Buscar: 

Advanced transport, more environmentally-friendly transport

People with a deep concern for the environmental deteriorations that human activity causes are still in a minority. Transport is one of the most polluting elements. The excessive combustion of petroleum derivatives to move private vehicles, with abundant elements of waste, troubles those who are conscious of the catastrophic consequences that the greenhouse effect can cause.

There is a minority of people that clamour for change, and a majority that does not want to change their way of life, except towards still greater consumption. Society in developed countries does not want to listen to warnings. Does some approach for building a bridge between necessity and reality exist? Is there some method for advancing towards a more ecological transport without facing the resistance of a majority that only wishes to avoid restrictions for travelling at will?

Yes, there is. In fact, the main ingredients of technologically-advanced transport aim towards a drastic improvement in the environmental arena, and all of them are attractive for great masses of users, which will mean high profits for innovative companies. We have hit bottom with regards polluting and irrational transport. Little by little, with twenty years of delay, we will advance on several fronts towards an important relief for the atmosphere, the biosphere and the terrestrial surface.

The mentioned ingredients of advanced transport are the following:
- Combination of data in public transport, that is to say, the network computerization of supply and demand. At first sight it does not seem a very revolutionary change, but by deepening its implications we will see that it is revolutionary. Within a few years, not many people will travel by public transport without having arranged their trip, short or long, in advance by phone or the Internet. The same will happen to the people who go to work early every morning, who go shopping, or to the cinema, or to a beach, or to a doctor’s surgery, or on holiday. The same will happen if the trip is in a city as if the distance travelled is 30 or thousands of kilometres. Users will book their trip in advance because in doing so they will gain great benefit.

    
This benefit forms part of the second ingredient of advanced transport:
- The public door-to-door trip. This is the great challenge of the 21st century transport, even more important than automatic guidance or the increase of speed. A public door-to-door trip means that the person who has arranged his/her trip by telephone or the Internet will be picked up at home and will be taken to the door of his/her destination, within a tailored schedule, although offering a certain time margin to the transport network.

We can affirm that it will happen because it is what every traveller desires and because thanks to computerized data combination it will be possible at a public service price.

Current buses will become minibuses with between fifteen and twenty seats that will gather and drop off travellers on a flexible route. The network software will combine the geographic and time data of thousands of users to keep those minibuses as full as possible and in continuous movement, obtaining a superior income from vehicle and driver than the one from fixed routes.

 
This will be a crucial advance of future public transport, and its great improvement, from an environmental point of view, is that it will attract a high percentage of private transport users. Many people will continue owning their car and using it from time to time, but not always. We must remember that the main advantage of a private car is indeed the complete service from door-to-door.  When this service is offer, on both the outgoing and return journey, by a cheaper, safer and often quicker (thanks to the bus lanes) public vehicle that presents no parking problems or responsibility for breakdowns, very few people will continue using their car to go to work, the cinema or the beach.

The next basic ingredient of advanced transport is related to the previous points:
- It is the separation of speed. This process began several decades ago. For reasons of safety, fast vehicles must circulate on routes closed to pedestrians, where children, animals or slow vehicles cannot enter. Motorways as well as high-speed train tracks are protected by means of fences. But the widespread solution in the near future will not consist of fences, but of light elevation. When elevated, a route becomes more penetrating in the city and its surroundings, as well as in the fields, and this is the best guarantee for the inaccessibility of foreign objects. Nevertheless, we do not need to  imagine large bridges like those of current motorways. We have talked about light elevation, very light, since the customized  door-to-door public transport of complete service, with advance agreement and the combination of supply and demand data, is the enemy of heavy buses and trains. It requires vehicles that do not surpass fifteen seats, or at the most twenty.

There is, as well, a strong ecological component in the fact that light elevation for speed opens the door to the fully pedestrianised city and to the fields and forests being free of fast traffic at ground level. Avoiding, thanks to columns, much of the clearing and filling required to build a conventional road, will also mean an important relief for the environmental. But the fundamental component, the one that will offer a huge improvement with regards to the greenhouse effect, consists of the definitive opening of the door to the electrification of engines. The vehicles of the near future, since they will circulate on separated routes, inaccessible to those who are not technicians or maintenance workers, will have at their reach, like electric trains, a cable connected to the electric power supply. Fast vehicles will receive their energy from a wire located on the ground of the continuous bridge or perhaps above, as trains currently do, and they will have an auxiliary battery that allows certain manoeuvrability at low speed at ground level at the start and end of trips.
- Another ecological ingredient of advanced transport is the computerized solution for freight: the narrow conduit. There will be a network of conduits -similar to pipe lines, although of square section- that will generally be placed underground at little depth, like the sewage system.

 
In summary, the key points of the advanced transport that will mean environmental improvements are: The agreement of trips in advance, the computerized combination of supply and demand data, public door-to-door transport able to compete with private transport, the extinction of heavy vehicles, the separation of speed by means of light elevation, the electrification of engines and the separation of freight by means of underground narrow conduits.

These points require a more detailed explanation. That explanation constitutes the book the COMPUTERIZATION OF TRANSPORT. FORECAST AND PROPOSAL FOR 2050, as well as the website www.futurtrans.info.

 

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