BOSTON’s Sub- HUBS

The neighborhoods of Boston are waking up to the exciting new prospects of networked transit.  This month a group of concerned citizens and Boston’s Transportation Director will meet with Bill James, the main force behind Jpods.  This may inspire the MBTA to think in a networked way.

Boston Back Bay streets are traffic-tamed and pedestrian friendly. Could a pod hub be retrofitted in?

Boston, Cambridge and other communities are inventing mobility futures in the age of Zipcars, Bridj and Uber.  Midway through the second decade of the 21^st century -- it is time to rethink public infrastructure policies. That means primarily but not exclusively transportation, and it is clear to that our future should be free of fossil fuels.

How far out can Boston envision a next-gen transit network? Is 2020 too soon? Or is it better to think to 2030 and work backwards to determine the first phase?

What Neighborhood Hubs for the Hub?

Where should stations or simpler “mobility hubs” be? Where in your neighborhood is the best site for a mobility “portal” that interfaces with existing MBTA and commuter rail stations?

Boston neighborhoods have many
architectural gems.

What destinations in Dorchester, Roxbury, JP, Fenway-Longwood  and Kenmore should be part of a network 2030?  Should it extend further to Brighton, Forest Hill? South Boston? Will Brookline and Cambridge join in for a larger look at “Boston-as-Hub”?

Judeth van Hamm and her varied team are opening important dialogs with those who commune in these districts.  She and Bill James both integrate solar power collection and use into their designs.

NEW PARADIGMS OF MOBIILTY

Driverless cars are changing everything about urban mobility. Uber has raised billions of dollars to work with. The former head of world transit recently observed that cities being "invaded" by new mobility entrepreneurs.

Self-driving cars change the paradigms of personal, community, service and corporate operations. Delivery of restaurant and shopping items is possible with robo-carts: experiments are underway in Santa Monica. Tomorrow’s smart taxi and shuttle services will operate in new ways that should lower the cost of taking a cab. Ride-sharing flourishes, Who know what lifestyles will be in 2020, let alone 2030 and beyond?

Podcars extend the reach of metro stations.

Even with a temporary reprieve from high gasoline prices, we see over the horizon a world where fuel-burning vehicles are passé --  like dial telephones wired to the wall. People young and old today are getting less ego satisfaction and more frustration out of the burden of owning a personal vehicle. Today, it is a necessity to be a full participant in US life. But the costs! The hassles! The dangers! Owning a car hardly seems worth it for more and more people.

No wonder many are kissing off the drudgery, renting when needed, and seeking the advantages of living in neighborhoods where walking and biking are safe and easy. There taxi and bus services are more available, and distances to travel are shorter. And maybe in the future a pod-station will anchor a local community hub.

Ripple Effects in the Urban System

If a large shift in mobility patterns were to happen, the places we want to get to (for work, shopping, socializing, sports, worship, and back) will need fewer parking spaces. Landscaped trails and gardens can replace parking lots. New housing, perhaps with no parking requirements, will appeal to those without cars. With modest funds, community volunteers and creativity, your part of town can create landscaped pedestrian networks and tame traffic.

Nodes of density will become more commercially viable clustered around pod-stations. Car-free citizens will walk and bike more. They will take transit more. Most adults uninterested in kids don’t want to live in suburbs. Most seniors don’t want the isolation of remote retirement communities. We all want to be close to other people, stores and happening places.

Systems of mobility can work together,

Podcars Mean Car-Free Living

Podcars are available to expand our mobility options, making young and old go car-less. This may seem impossible in today’s auto-addicted America. Well, a comparable paradigm shift happened about a century ago when the rich and middle classes got rid of the carriages and horses. Urban America sprawled out into suburbs and exurbs and mega-regional hubs, drunk in the 1960s and 1970s on cheap gas and the mobility of cars. Now it’s not so cheap. The friction of space is still there.

Automating cars won’t immediately reduce traffic. It does, however, do something much more important: automated mobility lessens the need to spend, on average, $10,000 a year to own and operate a personal car.

