Oil for breakfast

2006-06-06T09:04:00.000-07:00

I say let's put a "paying-for-the-sins-of-our-past-leaders-who-made-oil-deals-with-tyrant-middle-eastern-governments" tax on gas. The money thus generated can be used to subsidise alternative fuel research and to build the infrastructure for transit systems like PRT. Let gas prices rise to European levels so that we pay roughly twice as much as we pay now. Why? Because it's the safer, cheaper and faster way to fix our foreign policy self-contradictions. Safer because although it will hurt our pockets badly in the short-term, innocent lives will not be lost. Cheaper because other alternatives involve making deals with forces that are antagonistic to our so-called "ideals" (freedom, democracy etc) and they eventually land us in situations where we have to choose between confronting our past or their present. Naturally, we choose the latter and the price is then countless human lives, and an expense account that looks like a bottomless pit, not to mention the widespread use of environmentally criminal fuel-inefficent vehicles. Lastly, taxing ourselves would be the faster way to get out of our dependence on foreign oil since it would accelarate proliferation of alternative fuel technologies, thereby compressing the total period for which we'd be using that oil as fuel. It's either pay high prices for a long time or pay ridiculous prices for a short time. I'd rather do the latter. If we have the stomach for such a move, it will also bring the world great benefits. Further damage to the environment will be curtailed, and the non-democratic rulers of oil rich countries will have no leverage against us. If we don't run our cars on their oil, what will they do with it, eat it for breakfast?

E-rail

2006-05-31T20:22:00.000-07:00

It's called Personal Rapid Transit or PRT. Just like an email goes directly from origin to destination taking the shortest possible route over a network, pods can to. And you could be sitting in one. Or reading, or sleeping, or making out (unless it's a single seater). Heck, you could even be knocking back tequilas and getting hammered and it would still be perfectly safe. That's because you wouldn't be driving, the system would be driving you, and all the other pods. The ride would be super-fast since there would be no unpredictable drivers. It would also be super-smooth, since the pods would be running on or suspended from guideways. Plus, it would be an express all the way, unlike mass transit where hundreds of people can end up stopping for just one person to get on or off at a station no one else cares about. It gets better. No road maintenance, the ability to enter buildings directly, no pollution since it runs on electricity, no conflict with terrestrial traffic, no signalling required at intersections (since the switching occurs in 3-dimensional space). And best of all, none of this is really new technology. It is merely a new combination of existing technologies. So why don't we see it everywhere yet? Well, the challenges are largely political, and rich countries are already so massively invested in mass transit systems that a transition is difficult. Still, PRT is gaining ground in many places around the world. Prototypes are already in operation in the United States (1, 2), UK, Netherlands, Australia and S.Korea.

Other proposals include:

Autoway— For passengers and light freights, Virginia, USA
EcoTaxi — Finnish version of PRT
RUF, Dual-mode — Denmark
Intelligent Transportation - Passenger and cargo networks
Skycab — A Swedish concept
Skytran — Personal Maglev Transporter, California, USA
Thuma —A system for varying sizes of containers
Tritrack — Dual-mode system
UniModal — California & Montana, USA; New Delhi, India
Vectus Ltd. — 385 meter test track, Uppsala, Sweden

Silent Revolution

Oil for breakfast

E-rail