SnowTime in London

On February 2nd, 2009, Jenny Booth in the Times of London reported "Heaviest snow in 20 years brings large parts of Britain to a halt".

The heaviest snowfall in 20 years has closed thousands of schools and caused transport chaos up the eastern side of Britain, with London and the surrounding areas the hardest hit.

Six million bus passengers were left in the lurch as all London's bus services were halted because of dangerous driving conditions, and every Tube line except the Victoria line was at least partially suspended.

Many mainline commuter rail services were also cancelled or seriously delayed, and flights at London's airports were decimated, with both of Heathrow's runways shut, Luton and London City closed, and Gatwick and Stansted flights subject to delays and short-notice cancellations.

Millions of commuters stayed at home rather than brave the conditions, as an estimated one in five people either worked from home or took the day off, costing industry hundreds of millions of pounds.

One of the world's capitals, the great city of London, was paralyzed by a rare snowstorm, which eventually amounted to about eight inches (20 cm). There was virtually no way to travel in the city, with all bus service suspended, and even the "underground" subway system unreliable. Getting into and out of the city was equally hard, with commuter railroad service canceled and driving quite dangerous due in part to the lack of road clearing equipment. In a different Times of London article, Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, was quoted as saying “This is the kind of snow we haven’t seen in London in decades...We don’t have the snow-ploughs that we would otherwise need to be sure of getting the roads free.”

Because London rarely has snow, it has saved money most years compared to US cities like Chicago or Boston which must purchase and use large quantities of salt and sand each winter and purchase and use large quantities of snowplows and sand/salting trucks. And, less money is spent on the employees needed to make the roads passable. But, when the snowstorm does come, London is much less prepared to deal with it than cities with colder climates. One moderate size storm stops all transportation. Why? Because cars, trucks, buses and trains all have traction problems in snowy and icy conditions. No city should have to endure frozen mobility in the way London recently did. The recent London weather shows that even cities in usually temperate climates have some risk each winter of greatly reduced or even halted transportation.

There is only one way to have weather immune transportation, and that is to base it not on wheels and roads, but on air cushion vehicles (ACVs) in elevated, lightweight guideways. Those who have followed this blog before know that I'm talking about the Aeroduct System. It would not shut down in a snowstorm of any size, let alone one that amounted to less than one foot (30 cm). London and any other city would save money by having no need for salt, sand, trucks and plows, and no citizen would be prevented from travelling intra and inter city. ACVs glide over snow and ice, even pushing excess snow out of the way with the air propulsion. Not only would transporation be available, it would not be dangerous. As the article by Ms. Booth says, the bus service in the city was cancelled due to "dangerous driving conditions". And, Ms. Booth talks elsewhere in her article about the "treacherous conditions" on the roads leading to and from London.

London might not have another major snow event for some time to come. But, its recent plight shows that it doesn't take much for wheel based transportation to cease working well, to become a danger, and to require considerable expense to set right. And, the forced closing of businesses means additional money lost. I invite all those who want to bring safe, economic and always available transporation to their communites to contact us about the Aeroduct System.

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

In my last two blog posts, I've talked about the crippling effect winter can have on auto and truck transportation. As you know from those entries, I propose the Aeroduct System of air cushion vehicles in elevated lightweight guideways as the ideal transportation system, during the winter and the rest of the year.

Now I will address attempts to improve the performance of wheel based vehicles in bad weather. Many intelligent efforts are being made in that direction. Overall, my response is that those efforts will be highly expensive, highly complicated but with low results. Here are some specifics.

Some efforts are being directed at improved sensing devices for the roads. An article in the October/November issue of Traffic Technology International by Melanie Scott talks about the latest devices that can count cars and also detect pavement temperature and moisture. This information is passed on to traffic control officials, and can aid them in determining road conditions. Presumably, this same information could be passed on to drivers, also letting them know road conditions ahead. This is all part of the hoped for intelligent driving of the future.

Bad weather magnifies driver error, and even more informed drivers could still make mistakes, in part due to the tendency to travel as fast as one wants regardless of weather conditions, instead of as fast as is reasonable under those conditions. The recognition of the relationship between driver error and accidents has prompted the many ongoing efforts to design cars and road systems that take the driver out of the picture, by completely automating cars and trucks. These efforts are summarized by Ryan D. Lamm in his article "Driven to It", published in the November/December, 2008 edition of Thinking Highways North America.

