53> SMARTS

I have been witness to the worst foliage season in recent New England history. It has rained almost every single day I have been here, and just been dark and cloudy the rest of the time. This has led to lots of time in the cabin, and I have had plenty of time to think, especially about the things the cabin lacks, like unending water and electricity and gas. It occurred to me that once upon a time, all water and fuel had to be delivered in person. This, in turn, got me to think about PRT as a pipeline, much like a utility. Actually I was mostly thinking about freight. Has anyone really analyzed what automated delivery would do for the world?

I personally believe that the big story here might not be, so much, PRT per se, but rather the automatic aggregation, transportation and distribution of physical objects, much like a the utilities I am presently lacking. Consider electricity from a variety of sources; wind, coal, hydroelectric, etc. It is mixed in the wires and sent out only where needed, where it is measured out into exactly what the end users require, where and when they need it. The utility can just read the meters and send out the bills. Isn’t PRT really the evolution of transportation into a similar model, except with people?

I have been hard at work trying to imagine a system that would work for people, mail, cases of cola, etc., and I’ve come to the conclusion that “one size” does not “fit all.” at least not with vehicles or their bogies. That is not exactly true with the track, however. I believe that a track design standard could be established that could accommodate various bogie styles and functions. In this approach the system would be highly modularized. Bogies would reside inside the track and various carriage styles for numerous functions would “snap” on. We could call it something like Small-scale Modularized Automated Rail Transport System. (That’s right. I invented SMARTS.)

I see something like four flavors of track, where for example, a PRT “pod” would be precluded from track that was primarily industrial, (it might allow extreme maneuverability, using super tight radii and cog technology for vertical travel) but the industrial bogie might use a public guideway. (Perhaps late at night) There could be a low speed, low profile, indoor (shroudless) track that would be for bogies that don’t require upper guide wheels, (too slow) but can be hug between the floors of buildings. There could be a very high-speed long distance variety, although I do not see it as being much different than ordinary PRT track, although the bogies would obviously be built for speed. (unless it’s fitted with Inductrack or something)

I will be posting more on this in the future, but for now, I am still out of town, and my laptop is ailing. (It crashed four times writing this, and won’t even recognize a thumb drive anymore) I will therefore get this posted, while this little library is open and this darn thing still works. That’s all from rainy NH.