The title pretty much says it, but does anyone know of any current or recent projects that incorporate new (or existing) transportation methods onto/into existing transportation infrastructure?
The image in my head is a rail/cable system that would mount from/on highways or interstates.
This isn't totally related. But I was reading about Amtrak and the general state of America's train system. You guys probably know about this stuff. ConRail has right of way over Amtrak (hence the LOOOONG delays). Amtrak tried to implement high speed rail in the northeast corridor (Acela) but the issue was that some of the curves had too tight of a radius for conventional trains. So to deal with that they need to use what's called leaning trains that can rock a bit in the turns. However, unlike the Japanese system was purpose built, the tracks in the NE are too close, so if the trains lean in the corners, they would collide. Regional rail would be nice though. I live in Reading, PA (you know, the Reading Railroad of Monopoly?) There is no train to Philadelphia... Would be so nice because driving that 60 miles can sometimes take 3 hours because the roads are so overburdened.
Unfortunately I can't find this article again. It was in Newsweek or Time, I forget. It was something like "23 things you didn't know." And it was saying that keeping cars and not building a new train system is cheaper and more 'green.' As cars get more fuel efficient, the environmental cost of building a new railway is actually larger than driving clean cars. I wish I could find it again for all the facts and figures, but it was interesting. Had stats that something like only 4% of Japanese use the bullet train each year. Etc etc. One of the busiest plane routes in Japan is Tokyo to Osaka (2.5 hours on the train). They actually fly 747s on that route (even though the train stations are in the centers of the cities and the hassle of air travel).
i saw jesse reiser present a project last year where his office adapted an underutilized rail line to create public functions. when i look to his site the closest project to the one i remember is for "Alishan Tourist Routes" in Taiwan. the site is flash so can't link to project but if you google the office can find fast enough.
not exactly what you are looking for but maybe an interesting start.
that is interesting point hasselhof. entirely believable. funny about the train vs plane thing. i stopped flying to anywhere but kyushu in japan cuz the trip to airport kills any gain by flying faster than train. now if plane took off from ueno station, that would change things completely.
I suppose I was thinking beyond the light rail systems integrated into streets of switzerland or much of Spain and more about using U.S. highways as avenues for high speed trains.
For example, I know the Tampa chamber of commerce is working on a potential line to Orlando and eventually beyond. (which is why in foresight they made the median much wider than is normal.)
My immediate context is the midwest. Oklahoma City, Dallas, Kansas City and I'm thinking somewhere in between light rail and high speed.
Perhaps this is a new thought, but thats impossible because I know I'm not that special.
I've heard the reason the U.S. does not have an extensive train system like Europe does is because our extensive highway system makes up for it. (that and we like our cars and personal space). But it seems like the idea of a rail system, mounted/suspended or otherwise that could use our existing built highway network, would be more feasible and approachable than an entirely new entity and organization. Adaptive re-use something or other.
Your findings, hasselhoff, make me wonder if this idea would counter the idea that building a new system would be 'less green' or more expensive. That and statistics make me uncomfortable. I've heard both that statistics dont lie and that liars use statistics.
Perhaps a system that could move parked cars? They could exit when necessary and this would eliminate running other local lines into smaller districts. Am I crazy? I mean, I've even moved past my first idea of a teleporting machine.
The applicability of this is probably on a pretty narrow scope. Again, I am coming from smalltown, USA.
"For example, I know the Tampa chamber of commerce is working on a potential line to Orlando and eventually beyond. (which is why in foresight they made the median much wider than is normal.)"
This has been brought up multiple times over the years. It's a single serving approach... meaning, it doesn't really alleviate local travel. The basic premise here is Orlando tapping into Tampa's underutlized airport. Tampa gets money from usage fees and Orlando can bring more people in and for cheaper. And OIA will attract more business because OIA has more direct flights nationally and internationally.
It's a glroified airport bus. It won't compete with regulat intercity traffic because the drive and train times will be about the same. Tampa to Orlando is about 2 hours, Orlando to Miami is about 3 hours.
The other problem is Orlando is horribly antagonistic towards pedestrians. So is Tampa and so is Miami. So, what would be the point of taking a train when you end up having to rent a car on the other side?
And when the cost of the train ticket will more than likely be less than the cost of the gas it would take to drive?
