We Must Imagine a Future Without Cars- Kunstler

[Jcrowley]

We Must Imagine a Future Without Cars
By James Howard Kunstler, AlterNet. Posted April 4, 2007.

The following is James Howard Kunstler' recent speech to the Commonwealth Club of California. An audio stream of the speech is available.

Two years ago in my book The Long Emergency I wrote that our nation was sleepwalking into an era of unprecedented hardship and disorder -- largely due to the end of reliably cheap and abundant oil. We're still blindly following that path into a dangerous future, lost in dark raptures of infotainment, diverted by inane preoccupations with sex and celebrity, made frantic by incessant motoring.

The coming age of energy scarcity will change everything about how we live in this country. It will ignite more desperate contests between nations for the remaining oil and natural gas around the world. It will alter the fundamental terms of industrial economies. It will ramify and amplify many of the problems presented by climate change. It will require us to behave differently. But we are not paying attention.

As the American public continues sleepwalking into a future of energy scarcity, climate change, and geopolitical turmoil, we have also continued dreaming. Our collective dream is one of those super-vivid ones people have just before awakening, as the fantastic transports of the unconscious begin to merge with the demands of waking reality. The dream is a particularly American dream on an American theme: how to keep all the cars running by some other means than gasoline. We'll run them on ethanol! We'll run them on biodiesel, on synthesized coal liquids, on hydrogen, on methane gas, on electricity, on used French-fry oil... !

The dream goes around in fevered circles as each gasoline-replacement is examined and found to be inadequate. But the wish to keep the cars going is so powerful that round and round the dream goes. Ethanol! Biodiesel! Coal Liquids. ...

http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/50049/

[nam78_two]

1. K&R.nt

[boomboom]

2. i love my mini cooper and only live 3 miles from work

what about me? I agree that something needs to be done, but what about those of us who live in huge metroplexes without public transportation?

[Leopolds Ghost]

22. As a student of urban planning, I think a lot could be done transit wise that nobody's pushing for

A city like Houston, even, could have a decent fixed-rail transit system serving many parts of the city. I see you live in Dallas, a city that is actually trying to BUILD such a system, although light rail has its limitations.

In fact, Dallas is known in transit circles as the "Great Red Hope" because it is a conservative town in a Red state that has embraced
plans for rail transit. Be patient and get involved in your neighborhood
association to encourage them to bring transit to the neighborhood
and not oppose it.

[ComerPerro]

3. not without cars. Just without cars as we know them now, gas propelled

[Jcrowley]

5. Cars will be forever gas propelled

Even if they don't use gas.

Mining, Manfacturing, Processing. All necessary to make the automobile. All require petroleum.

[ComerPerro]

6. once produced, they don't have to use gas

granted, in production, gasoline and other natural resources will have to be used.

But if we aren't going to use any of these production methods, what do we use for transport instead?

[MadHound]

54. Not neccesarily

We have the capability to fulfill ALL of our fuel needs with biodiesel. We have the capability to fulfill ALL of our electrical needs with wind energy. Now all we need is the political and social will to enact these changes.

[Jcrowley]

57. Our needs are the problem

Miguel A Altieri
Professor of Agroecology
University of California, Berkeley

Elizabeth Bravo
Red por una América Latina Libre de Transgenicos
Quito, Ecuador

The nations of the OECD—the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, who account for 56% of the planet’s energy consumption, are desperately in need of a liquid fuel replacement for oil. Worldwide petroleum extraction rates are expected to peak this year, and global supply will likely dwindle significantly in the next fifty years. There is also a great need to find substitutes for fossil fuels, which are one of the major contributors to global climate change through the emission of CO2 and other greenhouse gases.

Biofuels have been promoted as a promising alternative to petroleum. Industry, government and scientific proponents of biofuels claim that they will serve as an alternative to peaking oil, mitigate climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, enhancing farmer incomes, and promoting rural development. But rigorous research and analysis conducted by respected ecologists and social scientists suggests that the large-scale industrial boom in biofuels will be disastrous for farmers, the environment, biodiversity preservation and consumers, particularly, the poor.

