You ’re previous for a meeting in downtown Los Angeles and you ’re still all the manner over in Burbank—13 air mile and 45 discontinue - and - go minutes away by freeway . or else , you walk a few engine block to the Los Angeles River , where you board a stylish pod - like vessel . before long , you ’re zip down the river channel , quicker than any vehicle on the 5 Freeway .
This could be L.A. ’s future , according to a concept byBMW Group DesignworksUSAfor a waterborne Mini Cooper built to journey the local river system .
Each yr , the Los Angeles Auto Show has a theme for itsDesign Challenge , where it tap firms from around the macrocosm to dream up concept vehicle . The theme this year is “ Biomimicry & Mobility 2025 : Nature ’s Answer to Human Challenges , ” which , to the BMW Designworks squad intend combining L.A. ’s full-grown transportation trouble ( dealings ) with its greatest underutilized transportation asset ( its river ) .
“ We knew that dealings congestion was something we all wanted to meliorate , ” say designer Anders Thogersen . “ And we have all these very big river systems in L.A. that we could use for a new highway scheme . ”
Inspired by bioluminescence in jellyfish , the Mini Cooper pod would use achemical reactioncreated when salt and fresh pee mix in the presence of sure bacteria , creating hydrogen fuel . This procedure not only yield energy , but the water inspiration / outtake system can also serve as the actuation method acting for the craft . diminutive “ cleaner ” robots , animate by many type of fish that do this in real living , keep the Mini uncontaminating by nibble algae from its surface .
“ The idea is that we ’re make a submarine , ” enounce senior designer John Buckingham . “ Even though jellyfish were the original intake for the direction , we make a motion towards a more conventional look and we choose Mini to make it fun and playful . ”
The other key part of BMW Designworks ’ proposition is taking the L.A. River and other confluent and filling them with enough piss so these petty hero sandwich can locomote around the city on these new make “ underground . ” In the wintertime the water does flow tremendously deep through these channels , so they reason that swamp the channel for good would make a double benefit of replenishing L.A. ’s groundwater and preventing billions of gallons of stormwater from flowing right away into the sea .
Having hundreds of speeding boats in the river might raise a huge environmental business organization for a body of water that is just starting to see some serious revitalization . Neither Thogersen or Buckingham had been down to the L.A. River before this project , and were surprised to learn about the movement to reestablish the river to a more natural state .
But the designer believe that tolerate more people to utilize the river for transportation and recreation will engage more people in its future tense , much like the hypothesis behind the kayaking programs offered on the river the past two summers . “ It will bring mass to the river more , ” say Buckingham . “ Allowing it to have some commercial consumption will draw multitude down there , especially when wintertime comes around and there ’s no kayaking . ”
While we credibly wo n’t have these fleets of miniskirt - pigboat taking over our waterways just yet , this concept does help us depart to believe of L.A. as more of a river urban center . The BMW Designworks squad sees us not only using existing rivers and Laurus nobilis for transportation , but also reestablish Venice Beach ’s canal organization ( which was once much larger than it is now ) , and possibly daylighting more creeks that have been asphalted over .
Maybe more workable is a coastal transportation meshing — which , right now , only really consists of private ferries to Catalina — that would tolerate people in , say , Marina del Rey to transpose to Long Beach via ferryboat instead of the 405 Freeway , or to take a H2O taxicab from Santa Monica to Malibu and thus ward off dealings on the Pacific Coast Highway .
Also practicable is the approximation of turning at least part of the L.A. River into a canal — without a current to worry about , this would afford up a whole range of option for the river . A water bus could go from one neighborhood to another . People could easily kayak to and from work .
And , someday , maybe , take one of these submarines , too .
CarsCitiesLos AngelesRiversurbanism
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