Transportation Workshop 2.12

Hi,

Thursday’s workshop was held by Antti Ruotoistenmäki from Aalto University’s Lifelong Learning Institute Dipoli. We were divided into groups and each group chose a topic to prepare a short presentation of two minutes. The task was called ”evevator task” because the groups had to present their views during an imaginary two minutes elevator ride, and get the ”board” (=Mr Ruotoistenmäki and Matleena) to buy their idea. There werevariuos topics to choose from concerning transportation. The case was Helsinki metropolitan area. The problem was, that the traffic input has to be reduced to get more effective and sustainable transportation system.

Mr Ruotoistenmäki showed us very interesting statistic on the connection between GDP growt and the number of private cars. It seemed that they have almost linear relationship. There are over five million private cars in Finland these days. The introducing lecture included almost the same features as Dr Rahaman showed us in the e-lecture on Tuesday.

 Our group chose the topic vehicle sharing versus private ownership. There were three main points in our solution. First, there are over 5 million cars in Finland, this means that ebery family has two or even tree cars. If the number of cars could be reduced to just one car per family, that would help a lot. The fact is, that some peolple want to have a private car/they need a private car if there isn’t good public transportation where they live. Second, vehicle sharing can be promoted by for example by putting road tolls for single drivers, setting special ”car pool lanes” or giving tax revenues for people who share their car with others. Third, there are many people in the city centre who don’t have a car. There could be special electric rent cars that you could rent and then return anywhere in the city to be rented forward. By doing this many people would use the same car. Another group  had almost the same solution as us.

There was an interesting solution to the same problem that we had. There would be small electric cars that had no driver and you could order them with mobile phone. The cars would follow metal spikes that are put on the ground, so they wouldn’t need a driver. This way every passenger would have privacy that is maybe the most valued feature in using private cars. The solution was futuristic but I think it could be a really good option.

This was the second last lecture on this course if you don’t count Independence Day’s individual work. Time goes so fast! I’m already looking forward to the last sgt course in the spring semester.