We Could Meet Kyoto And Solve A Lot Of Other Problems Too

Interesting information in a greenhouse gas report:

As shown, "Mobile Sources" is, in 1995, twice the contributor to greenhouse gases that utilities sources are. Also, as seen in the tabulation, utilities sources improved their greenhouse gas situation by about 1-3rd from 1990 to 1995, while transportation increased, suggesting that expecting the utilities sources further reduce their emissions to combat global warming is probably unreasonable and unlikely to be successful.

What we need to do is to replace as many major roads as possible with an automobile-carrying rail system. Drive your car onto a railcar, a process that would take about as long as driving into a car wash, tell the railcar's computer where you want to go, and the railcar determines the best route to get there and then moves onto the main line at 150 mph under complete control of the on-board computer. It would catch the tail-end of a pbutting "train" of railcars (who are all simply running closely together, not necessarily touching, but "drafting" each other like a NASCAR race car to break the wind for each other, and run 150 mph on maybe 30 - 50 horsepower) and travel to the destination by automatically switching from rail segment to rail segment, just like going through interstate highway interchanges. There would be no waiting at rail terminals, as cars would just drive onto waiting railcars and move out of the station immediately.

The international public relations benefit would be that, as cars were taken off the highway, they would instantly stop emitting not just carbon dioxide, but all the other pollutants as well. A Ford Model T would be a zero emissions vehicle while it ran on this system. We could, through reductions in the transportation sector alone, far exceed the Kyoto treaty's CO2 reduction by attacking one of the largest contributors to it. The electricity generated to run the system could be generated by a wide variety of non greenhouse gas producing sources - nuclear, wind, solar, geothermal, CO2-sequestering coal-fired plants (250 yr supply of fuel) and eventually orbital solar sources and maybe fusion sources in 50 years or so (I think they will figure out fusion... eventually.)

Other benefits:

Greatly reduced highway rest toll. Computer-controlled railcars should never have an "accident".

Energy independence. As electrically power railcars use electrical power sources generated from sources other than oil, we can quit importing fuels from overseas. Benefits from this would likely be a positive balance of trade and less chance of going to war over scarce oil resources.

Artificially reduce the size of the nation. Coast-to-coast travel times could be reduced to 20 hours, door to door, without flying, and with the ability to carry more that two 50 pound bags of personal effects which are most airline limits, not to mention arriving with your own car so you don't have to rent one. Also, it could be possible to go coast to coast without using any intervening motels, a major expense of current auto travel.

In addition to carrying individual cars, the rail system could also carry large trucks, getting them off the highways. The rail system could be built to handle this weight, while the interstate highway system crumbles under the pounding of these 80,000 lbs vehicles. Delivery times would plummet as well, as trucks would go down dramatically. Highway repair expenses would greatly decrease, as well as disruption to auto traffic that occurs from the many construction zones necessary to keep up with the largely truck-caused highway damage.

The rail system could also carry airliner-style pbuttenger cabins, enabling large numbers of people to travel along the rails in a short amount of time. Figure that, seated 6 across, a 30 foot long cabin containing 8 rows of seats could move 48 people. At 150 mph, or 220 feet per second, throughput of these 30 foot long cabins could be about 7 per second, or 336 people per second, or 1,209,600 people per hour. This is approximately the population of New Orleans, so under ideal conditions, with enough rail terminals to efficiently load such vehicles, the city of New Orleans could be completely evacuated in 1 hour with just one such railroad track. Practically, it would take much longer, but "much longer" would probably still be measured in hours, and definitely less than a day. In about 12 hours, New Orleans evacuess could arrive in whatever part of the country they would like to be to ride out a hurricane such as Katrina. Cleveland, Ohio may have once been known as the "mistake on the lake", but its a great place to be if you don't want to be bothered by a hurricane.

To a large exent, solve the commuting mess. Traveling to work on a railcar that does not stop until it gets to its destination, at 150 mph, the problem of "sprawl" would be eliminated as people could easily live 100 miles from work. We could "sprawl" and the vast countryside would swallow up the mbuttes - without traffic jams - the solution to this kind of "people pollution" is indeed dilution.

Recreational opportunities would increase. A ski resort in Colorado could see weekend tourists coming from Indianapolis, 1000 miles away, as these people consume only about 7 hours after work Friday night to get there, sleep, and hit the slopes early Saturday morning. Returning, the Indy residents could leave at 4 PM Sunday and be home in Indy by 11 PM, and well-rested for work the next day.

Car-train collisions would cease since the whole system would necessarily be separated from roadway grade crossings. No such crossing would be possible since railcar traffic would be so high, and so fast, that likely, no one could cross before the next train came along.

Railway rights of way can be constructed with much less real estate impact than can new highways. Such a rail system could be built with a lot less environmental impact.

Since most traffic, other than the airliner-style pbuttenger cabins, would never "bunch up" so that there would not be large concentrations of people in a rail station, so would be less susceptible to attack from persons plants. Any such plant, blowing up a such a rail station would likely kill less than 20 people. Since most people would be in their cars, which afford some protection themselves, maybe no one would die unless the plant were really huge.

Imagine your own personal use of the system. I can't think of all the benefits, but there are undoubtedly things I haven't thought of.

Dave Head