57> Roads, Roads and more Roads

A note about this post… One of the problems with a blog format is that the passage of time buries old posts more and more deeply, and with them, ideas that were considered foundational. After 57 posts, how do new readers even know what I’m talking about? I am caught between trying to build on previously explored concepts and not becoming so obscure as to turn new readers away. What follows is not exactly new to some of you, but will be to many. I think it is important to try to get everyone on the same page.

PRT has been aptly described as “The Physical Internet.” (Bill James, JPods) But what really fits the bill is the present road system. They don’t call the Internet the “information super highway” for nothing. Our road system has become an amazingly pervasive network, and, coupled with cheap fossil fuel and advances in cars and highways alike, has created the most mobile population that the world has ever known. The system works so well that very few people ever consider the negative implications of continuing its expansion. Also invisible, to most of us, is its costs. In fact, the only thing that wakes us up at all is when the system breaks down.

Roads have been built on tradition, more than real analysis of transportation design requirements. Paths became trails, carts needed flatter wider trails, faster wagons needed smoother roads, then there were cars, then trucks. Now our little paths need to support 80,000 lb. vehicles and can be hundreds of feet across.

It’s not that roads are cheap. They are not cheap to plan, to fix, to clean, to patrol, to connect to, drain around, to elevate, to bank, to clear from accidents, grade for, purchase land for, license drivers for… I could go on… But the costs are so buried in established practices that we don’t even see them anymore. We can’t even imagine a world without that money leaving our collective wallets. We not only lose millions of hours each day in traffic, we perversely pay more for roads when we are stuck in gridlock, through taxes levied on the gas we are wasting. (A little footnote here: As cars become more fuel efficient, these funds for road improvements decrease. Eventually the cost savings from owning a more efficient car will need to be offset by higher taxes.)

We can’t do without a sophisticated transportation network. That Genie cannot be put back in the bottle. But the developing world (and the world at large) cannot afford to see this concrete network model unfold to its logical conclusion.

Suppose we could start all over again, but with modern technology and environmental awareness. Knowing what we know now, were we dropped onto a primeval planet, and had to build a new network from scratch, would we begin by terraforming the habitat with bulldozers and dynamite so that foot thick ribbons of concrete could connect parking lots with each other, as the preferred way to connect structures, goods and people? Wouldn’t it be cheaper both in the short term and long term to plant some pylons in the ground to support pre-fabbed sections of guideway or track? (Don’t forget the environmental impact of changing drainage patterns and the habitat segmentation that roads create.)

I acknowledge importance of truck access. It’s pretty hard to build a house without it, much less a building. Yet truck access also shapes need and development. First comes truck access, then comes deforestation. Soon to follow are deliveries of heavy, bulky materials that can only be delivered by, of course, truck. The economics of suburban sprawl are directly tied to the economics of our “physical internet”. I do not pretend that this hypothetical alternative transportation network would be equal or advantageous in all respects. We have become used to having virtually all addresses accessible by very heavy equipment, even hundreds of miles from city centers. Would the pioneer inhabitants of our brave new world choose to abandon the road paradigm altogether? I doubt it, but I can’t imagine that they would want to revisit all of the cost and effort and environmental damage that went into the present system either, were a viable alternative available. I think they would look at the road for what it is, a great way to deliver truly heavy freight beyond shipyards and train yards, but not such a great medium for a one-and-only, all pervasive “physical internet”.

So what would make a great “physical internet” in this brave new world? Four things.
1. Very cheap. (in materials, construction costs, and upkeep)
2. Very versatile (as many applications as possible within the constrains of it’s form)
3. Elevated, both to unlock the value of the land below. (economic, aesthetic, environmental) and to minimize the amount construction that needs to be done on-site.
4. Very, very efficient, meaning fast, low energy, high though-put.

There are many iterations of PRT/PAT, but the two projects currently under construction, (ATS’ Heathrow Airport and 2getthere’s Masdar City ) projects are based on the familiar concept of the road, although it is usually described as a “guideway”. I hope these companies have a firm grasp on just how poorly their "guideways" stack up, on the basis of the above-mentioned criteria, compared to other designs that have been put forth. With any luck they already have “second generation” plans in the works. At the moment one is forced to compare their systems’ performances to that of user-driven electric vehicles on a similar guideway. I acknowledge that “going electric” and reducing lane widths is a major improvement. But why not just widen bicycle paths or paint off sections of road for small electric vehicles, private and/or rented? What is the point of having vehicles do something automatically that people can do as well or better? The value of automation comes when machines can vastly out-perform their human counterparts. It would seem that weather, or pedestrians, for example, would tend to keep automated roadway based transport forever slow for safety reasons.

Every journey begins with a single step, and the people who control the money are rightly conservative, and roads are familiar and proven, so I heartily endorse these projects, and congratulate the companies for landing the contracts. The driverless automation part, though less than essential on roads, is an absolute requirement for raised thin-guideway or rail systems that need sophisticated traffic management. All PRT efforts help develop that key element, so these companies are providing a needed boost. But let’s also keep our eyes on a bigger prize – a next-generation “physical internet” that is vastly better than what we have now. Only a system that demonstrates overwhelming superiority (by the previously mentioned criteria) will have the ability, in a free market world, to significantly impact our longstanding transportation traditions within our lifetimes, and so deliver the benefits that such a system could bring to all of humanity.