I commented on Mr. Lamm's article in an earlier blogpost. I'll reiterate here that no automation of wheel based vehicles and no sensing of road conditions will have as important an impact on creating ideal transportation as will the replacement of wheeled vehicles and roads with the Aeroduct System. Reducing accidents with better knowledge of road conditions and steps towards automating driver functions are steps in the right direction. But, complete automation of automobiles is a very big challenge, and I don't think it will ever happen, even with thousands of dollars of sensing and communication devices added to cars and trucks. A car or truck travels in a flat plane where other vehicles and pedestrians and animals can be in any direction, under many different weather situations. Computer sensing and reaction to all that will be extremely complicated. So, in the future. drivers will still influence the control of cars, and driver error will still be a factor, even if reduced some by technology.

Even more challenging to those who want to continue our current wheel based transportation system is that no amount of sensing and no steps towards automated cars will improve icy and snowy roads. Traffic accidents might decline, which would be a good thing, but road conditions will still be bad, and travel will still slow down greatly. The bane of winter weather for everyone is the inconvenience of increased travel time. And, all that salt and sand will still need to be dumped onto roads to make them passable at all. Only a transportation system immune to bad weather is really ideal. Only a transportation system that can be automated far less expensively than cars/trucks/roads and does not need enormous amounts of salt and sand each winter is ideal. That is why I say the Aeroduct System is the transportation modality of the future.

To those parts of the country where snowstorms and ice storms cause no end of problems each winter, I invite you to contact Aeromobile Inc. to talk to us. The population shift away from colder areas to warmer has many causes, but one of them has to be the desire to get away from the dangerous and slow travel conditions faced for three or four months each year.

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.

Automation Yes, Automobiles No

Ryan D. Lamm writes about the latest developments for automating automobiles in his article "Driven to It", published in the November/December, 2008 edition of Thinking Highways North America. He summarizes his perspective with the sentences "A self-chauffeured vehicle is crossing over from the sphere of science fiction into the realm of reality in the foreseeable future.", and "Removing the driver from control of the vehicle has the potential to revolutionize what surface transportation might look like".

I completely agree with Mr. Lamm that self-chauffeured vehicles are exactly what ground transportation needs. But, in spite of the interesting and innovative technologies that are being developed to allow automobiles to be more and more guided automatically, I feel that relying on wheeled vehicles will greatly limit the possibility and the benefits of complete automation. In earlier posts on this blog, I've pointed out the disadvantages of the basic premise of wheeled vehicles:

1. their susceptibility to weather (no matter how completely automated),
2. their need for miles of paved over green space in the form of roadways and parking lots
3. the great expense of their required infrastructure of roads and bridges,
4. the impossibility of accommodating peak demand with just the ground level surface, and the impossibly high costs of elevating roads
5. the dangerous interaction of automobiles, even automated, with pedestrians, bicyclists, and animals, who also must use the ground level
6. the cost of the vehicles themselves, which will become more expensive with the additional automation accessories.
   

Mr. Lamm's goals of "rush hour, without traffic jams", "trauma centers without motor vehicle accidents", "reducing, or even eliminating, motor vehicle fatalities altogether" are laudable indeed. But, only a new type of vehicle and a new type of infrastructure can ever yield truly ideal automated transportation. That is why I've worked on a technology that uses lightweight, inexpensive air cushion vehicles of any size in lightweight, inexpensive, elevated guideways. I call this the Aeroduct System, and I've talked about it in previous blog entries and on the Aeromobile website. The automation of such a system will be considerably easier than implementing all the technologies - described quite well in Mr. Lamm's article - that will be necessary to automate cars and trucks. And, for each of the disadvantages of wheeled vehicles on paved roads that I enumerated above, I now list the corresponding advantages of the Aeroduct System:

1. The Aeroduct System is not influenced by snow, ice, rain or fog.
2. No paving is required for the guideways or for temporarily "parked" vehicles.
3. The lightweight guideways of the Aeroduct System will cost far less to build and maintain than the many miles of asphalt and concrete needed for automobiles.
4. The capacity of the Aeroduct System can be easily increased, with guideways stacked horizontally and vertically.
5. Pedestrians, bicyclists and animals will rule the ground surface, with the transparent/translucent Aeroduct guideways a safe distance overhead.
6. The air cushion vehicles in the guideways are mechanically far simpler than cars or trucks, more efficient in their use of fuel, and more easily automated.
   

We will all benefit from the research that is developing the new sensing, communication and control technologies Mr. Lamm discusses quite well. But if we really want to have transportation system that achieves the goals he sets forth in his article, we have to travel away from the age of automobiles towards the age of air cushion vehicles in guideways.