In this paper we address the ecological, social and economic implications of biofuel production. We argue that contrary to the false claims of corporations that promote these “green fuels,” the massive cultivation of corn, sugar cane, soybean, oil palm and other crops presently pushed by the fuel crops industry—all to be genetically engineered—will not reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but will displace tens of thousands of farmers, decrease food security in many countries, and accelerate the deforestation and environmental destruction of the Global South.

http://www.foodfirst.org/node/1662

[MadHound]

59. Yes, land based crops are not the answer,

But water based crops are. Biodiesel, using oil bearing algae as the feedstock, can indeed supply all of our needs<http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html> All that is required is 15,000 sq miles of water on which to grow the algae. While this may seem like a lot, it really isn't. It is a little under half the size of Maine, about a tenth the size of the Sonora desert.

Many wastewater treatment plants already use algae as the first stage of their treatment process. We could incorporate this into all wastewater treatment. In addition, most farmers have one or more ponds that they can grow algae in, thus providing a boon to the farmer. Aquaculture like this is not energy intensive, it can be done with a rowboat and a strainer. It doesn't take fertilizer, nor require pesticides. And biodiesel burns about ninety percent cleaner than gas, so it benefits the air quality also.

Biodiesel can be a boon for our country, but we are going to have to exert our collective will in order to bring this about. Part of this is going to require a mandate that all new vehicles are to use diesel engines only, thus we can phase in biodiesel gradually as we ramp up our production capability. All at no cost to our land based crops.

Sounds like a solution to me:shrug:

[Jcrowley]

64. Three big problems

So, is Oil from Algae the Future?

The answer to the question: We don’t know, not yet.

While algal oil certainly appears promising, it should be pointed out that lots more inputs need to be analyzed and further experimentations done before one can be sure of algal oil being a worthy large-scale substitute for petro-diesel. In theory, algae have the potential to be a major fuel resource. In practice, however, there are many questions to be answered and multiple issues to be resolved before bio diesel can be produced sustainably & affordably on a large-scale from algae.

This web site hopes to be a small catalyst that assists with such inputs and analyses for those pursuing efforts in this area. We would hence be most grateful if visitors could provide us their feedback on what additional inputs they would wish to have on algae-based biodiesel.

http://www.oilgae.com/

The following are some of the main problems with the algae to biodiesel concept:

1. Harvesting algae is much more difficult and energy intensive than most people realize.

2. Random natural algae tend to start taking over from artificially seeded algae fairly rapidly unless the pond is covered, and covering ponds costs money.

3. Ponds often have to be lined to meet groundwater regulatory requirements, which adds quite a bit to costs.

These are not the only problems, but each of these is a significant issue to be tackled.

Two other points:

1. The EROEI for oil is what makes all of this industrial society possible. No Biodiesel can even come near what oil gives. And we wouldn't want it to anyway as there comes a high cost with that as our planet screams to us daily.

2. The biggest problem with Biodiesel "solutions" in my view is that they serve to disguise or distract from the disease. We shouldn't be looking for fixes so much as recognizing that we need to reconfigure every aspect of our living arrangements. Now is there a place for biofuels in this? I think so but certainly less focus should be placed on some solution and more on examining new modalities.

[MadHound]

66. Spoken like people who don't know very much about aquaculture

Harvesting algae is labor intensive, not energy intensive. To harvest algae, at least on the small farming aquacultural scale, you need two people and what looks like essentially a fine mesh fence mounted on wheels on each side. The two people push/pull this contraption across the the width of the pond and skim off the algae. This is done every year by a lot of people with ponds. Yes, for larger commercial operations one would have to get a larger mechanized set up, but the principal is the same. Besides, the motor could all be electrical, charged via solar or wind.

If you seed your algae densely, you run little risk of having your pond overrun with natural algae.

The overwhelming majority of ponds are lined anyway, to either keep the mud down, prevent leakage, or to already meet groundwater standards. Linings can be anything from clay to plastic. My preference is clay.