CARBON KILLERS

Mothers and other good citizens in fracking country -- New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and beyond-- are ardently protesting the dangers and foolishness of violating the earth and its precious groundwaters to squeeze out the last of once vast oil and natural gas resources that we have burned through over the last century.  Little reported in mainstream media are mothers who have gone to jail over deep convictions that we need to get off fossil fuels ASAP.

DC-based World Resources Institute (WRI) points out how growth-stimulating it will be to aim for a world “net-zero” on carbon emissions by mid-century. That’s a dazzlingly bold assertion in the US. WRI is speaking to world leaders who are expected to conclude an agreement next fall in Paris. Some question whether even so radical a shift is enough. The damages of Climate Chaos are already upon us!

The Top 10 emitter countries account for 70% of the world total.

Getting Our Heads around the Problem

How do we as individuals understand this? Here’s a dimensioning game to help bring it to daily personal life.  Imagine a ton of carbon dioxide. It fills a balloon of 32 feet (10+m). Each day, about 60,000 of them are added to Father Air, who loves Mother Earth so passionately, for each and every American! (That’s based on UN estimates of world annual GHG production at 49 billion tons. World per capital estimate is 20,000. Americans are voracious energy users, although others are worse. Tripling the world figure gets a fair guess of 60,000 for the US average.)

 That’s a lot of bubbles in the sky! A progression Southern California clean services company is helping us this by its Emissions Time Bomb. It is a 32-foot inflatable balloon by EcoMotion.

Transportation is only part of this world-transforming upsurge in greenhouse gases that is altering  our climate in ways that are already costly.  Power generation dominates GHG generation. Estimates for the share of all modes of transport are in the low twenties.  So urban transport accounts for “only” about one-fifth of total GHG generation.

Will we look up to a sustainable future?

Seeing a Way Forward for Podcars

If WRI has its way, all GHG generation will need to be phased out.  Clearly that includes transportation, and more specifically urban transportation.  More travel should be walking, biking and shared modes. All vehicles need to be electric and the power source cannot be fossil fuels.

Cars are already getting smarter and cleaner. SUVs and all kinds of road hogs may soon follow. Batteries are a big deal due to their weight and range limits. Inductive power from roadway infrastructure to vehicle may solve the problem, but it’s not here today.  

A Bubble A Day

Today we have lots of cars. In years to come, they should increasingly be electric. That does mean battery weight and chemical disposal needs. It also brings on operator recharging or replacement needs.  Future electric vehicles will be thirsty for easy recharging options.

The guideways needed for classical PRT - secured with its own exclusive powered network of “track” of some sort - can make money if it is open up to non-system vehicles by purchase “dual-mode” mileage. How many fewer 32-foot bubbles will pollute our atmosphere?

IS LONDON SMARTER, OR PARIS?

RATP transit leaders in Paris brag that they have reduced staff on Line 1 from 250 when it was in classic mode with drivers (or operators or conductors) aboard each train. Today the upgraded driverless line needs a staff of only 40. There similar driverless systems at CDG and Orly airports, in addition to driverless Line 14 that opened last century.

In London, all three airports have APMs, but none of the Tube lines are fully automated. When plans to retrofit them to driverless were announced, unions shouted that it would compromise public safety. Today they kick and groan about an order of new Tube cars that will be capable of unmanned operation, maybe by 2030.

In London, leaders are excited about CrossRail -- a mega-project to create express east-west service for Greater London.Paris did this thirty years ago with the first RER line. There are now three lignes of the Reseau Expres Regional (regional express network) elaborated with several branches. Happy catch-up, London!

Aramis was tested outside Paris in the 1980s.

There are, however, no automated transit networks (ATNs) in Paris. RATP ran a test track in the 1980s, dubbed Aramis, but abandoned the concept as too sophisticated and dismantled the track. London at least has a shuttle at Heathrow Airport with one end a two-pronged fork that in theory has ATN functionality.

Podcar-Fed Metros?