Orlando, Tampa and Miami have a defenite "quality of environment" issue that needs to be settled before they spend money on projects doomed to failure. There's also the issue that the workforce of Orlando is rotting itself out from drug abuse, poverty and crime. I'm assuming this is piss poor effort of importing a newer, cleaner workforce.
Knowing the jokers behind the rail project, I wouldn't be surprised if they are doing this on purpose as a last ditch effort the kill the idea of urbanism in Florida, ie make an embarassing national example of why we can't have nice things.
And to the technical details, people in Florida... for some reason... like to lose control of their cars frequently and cross into oncoming traffic. Like this happens on a near daily basis.
I don't see how putting a 50-ton train traveling at 80mph down a median of an interstate with a speed limit of 75 mph is going to end well.
The median will have to be dug up and reinforced anyways. Soils in Florida can't sustain the weight and pressure that would be exerted by a heavy, fast moving object.
The highway closures themselves would cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars a month.
Walling the highways to prevent car-train collisions would make the highways even more dangerous.
Orlando, Tampa and Miami need to fix their cities before adding cumbersome infrastrcture to their balance sheets. The local populations want urbanization. People want to go up. I've never seen a place where so many people live in "modern paradise" but profusely complain about it.
I think regional rail is viable in the US. They are starting the train up again from Reading to (Chuck)Norristown and then you will take Septa into Philly. The run from DC to Boston is fairly busy (I've had to stand from Philly to NYC). I think very long distance is rough. I mean, Japan for example, has a total land area equal to California. On top of that, about 60% of the population lives between Osaka and Tokyo (about 300 miles). European countries are much small too. Unless the US trains would hit...150,175 MPH, it would just be a massive waste of time. The train from Philly to Chicago takes something like 15 hours. We've taken vacation train trips across the US, which was great for site seeing. But it took almost 4 days to reach CA. You can get on and off, which is cool. We were majorly delayed once from the annual flooding of the Mississippi. Set us back a day. Not really a convenient means of transportation. As much as I would love to see more trains, I think we are spoiled by cars.
Like Orochi said, I think keeping trains near cars is a horrible idea. The trains in Japan rarely cross roads (elevated, parallel but distanced).
Sorry, made a few mis-quotes on the numbers, but equally interesting. I found the story.
President Obama set aside $8 billion for high-speed trains in the stimulus package, and Congress added another $1.2 billion. Yet many economists now say the costs of building a high-speed rail network far outstrip possible the benefits, especially when cars are becoming more energy-efficient. Harvard economist Edward Glaeser has studied the supposed environmental benefits, guided by the carbon-emission data used by environmental advocates. He pegs the annual environmental benefit for a 240-mile high-speed rail line that attracts 1.5 million riders at $4.2 million, a small return given the billions it would cost. Cato scholar Randal O'Toole notes that French and Japanese ride their bullet trains less than 400 miles a year on average, and estimates that an American network would take, at best, 3.5 percent of cars off the road.
Perhaps a system that could move parked cars? They could exit when necessary and this would eliminate running other local lines into smaller districts. Am I crazy?
awkeytect, I may be reading this wrong, but it reminds me of what I feel like I'd love to see the Interstate become: something you put your car on, but don't drive your car on. So you drive your regular surface streets, then lock into a track or something running on the freeway, and turn your engine off, read a book, eat breakfast etc., then when your exit comes up you turn your engine back on and disengage from the track.
Maybe I'm just thinking this because my son set up a new slot car track today. But it seems like the way to let us keep our cars, but use them more efficiently.
Hasselhoff, that was a similar point I was making is that as the world spreads out... trains become less viable. I think a lot of the locations you mentioned earlier on are far more likely to be somewhat pedestrian friendly that what is in Florida.
Trains really aren't that expensive* though.
There's a limited industrial capacity to produce trains-- that industry has mostly dried up domestically.
To better clarify, I pose this question-- how do you ship a locomotive?
I question the environmental impacts that some claim that environmentally trains are more damaging than highways.
Let's break it down... A double-train track needs a minimum of 48' wide. An 8-lane highway needs to be a minimum of 210' wide (each lane 15', two 25' buffers, two 8' shoulders, one 25' median). Footprint wise? Train wins.
