Some people are obsessed by French wines. Others love playing golf or devouring literature. One of my greatest pleasures in life is, I have to admit, a bit special. I cannot tell you how much I enjoy watching cities from the sky, from an airplane window.
有些人對法國葡萄酒著迷。 有些人則愛打高爾夫球, 或熱愛閱讀文學作品。 我生活中最大的樂趣之一, 我必須承認,有點特別。 我很難形容 我有多喜愛從空中, 從飛機的窗口,俯視整座城市。
Some cities are calmly industrious, like Dusseldorf or Louisville. Others project an energy that they can hardly contain, like New York or Hong Kong. And then you have Paris or Istanbul, and their patina full of history.
有些城市只經過些微的工業化, 像是杜塞道夫, 或路易維爾。 有些城市則散發出難以掩蓋的能量, 例如紐約, 或是香港。 你還能看到像是巴黎, 或伊斯坦堡, 連街道上的的銅鏽都充滿歷史情懷。
I see cities as living beings. And when I discover them from far above, I like to find those main streets and highways that structure their space. Especially at night, when commuters make these arteries look dramatically red and golden: the city's vascular system performing its vital function right before your eyes. But when I'm sitting in my car after an hour and a half of commute every day, that reality looks very different.
我把城市視為生命體, 當我從高空中看見它們, 我喜歡去尋找 架構空間的主要街道和高速公路。 尤其是在晚上, 往來的人們, 讓交通動脈顯得五彩繽紛: 它們就像是整座城市的血管系統, 正在你眼前執行重要的運輸功能。 但是當我坐在自己的車裡, 每天得花一個半小時上下班, 現實變得完全不同。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
Nothing -- not public radio, no podcast --
彷彿一切都不存在── 沒有廣播節目, 沒有播客──
(Laughter) Not even mindfulness meditation makes this time worth living.
(笑聲) 甚至無法靜下心來冥想, 讓等待的時間稍微有些意義。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
Isn't it absurd that we created cars that can reach 130 miles per hour and we now drive them at the same speed as 19th-century horse carriages?
這不是很荒謬嗎? 我們發明了汽車, 時速可以達到 130 英里, 但是我們現在開車的速度 卻跟 19 世紀的馬車一樣?
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
In the US alone, we spent 29.6 billion hours commuting in 2014. With that amount of time, ancient Egyptians could have built 26 Pyramids of Giza.
光是在美國, 在 2014 年我們就花費了 296 億小時在通勤上。 將這些時間加起來, 已經足夠讓古埃及人 蓋好 26 座吉薩金字塔。
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
We do that in one year. A monumental waste of time, energy and human potential.
而我們只要一年就做到了。 這實在很浪費時間、精神 和人類的潛能。
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 down hundreds of historical buildings to create 85 miles of transportation-friendly boulevards. And it still works today in fast-growing emerging cities. But in more established urban centers, significant network expansions are almost impossible: habitat is just too dense, real estate, too expensive and public finances, too fragile. Our city's vascular system is getting clogged, it's getting sick, and we should pay attention.
幾十年來, 我們解決交通堵塞的方法很簡單: 建造新的或是拓寬原有的道路。 而這個方法有效。 這個方法在巴黎有效, 當時這座城市拆毀了數百座歷史建築, 只為了建造 85 英里長, 便於交通運輸的林蔭大道。 對於快速成長的新興城市, 這個方法仍然有效。 但是在發展成熟的城市中心, 大幅度擴充路網幾乎是不可能的: 因為建築過於密集, 土地也過於昂貴, 而公共財政又脆弱不堪。 我們城市的血管系統 堵塞得愈來愈嚴重, 它生病了,我們應該重視此事。
Our current way of thinking is not working. For our transportation to flow, we need a new source of inspiration.
我們目前的思維是行不通的。 為了讓我們的交通流動順暢, 需要新的靈感來源。
So after 16 years working in transportation, my "aha moment" happened when speaking with a biotech customer. She was telling me how her treatment was leveraging specific properties of 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 been in 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 most sophisticated transportation laboratory.