The EROEI for biodiesel is more of an excuse for not using it, at least in many people's eyes. Yes, you gas mileage drops a couple of miles per gallon, but in the larger scope of things is this really such a big deal? Your exhaust pollutants drop radically, and your engine lasts much longer running on biodiesel due to increased lubrocity of biodiesel. In addition, the waste products from refining biodiesel are water and glycerin, which can be recycled into other products like soap or dynamite.

And biodiesel solutions aren't a disguise or distraction. If they were, don't you think that Bush would be pushing them as hard as he is pushing hydrogen? We do need to reconfigure our lives, but frankly our society cannot do that all at once. Conservation is a fine thing, one that everybody should practice, but the overwhelming majority of people simply cannot build green houses tommorrow. Nor can everybody live in a centralized urban area, since there is simply not enough room. Our public transportation in most cities is a joke, and interstate public transportation is virtually non-existent. Plus, there are people like myself who wish to live, and work, out in the rural parts of this country. Who are we to tell them no?

Establishing the infrastructure in order to build a fuel efficient society will take generations, just as it took generations to establish the car culture that we have today. Rather than continuing to use petroleum, and risk running off the cliff while we make this transition, why not use biodiesel? It provides a great interim, if not permanent solution while we reconfigure our society.

Thus my push for biodiesel. It is an off the shelf solution to our dwindling fuel needs, It is clean, renewable, and a boon to our farmers. Is it the end all and be all of our energy solutions? Who knows, but it is a great leap forward from what we have now. If you have any other viable solutions that can be implemented on the scale and time frame that biodiesel can, I'm listening. Otherwise I say that we mandate that all new vehicles use diesel motors and we start using algae based biodiesel. We simply don't have the time it would take to reconfigure our society otherwise.

[Jcrowley]

68. Some excellent points in there

Time to powerdown. Got to.

:toast:

[Canuckistanian]

4. It's inevitable

How we deal with it will speak volumes to those who are in denial.

Or maybe not.

Maybe we're doomed to our fate.

[A HERETIC I AM]

7. Personalized, personal transportation is not going away for those in the industrialized world.....

we are too used to it. Ingenuity will provide the solution. Individualized transport is too ingrained, I think to be considered as something modern society will gladly shed itself of.

An accommodation will be met.

We are pretty smart beings when pushed.

[karlrschneider]

9. There must be a pony.

...

[Jcrowley]

12. It's not a matter of habit

or gladness or choice or rumored cleverness this is unforgiving geology.

Coal will peak around 2025. No telling with natural gas, that falls off like a cliff rather than a graduation.

One must first approach this with the realistic notion that the high energy lifestyles of the last 100 years has been a complete aberration and unrealistic position. It has nothing to do with "being used to it."

Humans may be clever with gadgets but we sure don't know how to use them.

[A HERETIC I AM]

21. Don't sell your fellow humans short.....

An excellent point was made in NPR this morning;

The Model T got around 23 MPG. Todays fleet average is about the same. But that is not an indication of where technology has taken us.

Your statement "One must first approach this with the realistic notion that the high energy lifestyles of the last 100 years has been a complete aberration and unrealistic position. It has nothing to do with "being used to it." --- I think misses my point. It has EVERYTHING to do with being used to it.

If you think that the European and American cultures will readily do away with their personal transport, you are mistaken. The marketplace will provide the solution. It always has and it always will when there is sufficient demand. Geology be damned. Fossil fuels are not the only way to make a wheel go around.

[Leopolds Ghost]

32. If you think Europeans are as personal transit driven as you and Americans are, you're mistaken

What you and many other Americans would consider "radical and unacceptable"
reduction in vehicle miles traveled,

most people in other countries would call "normality."

And your relatives would call "the 1950s-1960s."

You know, back when most people lived in pedestrian friendly areas.

An era that also happened to coincide with the heyday of the car.

How can this be? (LA is the second most densely-developed city in the nation, don't pretend "Americans love their freedom, they don't want to live cheek by jowl in urban areas".)

