Buscar: 

2010-2040, three decades of transition in transport

There are a lot of researchers on dual mode, personal rapid transit and other innovative transport technologies, and their efforts are just now breaking the egg shell of a new age in transport. Our planet dramatically needs that creature. But there are several kinds of eggs and we still don’t know what the winner will be like. Perhaps this is a suitable moment to study the steps of transition taking into account the new circumstances that the computerization of society has brought about. This study can help us to specify several details when defining our goal.
The first step is inexpensive door-to-door public transport.
In the last century trains and buses took their passengers from one station to another. The twenty-first-century challenge is the complete service in time and space. The means to accomplish it are:
-Communication between travellers and central control by phone or the Internet in order to reach an agreement about all journeys (short and long ones).
-The computerized combination of supply and demand data.
-Communication between central control and vehicles in order to direct the drivers by displaying the itinerary with stops near the commuter’s point of origin or destination.
-The utilization of medium-size vehicles (taxibuses with 8 to 15 seats).
-The creation of a commercial network of agencies and other transport companies with the aim of guaranteeing the door-to-door concept for all journeys (both short and long ones) of a customer or a group of customers (for example, one family), jointly or separately. The agencies will combine several means of transport, if necessary (for example: taxibus, airplane, taxibus).

The second step (result of the first step) is the extinction of the dinosaurs of transport: all road or rail vehicles with more than 15 seats. They have lost their function in the door-to-door age. As in modern schools, 60 pupils/passengers per teacher/driver is a sub-developed ratio. As in modern hospitals, 60 patients/passengers per doctor/driver is a sub-developed ratio. The motive is the same in vehicles, schools or hospitals. The beneficiary of the service prefers and can pay for a personalized treatment. Developed countries have more doctors and teachers, it is a sign of progress. Therefore they will get one driver per 10 passengers on average. That will not be expensive.
The first and second steps are required for the successful development of innovative systems.
When door-to-door public transport becomes more popular, the percentage of public journeys will increase. Many car owners will use taxibuses for many of their trips, chiefly for the short ones.

The third step is the definitive separation of velocity. A vehicle at high speed at ground level is very dangerous for its passengers and for its surroundings. There will be two methods of separation of velocity, one for humans and one for freight. Humans and freight are like a stick and a stone in water. The stick goes up, the stone goes down.
The definitive separation of velocity for the transport of passengers is light elevation. This is the dominion of the successful dualmode or personal rapid transit systems for passengers. The vehicles, both public and private, will be light. They will move speedily on automated guide ways, and they will move slowly along the street controlled by human drivers, or maybe by additional guides.
It isn’t rational to forecast the growth of speeds out of race tracks in vehicles with human drivers. The risk will be unacceptable. It is already unacceptable now. The car is the first cause of death for people in good health.
There are two factors pressing against fossil fuels: the increasing conviction that they are active as a cause in global warming and other environmental damage, and petroleum depletion. This situation will stimulate other energy solutions, chiefly electric engines.

The passenger’s routes will be speedy, light, elevated, automatic and powered electrically.
The definitive separation of speed for freight is the narrow underground pipe (circular or square, often just below the pedestrian’s feet and the wheels on the streets). There will be also the super-narrow domiciliary pipe, not always underground, but sometimes elevated.

In addition to the three steps presented (inexpensive door-to-door public transport, the extinction of the dinosaurs of transport and the definitive separation of speed), It is necessary to add a few complementary considerations.

The a priori success of a concrete technology with a world agreement between experts, politicians and businessmen is very difficult. There are many companies with different and incompatible offers in dual mode or Personal Rapid Transit systems, with conventional or maglev routes. It seems that the absence of a universal language in the development of transport will delay and complicate the urgent substitution of the current system, but it is not like that, since a universal language does exist.

The first transport revolution in the 21st century will not depend mainly on railroad and vehicle technology, but on communications and data combination technology. This is the universal language available.

Equally revolutionary will be the input of companies which guarantee the journey from point of origin to destination, and it has been many years since commercial activity hasn’t had borders.

We can foresee that in 2050 different innovative systems of transport will be in full function in diverse cities, regions and countries, and old roads will still last in many rural zones with old vehicles. It is not a new phenomenon; during the 20th century four basic incompatible systems of transport were developed: the train, the road, the plane and the ship. The train has had diverse track gauges. The most universal system of transport, the road, has seen differences as important as the driving on the right or on the left. As variety has been possible in the 20th century, it will also be in the 21st, especially bearing in mind that the new century possesses the new tools already mentioned: modern communications and the combination of information by computer.

