INTRODUCTION

In his 1888 classic, "Looking Backward," author and social reformer Edward Bellamy’s hero is transported, by improbable means, from 1887 ahead to the year 2000. From that vantage point he looks backward and compares two starkly different periods in U.S. development, one real and very grim, the other imagined and idyllic. The point of the book, and the reason it became one of this country’s most popular and influential, turn-of-the-century writings was its promise of a brighter future, complete with details on how to achieve that future. A millennial utopia was described by an "on-the-site" observer!

Now rapidly approaching that magic moment in history, 2000AD, we must be sobered by the continuing need for fundamental changes in so much of society. For those of us in the world of transportation, Bellamy’s descriptions of a rational, systems-oriented approach are engaging. His workers, the "industrial army," would all be paid the same amount with a "debit" card. The wealth of a vastly more efficient nation would permit retirement by age 48, and there would, of course, be no unemployment. People would live in highly structured communities so as to minimize the need to travel for either social or economic necessities. In fact, transportation was reduced to a marginal consideration.

For Bellamy, attempting to chart a course to a more rational, humane, and effective society, the key was developing and adopting a "systems approach." In hindsight, Bellamy’s Achilles heel is painfully evident. His year 2000 people are wholly rational—encouraged to be so by a wise, powerful, benevolent government. Though the promise of an all-wise government rings hollow in our time, using our massively enhanced systems capabilities to further candidate social and economic causes deserves our best energies. So rather than looking backward, like Bellamy’s hero, should we not, quite deliberately, choose to look ahead to when we will provide the more effective, efficient transportation systems our customers—-and taxpayers—-want and deserve. Might not this magic, millennial moment have, as an integral part, a more rational, systems-oriented approach to meeting our transportation needs, a Simultaneous Vehicle Infrastructure Design approach?

But since we see only "darkly" into the future, perhaps we must, with Bellamy, begin by "looking backward." When we do so, who can say which, in the grand sweep of transportation history, came first—concern for infrastructure or for vehicle design, or have there been visionaries who always recognized the merit of a simultaneous approach? Certainly, a case can be made that providing useful transportation services has always required an essentially interactive, systems process. Beasts of burden, trails; wagons, primitive roads; ships, ports and waterways; locomotives and rails; airports and aircraft; and now great focus on roads with cars and trucks. In all these cases, there has been, in today’s parlance, "feedback" loops at work. This continuous, if primitive, feedback process, depending on cycle time, may have approached what we now define as SVID. We should, therefore, with appropriate humility remember that, over all time, feedback has driven and nourished the continuing quest for means of meeting the central human desire for improved access and mobility. The question of which came first, vehicle infrastructure design may, therefore, be moot.

Providing an overview to a concept so logical, yet so shrouded by time and "process" detail, is challenging. Examples and illustrations that will be the focus of my efforts to present applications and benefits, are homely, simplistic. To some they will register with a ho-hum, while to others they may seem beyond the pale. To begin, I will offer a definition of SVID offered in a seminal paper by David Albright^*, the person who first introduced me to the concept. This paper was presented at The Los Alamos National Laboratory, September, 19, 1995. Following definition, I will follow my charge to range widely across and between modes and to consider various possible impacts, i.e., safety, economic, capital investment, environmental, cultural, efficiency, productivity and institutional aspects.

From the perspective of the transportation system, individuals, materials and information are elements to be moved, Some means is employed to move these elements from one point to another—-the means of movement is a form of vehicle. Infrastructure is the environment employed for [vehicle] movement connecting the points of origin and destination. The environment is in part that which is constructed for the purpose of transportation, and in part the natural and social setting of the construction. Infrastructure includes {the "ways"}, operational controls, energy fueling and parts replacement required for the system to function. The transportation system may be described as including the elements [to be moved], vehicles, infrastructure, and the interaction among these components.

While David’s last point provides the operative definition, I believe the several quotes from his seminal paper shore up the concept and give the robustness necessary for full future development of the SVID concept.

In the Los Alamos paper cited earlier, Albright suggested three criteria for SVID project selection. Having these criteria in mind is, I believe useful in choosing SVID examples. His suggested criteria included:

1) Common design interest. That is, the project should be seen as important to both vehicle and infrastructure designers. Importance may be judged by various metrics.

2) Potential for mutual economic (and/or other) benefit. Given that transportation system investments approach a trillion dollars annually, and that the majority of this vast sum is spent in the motor vehicle/highway transportation this should be a vital and readily achievable criteria. (Increasingly we see the impacts going much beyond economic ones.)

3) There should be value added for individuals. Projects selected [as the means for advancing the concept in early stages] should have the potential to make a difference, both at the professional and community of individuals levels.

Following are possible areas for application intended to frame and clarify the SVID concept and to illustrate the many relevant factors that must be integral to any meaningful consideration.

Many in the highway engineering/commercial vehicle arena might point to this as an historic, preeminent example of SVID. Did not imperial Rome build a remarkable network of durable roads to accommodate the movement of goods, messengers and its legions? Did not our earliest pavement engineers develop "road tests" to ensure wheel-load/pavement strength compatibility? Have we not had manuals of national geometric design standards?

To such questions, the answer is yes. Still, and acknowledging the essential congruency, in this process, it does not qualify under the SVID definition, i.e., there has not been a true systems approach where both vehicle and road designers—and most importantly the "owners" of these have not worked cooperatively to ensure optimum solutions. Efforts continue (The 1995 TRB Record, No. 1501, entitled, Pavement-vehicle Interaction and Traffic Monitoring provides a view of overall progress. Also, the recently reported "Cost Allocation Study" and AASHTO and TRB manuals bear immediately on this matter.) Nevertheless, the processes here have been marked by inefficiencies, acrimony and divisiveness. Only through constant government intervention, through laws and regulation, has a modicum of rationality been preserved. (Most recently, the GAO has felt obliged to tell AASHTO that the team working to upgrade its pavement design manual should use a "computer-based analytical tool" and should consider including "the nonlinear 3 Dimensional-Finite Element Method (3D-FEM).