We can't get there from here

In an earlier post, I talked about the proposed new replacement for the Tappan Zee Bridge in New York, and the high costs of just that one bridge.

In an article from eight years ago in the NY Times, author David W. Chen talked about the plans back then for replacing the bridge. He also made these general points about trying to increase capacity for highways or bridges:

Not so many years ago, it was common wisdom that the only way to relieve highway congestion was to add new lanes. Now the common wisdom, supported by several recent studies, is that expanding a road usually leads to substantial increases in the number of vehicles on it. ''Adding highway capacity to solve traffic congestion is like buying larger pants to deal with your weight problem,'' said Michael Replogle, transportation director of the advocacy group Environmental Defense, in Washington.

So in New Jersey, the state transportation commissioner, James Weinstein, could go before a business group last week and utter words that would have been heresy in that car-besotted state just a few years ago: ''We're past the period where adding lanes is the solution to traffic congestion, make no mistake about that.''

And, that of course, is why the current wheel based ground transportation system is at maximum capacity, a capacity that cannot be increased, and a capacity that will require enormous expenditures just to stay at the same level. In other words, cars and trucks on roads will overall become bottlenecks as the USA (and world) population continue to increase, slowing down the economic and social progress of society, and yet still requiring huge sums of money to keep infrastructures usable.

For this reason alone - and there are numerous others - we can't seriously consider today's transportation system as belonging to the future. Unless it is replaced by something much more flexible and far less expensive, our future will be all the less desirable. Those who have been reading these blog entries know that my company, Aeromobile Inc., has developed a ground transportation system consisting of air cushion vehicles in elevated guideways. We call it the Aeroduct System, and its many advantages are given on our website and in earlier blog posts. For the purpose of today's blog, the advantage I want to promote is how it will allow capacity for travel along the surface or across rivers to greatly increase. There will be no bottlenecks, and congestion will become something of the past.

The Aeroduct guideways will be much lighter than paved roads and much cheaper to build. And they will be orders of magnitude lighter and cheaper than elevated pavement, including bridges. The guideways can be stacked vertically or horizontally, allow infinite expansion of capcacity as needed. Automation of the air cushion vehicles in the guideways will allow faster speeds than cars and more consistency in vehicle movement. Even one aeroduct guideway will allow more throughput than a road of today, and it will be much simpler and cheaper to add guideways when the demand is there. And, aeroducts will carry vehicles of any size, so air cushion trucks as well as air cushion cars will be used.

If we stick with cars, trucks, paved roads, expensive and woefully overloaded bridges, we won't get to any sort of promising future. We'll be stuck in the traffic of a now obsolete technology, and spending all our money for that dubious privilege. With the Aeroduct System, we have the technology enjoy a liberating means of travel instead of a continuing to suffer from an increasingly constrictive one. I invite anyone with any interest in a better future to let me know what he or she thinks.

Crowded Streets

On September 19th, as reported by station CBS 2 in Los Angeles, one of the light rail lines in that city, the Blue Line, collided with a out of service bus. Fortunately, injuries to the 15 passengers of the light rail train were not major. But, if the bus had been in service, there could have been many more injuries.

Light rail is used in numerous cities to transport people relatively quickly along fixed corridors. Like the streetcars of the old days, these light rail trains operate on the same street level as cars, trucks, buses, and pedestrians (In the old days, there were horses, too). This makes for a crowded transportation environment, and crashes involving light rail trains on the one hand and cars and buses on the other hand have occurred with some frequency. This is what one would expect when all transportation occurs on the same level. Certainly, there are safety measures to limit the number of these kinds of light rail accidents, but coordinating the activities of trains, buses, trucks, cars, bicycles and people walking all on the same streets and sidewalks is quite a challenge.

And, confining transportation to one level inherently limits the number of people who can travel. Congestion is the norm on many streets. At Aeromobile Inc., we think it is far better to elevate vehicle transportation, leaving the ground level for pedestrians and bicycles. This would not only make travel far safer for all involved, but much more efficient. Our Aeroduct System can be elevated with lightweight, transparent or translucent guideways, operating over the heads of those walking, and causing far less shadowing than any other form of raised level transportation.

