好英语网改变城市驾驶的6个好主意
You’ve been watching the cover art of sci-fi paperbacks for half a century now, so you know exactly what the city of the future will look like: gleaming skyscrapers and personal rocketships soaring above a Cartesian spaghetti of pneumatic tubes, all done up in a greenish-grey.
半个世纪来，你总会时不时看到科幻小说的封面。所以，你肯定知道未来的城市是什么样子：闪闪发光的摩天大楼比肩而立，私人火箭在相互盘绕的气动导管里高速穿梭。
Here in the actual future — the one without jetpacks, sadly — there are a host of technologies that will change the way we drive in urban areas, whether or not we’re actually doing the driving.
现在，我们迎来了真正的未来——可惜的是，并没有喷气背包——今后将出现许多有望改变城市生活的炫酷科技。
今后将出现许多有望改变城市生活的炫酷科技。
会说话的汽车。这里说的并不是《霹雳游侠》里面的KITT，也不是在斯巴鲁里整合Siri，而是指汽车与汽车之间的数据通信，也就是所谓的V2V。美国交通部最近起草了一些规定，希望针对汽车之间相互交换位置、方向和速度等数据的方式制定一套标准，以便针对潜在危险向驾驶员（最终可以直接向无人驾驶汽车）发出警告。在城市里，最常发生事故的是交叉路口，但汽车却可以自主判断你是否有足够的时间通过路口，并自行决定十字路口的通行顺序。这样一来，你就可以不停地刷Snapchat，但却不必费力按喇叭，也不用来回转动方向盘了。
Cars talking to stoplights. The other half of the commuting communication network is V2I, or Vehicle-to-Infrastructure communication. Fire trucks have used a variety of technologies to change red to green along their emergency routes, but V2I will work more in the aggregate, listening to vehicle data to make the city traffic grid more efficient. Smart infrastructure can keep a light green a little longer if traffic is backing up, change speed limits or regulate slip roads to break up traffic jams, and even reroute traffic around accidents and slowdowns in a HAL-meets-Waze mashup. When autonomous vehicles arrive, it won’t just be the cars that are sensing and thinking — the whole city will be a smart machine.
汽车可以与红灯交换信息。车联网的另外一部分是V2I，也就是汽车与基础设施之间的数据通信。消防车已经可以借助多项技术把救援路径上的红灯变成绿灯，但V2I则能起到更加综合的效果，通过获取汽车数据提升城市交通网络的效率。如果车辆积压严重，智能基础设施便可延长绿灯时间，还可以改变限速或对匝道进行管制，缓解交通堵塞。甚至在发生事故和车速缓慢的地区改变周围的通行路线。当无人驾驶汽车出现时，不光汽车本身将具备感应和思考能力——整座城市都将变成一台智能机器。
Fuel-based discrimination. Diesel engines are high-torque, hardworking, and fuel efficient — but soon you’re going to keep ‘em down on the farm, and they’ll never see Paree. The French capital, along with Mexico City, Madrid, and Athens, plans to ban diesel vehicles through major sections of the city to cut down on air pollution by 2025, and cities all over the world will likely follow soot (pun intended). Taking things one step further, Oslo and Bergen — Norway’s two largest cities — plan to set up zero-emission zones by the same date, cordoning off sections of the city where gasoline engines are similarly exiled. So while you may still be fighting with double-parked delivery vehicles as you navigate downtown, expect them to be smaller, cleaner, and much, much quieter.
