I submitted the following to Slate’s Hive project on transportation issues based on an idea I have often thought about during long, monotonous drives. I had written much more, but needed to pare it down to 1200 words:
My proposal is for intracity travel. In spite of gas price spikes and global warming fears, the American fascination with personal automobiles persists. Passenger rail is unpopular because it is slow, expensive, and requires renting a vehicle at the destination if one will be required. I propose to build alongside existing limited access roads with few interchanges a rail system designed to carry anything smaller than a full-size van. When motorists arrive at such a highway they could choose to drive it as usual, or to pay a fee to drive their vehicle into a rail car, where it would be secured until they reached their exit. Because all traffic is on rails and automatically controlled, this system could safely operate at speeds far above those allowed on the highway. Much like some existing locomotives, these rail cars could be powered by electricity generated from renewable resources and distributed through a “third rail”. This proposal would allow people to continue using the personal automobiles that they love, while helping to transition away from fossil fuel use, speeding long journeys, preventing crashes, and allowing motorists to focus on other tasks.
A few problems: This would require an enormous amount of construction to be as efficient as you present it. Laying the rail and building the interchanges and cars would be a huge project. Also, the cars themselves would have to be mammoth. The Market Street line is typically 5-8 cars long. If every two people had an automobile with them, the train would probably have to be 10 times as long. Also, it sounds as if you imagine the interchange process being fairly quick. For this to be a reality there would need to be a lot or rail cars operating, which would lead to a decrease in speed. Also, if you want fast trains, the stops would have to be far apart for it to be worthwhile, probably hundreds of miles. Maybe something like Boston-NY-Phila-DC-Richmond-Charlotte-Atlanta-Jacksonville-Tampa-Miami would work, but the more stops you add the longer it takes and the more inefficient it becomes. At this point, it’s just a regular passenger rail that carries automobiles, which sounds like a fine idea, but there’s probably reasons why this isn’t already popular.
Comment by Michaluk — June 17, 2010 @ 1:41 pm