Winter is here, and for cars and trucks it is no "Wonderland" - Part II

In my most recent blog entry, I made the point that the onset of winter in many parts of North America is a real bane to the drivers of automobiles and trucks. I don't think anyone would argue with that. Now I want to discuss a very viable solution to this problem.

Those of you who have read my blog for a while will be aware of the Aeroduct System that I have developed. This transportation system consists of air cushion vehicles gliding in lightweight guideways. It would be a far better way to travel than wheeled vehicles in the winter. Among the reasons are:

1. Air cushion vehicles do not require friction to hold their place in the guideway, nor to stop. Ice and snow greatly reduce friction, and the only way a tire can hold its place or be stopped is with friction. The vehicles in the Aeroduct System will glide right over the surface of the guideway, even if that surface is covered with snow or ice. To stop, the vehicles just reverse their thrust, and the slipperiness of the surface does not impede the halting of the vehicles motion, nor any reduction in speed. And, the guideways hold the vehicles in place laterally.

Automobile and truck accidents are far more frequent in bad weather than in more moderate conditions. One example is this one from Kansas:

Sedgwick County officials recorded 359 traffic accident calls to 911 between midnight and 4 p.m. today. That compares to 41 calls the day before during the same period of time.

1 of those involved a multi-car pileup involving five or six cars on Interstate 135 just north of the Kansas Coliseum.

Of course, these numerous winter accidents require police, emergency personnel, ambulances and tow trucks to work overtime.

2. But, accidents in themselves are not the most widespread issue. The great decrease in speed necessary in bad conditions to avoid accidents and the slowdown caused by accidents blocking lanes of traffic affect everyone travelling. Not only is winter driving more dangerous to drivers, it is often much slower, too. With the Aeroduct System, these bad conditions will not require slower movement of the air cushion vehicles, and there won't be a spike in accidents. Craft in the Aeroduct will move along just fine in spite of the slick surfaces, allowing everyone to travel as fast as any other time of the year.

3. Not only are people in cars and trucks at much more risk in slippery conditions, pedestrians, bicyclists and animals are as well. Since autos and trucks are on the same surface as other travellers on foot or bike, their inability to stop or to stay on course can be injurious or fatal to those other travellers. The guideways in the Aeroduct System will be raised above pedestrians and animals. Those travelling on foot or two wheels will have the ground surface to themselves, and will never be at risk from the air cushion vehicles above taking passengers to their destinations.

4. All the salt and sand that must be spread in order to enhance traction in the winter has a environmental impact. The benefit of reducing accidents outweighs the cost to the environment, but with the Aeroduct System, there will be no need for salting and sanding. Municipalities will save all that money they spend now, and the plants, animals and drinking water will benefit as well.

There is no reason that winter travel has to be a burden in most of North America - and of course, in other parts of the globe where winter means inclement weather. But, until we decide to replace automobiles and trucks on roads with air cushion vehicles in guideways, we will continue to experience winter as a season to dread. I invite all those who want to put an end to winter's menace for travellers to contact me and find out how the Aeroduct System can be implemented for the benefit of all.

In the next installment on this topic, I'll discuss efforts to improve wheeled transport in bad weather and why I think those efforts, well meaning as they are, cannot have the same success as the Aeroduct System.

Winter is here, and for cars and trucks it is no "Wonderland" - Part I

It's the time of the year in much of the USA and almost all of Canada where cold, snow and ice begin to dominate the weather and create driving conditions that are often slow and difficult and sometimes very treacherous. A few recent examples from different places will suffice to illustrate this reality:

From The Grand Rapids Press on Monday December 15, 2008, 6:12 AM

After a night of rains and warm temperatures, a cold snap is turning road conditions icy.

One vehicle ended up in the median on Int. 196 in Ottawa County, reducing eastbound traffic to one lane east of Zeeland around 6 a.m. Road crews were spreading sand on the highway. Traffic also was reduced to one lane near Hudsonville, where three cars were in the median.

From Nebraska.tv on December 9, 2008 6:04 PM ET

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) - The season's first winter blast spawned hundreds of traffic accidents Tuesday across central Kansas as slick roads made travel hazardous for much of the day.