The fact is, people were complaining about traffic and car craze
back in the 1950s and even the 1920s. Ever seen a picture of the miles long traffic jams of those model Ts?

And yet, AND YET, VMT was much, much less 25 years ago than it is today.

Don't lecture us about how Europeans need to live as we do if you're not prepared to reduce your own VMT to 1960's levels, or ask your neighbors to do the same.

Unless you think the 1920's-1960's were an era when Americans suffered for lack of mobility...?

[A HERETIC I AM]

36. I'm lecturing you?

"Don't lecture us about how Europeans need to live as we do if you're not prepared to reduce your own VMT to 1960's levels, or ask your neighbors to do the same."

WOW....Is that the "Royal" US? or are you speaking for every other possible person that might read this thread?

"Lecture" you? Lol...kiss my ass.

People WERE indeed complaining about traffic in the old days and will continue to until a seamless, standardized system evolves where an individual can use his own vehicle, go where he wants, WHEN he wants in the direction he wants at a cost that is affordable.

"If you think Europeans are as personal transit driven as you and Americans are, you're mistaken"

You have obviously never driven on the M1 or the A25. Or perhaps you drive those motorways everyday and are still convinced that the millions of British motorists and the rest of Europe are quite ready to give up their Autos. If that is the case, my apologies. I had not realized what sort i was replying to.

[Leopolds Ghost]

40. People in hell want icewater

"People WERE indeed complaining about traffic in the old days and will continue to until a seamless, standardized system evolves where an individual can use his own vehicle, go where he wants, WHEN he wants in the direction he wants at a cost that is affordable."

Excuse me for sounding hostile. I exaggerated the vehemence of your original post. The stringency of your actual arguments, however, is noted.

Many people in America feel that way.

One of the reasons personal autos are so popular in Britain, compared to many countries, is the cheapness of rapidly dwindling North Sea oil, a recent innovation. Compare that to cities in China, which literally cannot exist as livable places were everyone to drive. You must think Tokyo a horrible, horrible place, or else you imagine that Shanghai's new autoways are doing more than just destroy 1000 years of hutongs in order to take a mere 100,000 bicycles off the road and put the remainder in mortal peril, as pedestrians are in this country -- including large numbers of unacknowledged pedestrians in a suburb near you. You may not even realize they are trying to get around without a car -- most well-meaning liberals in my suburb try to convince them not to. When healthcare workers complain that cities in their home country, or in their working-class neighborhood, are easy to navigate without a personal automobile, suburban liberals sigh and declare "This is America, in America, we drive. Your kids will feel otherwise. If you don't have a car, you won't be able to marry or keep a good job because people will think there is something wrong with you." I have had people tell me that because I don't own a car. People I know who are affluent professionals but do not drive, often for health reasons (eyesight etc.) have similar experiences. They encounter sidewalks that mysteriously lead from hidden entrances to gated communities to bus stops, and dead end at the nearest bus stop. Who are these perfunctory sidewalks intended for?

[Jcrowley]

56. It has nothing to do with selling folks short

or what European culture or American culture, which are entirely different beasts but both depend on stealing others oil (and much else) as neither have any significant amounts left on their own lands.

It also doesn't matter what you or I think geology will not be damned nor is it subject to the whims of economic cornucopians or techno-utopians.

Peak oil is only one of the factors here. Have you looked into the worldwide copper supply? Or so many other resources?

No it has nothing to do with "being used to it" when something is gone it is gone and no matter how "used to it" you have become no amount of magical thinking will bring it back.

[Maven]

13. How about something like this?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UniModal

Also see: http://www.skytran.net

Personal maglev transports--I think they use the Inductrack method, so they're pretty efficient (theoretically, anyway--I don't think there's an actual Inductrack train in service).

In any event, we absolutely need to revitalize the train system in this country, which is something Kunstler has said from the beginning.