Putting trains or cars or buses overhead is very expensive, since those elevated structures must be made very strong to sustain constant weight and pounding. In addition, they create quite a shadow on the ground below. New York City had for many years its "El" trains running on most of the north south avenues in Manhattan. Increased subway coverage rendered these Els obsolete and they were removed by the 1950s. The shadowing caused by the structures necessary to support those overhead trains was considerable, and most considered that undesirable. In our times, in the "Loop" area of Chicago, its elevated trains converge and there is pronounced shadowing on a number of streets.

Since the Aeroduct System uses air cushion vehicles in its guideways, those guideways do not have to carry the enormous weight and endure the tremendous pounding generated by automobiles, trucks, buses and trains. They can be made out of lightweight materials, of any degree of transparency or of any color. Not only could the guideways look attractive, their shadowing effect could be very minimal. And, the Aeroduct System is a very efficient in the way it transports vehicles, so more travelling and yet fewer traffic slowdowns will be the norm. All of this will require less cost, both for the guideways and the efficient air cushion vehicles in the guideways.

You can read about the many advantages of the Aeroduct System at the Aeromobile Inc. website and other blog entries.

Building Better Bridges

Roads and Bridges magazine devotes itself to issues related to today's wheel based transportation infrastructure consisting, as the journal's name suggests, primarily of roads and bridges. In the August 2008 edition, editor Bill Wilson in his article "Ahead of Its Time" summarizes the successes in building the I-35W St. Anthony Falls Bridge in Minneapolis. This new bridge replaces the prior one that collapsed without warning in August of 2007. The article points out the faster than expected progress that was made, and the challenges faced in trying to quickly replace the faulty structure that had fallen last August.

From his article, it is clear that much intelligence and planning were involved in building the new bridge. This accomplishment reflects the many years of experience by those who designed and built the new structure. In the same publication, authors John Chiglo and Alan Phipps in their article "Brain waves over water waves" talk about the advanced technologies employed in the bridge that would help alert authorities to any potential problems before any serious failure.

In many ways, the new Minneapolis I-35W St. Anthony Falls Bridge represents the state of the art in infrastructure design and construction. Of course, all of this costs a great deal of money: $234,000,000 was the bid made by the primary contractor and the design team. Given the large number of bridges in the USA, some far longer that the one in Minneapolis, replacing all bridges with this kind of new construction will cost a very large amount of money. When the original Minneapolis bridge collapsed, many were worried that other bridges could suffer a similar fate, since many were reaching the end of their original projected lifespan, and just about all bridges, new or old, support more traffic than they were originally designed to hold.

Cars and trucks give bridges a tremendous pounding, which is why they must be built strong in the first place, and why they wear out over time. Their cement and steel components must be strong because the bridge is doing a yeoman's job in allowing thousands and thousands of heavy vehicles to cross over water. So, these bridges must be costly to build and costly to maintain, and of finite lifespan.

There is way to better use all that money needed to build bridges (and roads and elevated roads, too). A transportation system that does not require massive bridges would be much more efficient and economical. Our Aeroduct System, discussed in these blog entries, and on our website, will require passage over water in guideways that are far lighter, cheaper and longer lasting than any automobile/truck bridge could be. Bridges today are basically beat with a hammer every second of every day as heavy cars and even heavier trucks cross them. In contrast, the vehicles in our Aeroduct System glide through their guideways on a cushion of air, having a very light touch on the guideway surface. Aeroduct bridges can still be built using the intelligence and advanced sensing technologies available for cement and steel bridges, but with lighter and more flexible materials and much longer lifespans.

The color sketch below shows the simplicity of an Aeroduct bridge crossing a river. For wider rivers or other bodies of water, supports would be needed for the guideway, but those supports will have much less work to do than the supports for the bridges of today. The replacement of the much of our aging bridge infrastructure with the Aeroduct infrastructure would save a great amount of money in the building and maintenance of the structures, and the safety of using them. This is just one way of many Aeroduct System installations can make transportation far better than it is today.

Ideal Fuel for Ideal Transportation

I've discoursed quite a bit about the Aeroduct System, which consists of air cushion vehicles in elevated guideways. You can learn the many advantages of this ground transportation system from earlier blogposts, or from the Aeromobile website.

Today, my focus in on the important advantages of the Aeroduct System with regard to fuels and the fueling process. Our vehicles can use any fuel, petroleum or otherwise. However, I think the future of energy belongs to hydrogen. There are many technological considerations concerning the production and distribution of hydrogen, but in the long run, I feel it is the most environmentally advantageous way to power vehicles.