South central and parts of central Kansas generally had accumulations upward of 2 inches.

From the Tacoma (WA) News Tribune on as posted by Stacey Mulick on December 15th, 2008 at 06:56:54 AM

State transportation crews planned to be out overnight and this morning, treating and clearing the highways of ice.

Drivers should be prepared for slick conditions and take some precautions.

"One spin-out can block traffic for hours and cause additional incidents," transportation officials said in a press release. "And, clearing incidents can also take our crews away from road-clearing activities."

These three examples are just a tiny sample of the hundreds of news reports all across the USA and Canada of traffic slowdowns, accidents, extensive salting and sanding, and stressful driving conditions that winter brings to our roadways. Bridges are even more at risk, since they freeze first, and there is generally nowhere to slide except into other cards or in the worst of cases, off the bridge into the water below.

This rite of winter is the direct consequence of wheel based cars and trucks losing both traction and visibility in snowy and or icy conditions. Despite the best efforts of weather forecasters to predict bad weather so drivers are forewarned, and despite the efforts of road crews to plow, salt and sand roads before and during storms, each winter thousands of motorists will be involved in weather related accidents, and millions will be inconvenienced by the poor conditions. Add to that the environmental impact of distributing salt and sand in large quantities, and the expense of keeping road crews busy along with the police, ambulances, and tow trucks, and winter is not now and won't ever be a wonderland for those who travel on wheels.

This is part I of my blog entry on winter and transportation, and sets the stage for my offering the best solution to this inevitable and uneviable situation, which I will do in Part II and subsequent entries.

Traffic Simulation as an Enabler

On an IBM website, there is a June, 2008 announcement about a software simulation program for traffic congestion:

Kyoto University and IBM's Tokyo Research Laboratory have developed a system that can simulate urban transport situations encompassing millions of individual vehicles in complex traffic interactions. A simulation can predict, for example, what will happen if a new office building, sports arena or other major facility is built and lead to improved planning of roads and public transportation.

"Imagine having the ability to ease congestion while curtailing pollution and accidents," said Prof. Toru Ishida, Department of Social Informatics, Kyoto University. "IBM and Kyoto University have found a way to do this before expensive and disruptive construction and other changes impact Kyoto's economy and its citizens. This is an example of how technology can aid smarter decision-making."

One such use for this predictive software is to help cities design congestive pricing schemes, as reported in the NY Times in an article by Ken Belson called "Importing a Decongestant for Midtown Streets"

In a taste of the future, Singapore, which has dabbled in congestion pricing perhaps longer than any city, is working with I.B.M. and others to develop technology that will predict traffic up to an hour in advance. The system fuses congestion fee data with information from video cameras, G.P.S. devices in taxis and sensors embedded in streets.

I laud the achievements of all involved in developing this very sophisticated software. I don't feel, however, that it will ever allow transportation based on wheeled vehicles to be much better than it is now. Better predictions of traffic flow will help traffic management specialists, for sure, and will let them make wiser choices about adding capacity, or restricting traffic with congestion pricing. But, no amount of predicting will ever allow automobiles and trucks to function smoothly in ice, snow, driving rain or fog. And no simulation will truly expand capacity as required to handle the extensive slowdowns that all metropolitan areas - suburbs as well as inner cities - experience. These periods of peak congestion often called "rush hour", but more appropriately "rush hours", having stretched out in many cases to three or four hour periods twice each work day.

As for congestion pricing, it can work in some ways where there is an alternative to driving a car in the restricted zone. Inner cities with mass transit, like London, have reduced car usage to somewhat because the mass transit of subways and buses does allow an alternative for those who don't want to pay the congestion surcharge. But, this will not work where the automobile is the only means to commute, and for the USA, at least, that is the case for the majority of people needing to travel. And even inner cities, by increasing demand on the mass transit, are still relying on either exceptionally costly to expand subway systems, or buses and perhaps light rail, which are at the mercy of the weather, just like all wheel based vehicles.