One London driverless transit project stands out as an outstanding example of staged development coordinated with massive real estate construction, While without off-line stations and the non-stop service that is the hallmark of ATN, it catalyzed redevelopment in the old port district downstream from Parliament and the Financial District. Known as the DLR (Dockland Light Railway), it is a huge success by most measures. One wonders why there aren’t more DLR-like projects all around the English capital, including less dense districts where ATNs make sense.

Paris, meanwhile, is charting out a grand transit-oriented future centered on a driverless metro ring (with branches) known as Grand Paris - usable in both French and English. Its technology will be like Line 14 or the upgraded Line 1 -- capable of carrying the high linear passengers flows expected of metros.

What will feed Grand Paris stations?

Grand Paris stations will handle large passenger flows, and many of them will benefit from local circulation projects that can capture increased real estate value. Next-generation Aramis projects, well planned and run, could make Grand Paris even greater.

Paris, London and the world will learn more at PCC9 next fall.

THERE IS NO PLANET B!

American tree-hugger Bill McKibben can take pride in the “landmark” global wakeup call that he and countless others organized September 21 -- start of fall -- in New York City. At first the number of participants was estimated at a little over 100,000. The next day the New York Times reported over 300,000. Now 400,000+ is accepted. 

The Times gave only token coverage to a “spectacle” that even blasé Manhattan had to notice.  The March ended in a moment of silence that exploded into noise - clapping, drumming, blowing trumpets, and shouts and screams in a myriad of accents and tones. The message was loud and clear: it is time to put the burning of fossil fuel into our past!

The establishment media gave almost no coverage to the March before the event.  It reminded many of the disconnect between that same “establishment” and anti-war protests over Vietnam in the 1960s.

Global Political Attention

The2014 People’s Climate March was timed two days before a high-level UN Summit on Climate Change, attended by Secretary Ban Ki-Moon. President Obama and scores of other heads of state from every continent attended. The Summit identified three areas needing immediate attention for consideration in a treaty to be finalized and signed next fall in Paris. In the US, it would then need Congressional ratification and ink on paper. Preservation of tropical forest and better ways to grow and prepare food are two of them.

Harvard's Chuck Harris saw PRT in the mix last century. He still does!

The third priority deals directly with transportation. Perhaps disappointing to many PRT promoters, it does not call for R&D to demonstrate podcars or ATN or whatever label you prefer. It does call for 30 percent of vehicles sold in 2030 to be electric and buildup of their enabling infrastructure, and also unspecified urban mobility options.

How modest this is to advanced transit thinkers and doers. No doubt McKibben and most of the marchers are all for better public transit, walking and biking improvements, and community-based ride-sharing schemes. This green urban vision needs to be fleshed out - with the color and flavor of Greenville’s Swamp Rabbit Trail and the new multi-modal station design on the Morgantown PRT in West Virginia.

Divestiture is the Start

The moneyed Rockefeller Foundation got almost as much attention from New York media when it announced just before the Climate March its decision to dump stocks in companies that pollute to peddle fossil fuels. Vermont and many universities are moving in that direction. The long-term goal is to sever the future from those who make profit on fossil fuels. That will lead to a better future with all electric transport, much of it on guideways that are really long electric plugs.

Planet A, We Love You!

Maybe Planet B will have unlimited sustainable energy. For now, we’re stuck with Planet A.  Our work is to cut out for us, and it’s not just replenishing the Highway Trust Fund ($206 billion over four years, with $72 billion for transit and $19 billion in the yet to be enacted Green America Act proposed by the White House. Where are ped/bike and ride-sharing projects? And where is PRT?

Planet A gets lots of sun. The People’s Climate March and UN Summit were meant as wake up calls. Earthlings, Unite!

PCC8 BRINGS ATN CLOSER TO PUBLIC TRANSIT

The 8th Podcar City conference just held near Stockholm's Arlanda Airport brought the 50 year old concept of PRT several steps closer to the reality of urban public transport. Small in size but rich in dialog, the discussions included a peek at the Assessment of the Automated Transit Network Industry soon to be released by San Jose University's Mineta Transportation Institute. One major conclusion is that the ability to deliver a 10-station network is within reach and that urban planners and transit officials can advance such plans with technological confidence.

