Evolution of Surface Transportation

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Evolution of Surface Transportation

Technologies have life cycles, and trains took over the traffic formerly carried across the northeastern US on a network of water canals in the mid 19th century. During the 20th century, station train technology lost almost all of its market share, primarily to automobiles because they offer service on-demand, door-to-door . However, the road systems now suffer from serious and rising congestion. The world needs a blueprint for phasing in a new surface transport infrastructure.

Multiples of current capacity will be required to keep traffic flowing smoothly, and not just on highways but on city thoroughfares as well. The Transportation Research Board produced a report in 1974 that gave substantial coverage to congestion alleviating “dual-mode” vehicles able to platoon on guideways, but also drive like normal cars. Developments during the 1990's suggest the outlines of a progressive evolution towards multi-mode vehicles with:

1. Ordinary car mode

2. Platoon mode

3. Driverless mode

4. Guideway mode

Let’s look briefly at each of these stages in turn:

2. Platoon

Microelectronics can be used to create articulating platoons of cars. The drivers would need a special certification on account of the vehicle’s length and the added responsibility when driving in the lead. Most following vehicles could be unattended while in this mode, which would be a major benefit for longer trips. But the most significant gain will come in metro areas where they could increase lane throughput up to 3-5X. To get the larger improvement, most of the fleet would have to be converted, and there would be priority lanes and signaling. But gridlock will start to improve noticeably even if only 10-20% of vehicles have this capability.

3. Driverless

Once platooning becomes commonplace, carmakers can offer progressively more autonomous capability. The next level would allow limited driverless taxi service, with vehicles that can autonomously join/leave the vehicle platoons, avoid moving obstacles and park in “taxi-stands”. Together with short-term “Zipcar” rentals, and much denser packing of parked vehicles, the driverless capability would decrease the demand for downtown parking space.

Even taxi-stand to taxi-stand service would be very useful, but the capability will inevitably progress to door-to-door service, providing convenient service for the elderly and children, even if travel on side streets is at relatively low speeds. Fully autonomous vehicles would obviously lower the cost of delivery services.

Guideways may become common before fully driverless vehicles, but will not replace the need for driverless capabilities.

4. Guideway

Long car platoons can travel very safely on guideways that eliminate surface interference. Such guideways could carry 10,000 vehicles/hour, 5X more than a highway lane at the same speed. Elevated guideways would first be placed next to major thoroughfares and railways in congested areas, reducing many commutes to a small fraction of their current duration.

But much higher speeds and total throughput would also be possible. On-demand and door-to-door, multi-mode vehicles traveling at 100MPH would be the fastest way to travel up to 400 miles. Once built nationwide, the marginal costs would be low and about 1/3 of airport traffic, buses and Amtrak would be eliminated.

Maglev is much more likely to be economically viable for individual vehicles than for station trains because of up to 100X greater utilization of the expensive track. In the open air, speeds would still be limited to approximately 200-300 MPH, but marginal energy use and operating costs could beat domestic air on any overland route. Maglev sleepers could go coast-to-coast in 10-15 hours, and they would really be a great way to “see the country”.

While private concerns will construct the new generation of vehicles, and might even capitalize the infrastructure, the Federal government’s role is to create the opportunity. Stages 2 & 3 can be attained with legislative help but relatively little public money. Congress should fund R&D with the ability to deliver technical standards for roadways and vehicles; and create model laws for the states to re-regulate liability and license drivers. Stage 4 guideways, especially Maglev, will require very large infrastructure expenditures that will cost the nation on the order of one trillion dollars (see end note).

End-note: Elevated guideway costs for one prototype (www.ruf.dk) are estimated at about $7 million per route mile in Los Angeles . Let’s be conservative and figure actual costs at $40M per average metro route mile, and devise a rule of thumb: 100 critically congested route miles – only half of which are now covered by freeways - per 2M inhabitants (The New York and LA metro areas have 20M people and need about 1,000 miles of guideways; the SF Bay Area has 8M people needing 400 miles, Boston has 4M and needs 200 miles) This rule yields a cost of $2B / million, or $2000/person. For approximately 200M major metro area residents nationwide, 10,000 route miles at $40M/mile would cost $400B. There would still be almost 44,238 less 5,000, or about 40,000 miles of interstate to upgrade for speed and safety. At a more economical $10M/mile for non-urban areas, this would double the cost of a national system, which would then be approaching $1T or $50B/year or $165 per person per year during 20 years of build-out.

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Revision History

1/14/2002 Bruce A. McHenry (sent to Center for the Study of the Presidency)