The only real answer to congestion is a transportation system where capacity is easily expanded, and works in all communities. The Aeroduct System that I have developed, and which I have discussed in numerous other blog posts, is transportation as it should be. Of course, it will still be important to predict in advance peak transportation periods, but in conjunction with the Aeroduct System, such simulation software can truly be of use. With its lightweight, easily elevated and stackable guideways, lower cost vehicles, inherent automation, weather immunity and numerous other advantages over wheel based systems, no community will ever experience long, frustrating periods of congestion. No community's transportation will be completely shut down due to the vagaries of weather. Traffic management will become an enabler on a scale magnitudes better than would ever be possible with cars and trucks.

I invite all those who are trying to make today's transportation better to investigate the Aeroduct System. They will find that their goals can finally be achieved.

Safe Flying, Part I

The USA Today of August 18th has an article by Chris Woodyard and Sharon Silke Carty titled "Inventors are sure cars can fly". This story reviews current attempts to create automobiles that can also fly, which I would call "roadable aircraft", and personal vehicles that take off and land anywhere, which I would call "flying cars".

Regarding the "roadable" aircraft designs that add wings or some other lift mechanism to a wheeled vehicle, the problems of safety, good performance as a car and as an aircraft, and the price are obvious hindrances. On top of that, these designs require taking off and landing at an airport, which precludes true point to point transportation. But, my biggest concern is safety. Piloting airplanes is not something to be taken casually. To be fair, according to the USA Today article, most of the inventors of the diverse group of roadable aircraft are targeting people who are already small plane pilots. The substantial difference between obtaining and keeping a pilots license and an automobile license, the rigorous testing of a new airplane design that the FAA requires, and the increased maintenance needed by aircraft all point to safety concerns unique to a craft that travels through the sky.

I believe roadable planes are not for the average citizen. The best airplane is a safe airplane, and that requires not only a aerodynamically proper design, it also requires a pilot who can handle the craft properly, in many different kinds of weather. Also, I feel a roadable airplane is not a really big advantage. Having a airplane that can also travel on roads seems better because conventional takeoff and landing (CTOL) airplanes need an airport for departure and takeoff, and also require an automobile for getting to and from the airports. But, what if the airplane could take off and land vertically? There would be no need for the automobile part of the journey. A traveler could go from his real departure point to his real destination.

Of course, I am not the only person who promulgates the advantages of vertical flight craft. In the USA Today article, some of the inventors cited want to offer vehicles that can take off and land virtually anywhere, in other words, flying cars. My main concern with their approach is again, safety. I don't think the technologies employed by these inventors are safe enough. As I said in my blog entry about the Osprey V-22 tilt rotor aircraft, "In total power failure or 'running out of gas', the V-22 is a free falling body below 1600 feet altitude. It cannot use its wing for gliding flight to non disastrous landing,". I also criticized that aircraft as being overly complex. I would say the same about the technologies that are currently proposed to create truly flying cars. They require redundancies and complexities that decrease safety, and they do not have wings that can be used for gliding to safety in the event of a major mechanical failure. They have no air worthiness on their own. And, it is completely unknown what level of skill will be required to pilot these kind of craft safely. Again even if these vehicles can be made to work effectively, which is yet to be seen, could they ever be piloted by most people?

Those of you who have read my blog entries before know that I propose a VTOL airplane, which has the built in safety characteristics of winged craft, and yet can take off and land vertically. I call it the Arc Wing VTOL airplane. A sketch of it is below. You can read more about this unique airplane at previous blog entries, or at the website of my company.


I think this is the best way to eliminate the need for a vehicle to have both wheels and wings. But this craft is for those who are airplane pilots or have a pilot at their disposal. I don't advocate it as a replacement for all transportation. I have another way that "flight" of a certain kind can be used for more general transport. In part II of my response to the USA Today article, I will elaborate on that.

A Really Safe Design

The June, 2008 edition of Design News Magazine has as its cover story an article called "The Biggest Thing in Safety." In this interesting article, the author Charles J. Murray, senior technical electronics editor of the magazine, discusses the development of dedicated short range communication (DSRC) devices that allow vehicles to communicate with each other. Mr. Murray feels these devices when implemented on a broad scale "..will save more lives than seat belts, more than air bags and more than electronic stability control". They will create truly intelligent vehicles that can tell each other when road conditions are bad, when there are accidents, when there are unexpected obstacles, and based on this feedback, cars themselves will react, thereby reducing accidents. The proponents of this technology say that between 60 and 90 percent of road fatalities can be prevented.