Let's see first how future trips will be solved for people:

The common traveller of the 21st century will demand a comfortable and rapid trip from the door of his/her origin up to the door of his/her destination in conformity with a tailored schedule. And he/she will have the economic capacity to pay for it. He/she will request his/her trip in advance. The managing company of his/her journey will provide this service. As a general rule both traveller and company will keep a contractual relation to cover many journeys.

Simple travel inside the urban environment will often be in the same shared vehicle of medium size -between 8 and 15 seats. A fleet of taxibuses with human drivers, GPS and centralized management of the routes can already do this. In the future it can be foreseen that this task will be done by dual mode vehicles that will cover part of the distance with automatic driving on elevated guideways.

A complex trip will maybe need several vehicles. The basic model is: urban vehicle door-to-door - vehicle on very rapid line - urban vehicle door-to-door. It is similar to the current long trip in which a taxi picks up the traveller at home to take him/her to the airport and, after the trip by plane, another taxi picks up him/her at the airport and takes him/her to the destination hotel. In the future, the traveller will be collected from home by a taxibus, much cheaper than a taxi. This vehicle will take him/her to a rapid route that will often not be by air, but maglev, and at the destination station a new taxibus will take him/her to his/her hotel.

But it is necessary to consider that all trips in the future will be arranged ahead of time, thanks to the new technologies. The managing company of the trip will program the connection in time and space between the diverse vehicles to avoid long delays, uncertainty and long walks with luggage. In spite of the transfers, the traveller will always stay under the same system of communications, management and data combination. This is the practical base that will make the diverse systems of transport of the future compatible.

We can also consider a possibility that can avoid many transfers: It is the independent passenger cabin. To give an example: A family crosses a country on a fast magnetic levitation route, and arrives in another country where there is another fast maglev route of different design, with mutual incompatibility between the vehicles. At the border a joint station exists in which the vehicles of each line are placed together. An automatic crane transfers the cabin from the newly arrived vehicle to the other one that is going to start immediately with the same passengers in the new country. The same process can occur between an interurban maglev line and conventional route urban line. It is a simple and effective process between small, light and automatic units, in which the central control knows the origin, the destination and the location of each vehicle and each cabin.

In conclusion, the three steps in the development of 21st century transport will be put into practice from now on with diverse solutions, and the geographic limits of each new project will not soon make it obsolete, victim of more universal successful systems. The process of normalization towards a few generalized solutions will occur throughout the 21st century, but any efficient system will have the possibility of resisting enough at least to recover the investment.

However, it is very important that the new projects adapt to the foreseeable phases of the development. After a meticulous study of the proposals that are set out in the list of innovative transport technologies on the website of the university of Washington, Seatle, coordinated by Jerry Schneider (http://faculty.washington.edu/jbs/itrans/techtable.htm), the following projects, in accordance with our criterion, deserve a positive valuation:

The IGT Taxibus system is at the front of the vanguard applicable from the present day, because it takes the practical shape of the first established step: the public door-to-door trip affordable for a large number of travellers. What matters is that many users can request their tailored trip in advance and that the central transport control combines the data of thousands of applicants, addresses and the location of available taxibuses to optimize the relation between supply and demand. Human drivers’ work with conventional vehicles is a necessary condition to immediately start a great impulse of public door-to-door trips. Once a market with that service is consolidated, systems of automatic guidance and light elevation ready to go further on efficiency, security and rapidity will appear.

Dual systems will probably be the first to obtain concessions on complete service in concrete urban zones, where a city with its environs is included. The following are of interest:

-RUF (Rapid Urban Flexible) Dual Mode Transport System.

This system presents a very promising technology in which every defined future option meets. It can be applied to small-size public vehicles, but also to private vehicles, which at the beginning of the transition contributes very much to its favour. It combines low-speed human driving on streets with fast automatic guidance on elevated routes.

 

-Monomobile.

Small and very light automatically controlled vehicles advance hung from a monorail for fast journeys. As soon as they leave the automatic line, their wheels touch the ground to circulate like conventional cars on the streets. If a good yield of this high-speed method is possible, it could be very competitive in the next decades. Higherway suggest a similar solution.

-MAIT (Modular Automated Individual Transport).

