Odd to think that only 50 years ago there was a feeling of tremendous, open-ended possibility about travel and transport. With every family of modest income able to buy a car, with jet planes opening up the globe to holidaymakers, with the US and Soviet Union rocketing into space, with supersonic travel around the corner, the concept of mobility — of freedom itself — was transformed. And people saw this as just the beginning. My parents’ generation, blissfully free of 21st-century angst about pollution or congestion, confidently expected that their grandchildren would travel to work, to holiday destinations, even to the Moon or Mars, at speeds and in vehicles that they could hardly imagine.

Half a century on, what an anticlimax! Commuting times get slower and slower. Cars go quicker, but there’s no open road left. Public transport is abhorred. Air travel involves hours of waiting. The supersonic passenger age is over. The dream of space travel flickers only fitfully. And few of us now expect that our grandchildren will travel any faster than we do. On the contrary. With maybe 60 years of extractable fossil fuel left, there is a strong chance that future humanity may not travel much at all. It’s quite possible that we will sink back into a pre-1900 state of mobility, when a long journey meant venturing to the next village.

So where’s the quantum leap in transport that will once again set us free — the 21st-century equivalent to Stephenson’s Rocket, Ford’s Model T or Boeing’s epoch-defining 707 jet plane? A superbly researched new book offers some provocative answers to that. Paul Schilperoord’s Future Tech: Innovations in Transportation (Black Dog Publishing) surveys every mode of transport — public and private, land, sea and aerospace — and outlines what’s on the drawing-board, what’s putting a gleam in the eyes of visionaries, and what’s likely to be turned into reality during our lifetimes. There are certainly some eye-popping ideas around. Most of us know dimly about magnetically levitated (“maglev”) trains, capable of skimming along at 200mph by reducing friction to almost zero (and thus saving huge amounts of energy). But what if you ran a maglev train in a vacuum tube, mimicking the conditions in outer space? According to the American researchers working on the project, it could theoretically reach a zippy 4,000mph. As Schilperoord puts it, with delicious understatement: “This could seriously cut down travel times between cities.” Indeed. London to Paris in five minutes!

Or what about the handy gadget that’s been knocking around sci-fi comics and Bond movies for decades, but never seems to get any closer to appearing in real life: the jet-powered backpack that could send you soaring over traffic jams? It does exist. There’s a model available that can fly a person upright for about 180 miles at 95mph. What hinders its mass production is the nightmare vision of millions of “reckless drivers” zooming around in mid-air. But what if radar, sat-nav technology and microcomputers were harnessed to steer them safely along “digital highways” in the sky? Suddenly the notion becomes feasible.

Other “almost here” modes of transport? Schilperoord describes “Senso Cars” that biometrically measure drivers’ moods and adjust the controls accordingly. He looks at prototype passenger planes that “morph” in mid-air, growing or retracting their wings to increase efficiency and cut noise. He examines how “personal rapid transport” systems already in development could whisk people round towns in pods on overhead tracks. He marvels at plans for a mile-long floating city called the Freedom Ship, capable of transporting 100,000 passengers at a time across the ocean. And he tackles the biggest question of all: what will fuel our transport when the oil runs out? Hydrogen, wind, solar power, nuclear energy, compressed air, bio-fuels: any of these could be what makes tomorrow’s vehicles go.

But here’s the odd thing. As you read Schilperoord, the impression you get is not of mankind stepping boldly into a brave new world. It’s of us taking two steps back in order to edge one step forward. Just consider how many of these supposedly radical new ideas were being kicked around decades ago. Electric cars were a Victorian idea. In 1900 they outsold petrol-powered vehicles. Automated “drive by wire” cars were tested 60 years ago. The maglev train was patented in 1934. A prototype vacuum-tube train was tested back in the 1870s! And so on.

None of these inventions caught on for one simple reason: mankind became fixated on the oil-fuelled internal combustion or jet engine as the solution to our transport needs. The trouble is that the internal combustion engine has driven us down a cul-de-sac, and nearly made a car-crash of our planet in the process. Now we have to retrace our tracks and find a different route. It will be galling for a species besotted for 50,000 years with the “faster! higher! bigger!” concept of transport progress. But we have no choice.

Still, I’m pleased to see from Future Tech that my own humble mode of transport — the venerable bicycle (inventor: Leonardo da Vinci, circa 1490) — is still inspiring new refinements. I can’t wait to try the revolutionary “Embrio Advanced Concept” bike dreamed up by some American boffins: a single-wheel machine that employs microchip sensors and gyroscopes to keep you upright, uses eco-friendly hydrogen to push you along, and turns left or right depending on how you swivel your buttocks. The drawback? It isn’t expected to be on the market until 2025. Not sure how much buttock-swivelling I’ll be able to manage by then.

A degree of puzzlement

Yes, I may be biased. But I am puzzled to see Oxford heading The Times’s latest university rankings, when they were comprehensively routed by Cambridge in the categories of research assessment, entry standards, staff/student ratio, spending on facilities, graduate job prospects, the percentage of students completing their degree, and the majority of individual subject assessments. Perhaps you need to have gone to Oxford to understand the scoring system.

Put out more flags

Our local pub is festooned with the familiar emblem. My son is threatening to paint his face at the weekend. Flags hang from every van. Even my wife says she’s going to attach a couple to her chassis. And she’s decorating her car as well. How good to see such support for the excellent work of the Red Cross.

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