Sustainable Accessibility: A Grand Challenge for the World and for MIT

Transportation systems, as we know them today, will simply not sustain the worlds’ growing population. Imagine a projected population of nine billion individuals. If this future population had mobility patterns like drivers in the United States, there would be a staggering 7.6 billion motor vehicles, using 440 million barrels of oil and producing 62 billion tons of CO2 per year.
John Sterman says it is self-evident that our current transportation model simply will not scale. But, since the gross world product (GWP) is growing at 3.2% annually, and doubles every twenty years, our current model of development is an overture for environmental disaster.

It is clear to Sterman that we need to think differently about the problem. People need access to goods, services, people, and opportunities.

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