[ale] Mass Transit Solutions?

[James P. Kinney III]

So the big questions I have to pose is:

What can be done about it that is financially feasible, politically
possible and technically available?

Of course I have some thoughts on this. :)

We already have an extensive network of asphalt. Neighborhood
associations have enough clout to kill off a rail line in the areas
where it is needed (Why has the Tucker Marta spur never been built?).
The Grand Darpa Challenge has demonstrated we currently posses the
technical ability to auto-navigate a car through some of the worst
terrain.

Is it feasible to have current cars retro-fitted with self-nav as an
intermediate step to a purpose built light vehicle with self-nav
designed in?

There are social issues with peoples current choice of cars that can't
be addressed with technology (Why do so many little, tiny women drive
gigantic 3 ton monsters like Chevy Suburbans north of I-20?).

My thinking on the self-nav is it could allow a smoother traffic flow
process that would be safer and much more fuel efficient. Ad 60% of the
work done by the engine is to simply move the air out of the way,
self-nav would allow cars to safely tail-gate literally bumper-to-bumper
and thus greatly reduce wind drag on the entire mini-train.

A second factor in this (long range proposal) would be a super light
weight, single commuter vehicle. Much of the mass of the current vehicle
design is involve in the safety of the passengers. Let's face it, cars
crash because drivers make mistakes. If the crash likelihood is reduced
by removing as much of the human error as engineering possible, the
overall mass of the car can be reduced dramatically with tremendous
efficiency results. Likewise, the reduction in size increases the number
of these vehicles that can be on the roads at any given time (which
extends the useful lifetime of the existing road size and also reduces
maintenance as the vehicles are lighter and thus don't produce the wear
on the roadway that the heavier ones do.)

Of course, the nav systems would have to be fully open source to ensure
that the travel details of any one person are not used nefariously. In
fact, the entire traffic control system should be fully open source to
engender an enhanced trust of the system by the population at large.
Having a talking guvment head telling me "Of course it's safe and
secure" is rather pointless. Having 40-50 research engineers jointly say
it is means much more.

More?

On Fri, 2006-06-16 at 09:08 -0400, William Bagwell wrote:
> Catch up? The idiots should never have *abandoned* in the 50s what had 
> existed in the 1930s! A bit before my time so I'm not exactly sure when 
> they were first built, but depression era trolley lines ran as far as 
> Marietta to the north and Stone Mountain to the east. (Probably others 
> too.) Cheap, simple rail trolleys that cost a nickel to ride... Or so I 
> have been told, I only remember the rotting stations as a small child.
> 
> Lingering bitterness over Atlanta killing the trolley, was a primary reason 
> why Cobb county rejected joining Marta when it was first proposed back in 
> the late 60s or early 70s.
-- 
James P. Kinney III          \Changing the mobile computing world/
CEO & Director of Engineering \          one Linux user         /
Local Net Solutions,LLC        \           at a time.          /
770-493-8244                    \.___________________________./
http://www.localnetsolutions.com

GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics)
<jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
Fingerprint = 3C9E 6366 54FC A3FE BA4D 0659 6190 ADC3 829C 6CA7
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