ATN can strengthen conventional rail transit.

Ingmar Andreasson of LogistikCentrum presented results of sophisticated analysis of ways that ATN capacity can be increased to levels comparable to rail modes by coupling vehicles, using larger vehicles and allowing trips to be scheduled to multiple destinations. Bengt Gustafsson described strategies to gradually introduce ATN in ways that reduce risks.

Suppliers Vectus and Ultra reported on their growing experience with ATN operations in South Korea and at London;s Heathrow Airport. China's Tubenet presented their previously unknown concept that uses small vehicles running under guiderails and solar collectors and plans for a 4km, 12-station test line to be running in three years. Simulation of a 446km network for Xian (population 4 million) has been done. Given China's growing economic might, Tubenet introduces a new dynamic into world ATN developments.

The PCC8 program for the first included a debate of candidates from four parties vying for votes in this weeks elections in Sweden. All agreed that a pilot ATN project linking Arlanda Airport to five growth nodes planned nearby.

MULTI-MODAL SWEDEN

Sweden more any other country in the world has analyzed podcar applications in its cities and towns, comparing them to other modes. None has built. So far these visions has stayed at the thought level -- something to do to keep balanced during the short days of long dark winters.

Visioning community spaces is fun!

Being a nation of only nine million people with a third concentrated in and around Stockholm, Sweden has a long list of small towns where multi-modal PRT analysis has taken place. Umea, Eskilstuna, Varmdo, Flemingsburg, Upplands Vasby, Kiruna, Bolanderna, Gavle, V, Froelunda, and Sodertalje. They have also been done for Stockholm’s academic district and as a rail station distributor in Uppsala.  Much of this work has been done by Ingmar Andreasson and Goran Tegner, but there are many others who have contributed to these impressive efforts. Multi-modal analysis goes well beyond the study of whether PRT is feasible.

Andreasson is a native of Sweden’s second largest city, Gothenburg, where APM and PRT studies have been done, most recently for the campus of Chalmers Institute of Technology. Tegner residents on a lovely island suburb connected by rail, road and water to Stockholm.

Thinking through junctions in Sweden is serious.

Tegner and Andreasson presented a paper on one of the most advanced of these multi-modal studies for a Greater Stockholm big box retail district know as King’s Curve. Site of the original and the largest Ikea store, most of the 42,000 people who travel there to shop and work come by car. Bus ridership was estimated to be 5% - which would be impressive in the US, but low for transit-friendly Stockholm.

Forecasts of 50% growth in shopping and traffic  were in place. Local officials from the city of Huddinge had ambitions to preserve its community as a sustainable society.  A dense PRT network was proposed to connect residential and shopping areas to a metro station with 12 km guideway and 12 stations. Two remote stations were inside major parking structures to the north and south.  

With PRT in place, it was calculated that King’s Curve transit share would more than triple to twenty percent, seventeen percent using PRT. Andreasson and Tegner concluded that PRT would provide an environmental-friendly and attractive com­plement to the private car that would increase metropolitan  metro and bus travel.

Based on input from Ultra, Taxi2000 and the currently inactive Australian PRT effort Austrans, a per-km average of €6m ($8m at today’s rate), about one-third the cost of LRT.

What could have been outside Stockholm.

Simulations showed  a 8 percent reduction in car traffic in 2015 with PRT. Without PRT the growth in car traffic might be 40 percent. The social analysis identified that the following benefits:

• Travel time Savings for car users and for public transport users
• Reduced road congestion, both on regional roads and  inside King’s Curve
• PRT vehicle & station comfort & convenience gains
• Reduced air pollution emissions
• Traffic safety gains
• Increased land values due to reduced surface car parking 

Andreasson and Tegner ten years ago surveyed potential podcar suppliers and analyzed configurations for King’s Curve for Ultra, SkyWeb Express (Taxi 2000), Flyby (a Scandinavian-Korean venture that evolved into Vectus PRT). They found  SkyWeb Express the least costly but needing a full-sized test track.