One of the big expenses in moving towards a "hydrogen economy" is the need for a new infrastructure that distributes this fuel. As John Dodge, Editor-in-Chief of Design News says in his July 15th article, "Despite the extensive progress auto makers have made in developing hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (FCV), energy companies have largely sat on the sidelines with only a couple of exceptions in building out a refueling infrastructure." For automobiles to make use of hydrogen, the refueling stations will have to be as plentiful as gasoline stations are now for drivers to not feel inconvenienced. This component alone of the hydrogen economy will be a big expense to construct.

With the Aeroduct System, we have the significant advantage of building the refueling locations as part of the Aeroduct infrastructure. As the Aeroduct transportation system is implemented, hydrogen refueling stations can be conveniently located within the system. And, just as travel in the Aeroduct System is completely automated, so will be the fueling process. It can be done with or without passengers in the vehicle, at any time of day or night. The Aeroduct System is intended to replace automobiles and trucks as the chief form of ground transportation. Concomitant with that will be replacement of petroleum based fuels with hydrogen. So, we will have ideal fuel for the ideal transportation system.

We certainly welcome a dialog with those interested in the future of transportation and the future of energy.

Curing Congestion

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has an program called Focus on Congestion Relief. It certainly seems appropriate the FHWA would address the problem of increasing traffic congestion. They define the sources of congestion as:

Bottlenecks—points where the roadway narrows or regular traffic demands cause traffic to backup–are the largest source of congestion.
Traffic incidents—crashes, stalled vehicles, debris on the road–cause about 1/4 of congestion problems.
Work zones—for new road building and maintenance activities like filling potholes–are caused by necessary activities, but the amount of congestion caused by these actions can be reduced by a variety of strategies.
Bad weather cannot be controlled, but travelers can be notified of the potential for increased congestion.
Poor traffic signal timing—the faulty operation of traffic signals or green/red lights where the time allocation for a road does not match the volume on that road–are a source of congestion on major and minor streets.
Special events cause "spikes" in traffic volumes and changes in traffic patterns. These irregularities either cause delay on days, times or locations where there usually is none, or add to regular congestion problems.

As the FHWA suggests, each of these congestion contributors can be mitigated. But, some can be influenced more than others, only at much expense, and in the case of weather, not much at all. And, the main source of congestion - more transportation demand than can be supplied - can never be solved with roads, unless we pave over vastly more green space.

What the FHWA says about combatting congestion is all the more evidence that something completely different is needed for ground transportation. As the population of the USA grows, particularly in parts of the country already experiencing traffic problems, only a ground transportation system that is expandable, weather immune, with few accidents, free of the need for extensive maintenance (i.e. road work) and automated so that no traffic signals or signs are needed will be suitable. Otherwise, time spent in traffic can only increase.

Our Aeromobile-Aeroduct System is exactly what is needed to cure congestion. Its rights of way (ROW) are lightweight and stackable for easy expansion of capacity. It is weather immune, and as an automated system will be without the accidents caused by bad weather and bad driving. Traffic control is automatically built into the system, so poorly coordinated traffic signals won't even exist. Transportation will not longer be a hindrance; instead it will be an enabler. We invite contact from all those who really want travel in the future to be ideal.

You can see more of our blog posts on this subject at: http://drbertelsen.blogspot.com/search/label/Aeroduct

and far more information about the Aeroduct System and all its advantages at: http://www.aeromobile.com/aeromobile_vers2/aeroduct1/aeroduct1.htm

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.

Traffic Trauma

For almost all people living in urban and suburban areas, traffic congestion is always with us. The blog of the LA Times dealing with traffic in the LA area is appropriately called the "Bottleneck Blog". It is almost unnecessary to cite statistics about snarled traffic, big delays, and the consequent frustration of driving in most metropolitan USA areas, and in every other country of the world. Just about everyone experiences this reality firsthand, and knows that they themselves are part of the statistics.

Does it have to be this way? No. The wheel based transportation system of cars and trucks is not the only way for people to get around. My years of work on air cushion technology led me to devise a ground transportation system that will work without congestion. I call it the Aeroduct System. Briefly, it consists of air cushion vehicles traveling at high speed in tubes (aeroducts) in a completely automated fashion. These tubes can be elevated to eliminate the congestion - and danger - of travel on ground level. There are numerous other benefits to this technology which I will discuss from time to time.

Most people are resigned to long traffic delays because the current car/truck/paved road method of travel cannot possibly handle the traffic we have now, let alone that which will be coming in the future. We must look at an alternative if we really want to surmount this big drag of modern life. I refer you here to the relevant part of the Aeromobile website for more information on this essential technology.