The economics of discounting distance and transport

[sweetheart]

Can it be said, that the public should pay to interconnect itself
naturally subisidizing by the net-subsidy per capita, those in the
most rural areas, by that the subsidies for gasoline wars, and the
false economies of scale of air travel, petroleum, hundreds of
miles of tarmac. In the pure raw-materials sense, rural interconnection
is a public subsidy that grossly distorts the transport systems that
underwrite neo-globalization.

Is there an economic alternative, and how does it work exactly on day
1? Do we simply cut the subsidies altogether, and let big oil finance
private wars of the east india tea company all over again?

[IrateCitizen]

1. This has always struck me as a weak-link in globalization of trade, too.

It takes tremendous resources to transport all these goods all over the globe. What then happens to production and distribution in the event of passing the "oil peak"? What about if there is actually a global energy crash?

I realize this isn't necessarily the thrust of your post, sweetheart -- but it's been weighing on my mind for some time.

Personally, I think that the Western European -- particularly in Germany -- model of growth is perhaps the best one. Population should be kept primarily to towns and cities. Rural areas should be left primarily for farming, and stewarded open spaces. It's not a popular stance here in the US, with our love affair with the automobile and suburban sprawl -- but in the long run, it's the only model that can save us, both environmentally and economically.

[sweetheart]

2. Radical transformation of the sprawl problem

The problem is that it takes too much time to get a distance. The
transport systems of the day, are indeed becoming too slow considering
the real technological advances of robotics, packet switching, and
pallet-factory systems. I hope, the american way is to innovate a
groundbreaking form of public-individual transport that allows someone
to retain their private space, but not be piloted by a driver.

The movies romantisize it, like the trasnport in that coling farrel/tom cruise film who's name slips me at the moment.(Minority
report!) Or in I robot for that
matter, with robotics and in-road electronic tracks, via short range
radio antenna... sora like having RFID's in every speed bump to guide
and allow pan-area public computers go run car-driving like a high
speed railway. Then the public need only key in to the GPS the
destination, and the vehicle autodrives, given that all vehicles are
properly aligned technologically, very similar to railroads, i believe
a new "better" form of traffic control might be a way to take
the energy/noise/subsidy problem out of this. Rather than running back
to horsecarts, set up a lower-friction, faster, more private, indviduual
system than busses... bussses suck, so do subways. Great if you want
to be in public, but the privacy of a taxi, is really not difficult
technologically. THe problem is vision, and the economists are hindward
looking.

As supply chains go geo, like containerships across the pacific, the
public subsidy of policing the space, and the guidance systems and
whatnot are publically controlled, and satellite guided. Surely such
a system can work in microcosm, given electromagnetics today.

American innovation has always done forward things, and re-desigining
public transit to evolve past the car AND capture the technology
frame shift, is what i'd hope america's brighter engineers aspire.
This is a case of gross market failure, for the lack of public
regulation and ass kicking in the private transport market.

Were eliot spitzer on their case for being lazy slobs as a profession
and selling us an SUV dystopia that covers our houses with car brakes
dust, as the automobiles take over the globe. The current automobile
paradim is grossly outdated, if we can honestly be presenting to the
whole world a coherent transport vision. FEDEX is to the paradigm
shift in package shipping as "x" is to american individual transport,
and that little 2 wheeled thingie is not it either. It can't shift
the inevitable packages of all people effectively. The thing needs a
"boot".

That said, i try to dream optimistic, and then settle for cowardly
engineering. Given a culture that can make war with helicopters, that
the internal combustion engeine, rubber tyres and absbestos brakes,
are so "last century".

Maintaining hundreds of milies of 6 lanes megafreeways, because of the
latency introduced by human decision in driving is sad. Computers
controlling the vehicles on motorways at the very least, could
radically transform transport, using accurate geopositioning, and
in-road magneto-robotic tracks, and supercomputers.

[IrateCitizen]

3. Reply on engineers' role in all of this...

I'm a civil engineer, and I have to tell you that I think you're overstating the role that engineers have in all of this.

The fact is that everything you're describing is largely set at the public policy level. Engineers don't have any real latitude in designing and promoting these innovations, unless they're being advocated and funded by the public sector.

For instance, I'm a big proponent of "smart growth" policies that emphasize mixed-use development, bike and walking paths, public transportation and the like. However, even though I personally advocate these things, I have absolutely no opportunity to champion them within my company, because they aren't being supported by the public sector within my region.

I certainly agree that I'd like to see my fellow engineers looking at these alternatives for the future. However, there has to be some political will in order to propel it into the future. Hopefully a growing dissatisfaction with the idealized suburban lifestyle will provide enough of a backlash to start making these ideas a reality in many more cities across the US.