MAIT develops the interesting concept of the passenger cabin. Travellers make their complete trip from the door of origin to destination in the same cabin that can be transferred from one type of vehicle carrier to another. The carriers constitute the vehicles themselves. Some of them are suited to circulating at ground level and others are suited to elevated fast circulation. As much in this concrete project as in other possible ones, the development of the quickly transferable cabin from one vehicle to another could offer a key to mass transport improvement.

-PTS (Personal Transit System) and PRISM (Program for Individual Sustainable Mobility)

Both models consider the use of private vehicles, similar to those currently used, to be driven as now on urban streets and to be integrated on light elevated lines connected to an automatic guidance system. They may be suitable at the start of the development, and may adapt to the increase in public door-to-door trips.

- Other projects that offer suggested features of this type are: DMV (Dual Mode Vehicle), IMT (Individual Mass Transit), REV (Revolutionary Dualmode Transportation System) and TriTrack Dualmode Concept.
Many proposals in the development of transport are not dual, but offer the design of an automatic, elevated, light and fast route, as well as the vehicles able to circulate on it. The dual equipment for two different modes may be a ballast to the growth of great speeds and expensive from the energy point of view. This advantage of non-dual fast routes will not be diminished by the few disadvantages with regards the door-to-door service required by travellers in the near future. The penetration of the city streets by a light elevated route could be great. Also, the combination of fast route stations with a fleet of specialized door-to-door neighbourhood service vehicles will mean that users travel in accordance to a single program that diminishes the necessity for transfers and delays.

Abundant examples of operational elevated lines exist throughout the world, usually on short and simple routes (airport terminals, fairs, zoos, etc). They obey the pre-computerized planning of the last century: to reunite many passengers in a vehicle to take them from one station to another. They have to evolve towards lightness and the combination of data, but we should not scorn the accumulated technological experience as far as the advance of vehicles on a continuous bridge is concerned.

Any efficient light elevation system that manages to be introduced into a territory can expect at least two or three decades of use. Evidently, with time the most efficient systems will prevail at the cost of the others. It is still too soon to decide the technological factors that may lead to the success or the failure of the following proposals, classified according to two fundamental aspects. On the one hand there is the criterion that differentiates those systems in which the vehicles circulate on the continuous bridge from those whose vehicles hang underneath it. On the other hand there is the criterion that differentiates those systems in which the vehicles have wheels from those in which they magnetically levitate.

On the bridge and with wheels we have the following:

Autoway, CyberTran, City Mobility, EcoTaxi de APGM, Flash,  Microrail, PRT 2000, SkyCab PRT, Skyweb Express, SmartSkayways, STU (String Trnasport Unitsky), ULTra, Urbanaut, Vectus PRT, Y-Rail.

On the bridge and with magnetic levitation we have the following:
Aplied Levitation, LEVX maglev, Magplane Passenger, Urban Maglev de Magnetrans.

HSST maglev is a system based on the magnetic levitation of trains already in operation in Japan. Its application to small units on a light route is a question of development towards the needs of the new century. Also MAGLEV 2000 and Urban Maglev de Magnemotion are still conceived in terms of heavy routes.

Next we enlist the systems in which the vehicle is hanging:
Airtrain, Flyway, Higherway, JPods, SkyCabs.
SkyTran and Zhonghua-06 are based on maglev technology.
Aerobus and Dragonfly are too big. They have to adapt to the new conditions that computerized transport presents.

Cabintaxi proposes the combination, on the same horizontal structure, of vehicles that circulate above in one direction and hanging vehicles in the opposite direction. Also the system Project 21 takes advantage of the same beam for both directions, although in a different way: The vehicles advance connected to each side of the beam.

As we have already said, merchandise will be separated from the passengers’ traffic by narrow conduits, usually subterranean. Very promising diverse proposals exist on the matter:

Cargocap presents cylindrical cabins suitable for transporting a two-palet load by underground conduits of approximately 1.5 metres in diametre. A similar system is proposed by TubeXpress.

Pipenet is based on a much narrower tube section and on magnetic levitation to carry the loads. Magnetrans proposes magnetic levitation and a very narrow tube for the transport of grain and petroleum in long containers. Rumba uses magnetic levitation in cabins that travel along underground pipes; in theory it presents a system applicable to the traffic of passengers, which does not agree with our development forecasts; but it may be suitable for freight.

Also Freight Pipeline Company works in the development of pipes for merchandise.
In summary: Now is the propitious time for a great transport revolution with complete computerization. The technology is already mature. We need to reunite our efforts so that the decade of 2010 will be the one of 21st century transport, with the success of the public trip with the door-to-door concept.

---