We at Aeromobile Inc. are all for reducing accidents and fatalities, and agree that more intelligent automobiles can make the roads safer. There are a number of approaches to intelligent highways and intelligent cars that no doubt will improve safety and even help congestion in certain ways. But, we don't think that the many disadvantages of cars are mitigated enough by making them more intelligent. There is still the issue of bad weather, with ice, snow and heavy rain that will constrain how much safety can be improved. Cars have poor traction under a number of weather conditions. And, even cars driven more efficiently with the help of intelligent devices will still have to travel on the ground level, which is also where pedestrians and animals travel as well, and that "conflict of interest" will still continue.

And, even intelligent cars will need expensive paved roads, and acres of parking lots, and congestion will still be a big issue, since only so much throughput can occur on one planar surface. Even with more built in smarts, cars, trucks and roads are not the ideal transportation system. We still maintain that our Aeroduct System of ground transportation incorporates the intelligence that designers hope to incorporate in cars, and by not needing paved roads and parking lots, is a lot more environmentally appropriate. It's also much less expensive to build and operate, and it can be expanded considerably more easily. We invite anyone interested in making ground transportation truly safe and truly better in all respects to talk to us about our Aeroduct System.

Parting with Parking

Recently, I've been referring to a Russell Baker column from 1996 when I talk about the inherent deficiencies with a car based culture. Today, I'll focus again on the issue of parking and parking lots, and how the Aeroduct System that we've developed at Aeromobile Inc. handles those two issues.

In that article Mr. Baker says "I'm mad about the grocery having relocated from just around the corner to three miles away in what used to be a cornfield out in the country. And why? Because the grocer needs 15 acres of parking lot to accommodate cars that have to be driven three miles every time you want a bag of grapefruit and a gallon of milk." He says later on in his column "I'm mad about spending my life looking for a parking space in the city, mad about paying breathtaking sums of money to parking garages..."

Cars require parking spaces, and the more cars there are, the more parking spaces are needed. In some cases, where land is more available, enormous parking lots are built, consuming perhaps acres of land. In many instances, as with a church or shopping mall, the parking lot's full capacity is utilized only some of the time. The rest of the time, no use is being made of a large paved surface that now covers the former green space where trees or other plants once flourished. This flora is essential in keeping atmospheric carbon dioxide levels from reaching undesirable levels .

Of course, there are places, like Manhattan Island in New York City, where there are not nearly enough parking for the cars that need a place to stop. Then finding parking becomes a vexing and time consuming task, and often a very expensive one as well. The mobility of the automobile matters little if the driver cannot park near his destination, and the expense of using the automobile increases as he drives around to find a spot, and perhaps pays a lot of money when he finally finds one.

So, parking must go, and that's what the Aeroduct System allows. With our system, you debark at the station nearest to your destination, and each possible destination will have a station, unlike mass transit, and your vehicle can return automatically to your house or to a nearby holding area until it is needed again. No verdant land is covered by asphalt, either for the guideways or parking lots. If you don't need your vehicle for a while, it can return home and wait for you to summon it again, or to be used by another family member. Or, if you will need it soon, vertical storage places that can store many Aeroduct craft will allow for the vehicle to remain close by.

The Aeroduct System saves enormous amounts of land that otherwise is being destroyed with pavement, and it saves all sorts of time that drivers now spend looking for the limited parking spots in town and city centers.

A (Better) Streetcar Named the Aeroduct System

In my blog post of May 4^th, 2008, I commented on remarks made by Russell Baker in a 1996 column he titled “Here is what mad is”. That column was a complaint against the automobile dominated transportation of the modern USA. In this and in future blog entries, I'll comment at length on specific points he made, and how the Aeroduct System of ground transportation deals with his complaints.

For today, I'll discuss his statement “I'm mad about not having a bus or streetcar system left like the one that once enabled people to travel those six miles for a little pocket change.”