[sweetheart]

4. Bike paths and pallet packet switching.

Pardon that i'm off topic.. I envision a series of bike paths that
have embedded an invisible magntic track, the pallet track. Then each
person would have a transport container, probably the size of 2 generous
chairs, 1x2 meters. This would be enclosed in a vertical glass railway
car-box with windows, and a fold down seat, with a 3rd meter of closet
space... so the car is 1x3 meters. Directly below it, is a .5 meter
tall engine. In to the road, are embedded electro magnetic tracks flush
with the roadway, like a flush trackless railroad. Eletromagnaetics
would be run by computers to keep on track. that pulse
a speed waveform down the path, and can shift the pallet without any
engine, through the lorenz force, inducing a current in the pallet to
glide. The rest of the track needn't be concrete or even paved for
that matter, it could be simply gravel, much as a rail road is, and
transport could have much more green spaces around it, as it would be
lighter footprint. The tracks would be several parallel, like say 3
per current-car lane, and they could group in clusters for multiples
transit, much as pallets travel in an automated warehouse, rolling
in sequence. Interia can be kept to effective tolerances, that human
control could ever achieve, and a safe transport speed tolerance set
in to the electromagnic track RFID system. that combined with teh
vehicles on-board moisture sensor, temperature sensor, woudl be able
to advise a comptuer, at central and on-board, the exact safe speed
given unlimited is the upside. An electro magnetic system could hurl
a car, very much like the minority report concept, just no need for the
wide footprint, or the climbing buildings thing... romantic... but
no need for the magnets to hold like that.

Horizontal individual elevators, that cluster in groups, in-path, that
i could sit with my family and get somewhere, enjoying looking out
the window, reading or working, much as one does in a train. That
the driver's time is not their own, and is rather that of the
republican hate radio jock, that the religion of the automobile
society be that one is to be denied freedom to be at privacy AND
not engaged driving the car is my complaint. I want the car to do
the simplistic job of driving itself, setting its safe speed given
road conditions, and following its little track of reeces pieces.

In response to your post, i mean the "greater" social engineering that
contains the transport frame. If we view the whole economic system,
its finance, its political controls, regulation and public interest,
can't we have silence... must transport progressively blot the world
of bird songs out with buzzing, whirring, humming and pollluting.

It took exactly that kind of engineering vision to land someone on the
moon, something that really was awesome... a way american goodwill is
shared with the world... nicely... that such technology is invested
solely for mass murder... if we consider what the cost of Iraq has
cost us ... wasted cash flushed down the toilet of bush' hubris.

Bicycles are not practical go commute like modern business transport
requires, so it forces a second "cart" system and we end up with
businesses using the public goods of the roads using large trucks/
lorries... and the public getting skint. A pallette hurling between
a saint-louis "pallet-taxi stop" and an address in salt lake could be low like 1 hour, as the pallet could accelerate and allocate space
far ahead of itself, legally, and the transported, could be charged
for "bandwidth" usage.

Frankly and overhead system is the ultimate, ski lifts, with parallel
high speed accelerating modules.... take the antiques of disney land
and make them pass within millimeters tolerance.

The public engineering fuction is in the subsidies, and though they
might say they are not imposing a state-religion, it is embedded
within the subsidy framework, that liberty to have free religion is
impinged by forcing ALL taxpayers to subsidize the wars and the
pavements of the divine right of kings.

[sweetheart]

5. Flywheel transport

The electric motor inernalizes the rotor and the magnetic pulse.
I say put the electromagnetic alternating pulse in the road surface
and put the flywheel driving the wheels of the car. Then a central
comptuer can pulse magnets at different speeds on different "single"
magnets of track. This would allow a series of cars that have only
simple mechanics. Magnetic Flywheel drive! It could be soundless,
and lightning fast,... as it goes faster, the flywheel's inertia will
keep the car tracking safely.

So perhaps we should break up the subsidy ring, and force the public
to pay at the pumps, for the wars, and not at the tax man's take.
I can't but help see it as the politically expedient measure, as long
as something else "even better" is proposed. TO simply force people
to drive less by cutting fuel costs, hurts the economics of transport
and JIT business processes.

[sweetheart]

6. Economics then

1 electronic magnet, and 1 light sensor per road-magnetic-unit. Each
panel of flat road surface, would incorporate 1 sensor per square 10cm.

1 sensor: wire-20dollars, electromagnet-100 dollars, light sensor=10 dollars, PCB-7 dollars, digitial - D/A converter( analog switch) 10 dollars, Grid 10x10 power supply embedded underground waterproof
electric plug.

Fixed costs: about 250 dollars per component * 100 per square meter *
3 per road-lane (considering road lane= 3m), *1,000,000

100,000,000,000 one hundred billion for a 100,000 kilometers of
automated track at 250 per unit. If costs are reduced by 10 with
mass production...

The trolly unit is much simpler than a modern car, rather 3 flywheels,
the front wheel is specially designed hollow sphere flywheel. These
are rotated subtly in X,Y direction, by a magnetic pulse impulsed by
electromagnetics from the track, rolling the wheel, very quietly and
gently along. The light sensor, would feed in to the computer vision
sensor. This would have an absolute image of all "pixels" in the
transport system. This then is joined to the propulsion and
road surface weather conditions, this data then is transmitted as
"a big number" to every road pixel per second. This would cause an
analog pulse from the surface electromagnet, pulling the wheel subtly
to rotate in one direction.

As the "vision" system said the wheel was progressing, the propulsion
side system increases the pulse frequency depending on the momentum
of the surface vehicle. per pallett: 1000- dollars... basically they're
a steel frame and some giant roller bearings.

The passenger chassis would sit on this giant magneto-rolled pallette.
The GPS system is used as well to provide a fault tolerant verfication
and double check the grid. Supercomputer - 1,000,000, software= 10,000,000.

Thats pretty expensive, in the billions, but not out of what cities
get to in their transport systems. Comptuer switched, indivdiual
road train-transport cars.... vision is always a punt. The technology
exists, and its a matter of a civic minded transport vision by not
a politician but an empowered engineer.

[sweetheart]

7. riggs bozon kick

:-)