When I read Justin Bachman’s eye-popping imagining of airports in 2040 I was strongly reminded of some pictures. On the left is a photograph of a busy train station circa 1900. Here’s an artist’s conception of the train station of the future, drawn about the same time:
For reference purposes here’s a picture of an actual train station in 2010.
It probably serves the same routes as it did a century ago but more slowly and with fewer passengers.
I don’t know what the airports of 2040 or 2050 or 2100 will be like. I’m pretty confident that they’ll be a lot more like the airports of today than whatever we imagine. Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were no airports in 2100 because air travel had become too expensive. Be careful about projecting trends of today in a straight line into the future.
This reminds me of a good article about European trains from a few years ago:
High Speed Trains are Killing the European Railway Network – LOW-TECH MAGAZINE