我在交通運輸部門工作了 16 年, 在一次和生技領域的客戶談話時, 我突然靈光一閃! 她告訴我, 她如何運用血管系統的特性, 來治療病人。 「哇!」我想,「我們的血管系統── 我們體內所有的靜脈和動脈, 每天都在進行奇蹟般的運送工作。」 那時我意識到, 生物已經進行了 數十億年的運輸工作。 測試過無數種解決方式, 來運送養分、氣體和蛋白質。 這真的是世界上 最複雜又尖端的運輸實驗室。
So, what if the solution to our traffic challenges was inside us? I wanted to know: Why is it that blood flows in our veins most of our lives, when our big cities get clogged on a daily basis? And the reality is that you're looking at two very different networks. I don't know if you realize, but each of us has 60,000 miles of blood vessels in our bodies -- 60,000 miles. That's two-and-a-half times the Earth's circumference, inside you. What it means is that blood vessels are everywhere inside us, not just under the surface of our skin.
那麼,是否解決交通問題的答案, 其實來自我們身體之中? 我想知道: 為什麼在大多數生物的體內, 血液都能在血管中順暢流動, 但是大城市的交通卻每天都在堵塞? 事實上,你得把它們視為 兩種完全不同的網路。 不曉得你知不知道, 我們每個人體內都有 長達 60,000 英里的血管 -- 60,000 英里。 這個長度是地球圓周的兩倍半, 就在你身體裡面。 這代表著血管佈滿我們身體內部, 而不只是在表皮之下。
But if you look at our cities, yes, we have some underground subway systems and some tunnels and bridges, and also some helicopters in the sky. But the vast majority of our traffic is focused on the ground, on the surface. So in other words, while our vascular system uses the three dimensions inside us, our urban transportation is mostly two-dimensional. And so what we need is to embrace that verticality. If our surface grid is saturated, well, let's elevate our traffic.
但是,如果你看看我們的城市, 是的,我們擁有地下捷運系統, 隧道和橋樑, 天上還有直升機。 但是我們大多數的交通運輸 集中在地面上, 在地表上。 所以換句話說, 我們的血管系統, 在人體內是三維的立體分佈, 但是我們的都市交通, 大部分還是二維的平面結構。 所以我們需要的是往垂直方向發展。 如果我們的交通網已經飽和, 讓我們把它往上提高。
This Chinese concept of a bus that can straddle traffic jams -- that was an eye-opener on new ways to think about space and movement inside our cities. And we can go higher, and suspend our transportation like we did with our electrical grid. Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi are talking about testing these futuristic networks of suspended magnetic pods. And we can keep climbing, and fly. The fact that a company like Airbus is now seriously working on flying urban taxis is telling us something. Flying cars are finally moving from science-fiction déjà vu to attractive business-case territory. And that's an exciting moment.
這是可以跨越堵塞車潮的 中國公車概念── 這個令人大開眼界的新方法, 讓我們重新思考 在城市中,空間和移動的關係。 接著我們可以繼續上昇, 把運輸系統懸吊起來, 就像輸電網路一樣。 特拉維夫和阿布達比, 都正在測試磁浮懸吊的運輸系統。 我們還可以繼續往上升, 然後飛起來。 事實上,像空中巴士 這樣的航空公司, 正在努力研究 適用於都市的飛行計程車, 這帶給我們一些啟示。 飛行汽車終於從科幻電影的場景, 來到讓人期待的商業領域。 這是一個令人激動的時刻。
So building this 3-D transportation network is one of the ways we can mitigate and solve traffic jams. But it's not the only one. We have to question other fundamental choices that we made, like the vehicles we use. Just imagine a very familiar scene: You've been driving for 42 minutes. The two kids behind you are getting restless. And you're late. Do you see that slow car in front of you? Always comes when you're late, right?
