 130 miles per hour and we now drive them at the same speedas 19th-century horse carriages? (Laughter) In the US alone, we spent 29.6 billion hourscommuting in 2014. With that amount of time, ancient Egyptians could have built26 Pyramids of Giza. (Laughter) We do that in one year. A monumental waste of time,energy and human potential. For decades, our remedy for congestion was simple: build new roads or enlarge existing ones. And it worked. It worked admirably for Paris, when the city tore downhundreds of historical buildings to create 85 miles of transportation-friendly boulevards. And it still works todayin fast-growing emerging cities. But in more established urban centers, significant network expansionsare almost impossible: habitat is just too dense, real estate, too expensive and public finances, too fragile. Our city's vascular systemis getting clogged, it's getting sick, and we should pay attention. Our current wayof thinking is not working. For our transportation to flow, we need a new source of inspiration. So after 16 yearsworking in transportation, my "aha moment" happenedwhen speaking with a biotech customer. She was telling me how her treatment was leveraging specific propertiesof our vascular system. "Wow," I thought, "Our vascular system -- all the veins and arteries in our body making miracles of logistics every day." This is the moment I realized that biology has beenin the transportation business for billions of years. It has been testing countless solutions to move nutrients, gases and proteins. It really is the world's mostsophisticated transportation laboratory. So, what if the solution to our trafficchallenges was inside us? I wanted to know: Why is it that blood flowsin our veins most of our lives, when our big cities get cloggedon a daily basis? And the reality is that you're lookingat two very different networks. I don't know if you realize, but each of us has 60,000 milesof blood vessels in our bodies -- 60,000 miles. That's two-and-a-half timesthe Earth's circumference, inside you. What it means is that blood vesselsare everywhere inside us, not just under the surface of our skin. But if you look at our cities, yes, we have someunderground subway systems and some tunnels and bridges, and also some helicopters in the sky. But the vast majority of our trafficis focused on the ground, on the surface. So in other words, while our vascular system usesthe three dimensions inside us, our urban transportationis mostly two-dimensional. And so what we needis to embrace that verticality. If our surface grid is saturated, well, let's elevate our traffic. This Chinese concept of a busthat can straddle traffic jams -- that was an eye-opener on new waysto think about space and movement inside our cities. And we can go higher, and suspend our transportationlike we did with our electrical grid. Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabiare talking about testing these futuristic networksof suspended magnetic pods. And we can keep climbing, and fly. The fact that a company like Airbus is now seriously workingon flying urban taxis is telling us something. Flying cars are finally movingfrom science-fiction déjà vu to attractive business-case territory. And that's an exciting moment. So building this 3-Dtransportation network is one of the ways we can mitigateand solve traffic jams. But it's not the only one. We have to question other fundamental choicesthat we made, like the vehicles we use. Just imagine a very familiar scene: You've been driving for 42 minutes. The two kids behind youare getting restless. And you're late. Do you see that slow car in front of you? Always comes when you're late, right? (Laughter) That driver is looking for parking. There is no parking spotavailable in the area, but how would he know? It is estimated that up to 30 percentof urban traffic is generated by drivers looking for parking. Do you see the 100 cars around you? Eighty-five of themonly have one passenger. Those 85 drivers could all fitin one Londonian red bus. So the question is: Why are we wasting so much spaceif it is what we need the most? Why are we doing this to ourselves? Biology would never do this. Space inside our arteriesis fully utilized. At every heartbeat, a higher blood pressure literally compactsmillions of red blood cells into massive trains of oxygen that quickly flow throughout our body. And the tiny space inside our redblood cells is not wasted, either. In healthy conditions, more than 95 percentof their oxygen capacity is utilized. Can you imagine if the vehicleswe used in our cities were 95 percent full, all the additional spaceyou would have to walk, to bike and to enjoy our cities? The reason blood is soincredibly efficient is that our red blood cellsare not dedicated to specific organs or tissues; otherwise, we would probably havetraffic jams in our veins. No, they're shared. They're shared by allthe cells of our body. And because our network is so extensive, each one of our 37 trillion cellsgets its own deliveries of oxygen precisely when it needs them. Blood is both a collectiveand individual form of transportation. But for our cities, we've been stuck. We've been stuck in an endless debate between creating a car-centric societyor extensive mass-transit systems. I think we should transcend this. I think we can create vehiclesthat combine the convenience of cars and the efficiencies of trains and buses. Just imagine. You're comfortably sittingin a fast and smooth urban train, along with 1,200 passengers. The problem with urban trains is that sometimes you have to stopfive, ten, fifteen times before your final destination. What if in this trainyou didn't have to stop? In this train, wagons can detach dynamicallywhile you're moving and become express, driverless buses that move on a secondary road network. And so without a single stop, nor a lengthy transfer, you are now sitting in a busthat is headed toward your suburb. And when you get close, the section you're sitting in detaches and self-drives youright to your doorstep. It is collective and individualat the same time. This could be one of the shared,modular, driverless vehicles of tomorrow. Now ... as if walking in a citybuzzing with drones, flying taxis, modular busesand suspended magnetic pods was not exotic enough, I think there is another force in action that will make urban traffic mesmerizing. If you think about it, the current generation of driverless carsis just trying to earn its way into a traffic gridmade by and for humans. They're trying to learn traffic rules,which is relatively simple, and coping with human unpredictability, which is more challenging. But what would happenwhen whole cities become driverless? Would we need traffic lights? Would we need lanes? How about speed limits? Red blood cells are not flowing in lanes. They never stop at red lights. In the first driverless cities, you would have no red lights and no lanes. And when all the carsare driverless and connected, everything is predictableand reaction time, minimum. They can drive much faster and can take any rational initiativethat can speed them up or the cars around them. So instead of rigid traffic rules, flow will be regulated by a mesh of dynamic and constantlyself-improving algorithms. The result: a strange traffic that mixes the fast and smoothrigor of German autobahns and the creative vitalityof the intersections of Mumbai. (Laughter) Traffic will be functionally exuberant. It will be liquid like our blood. And by a strange paradox, the more robotizedour traffic grid will be, the more organic and aliveits movement will feel. So yes, biology has all the attributesof a transportation genius today. But this process has takenbillions of years, and went through all sortsof iterations and mutations. We can't wait billions of yearsto evolve our transportation system. We now have the dreams, the concepts and the technology to create 3-D transportation networks, invent new vehicles and change the flow in our cities. Let's do it. Thank you. (Applause)