The invention of the car gave us suburbs. The invention of mass transport systems like the metro allow us to move in large numbers from one place to another within a city.
Getting from your place of residence to the metro and from the metro to your place of work is still an issue. There is no clear solution to this.
The invention and proliferation of electric vehicles clubbed with technology which makes automated rentals possible may offer a solution.
Every metro station has some sort of a parking lot nearby. If we were to have a multilevel parking lot connected to metro stations we could place compact electric vehicles with charging slots in them. These could be inexpensive vehicles which could be hired out to people.
All that is needed now is to have another parking slot located in every residential or office block served by the particular metro station.
The electric vehicle gets hired from parking lot to parking lot. It would be in the interest of the commuter to get the electric vehicle to the receiving parking slot as quickly as possible to reduce the hiring expense.
Such a system would be easy to automate. Even the electric vehicle could self park itself at the receiving parking slot.
What such a system would do is drastically reduce the walking distance for the commuter, thus achieving the elusive last mile connectivity.
When parked the electric vehicle would charge itself, ready for the next trip.
Also see my posts: The foot path beckons: walk and see nature. Getting around: freedom of a commute. E Rickshaw shows the way: an electric vehicle success story. E rickshaw the ubiquitous vehicle: grass route techology is improving lives of people.
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