所以建立三維的立體交通網路, 是我們減輕和解決 交通堵塞的辦法之一。 但這並不是唯一的方法。 我們需要質疑 過去所做的一些重要選擇, 例如我們所使用的運輸工具。 試著想像一個熟悉的場景: 你已經開了 42 分鐘的車。 在你身後的兩個孩子, 越來越感到焦躁不安。 而且你已經遲到了。 你看到前面那台龜速的車子嗎? 每次當你遲到了, 他們就會出現,對吧?
(Laughter)
(笑聲)
That driver is looking for parking. There is no parking spot available in the area, but how would he know? It is estimated that up to 30 percent of urban traffic is generated by drivers looking for parking. Do you see the 100 cars around you? Eighty-five of them only have one passenger. Those 85 drivers could all fit in one Londonian red bus. So the question is: Why are we wasting so much space if it is what we need the most? Why are we doing this to ourselves?
那輛車的駕駛正在找停車位。 這個地區根本沒有空的停車位, 但是他怎麼可能知道? 據估計,都市中 高達 30% 的交通堵塞, 都是因為找停車位所引起的。 你看到你周圍的 100 輛車子了嗎? 其中的 85 輛車只載了一個人。 這 85 位汽車駕駛,可以全部 坐進一輛倫敦的紅色巴士。 所以問題是: 為什麼如此浪費 人們最需要的空間? 為什麼我們要這樣做?
Biology would never do this. Space inside our arteries is fully utilized. At every heartbeat, a higher blood pressure literally compacts millions of red blood cells into massive trains of oxygen that quickly flow throughout our body. And the tiny space inside our red blood cells is not wasted, either. In healthy conditions, more than 95 percent of their oxygen capacity is utilized. Can you imagine if the vehicles we used in our cities were 95 percent full, all the additional space you would have to walk, to bike and to enjoy our cities?
在生物學上,這絕對不會發生。 我們體內血管的空間, 都被充分的利用。 每次心跳時, 血壓將百萬個紅血球 帶入大量的氧氣, 迅速地運送到我們的全身。 同樣,我們體內紅血球的狹小空間, 也完全沒有被浪費。 在健康的情況下, 95% 以上的氧氣容量 都被完全利用。 你能否想像,如果我們在都市中 所使用的交通工具 都有 95% 的使用率, 可以增加多少空間, 讓你自由行走、騎自行車, 並且享受各種都市生活?
The reason blood is so incredibly efficient is that our red blood cells are not dedicated to specific organs or tissues; otherwise, we would probably have traffic jams in our veins. No, they're shared. They're shared by all the cells of our body. And because our network is so extensive, each one of our 37 trillion cells gets its own deliveries of oxygen precisely when it needs them.
血液具有神奇的高效率, 是因為我們的紅血球並不是專屬於 特定的器官或組織; 否則,我們的血管 也可能會發生交通堵塞。 不,它們是所有器官共享的。 它們是由身體內所有細胞共享的。 而且因為血管的分佈如此廣泛, 我們體內 37 兆細胞 當中的每一個, 都能在有需要時精確地取得氧氣。
Blood is both a collective and 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 society or extensive mass-transit systems. I think we should transcend this. I think we can create vehicles that combine the convenience of cars and the efficiencies of trains and buses. Just imagine. You're comfortably sitting in a fast and smooth urban train, along with 1,200 passengers. The problem with urban trains is that sometimes you have to stop five, ten, fifteen times before your final destination.
血液同時兼具 整合與獨特的運輸形式。 但是對於我們的城市, 我們一直在堅持某些原則。 我們一直陷於無止境的爭論: 應該創造一個汽車為中心的社會, 或是提供廣泛的公共運輸系統? 我認為我們應該超越這一點。 我認為,我們可以結合兩者: 能夠像汽車一樣便利, 同時和火車、巴士一樣 有效率的交通工具。 想像一下。 你正舒服地坐在快速、平穩的 市區列車上。 和其他的 1200 名乘客一起。 問題在於市區列車 可能需要停車五次、 十次甚至十五次, 才會抵達你的目的地。
What if in this train you didn't have to stop? In this train, wagons can detach dynamically while 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 bus that is headed toward your suburb. And when you get close, the section you're sitting in detaches and self-drives you right to your doorstep. It is collective and individual at the same time. This could be one of the shared, modular, driverless vehicles of tomorrow.
