The New Normal on LA Freeways

For the past few months (or more) I've been thinking about what many are calling "The New Normal". Just google those three words, and you'll be thrown into a surprising number of views on strategies for managing the magnitude of change that we are all (as individuals, employees, corporations and governments) experiencing.

I was imagining what this future could look like and I had an idea of what transportation could look like in Los Angeles:

Local roads will serve pedestrians, bicyclists, mopeds and, maybe, electric carts, allowing individuals to move around their neighborhood. For longer trips, cars (or whatever these vehicles are normally called in the future) could navigate on to the freeways. Once on the freeway, they would connect up magnetically to other vehicles going in the same direction (plotted through GPS) so that the travelling individual and/or group of friends could enjoy the ride and socialize, using less energy overall. Seems doable since the existing infrastructure could be used.

For me, this type of idea is exactly why I work in design and believe that design thinking can solve problems like mass transportation. More significantly, design can actually create the "New Normal". Tim Brown's blog provides useful reading, as well as his article on Strategy by Design.