Highways tend to have two 8'-10' tall fences running parallel to the highway. Fences these high act as physical barriers to animals basically bigger than a rabbit. Trains usually have no barrier at all whatsoever.
This basically means that highways and interstates are now the dividing line of ecological regions. Train obvious wins this one.
I mean, I can go pretty far with this.
While cars are more efficient carrying passengers, nothing beats the efficiency of trains hauling bulk cargo.
Cargo train efficiency has been doubling every decade for the last five.
A completely full train has a maximum weight [regulated] of 6,000 tons and around 210 cars (28 tons per car average). A semi-truck has a regulated maximum of 40 tons. However, most trucks in the US carry rarely more than 20 tons.
Currently a completely full train has about the mpg of between 18-26 mpg. A truck averages between 5-12 mpg. Although both of these figures are misleading, there's the obvious advantage of efficiency when dealing with 2 to 3 motors versus 200.
According to Union Pacific: "One intermodal train can take 280 trucks (equal to 1,100 cars) off our already congested highways. Trains carrying other types of freight can take up to 500 trucks off the highway."
There are tests right now on trains carrying up to 36,000 tons. This would put railway efficiencies well over 1200 mpg per ton.
The Randal O'Toole figures are very misleading. Because he is taking one very small, slim slice of railway usage and applying it broadly as an argument.
The fact is that there is very few running "high-speed" rail services out there. His figures don't take regular trains, intermodals, airport trains, mine trains, light rail, trams, rapid transit, commuter, regional or intercity trains into his view. To be honest, as much as I'd like to go 200 miles an hour... why do I need to go 200 mph over a relatively short distance?
In fact, if trains are such a piss poor alternative... than why does every high impact, high density environment depend on them?
That further also asks... if trains are a dead end, why are some of the most innovative and biggest companies (GE, Siemens et cetera) still developing the technology and producing trains?
In terms of energy, I hate these comparisons as well. While a single car by itself maybe very efficient, it really isn't. How many gallons of oil went into making the road it operates on? How many gallons went into making the tires it uses for traction? How many gallons went to make the totally synthetic interior... and better yet, what is the VOC inside of a car? How many gallons of fuel went into making the thousands of unused spare parts to guarantee your cars operation? How many gallons of fuel have went into making the millions of roadside signs?
I don't think people really consider every bit and piece that goes into regular car driving.
I ultimately think rail has an advantage here for the sheer fact that rubber-on-road will never be as efficient as steel-on-steel. Cars have far too many parts to tweak. And the spatial concerns are even more baffling.
I think another consideration is that employers ultimately play the largest role. They chose where their businesses go-- and as a byproduct chose how their employees travel, how their goods are moved and how their overall business operates. I don't planner or citizen really has that much of a choice.
LB, thats exactly where I was headed. I just came up with too many conflicting questions as I began to make it work in my head that I slowed down a little bit.
Like...How do you drive off? Are we stopping at EVERY exit? What if everyone is exiting at the same exit?
Ask your son, he's probably further ahead on this than I am.
LB and awkeytect, you might like to read an early SF story by Robert Heinlein, called the roads must roll. it is about just the idea you describe. HG Wells wrote of similar idea in The Sleeper Wakes, in the late 1890's. Heinlein also invented the waterbed :-)
rail is great but infrastructure is hard to plan for correctly. and it has to be right because the cost of setting things up just to get started is so high and the construction process so lengthy. trains are customised one-offs and in that sense particularly in-flexible.
cars and the infrastructure that supports them are wasteful but allow for redundancy. redundancy is flexible. that is why cars win. that is why cars always win. flexibility/redundancy is an evolutionary trait of significant power and very common. trees make too many seeds, animals make too many babies.
still, i do think trains are awesome. i love em but don't know how to make them work in north america. not without fundamental societal change, or shifting of legal apparatus and subsidies. maybe some day.
Actually, awkeytect, I feel like Disneyland had a World of Tomorrow-type ride that had little cars that did this.
Hasselhoff, I *did* see Minority Report, but I don't remember that scene. Didn't that movie have Tom Cruise in it? if so, I was watching it with my eyes half closed to keep his particular crazy from penetrating my brain.
jump, sounds like a good story. And, I loved my waterbed (1975-85).
