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THE REVOLUTIONARY DUALMODE TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM
Types of Systems
and Components
On the ground and above the ground.
Monorail has two types of systems that are all elevated: hung and straddle
(above the traffic). On the ground has linked our cities and best used for long
distance. Above the ground is best for an urban setting where traffic congestion rules.
Here are a variety of ideas showing a robust private sector involvement..
 Rail
-
Over 50 yrs old, the railroad track is the only standard in America, there are over 50,000
miles of existing ROW. Conventional trains are costly and slow. From steam to diesel
to gas turbine, trains have grown into high tech machines that can go 300 mph or
pull one mile of freight. But they can't match the local management and convenience
needs of people and thus don't attract the ridership to support them. Costs for light rail analyzed.
Still rail has it's fans and some states such as California have established a
High Speed Rail Authority.
For more, visit Railway-Technology.com.
Monorail - The
best
feature of monorail is the elevated guideway above traffic. They have low efficiency
and are expensive to build - about $25 million per mile. The
Mountain Monorail study
is a plan to build a
127-mile track from Denver into the mountains feasible? It'll take $50 million to find
out. Supporters of the monorail plan have submitted to the secretary of state a proposed
initiative to put the issue on November's ballot. If voters say yes, $50 million will be
spent on a study to determine if the monorail can work. Supporters of the plan want the track to run along I-70, connecting
Denver's airport and the Vail ski resort in Eagle County" Now automation is and
breaking down barriers in transit and breaking down the huge automated trains into small
automated cars that more match the flow of people such as www.skyTran.net
Seattle has approved a Monorail
Initiative (MS Word format, 82 KB) and their web site is
www.elevated.org. See
http://monorail.org/links.html
for more on monorails.
Other links:
The Monorail Society: http://www.monorails.org/
Elevated Transportation Co.:
http://www.elevated.org/
Automated
Guideways
Here are hyperlinks to 15 exiting systems in America than run on
automated guideways including monorails, aerial trams and people movers
Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) - This technology is the most automated and uses
very small vehicles offering off-line service to the final destination instead of
on-line large stations.
Taxi 2000 is the most well prepared and knowledgeable in this technology. Taxi
2000's first customer could be Cincinnati or
St Louis.
MagLev
is a fast guideway above the
ground with high costs and promising future. The Federal Railway Administration is
conducting a $1 billion competition in seven cities to build a demonstration line as described
below. The big player is an International Consortium of Adtranz,
Siemens,
ThyssenKrupp and Lockheed Martin
Their goal is to build 300 mph trains in America. On April 26, 2001 the Southern
California Association of Governments approved a maglev business
plan for a 92 mile route to be funded privately.
Congress designated
a competition as part of the national network of High Speed Ground Transportation
corridors to be developed throughout the United States. The objective was to design and
implement a phased high-speed ground transportation system as part of a national network
of inter-city high speed ground transportation services. Florida has passed
legislation to set up a high speed rail or maglev authority to build 400 miles and link 6
cities.
U.S. Secretary of Transportation Rodney E.
Slater announced Jan 18, 2001 the selection of two projects in Maryland and
Pennsylvania to be advanced into the next phase of the competition to build and
demonstrate the first magnetically levitated (maglev) high-speed train system in revenue
service in the United States. Oklahoma State university has announced a low speed Maglev (MS Word format, 65 KB) demonstration Model of 3200 feet. Summary of maglev Web
Sites:
Swiss
Metro - Switzerland
CargoRailTM
Heavy Duty CargoTramTM
Shipment Option
(PDF Format - 1.6 MB)
MagLev in China
NRP-
41 - Switzerland
RTRI
- Japan
Baltimore
Washington Maglev - USA
ITT
- USA
Modern
Transport Systems Corporation
-
Magnetic Support Technology for Transport Applications
http://www.magsupport.com/
Guideway
Analysis -
NATIONAL
HIGH-AND-LOW-SPEED TRANSPORTATION SYSTEM (HiLoMag)
Magplane
is a derivative of maglev with an innovative track.
Segway
Pedestrian
Transport System and
Airboard at AirborTech.
Moller
International has developed the first and only feasible, personally affordable,
personal vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) vehicle the world has ever seen.
http://www.skyaid.org/Skycar/skycar_PugetSound_Dec28.htm
Vendor Database
Innovative Transportation
The University of Washington maintains a list of hyperlinks of all
the existing and planned technologies world wide.
European Lists The following technologies have been
included in the European Union report on innovative transportation technologies. Click to
see Euro-List.
The Transportation Research Board issued "Making Transit Work:
Insight from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States - Special Report 257". The
report identifies practices and policies employed in Western Europe and Canada to
encourage public-transportation use and suggests approaches the United States could take
to increase ridership from an average of 2% to the European average of 10% ridership in
the population.
Associations
There are a surprising
number of associations as the business community is becoming turned on to the opportunities.
National ITS Program Plan And Research Agenda (Intelligent Transport
Systems, MS Word format, 88 KB)
U.S.
DOT has asked ITS America to coordinate the development of a comprehensive ten-year
National ITS Program Plan Research Agenda. A joint ITS America/DOT Steering Committee has
been established to guide the overall development process. The Program Plan/Research
Agenda will be designed to be consistent with on going and proposed research activities of
organizations including the Transportation Research Board, the Institute of Transportation
Engineers and the National Science Foundation.
California Path Partners.
Others are:
CDOT's External Info Access
Clark County Nevada
Colorado by the Numbers
Colorado
Government
Design News
Force Engineering
Hawaii State Home Page
Intermodal
Transport Institute
Power Superconductor, Inc
Railway Technology
Regional Transportation
District
Transit
Mix Too Slow - Article by Daniel G. Jennings
Links to Related
Sites
Amtrak
http://www.amtrak.com/
http://www.amtrak.com/
Amtrak President
Ready to Depart
Murray Holds Hearing on Future of Amtrak
Illustration of a Phased Deployment of Personal Rapid Transit System for the Minneapolis-St. Paul Metropolitan Area:
http://faculty.washington.edu/jbs/itrans/minnprt.htm
Trains Without Track
2-car rail vehicles on tires to take travelers around SFO
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/02/21/MN118224.DTL
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