Bringing more traffic into our cities as a way to ease traffic jams sounds like fighting a fire with petrol, but this is one element of a comprehensive plan devised by an Irish engineer to ease congestion on our roads.
Mr John Gilmore, a lecturer in environmental engineering at Dundalk Institute of Technology, has carried out a radical rethink on urban transport. He concludes that buses and trains are out and small and convenient are in.
"Mass transit cannot be the answer for the future," he explained. He has factored in all of the aspects involved in the transport of people including vehicle size, weight, energy demand, carrying capacity and pollution load.
He said there was too much cost involved in having a 13 tonne bus stop, start and stop again for passengers and dismissed it as "very polluting". "The alternative has to be to carry people from their origin to their destination in as light a vehicle as possible with as few stops as possible."
His model for high-volume transport is the body and its complex blood distribution system. Blood cells jostle and bump their way along one-way "streets", merging at intersections and flowing into wider thoroughfares with no collision damage.
He envisages a similar approach on our roads using very small, lightweight cars with inflatable sides that would allow contact without damage.
"Congestion is caused by each person bringing their own car into the city. If we can reduce this to a minimalist level we can solve much of the problem. Instead of trying to get cars full of people let us try to get cars down to the size of what people want. People want door-to-door travel. Let us give them that and we can reduce accidents, congestion and pollution."
When Mr Gilmore says small, he means small. His car would be a short, low, three-wheeler not unlike a recumbent bicycle, but with inflatable sides and a flip-up canopy to keep out the weather, "almost a Michelin man type vehicle". It would run on a one-horsepower motor giving hundreds of miles per gallon and offer sustained speeds of 15 to 20 m.p.h.
Instead of a 1,000 kg car "with five seats, a heavy engine and long boot and bonnet", you would have a short one or two-seater with a lightweight inflatable body. "They would weigh a lot less than today's cars. They might even weigh less than the driver. They would be harmless in the event of an accident. You replace crumple zones with rebound zones."
Pedestrians and cyclists would be much safer and it would be difficult, if not impossible, to cause any damage if two cars collided. They would be smaller, no more than two metres long, so more would fit on the existing roadway and they would produce far less pollution than the six tonnes of carbon dioxide emitted annually by the typical 1.5 tonne luxury car.
His idea would be to allow only the smaller inflatables into urban centres. This did not mean, however, that people would be prevented from having the traditional large family sedan. "We could still own the status vehicle but you leave it at home and don't bring it into the city."
Significant changes on the ground would also be needed to make the new system work, Mr Gilmore said. As in the human body with its extensive one-way flow systems, he would introduce many more one-way streets. There would be much less requirement for traffic lights because of the lower vehicle speeds. There would be more merging and use of mini-roundabouts and if cars jostled one another then there would be little harm done.
He would also introduce "zip merging" at lightless intersections where drivers alternately let a car through on one side, then the other. Known as "alternate merge" in parts of the US, the system works well if drivers are disciplined enough and Mr Gilmore would require new drivers to learn zip merging as part of the driving test.
He also has a new approach for intercity personal transport, with cars moving along dedicated channels. There would be controlled access to these narrow channels where speeds up to 100 m.p.h. would be possible. Vehicles could be fitted with automatic, radar-controlled braking to prevent rear-end collisions. "The design should be such that [the car] should drive itself with the driver reading the paper."