[A HERETIC I AM]

26. If only i had been able to copyright or patent an idea i had 30 years ago....

I predict that at some point in the future, the outward appearance of our personal transport vehicles, call them cars, pods, whatever, will become less and less important. Personalizing the interior will become all the rage. When folks become less concerned what their vehicle looks like on the outside, standardization can occur and that can lead to all sorts of innovations, much like the system described in your links.

[Leopolds Ghost]

28. What the hell happened to Inductrak? An energy-efficient maglev

I understand Bechtel and Bombardier opposed it and convinced the federal government to eliminate Inductrak from its list of approved maglev technologies, BECAUSE it wasn't profitable enough for them (untested, not enough expensive proprietary technology, they didn't own the patents) and apparently to kill off the notion of maglev entirely, they eliminated the sensible notion of a conventional-rail based (quadruple-rail) maglev or fixed-beam maglev in favor of some horrendously expensive pilot project that would be nothing more than a source of graft for Bechtel or Bombardier, like the ones in China and Germany.

Meanwhile, the auto industry bought up a working prototype of a magnetically levitated flywheel car, I think it used permanent magnets, too. Took out the flywheel and replaced it with a gas engine, kept all the other innovations, just so we could have a working hybrid (the Prius).
Just so we could keep buying fuel at our local pump instead of plugging our cars in to the wall. Prius owners... I hope you're happy..!

[chknltl]

8. Steam Power???? Perhaps...

I am no "Tech-Gizzard" but it seems to me that there should be some way to fuel cars only with H2O and heat the fuel to steam. No, I have no clue what should be used to heat that water. I am hardly imagining dragging around a bunch of firewood here but there should be some way to rapidly heat the water which does not require burning anything. Just a related thought from out in left field....

[ComerPerro]

10. That's kind of the theory with hydrogen fuel cells, but as far as traditional steam power goes

I am not certain, but I think the weight of the engine would be too much and make the vehicle inefficient. Steam locomotives worked, but they were had very large engines and very distributed weights. Plus they rode on rails, less friction.

[chknltl]

14. I did not know that about the fuel cells....

As far as weight to power ratios, we have come a looooong way from the days of those steam powered beauties which once roamed the rails of our planet. It just seems to me that someone could come up with a lightweight engine with the ability to somehow flash-heat the fed in water to steam and place this engine in a lightweight vehicle.... Again, I am no techie...maybe just wishful imaginings here.

[ComerPerro]

15. Yeah, the trick is finding a power source that can flash-heat the water

and storing it on-board.

Don't know if solar is powerful enough.

As for hydrogen, I may have misrepresented exactly what they do. If you are curious, I suggest you do some googling, its a better source than my uninformed ass could ever be, lol.

[chknltl]

23. Yeah I suppose I could do some research...

...but hanging out here is funner. Tech stuff has never been my interest anyway. I've lot's of silly notions like this which make sense to me and likely fly fast in the face of physics.

For instance: Why doesn't Nasa design a launch system which hauls the vehicle up the side of a large hill or mountain and use GRAVITY to pull the vehicle DOWNSLOPE on a set of mag-lev rails which gently arc upward to vertical prior to releasing the vehicle. Imagine the space shuttle already traveling at over a hundred MPH prior to it's own engines taking over after a few miles of gently arcing roller coaster ride! No I don't see the need to squish the astronauts with outrageous g-forces here but it sure seems to me that if we have no problems utilizing the gravity of planetary bodies for adding speed to our existing vehicles OUT IN SPACE why not use these same forces at launch and supplementing them with mag-lev.

Meanwhile back on earth and back to the future of automobiles, here's another of my silly notions...(someone's gonna read this and get rich on it): So why isn't my car alarm keyed into my cell phone? How tough would that tech be? How useful huh? Wouldn't instead of an annoying alarm a simple call on your cell phone alerting you BY YOUR CAR that it is being messed with and by the way should "I", (the car) "dial 9-11 here and activate the GPS...please press yes or no"

OP: sorry not desiring of hijacking your thoughtful thread...I brought it back to cars here...well semi intelligent car alarms...that should count for something shouldn't it? :blush:

[ComerPerro]

25. We are all guilty of that. One time (after several college level physics courses)

I was chatting with my brother (a physics major) about the possibility of using electrical power to run the pistons of a generator. We talked about how it could be built, if it could save energy, what kind of efficiency it would have, how it should be made, materials...