High speed rail would be competing with air travel as much as car travel which I think strengthens its argument as long as we talk about true "High Speed" not just faster than what we had. If I can take a train from downtown Chicago to downtown St. Louis and get there in 2.5 hours, I sure as hell am not driving and I probably am not going to fly either.
Back to the original question, I think the answer lies with "smart roads" and having cars that drive themselves. We all maintain the autonomy we love with our own cars, but they now drive themselves and using the power of the computer I think we have the most efficient system possible.
Benefits:
-Car crashes all but eliminated
-Cars able to travel faster and in concert with each other with instant response from "drivers"
-ultra efficient driving with computer able to adjust for upcoming events such as stop lights, slow downs, traffic etc...
-moving violations reduced or eliminated
-human element removed from road
-nobody ever gets lost again
I believe the technology is out there, the existing infrastructure would need to be reworked but we already rebuild roads pretty frequently so this could be phased in starting with highways. I haven't worked on the details too much and I know it isn't completely original but its what I'd like to see.
If not, I love trains for intercity and intracity travel.
japan is fantastic for trains. but like hasselhoff says japan is a small country, so while it is feasible here am not sure how it works in usa or canada.
that may be enough orochi. don't believe it would be simple. i am re-reading dolores hayden this week and she has a much longer list, much of it very political.
i don't have a car and in tokyo is not necessary, but outside tokyo only children who don't have a driver's license use trains (which are amazingly available, even in suburbia). i must say i also would like to have a car. we could use it to make life more convenient for travelling laterally. when i was finishing up uni last year i had to take 2 hour train ride because the campus was moved to urban fringe and only way to get there was to ride into centre then back out again. a car ride would have been half as long. trains are seriously not the best for cities that change shape and shuffle functions over time (meaning, frankly every city on this planet). that trip was ALL high density mind you. it wasn't a suburban thing, just reality in a living city. whether cars should dominate or not i can't say but they certainly have a valid place in our world.
the auto-highways would be awesome. if it could work in the middle of city too i would love it.
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alt. transportation using existing infrastructure
The title pretty much says it, but does anyone know of any current or recent projects that incorporate new (or existing) transportation methods onto/into existing transportation infrastructure?
The image in my head is a rail/cable system that would mount from/on highways or interstates.
But with underground connections. Technically probably the best alternative to buses/subways... integrates pretty well with the surroundings too.
what about hitch-hiking? it's using existing infrastructure AND transportation as well.
This isn't totally related. But I was reading about Amtrak and the general state of America's train system. You guys probably know about this stuff. ConRail has right of way over Amtrak (hence the LOOOONG delays). Amtrak tried to implement high speed rail in the northeast corridor (Acela) but the issue was that some of the curves had too tight of a radius for conventional trains. So to deal with that they need to use what's called leaning trains that can rock a bit in the turns. However, unlike the Japanese system was purpose built, the tracks in the NE are too close, so if the trains lean in the corners, they would collide. Regional rail would be nice though. I live in Reading, PA (you know, the Reading Railroad of Monopoly?) There is no train to Philadelphia... Would be so nice because driving that 60 miles can sometimes take 3 hours because the roads are so overburdened.
Unfortunately I can't find this article again. It was in Newsweek or Time, I forget. It was something like "23 things you didn't know." And it was saying that keeping cars and not building a new train system is cheaper and more 'green.' As cars get more fuel efficient, the environmental cost of building a new railway is actually larger than driving clean cars. I wish I could find it again for all the facts and figures, but it was interesting. Had stats that something like only 4% of Japanese use the bullet train each year. Etc etc. One of the busiest plane routes in Japan is Tokyo to Osaka (2.5 hours on the train). They actually fly 747s on that route (even though the train stations are in the centers of the cities and the hassle of air travel).
i saw jesse reiser present a project last year where his office adapted an underutilized rail line to create public functions. when i look to his site the closest project to the one i remember is for "Alishan Tourist Routes" in Taiwan. the site is flash so can't link to project but if you google the office can find fast enough.
not exactly what you are looking for but maybe an interesting start.
that is interesting point hasselhof. entirely believable. funny about the train vs plane thing. i stopped flying to anywhere but kyushu in japan cuz the trip to airport kills any gain by flying faster than train. now if plane took off from ueno station, that would change things completely.