Rail transportation of all kinds, including streetcars, dominated the movement of people and freight for the last part of the 1800s and the first 50 years of the 1900s. People did not have to own their own vehicles; they could make use of mass transit for their travels. The advent of the automobile and accompanying roads changed all that. Streetcars and other means of mass transit dwindled in popularity as people used their cars to travel to all sorts of places not accessible by rail transportation. Suburbs grew up around major cities, became completely car based, and the remains of mass transit serviced only the densely populated cities.

This all happened because that's what people wanted. They wanted the freedom to live somewhere instead of a crowded city, and they wanted the freedom to go exactly where they wanted when they wanted. This type of freedom allowed by cars is its major attraction and few people would want to give it up.

Of course, this comes at a price, and Mr. Baker and numerous others have pointed out the many undesirable “side effects” of an automobile culture. But, returning to streetcars and other mass transit transportation is not going to appeal to most people, not matter how bad the future reality of traveling by cars on roads becomes. Mass transit can only work at all (and not always well) where there is sufficient population density, and people who live in suburbs or exurbs are there because they don't want to be part of high density population.

Cars can only be replaced by a ground transportation system that gives people the freedom to have their own vehicle and go where they want when they want. At Aeromobile Inc. our Aeroduct System does just that. It carries vehicles of any size, privately owned for the most part, on a cushion of air and service all the places where cars are currently the only possibility. Our system allows entry and destination points anywhere along the guideway, and these points of accessibility can be at each home, store, church, hospital, business, etc. as close together or as far apart as these locations are in the cities, towns, and suburbs we have today.

So, we can give Mr. Baker and anyone else a direct ride (no stops at other stations along the way) from their home to the store or anywhere else without requiring driving on busy roads in bad weather while consuming lots of high priced fuel and creating lots of carbon emissions. Our system is far more efficient and people and environmentally friendly than that.

I hear you, Mr. Baker

On May 4, 2008, the NY Times reprinted a column by Pulitzer Prize winner Russell Baker, well known for his often humorous “Observer” column. The Times picked a column that Mr. Baker had written twelve years ago (1996) to the day, prefacing it with the statement “Twelve years ago, the columnist Russell Baker, facing higher gasoline prices, complained about being forced to take his car everywhere.”.

For the vast majority of people in the USA, Mr. Baker's litany of complaints about automobile transportation and the impossibility of living with it, and the impossibility of living without it ring quite true. The automobile gives us the freedom to have extensive mobility, yet it extracts quite a price, and by doing away with any other systems of alternative transportation, has become obligatory. As Mr. Baker notes: “I'm mad about not having a bus or streetcar system left like the one that once enabled people to travel those six miles for a little pocket change.”

Now that in the year 2008 the price of gasoline is higher than ever before, the economic costs of automobile – and by extension anything wheel based – are enormous. And, what will change this? Electric and hybrid cars are offered as options, as are alternative fuels. However, these are just possible solutions for the fuel costs. What about the costs of maintaining roads, bridges, tunnels and other components of the infrastructure? What about the costs of traffic accidents, fatalities, and the policing of roads?

Mr. Baker also says “I'm mad, too, about people who can't drive being rendered immobile by the national drive-or-else policy.”. Automobile transportation is limited to those in a certain age range, a certain economic status and possessing certain physical and mental capabilities.

And, there are the environmental costs of automobiles and their need for level, hard surfaces, to which Mr. Baker alludes when he says “I'm mad about the grocery having relocated from just around the corner to three miles away in what used to be a cornfield out in the country. And why? Because the grocer needs 15 acres of parking lot to accommodate cars that have to be driven three miles every time you want a bag of grapefruit and a gallon of milk.” All those thousands of acres of parking lots in every town in this country (and just about every country), and thousands of miles of paved roads take away not only green space for enjoyment and recreation, but for the trees and other plants to counteract global warming.

So, what do we do about this? I think the answer is the Aeroduct System of ground transportation which we at Aeromobile Inc. have developed. It consists of mechanically simple air cushion vehicles in elevated guideways, completely automated and weather immune. All the problems Mr. Baker found with an automobile based society, and problems that he did not mention at length – like monumental traffic jams - will be fixed by this system. I hope people take it seriously and soon. I'll have a lot more to say about this in future blog entries.