It wasn't until about an hour and a half in the discussion that one of us snapped awake and realized DUH! We were describing a perpetual motion machine!

[originalpckelly]

16. Well, the main problem with hydrogen is 1) it's not an energy source...

and 2) it's a low density fuel.

Hydrogen does come in mineral deposits, but it is usually made in a process that is actually quite harmful to the environment.

It is also the lowest density gas, so that means it has less possible energy.

What we need is fuel-independence through electric cars. That way we can exploit a large variety of energy sources and we don't become dependent on one source again. It will allow us to rapidly change without having to buy new cars should some new energy source become available.

However, as it stands batteries in cars do not have enough staying power. We might consider a standardized battery that could be exchanged at filling stations, to be charged there. Or we could use some type of electrically driven car carrying rail system. Something similar to the car carriers they use in the Channel-tunnel.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurotunnel_Shuttle

It could replace highways, and actually shorten the travel time for someone driving on a highway, while also allowing us to have our cars with us when we go somewhere. It might be a very acceptable solution, because it would reduce the hassle of a road trip and interstate highways are pretty standardized and don't offer that much in the way of driving independence.

[ComerPerro]

27. I always hear about electric cars in terms of distance, but I always wonder

what about city driving. As in, lots of time stopped at red lights. How much power is drained when the car "idles" (although an electric car wouldn't truly idle). In a gas-propelled car, things like AC, radio, etc are powered electrically by the battery, which is powered ultimately (after converstion and storage) through the engine.

But I assume an electric car would route power to these non-movement features from the main battery as well. So does that cut into mileage if you are stuck at red lights? Or is there another battery, and you charge both?

I just don't know much about strictly electric cars.

[Leopolds Ghost]

37. Electric cars without flywheel motors or some "hybrid" motor are a problem. Flywheel cars

Flywheel cars are the answer to the all-electric problem. Flywheels idle
all the time by definition. Dynamic drive braking system (already in use)
transfers almost all the forward momentum of the car into kinetic energy of the flywheel, recycling energy as you go up and down hills. When you start from a stop, instead of consuming massive amounts of wasted power as in a battery or conventional engine (which are most inefficient when starting from a dead stop), the flywheel is capable of delivering pulsed energy in any quantity, rapidly. And rundown times of a rapidly spinning (500,000 rpm) flywheel are comparable or better than conventional car batteries. They don't have to be "cranked back up again".

[ComerPerro]

39. oh ok so there is an "idle" function or something like it.

[Leopolds Ghost]

41. Yes, dynamic braking was invented for use in rail transit

and the car companies figured out how to make it work in a hybrid Prius.

(Either that or they stripped the technology from the flywheel car
prototype, which, having funded, they were able to cherry-pick for
patents -- as you note, whoever owns the patents can withhold tech
from the general public and sell bloated, proprietary systems in
order to milk the government dry, or sell to niche markets only,
the way many organic products were kept off the general market for
years because ill-intentioned farmers and co-op owners wanted their
customers to pay a premium for the privilege of buying organic
foods in limited quantities, like cars before Henry Ford came along.
Patents allow companies to keep products like personal cars off the
market and restrict them to prototypes, or the luxury market. Also
see the movie _Tucker_, and the various movies on how the auto
industry deliberately killed off electric transport in the US
in order to benefit the oil and rubber cartel.)

[Jonathan50]

50. I already pointed out to you on another thread that dynamic braking.

Was developed for the Gyrobus.. Railroad engines would have no need for dynamic braking, they don't have batteries that need to be recharged. All electricity for railroads are delivered either through overhead power lines or through a third rail.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrobus

[Leopolds Ghost]

69. Dynamic braking is commonly used for light rail. It makes hybrid cars and flywheel cars

Much more efficient. Especially flywheel cars because they are all-electric. Eliminating the prototype flywheel car from development was the "perfect crime" because it is the most promising electric technology, one of the few that answers your complaints, and yet DUers have not heard of it. Just like most DUers who complain about how mass transit wouldn't work in their city don't realize how extensive streetcar / interurbans were in the 1930s. Los Angeles was built around the streetcar.