I suppose I was thinking beyond the light rail systems integrated into streets of switzerland or much of Spain and more about using U.S. highways as avenues for high speed trains.
For example, I know the Tampa chamber of commerce is working on a potential line to Orlando and eventually beyond. (which is why in foresight they made the median much wider than is normal.)
My immediate context is the midwest. Oklahoma City, Dallas, Kansas City and I'm thinking somewhere in between light rail and high speed.
Perhaps this is a new thought, but thats impossible because I know I'm not that special.
I've heard the reason the U.S. does not have an extensive train system like Europe does is because our extensive highway system makes up for it. (that and we like our cars and personal space). But it seems like the idea of a rail system, mounted/suspended or otherwise that could use our existing built highway network, would be more feasible and approachable than an entirely new entity and organization. Adaptive re-use something or other.
Your findings, hasselhoff, make me wonder if this idea would counter the idea that building a new system would be 'less green' or more expensive. That and statistics make me uncomfortable. I've heard both that statistics dont lie and that liars use statistics.
Perhaps a system that could move parked cars? They could exit when necessary and this would eliminate running other local lines into smaller districts. Am I crazy? I mean, I've even moved past my first idea of a teleporting machine.
The applicability of this is probably on a pretty narrow scope. Again, I am coming from smalltown, USA.
"For example, I know the Tampa chamber of commerce is working on a potential line to Orlando and eventually beyond. (which is why in foresight they made the median much wider than is normal.)"
This has been brought up multiple times over the years. It's a single serving approach... meaning, it doesn't really alleviate local travel. The basic premise here is Orlando tapping into Tampa's underutlized airport. Tampa gets money from usage fees and Orlando can bring more people in and for cheaper. And OIA will attract more business because OIA has more direct flights nationally and internationally.
It's a glroified airport bus. It won't compete with regulat intercity traffic because the drive and train times will be about the same. Tampa to Orlando is about 2 hours, Orlando to Miami is about 3 hours.
The other problem is Orlando is horribly antagonistic towards pedestrians. So is Tampa and so is Miami. So, what would be the point of taking a train when you end up having to rent a car on the other side?
And when the cost of the train ticket will more than likely be less than the cost of the gas it would take to drive?
Orlando, Tampa and Miami have a defenite "quality of environment" issue that needs to be settled before they spend money on projects doomed to failure. There's also the issue that the workforce of Orlando is rotting itself out from drug abuse, poverty and crime. I'm assuming this is piss poor effort of importing a newer, cleaner workforce.
Knowing the jokers behind the rail project, I wouldn't be surprised if they are doing this on purpose as a last ditch effort the kill the idea of urbanism in Florida, ie make an embarassing national example of why we can't have nice things.
And to the technical details, people in Florida... for some reason... like to lose control of their cars frequently and cross into oncoming traffic. Like this happens on a near daily basis.
I don't see how putting a 50-ton train traveling at 80mph down a median of an interstate with a speed limit of 75 mph is going to end well.
The median will have to be dug up and reinforced anyways. Soils in Florida can't sustain the weight and pressure that would be exerted by a heavy, fast moving object.
The highway closures themselves would cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars a month.
Walling the highways to prevent car-train collisions would make the highways even more dangerous.
Orlando, Tampa and Miami need to fix their cities before adding cumbersome infrastrcture to their balance sheets. The local populations want urbanization. People want to go up. I've never seen a place where so many people live in "modern paradise" but profusely complain about it.
I think regional rail is viable in the US. They are starting the train up again from Reading to (Chuck)Norristown and then you will take Septa into Philly. The run from DC to Boston is fairly busy (I've had to stand from Philly to NYC). I think very long distance is rough. I mean, Japan for example, has a total land area equal to California. On top of that, about 60% of the population lives between Osaka and Tokyo (about 300 miles). European countries are much small too. Unless the US trains would hit...150,175 MPH, it would just be a massive waste of time. The train from Philly to Chicago takes something like 15 hours. We've taken vacation train trips across the US, which was great for site seeing. But it took almost 4 days to reach CA. You can get on and off, which is cool. We were majorly delayed once from the annual flooding of the Mississippi. Set us back a day. Not really a convenient means of transportation. As much as I would love to see more trains, I think we are spoiled by cars.