Here there is clearly a common design interest, a vast potential for mutual benefit, and value adding potential for professionals individually and in the several communities. In other words, the Albright criteria are easily met.

Nearing the 21^st century, social and environmental concerns, at a level largely unrecognized by transportation providers over our history (but a central concern in Bellamy’s millennial portrait) loom large. Here there is, indeed, a common design interest, extending to environmental, architectural and landscape arenas, and the potential for multiple benefits. SVID provides a framework appropriate to consider the best transportation "system" of appropriately sized, safe, pollution free, affordable vehicles; streets that provide for access and mobility using minimum space while "calming" traffic and having the geometry and strength to serve service vehicles (For example, very large and heavy garbage trucks) and buses.

As is widely known, in 1991 ISTEA specified certain developmental work leading to a future automated highway. The DOT launched the effort utilizing a National Automated Highway System Consortium, (NAHSC). This unique consortium, using systems methodology in unprecedented ways, demonstrated progress this fall at a San Diego test site. If this concept is to be realized, the vehicle and the roadway must not only be compatible in conventional ways, they must "talk" to each other. We have, at best a primitive understanding of just what will be required for this "conversation." What we do know is that before automated highways are realized, and have the capabilities to serve autos, trucks and transit vehicles, a more complete explication of impacts and benefits must be articulated. In other words, the net for possible impacts must be cast more widely.

The 45,000 deaths each year on this system is a national health crisis, a national disgrace. Worse, with some 3 trillion, and rapidly climbing, annual passenger miles, here is an example meeting the three listed criteria. (Even the often brutal world of Bellamy’s time could not have prepared him for understanding this now largely trivialized, massive brutality) We struggle to make progress, but rarely see evidence of a holistic, systems approach. At the top, in the U.S. DOT, responsibility is officially divided by law between the vehicle people, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), and the roads people, Federal Highway Administration (FHWA). Worse than just a legal division, is the bureaucratic competition and consequent suboptimal solutions forthcoming for our tax dollars. Honest, full application of SVID, with no additional investment of public funds could, in my opinion, save lives.

While autos and highways are most often the focus, the growing fleets of heavy, highway, goods movers and the increasing at-grade conflicts between road and rail vehicles give this safety crisis a clear multimodal flavor. (Recent work in the ITS arena, a contemporary application of SVID in some instances, is beginning to address these matters.)

Aircraft capabilities have largely driven airport design. Pavements, runways, must have strength for growing wheel loads. Terminals must have carefully coordinated facilities for growing numbers of passengers, by planeload and in total. And increasingly, at the new Denver airport, for example, the runway/terminal configuration is intended to serve the "vehicles" in a maximized, safe, all-weather fashion. Unfortunately, again historic discipline separations and funding-fueled jealousies have lead to terminals remotely located and poorly served by surface transportation.

Approaching the 21^st century, our people might increasingly, without excessive exaggeration, be said to live, not "out of a suitcase," but rather, "out of a container." Ships carrying 6000 standard 20 ft. containers, with 8000 capacity ships as the next target, labor into major ports. They require deep, 50ft., channels and dock capacity for hours long unloading. Here again the congruency between ship and port has been explicitly recognized. The "land side" requirements for moving these containers is more lately coming into focus and is now highlighting rail service (UP) limitations.

CLOSING NOTES

Several quotes from David Albright’s paper are appropriate for bringing closure to this SVID overview:

It may well be that the most challenging of the quotes in terms of "take away" value is the last one. At first consideration examples like those used here point to a deceptive simplicity in SVID. A favorite quote from Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes Jr. points up the inherent danger in a deceptive simplicity. The time was 1902, just a few months before he joined the U.S. Supreme Court, when, in a discussion with an acquaintance, one Lady Pollock, Holmes said, "The only simplicity for which I would give a straw is that which is on the other side of the complex, not that which never has divined it." For me, Holmes portrays our current SVID circumstance. Clearly we are not yet on the simplicity side of the equation. Rather, struggling here on the "complexity" side , a casual observer may very likely conclude, "Well we may not have it all together but isn’t this how it’s always done," or, "There might be something in all this systems talk but is SVID worth the effort? After all, we do have the best transportation systems in the world."

It seems to me the pre-eminent outcome to be hoped for from this meeting is the engagement with the SVID concept of the remarkable talent assembled here. Then these minds must be kept engaged until "the other side of complexity" is discerned.

My opening reference fits for closing as well. Mr. West, the time traveler from 1887 to 2000, kept asking Dr. Leete, his year 2000 host, how all these marvels could be—-how could the nation afford them. Dr. Leete said it was simple. A nation without war and defense costs, with everyone gainfully employed, and with all things managed in a systematic, cooperative way could afford almost everything. This, in the most sweeping, idealistic terms, describes the SVID promise. A simultaneous employment of talents, less conflict among parties, and a systems driven application of the best in technology and management across the several elements of transportation systems, these measures can indeed lead to marked economies. The consequence of this would be an improved adequacy of funds for the provision of transportation access and mobility. Should we not mark the millennium, now more that 100 years closer than in Bellamy’s vision, with measurable progress towards this worthy goal.

^* David Albright was the first person to introduce me to SVID. After a significant effort to advance the concept in theU.S., he took it to China in April 1996. It was his belief that a country committed to "simultaneously" building vehicles and infrastructure, virtually from a ground zero position, could be the most fertile ground for rapid SVID application.