[Jonathan50]

49. I'm sorry, but you are mistaken..

In cars today, the battery is only used for starting. All electrical energy when the engine is running is supplied by the alternator.

The AC compressor in cars is run by a belt from the crankshaft of the engine.

AC and heating will be a truly major portion of the battery drain in electric cars.

[chknltl]

31. I've had a similar related thought:

I live in Tacoma, thirty miles north of me is Seattle. Twice daily poor Interstate 5 is horribly choked with cars. Often travel time during these rush "hour" period is tripled.
There is a fine rail system connecting the two though. So why not offer up a rail system which allows a driver to merely drive on like a ferry. Then after driving on, a simple system which locks the car on by its wheels activates rendering the car immobile. When enough cars have loaded on the train takes off while the occupants take the 20 minutes of travel time to do as they please in the comfort of their own vehicle. I'll bet we could design this in such a way as to move over a few hundred or more vehicles per load and move a new load every half hour or less thereby easing up congestion on poor old overburdened I-5.
edited to add punctuations

[originalpckelly]

35. We need fuel-independence in everything, so that's a great idea...

I think most people will agree that it's just the best way to do it, because it's just so fast. The truth is that we could probably allow people to travel by car ferry rail so fast that it would compete with air travel.

[chknltl]

43. Hooray one of my insane notions seconded!

Frankly I thought my semi-intelligent car alarm was likely to get a faster response here but YES this system could work imo. I have envisioned it just like you say but starting out as a system to control traffic congestion to and from the major urban centers. The Seattle Tacoma route is a natural with peak time congestions occurring twice daily five days a week. I know that the Sea-Tac corridor is not alone here with the congestion issue but I DO know that there is a commuter transit system in place doing double duty on those very tracks which move normal trains daily up and down the west coast. Eventually A system like I propose here would allow for much longer daily commutes, Seattle-Portland for instance. If the trains eventually morphed into mag-lev systems then commutes between Seattle and L.A. become feasible too...just like what you are saying. How nice would it be to load up in Seattle disembark from your car, walk along an overhead enclosed corridor to a restaurant or general public area, maybe even a sleeper car and hang out while being transported, car and all to a destination like Chicago the NEXT DAY! These things ARE possible IMHO with current tech...

I am sure there are plenty of flies in my ointment...like most folks I know my heart is in the right place... nothing wrong with fantasizing though. Perhaps I missed my calling as a Sci-Fi writer.

:hi:

[Jonathan50]

55. I used to take the Canal street/Algiers ferry in New Orleans fairly regularly..

The wait was usually long and frustrating..

[Leopolds Ghost]

34. Go to Wikipedia: Flywheel Energy Storage -- an alternative to electric motor/battery

Flywheel powered cars operate just like hybrid gas-electric cars, only instead of a gas engine, they have a massive magnetically suspended flywheel where the engine would be.

The flywheel is plugged into a generator-size electrical outlet at home and recharges overnight. Massive amounts of energy can be stored in a rapidly spinning series of flywheels, which absorb and transmit energy at an efficiency of 90% -- much better than any other energy storage device -- and they double as a generator/motor, meaning they can be used as both energy storage and locomotive device, delivering pulsed energy to start the car. The batteries only exist for backup. Much like the hybrid gas-electric, dynamic drive braking and energy transfer between the (flywheel) engine block and auxiliary battery pack had to be perfected first, when the flywheel car was first designed, hybrid car technology had not yet been perfected. The hybrid in this instance is a flywheel engine which doubles as an energy source, not a gas engine.

This is current technology, these flywheels exist and a prototype car was made.

Unfortunately, the car companies stripped it for patents to make their g-ddamned gas-electric hybrid car, which they are now selling as the "ultimate solution" because it doesn't put their buddies, the gas companies, out of business. (Most oil industry profits are made at the filling station.)