Like Orochi said, I think keeping trains near cars is a horrible idea. The trains in Japan rarely cross roads (elevated, parallel but distanced).
Sorry, made a few mis-quotes on the numbers, but equally interesting. I found the story.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/212136
President Obama set aside $8 billion for high-speed trains in the stimulus package, and Congress added another $1.2 billion. Yet many economists now say the costs of building a high-speed rail network far outstrip possible the benefits, especially when cars are becoming more energy-efficient. Harvard economist Edward Glaeser has studied the supposed environmental benefits, guided by the carbon-emission data used by environmental advocates. He pegs the annual environmental benefit for a 240-mile high-speed rail line that attracts 1.5 million riders at $4.2 million, a small return given the billions it would cost. Cato scholar Randal O'Toole notes that French and Japanese ride their bullet trains less than 400 miles a year on average, and estimates that an American network would take, at best, 3.5 percent of cars off the road.
awkeytect, I may be reading this wrong, but it reminds me of what I feel like I'd love to see the Interstate become: something you put your car on, but don't drive your car on. So you drive your regular surface streets, then lock into a track or something running on the freeway, and turn your engine off, read a book, eat breakfast etc., then when your exit comes up you turn your engine back on and disengage from the track.
Maybe I'm just thinking this because my son set up a new slot car track today. But it seems like the way to let us keep our cars, but use them more efficiently.
Hasselhoff, that was a similar point I was making is that as the world spreads out... trains become less viable. I think a lot of the locations you mentioned earlier on are far more likely to be somewhat pedestrian friendly that what is in Florida.
Trains really aren't that expensive* though.
There's a limited industrial capacity to produce trains-- that industry has mostly dried up domestically.
To better clarify, I pose this question-- how do you ship a locomotive?
I question the environmental impacts that some claim that environmentally trains are more damaging than highways.
Let's break it down... A double-train track needs a minimum of 48' wide. An 8-lane highway needs to be a minimum of 210' wide (each lane 15', two 25' buffers, two 8' shoulders, one 25' median). Footprint wise? Train wins.
Highways tend to have two 8'-10' tall fences running parallel to the highway. Fences these high act as physical barriers to animals basically bigger than a rabbit. Trains usually have no barrier at all whatsoever.
This basically means that highways and interstates are now the dividing line of ecological regions. Train obvious wins this one.
I mean, I can go pretty far with this.
While cars are more efficient carrying passengers, nothing beats the efficiency of trains hauling bulk cargo.
Cargo train efficiency has been doubling every decade for the last five.
A completely full train has a maximum weight [regulated] of 6,000 tons and around 210 cars (28 tons per car average). A semi-truck has a regulated maximum of 40 tons. However, most trucks in the US carry rarely more than 20 tons.
Currently a completely full train has about the mpg of between 18-26 mpg. A truck averages between 5-12 mpg. Although both of these figures are misleading, there's the obvious advantage of efficiency when dealing with 2 to 3 motors versus 200.
According to Union Pacific: "One intermodal train can take 280 trucks (equal to 1,100 cars) off our already congested highways. Trains carrying other types of freight can take up to 500 trucks off the highway."
There are tests right now on trains carrying up to 36,000 tons. This would put railway efficiencies well over 1200 mpg per ton.
The Randal O'Toole figures are very misleading. Because he is taking one very small, slim slice of railway usage and applying it broadly as an argument.
The fact is that there is very few running "high-speed" rail services out there. His figures don't take regular trains, intermodals, airport trains, mine trains, light rail, trams, rapid transit, commuter, regional or intercity trains into his view. To be honest, as much as I'd like to go 200 miles an hour... why do I need to go 200 mph over a relatively short distance?
In fact, if trains are such a piss poor alternative... than why does every high impact, high density environment depend on them?
That further also asks... if trains are a dead end, why are some of the most innovative and biggest companies (GE, Siemens et cetera) still developing the technology and producing trains?
In terms of energy, I hate these comparisons as well. While a single car by itself maybe very efficient, it really isn't. How many gallons of oil went into making the road it operates on? How many gallons went into making the tires it uses for traction? How many gallons went to make the totally synthetic interior... and better yet, what is the VOC inside of a car? How many gallons of fuel went into making the thousands of unused spare parts to guarantee your cars operation? How many gallons of fuel have went into making the millions of roadside signs?