如果這列火車不需要停止呢? 在這列火車上, 車廂可以在移動中進行動態分離, 變成一部輕便、無人駕駛的巴士, 行駛於次要道路路網上。 所以,一站都不需要停, 也不用花時間轉車, 你現在所搭乘的 就是直達目的地的小巴士。 而當你接近目的地時, 你的座位區塊會分離, 然後自動載送您到家門口。 它在同一時間提供了 整合與個人化的運輸形式。 這會是一種共享、模組化、 無人駕駛的未來交通工具。
Now ... as if walking in a city buzzing with drones, flying taxis, modular buses and 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 cars is just trying to earn its way into a traffic grid made by and for humans. They're trying to learn traffic rules, which is relatively simple, and coping with human unpredictability, which is more challenging.
現在…… 即使你漫步在充滿著無人機、 飛天計程車、模組化公車 和磁浮懸吊運輸系統的城市中, 都還不夠新奇。 我認為還有另一種思維正逐漸興起, 將會讓你對於都市的交通 感到不可思議。 如果你想一下, 無人駕駛汽車目前的設計方式, 仍然是為了適應人類的道路系統。 它們正努力學習交通規則, 這還算是比較簡單的, 還要應付人類的不可預測性, 那才是更大的挑戰。
But what would happen when 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 cars are driverless and connected, everything is predictable and reaction time, minimum. They can drive much faster and can take any rational initiative that 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 constantly self-improving algorithms. The result: a strange traffic that mixes the fast and smooth rigor of German autobahns and the creative vitality of the intersections of Mumbai.
但是,當整座城市都變成無人駕駛, 會發生什麼事? 我們還需要紅綠燈嗎? 我們還需要車道標線嗎? 我們還需要速限嗎? 紅血球不必順著標線流動。 也不必遇到紅燈時停下來。 在第一座無人駕駛的城市, 就完全沒有紅綠燈跟車道標線。 當所有的車輛都是無人駕駛, 並且互相連線時, 所有過程都能事先預測, 而反應時間也能降到最少。 它們可以開得更快, 也能主動採取任何合理的駕駛行為, 無論是自己加速, 或是讓周圍的車輛加速。 所以,固定的交通規則將會消失, 取而代之的是具有動態特性、 能持續自我改善演算法的 交通流量調節方式。 結果將產生一種全新的交通模式, 同時結合了德國的高速公路 快速、平穩與精確特性, 以及孟買的十字路口 所具有的創意與活力。
(Laughter)
交通......(笑聲)
Traffic will be functionally exuberant. It will be liquid like our blood. And by a strange paradox, the more robotized our traffic grid will be, the more organic and alive its movement will feel.
交通運輸將會更為生氣蓬勃。 就像是我們體內血液的流動。 很弔詭的是: 我們的交通網路愈是自動化, 人們愈能在移動過程中 感覺到有機和活力。
So yes, biology has all the attributes of a transportation genius today. But this process has taken billions of years, and went through all sorts of iterations and mutations. We can't wait billions of years to 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.
所以,是的, 現今的生物擁有聰明運輸的特性。 但是,這是歷經數十億年的過程, 經過不斷地重複和突變而來的。 我們無法再等待數十億年, 來改良運輸系統。 現在,我們擁有夢想, 我們擁有觀念, 我們還擁有技術 來建造立體的交通運輸網路, 發明新的運輸工具, 並改變我們的城市動線。
Let's do it.
我們開始行動吧!
Thank you.
謝謝大家。
(Applause)
(掌聲)