燃料歧视。柴油发动机扭矩大、效率高，而且结实耐用——但你很快就会把它们下放到农场，再也无法在巴黎街头看到它们。除了法国首都外，墨西哥城、马德里和雅典都计划在2025年禁止柴油车进入主城区，以此降低空气污染。世界各地的城市都将陆续跟进。更有甚者，奥斯陆和卑尔根两大挪威城市计划在同一时间设立零排放区，禁止燃油车进入城区的某一范围。所以，你今后在市中心可能仍会看到配送车辆，但它们应该会更小、更环保，噪音也将比现在低得多。
Charging while driving. If everyone driving in the city is driving an electric car, it stands to reason that where once we had parking meters (and flower-filled planters, and sidewalk cafes), we’ll need tentacled towers for topping off Teslas. Actually, with a little infrastructure planning, we may be able to charge our cars as we’re stopped at red lights or simply sitting in a parking place. The idea of charging at a distance seems like snake oil, but for a decade now scientists have been able to transfer power through gaps up to 2 meters with efficiency nearing 100 percent. It’s called magnetic resonance coupling, and it could use powered coils in the roadway to create vibration in paired coils in a car, which would then convert that vibration into electricity to charge the batteries. City transportation systems the world over are already testing buses that charge — unconnected — while waiting at bus stops, and the technology should be easy to build into every space of a new parking garage, and to retrofit into the asphalt of intersections. Exactly how an individual driver will pay for that power is waiting for some app-based startup to figure out.
边行驶边充电。如果城市里的所有汽车都是电动汽车，那么原先安装停车计时器的地方理应换成充电桩。事实上，稍微进行一些基础设施规划，或许就能在车辆等红灯或停在停车场的时候为其充电。远距离充电听起来似乎是骗人的把戏，但经过了10年的发展，科学家现在已经可以在2米的距离内实现近乎100%的无线充电效率。这种技术名为磁共振耦合，它可以使用路面下的动力线圈创造与车内线圈匹配的震动，然后将震动转化成电，给汽车的电池充电。世界有许多城市的交通系统已经尝试在公交车站为公交车提供无线充电，这种技术可以轻易整合到每个新建的停车场里，还可以对交叉路口的道路进行改造。但每位车主具体支付多少费用还需要等待创业公司开发出相关的应用才能确定。
New charges for driving. The future is here, and it’s fee-based. “Congestion pricing” means that you’ll pay more for the use of city streets when everyone else wants to use city streets, adding the law of supply and demand to the other rules of the road. It’s been in use in Singapore since 1975, but cities from London to Riga are making more and more use of the scheme to keep traffic down. And, since we’ll soon have smart vehicles talking to smart infrastructure, there’s nothing to keep part of that infrastructure from being the toll authority. Rather than a petrol tax, drivers would pay a toll for distances traveled, with higher rates for certain areas at certain times. Bigger vehicles such as limos and SUVs might pay more to enter a city center, just like a three-axle lorry does today.
养车费用增加。未来已经到来，只是要支付一些费用。"拥堵费"意味着当其他人也都想使用城市街道时，你需要支付更多费用才能获得使用权，这与其他道路资源的供需法则一致。新加坡1975年就开始落实这一方案，包括伦敦和里加在内的很多城市也都开始借助这种机制降低交通拥堵程度。而且，由于可以与智能基础设施互动的智能汽车很快就会出现，所以这种设施的应用将势不可挡。与燃油税根据行驶里程收费的方式不同，只有当车辆在特定时段进入特定区域时才需要支付这种费用。豪华轿车和SUV等体型更大的汽车进入市中心时可能需要支付更多费用，面临跟卡车类似的待遇。
Drive to the city, but not in it. The economies of large cities depend on the Park-n-Ride (or the local equivalent), in which a suburban workforce drives to a train station for a trip into the city. While perfect for the workaday world, it’s not ideal for brief trips or off-peak hours when the trains are few and far between. So some cities are reshaping that idea, and the humble parking lot is becoming the hub for much more. A truly smart city would let you drive to some central location, where you’d join a minibus carpool (on-demand and app-enabled) to take you to a trolley station, or a bikeshare station, or a Cartesian spaghetti of pneumatic tubes. Though perhaps in a brighter green that you’d expect.
开车去城市，但不开进城市。大城市都广泛采用了停车换乘模式——居住在郊区的人们开车到达地铁站后，再乘坐地铁进入市区。虽然这对工作日非常适用，但对短暂进入市区或者在地铁班次稀少的非高峰时段进入市区的人们来说，效果却不够理想。所以，有些城市开始改造这种模式，让停车场发挥更多作用。真正的智能城市可以让你直接驾车到中心位置，然后与他人一起乘坐小型公交车（可以通过手机应用使用应需服务）前往地铁站或共享单车站，甚至高速真空管列车站。具体方式可能更加环保。