I don't think people really consider every bit and piece that goes into regular car driving.
I ultimately think rail has an advantage here for the sheer fact that rubber-on-road will never be as efficient as steel-on-steel. Cars have far too many parts to tweak. And the spatial concerns are even more baffling.
I think another consideration is that employers ultimately play the largest role. They chose where their businesses go-- and as a byproduct chose how their employees travel, how their goods are moved and how their overall business operates. I don't planner or citizen really has that much of a choice.
LB, sounds like Minority Report. Did you see that movie?
LB, thats exactly where I was headed. I just came up with too many conflicting questions as I began to make it work in my head that I slowed down a little bit.
Like...How do you drive off? Are we stopping at EVERY exit? What if everyone is exiting at the same exit?
Ask your son, he's probably further ahead on this than I am.
LB and awkeytect, you might like to read an early SF story by Robert Heinlein, called the roads must roll. it is about just the idea you describe. HG Wells wrote of similar idea in The Sleeper Wakes, in the late 1890's. Heinlein also invented the waterbed :-)
rail is great but infrastructure is hard to plan for correctly. and it has to be right because the cost of setting things up just to get started is so high and the construction process so lengthy. trains are customised one-offs and in that sense particularly in-flexible.
cars and the infrastructure that supports them are wasteful but allow for redundancy. redundancy is flexible. that is why cars win. that is why cars always win. flexibility/redundancy is an evolutionary trait of significant power and very common. trees make too many seeds, animals make too many babies.
still, i do think trains are awesome. i love em but don't know how to make them work in north america. not without fundamental societal change, or shifting of legal apparatus and subsidies. maybe some day.
Jump... actually it would be very easy to make trains viable again.
1) Illegalize development right swaps.
2) Flat rate real estate tax from border to border. No more county tax havens.
3) Eliminate homestead exemptions.
4) Partially subsidize rail construction.
Actually, awkeytect, I feel like Disneyland had a World of Tomorrow-type ride that had little cars that did this.
Hasselhoff, I *did* see Minority Report, but I don't remember that scene. Didn't that movie have Tom Cruise in it? if so, I was watching it with my eyes half closed to keep his particular crazy from penetrating my brain.
jump, sounds like a good story. And, I loved my waterbed (1975-85).
High speed rail would be competing with air travel as much as car travel which I think strengthens its argument as long as we talk about true "High Speed" not just faster than what we had. If I can take a train from downtown Chicago to downtown St. Louis and get there in 2.5 hours, I sure as hell am not driving and I probably am not going to fly either.
Back to the original question, I think the answer lies with "smart roads" and having cars that drive themselves. We all maintain the autonomy we love with our own cars, but they now drive themselves and using the power of the computer I think we have the most efficient system possible.
Benefits:
-Car crashes all but eliminated
-Cars able to travel faster and in concert with each other with instant response from "drivers"
-ultra efficient driving with computer able to adjust for upcoming events such as stop lights, slow downs, traffic etc...
-moving violations reduced or eliminated
-human element removed from road
-nobody ever gets lost again
I believe the technology is out there, the existing infrastructure would need to be reworked but we already rebuild roads pretty frequently so this could be phased in starting with highways. I haven't worked on the details too much and I know it isn't completely original but its what I'd like to see.
If not, I love trains for intercity and intracity travel.
japan is fantastic for trains. but like hasselhoff says japan is a small country, so while it is feasible here am not sure how it works in usa or canada.
that may be enough orochi. don't believe it would be simple. i am re-reading dolores hayden this week and she has a much longer list, much of it very political.
i don't have a car and in tokyo is not necessary, but outside tokyo only children who don't have a driver's license use trains (which are amazingly available, even in suburbia). i must say i also would like to have a car. we could use it to make life more convenient for travelling laterally. when i was finishing up uni last year i had to take 2 hour train ride because the campus was moved to urban fringe and only way to get there was to ride into centre then back out again. a car ride would have been half as long. trains are seriously not the best for cities that change shape and shuffle functions over time (meaning, frankly every city on this planet). that trip was ALL high density mind you. it wasn't a suburban thing, just reality in a living city. whether cars should dominate or not i can't say but they certainly have a valid place in our world.
the auto-highways would be awesome. if it could work in the middle of city too i would love it.
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