Magnetically suspended flywheels can spin at upwards of .5 million rpm (10,000 r/sec) and have rundown times measurable in months, or years.

Engine failure results in the flywheel vaporizing itself due to the speeds at which it is rotating if it cracks or falls off center. Therefore it is made out of lightweight material (Kevlar or tape) which is rolled up into a heavy flywheel on magnetic bearings. The flywheels rotate in opposite directions because otherwise the car would be unable to turn due to the gyroscopic forces emitted by the flywheel. These forces are great enough that the engine itself can prevent the vehicle from crashing or overturning by taking advantage of gyroscopic forces.

Flywheels are also alone in alternative power methods, in that, unlike alternate fuels, they can power trucks and other heavy machinery. In fact, flywheels are just about the only all-electric power source capable of handling large loads.

[originalpckelly]

38. Yeah, as long as it uses an electrical outlet, it just doesn't matter how the energy is stored...

On a tangential topic, I've been thinking about patents, and quite frankly it seems they really serve the producers more than the consumers. I think we need to start some type of campaign to eliminate them. I say this as someone interested in inventing new things, but quite frankly I enjoy just thinking about new ideas, it's not some awful thing. Money doesn't have to be the only motivating factor in life, and I think honestly that good inventors will always be around whether or not there are patents to make money off of.

[karlrschneider]

11. Well, the only basic energy source we know of that can be utilized is heat.

(and light, to a much less degree - which is also basically electromagnetic radiation at a shorter wavelength)...it all boils (!) down to that until we figure out a way to suck energy from the "other space" a la Heinlein's "Waldo".

[Occulus]

33. Fusion power + magnetic levitation?

Gravitophotonic drive, ala Heim theory?

Magnetically contained antimatter reactors?

(Solar won't work except as part of a complete solution; at least, not unless it's way more efficient than it is today.)

Electricity-generating genetically designed microbes? Nanite power cells?

Wild ideas, all, but necessity and invention and all...

(How would one represent mathematically the phrase "Necessity is the mother of all invention"?)

[piedmont]

65. The water in a steam engine is NOT fuel-- it is the working fluid.

The fuel is whatever energy source is being used to boil the water. The water itself contributes NO energy to the system-- it only transfers it from the heat source to the mechanical components.

[originalpckelly]

17. I don't if I should say this, but I've been thinking about a new concept lately...

it would be a neighborhood ultralight monorail service, that would use slightly modified CURBS as rails for a small passenger train.

[Maven]

18. Like skytran, but upside down? nt

[originalpckelly]

19. Well, in a way, though it would offer on-demand stops...

it's still collectivized in ownership and use, just to cut down on the costs.

However, the cars I'm talking about are only two people wide and four seats long, they are short, and they have pre-paid swipe cards that can be re-charged on the internet and other places, in lieu of cash.

It would use a swap out battery, so no electric wires would be needed. The battery would be automatically swapped into something that looks like an underground electrical box.

The neighbors would actually own the system and pay for it, but in return they would receive a cut in any profits over the years for allowing people to use their curbs. It would be a collectivized government independent transit system/company.

It could provide on demand service by a standardized protocol for stopping, something like pull the cord if you want to stop a house or two down, to give it the time to slow down.

At intersections with streets, a very thin two channel concrete strip would be built between curbs, as well as any other place where the curbs would get in the way (like a street facing driveway.)

[Maven]

20. I like the swap-out battery idea

I think your idea would be well-suited to residential areas. People would want to be able to stop on demand (i.e., from house to house, as you suggested), they would want to exit at street level, and they would want to implement a system that wasn't structurally obtrusive (no platforms or poles). Whereas in more urban areas it would be preferable to keep the cars elevated above traffic and only allow stops at designated points, and the added structure wouldn't be a problem.

[originalpckelly]

24. And see the thing that's cool, is that people would get paid for letting go in their neighborhood...

it'd be a non-profit corporation that was collectively owned by the neighbors/small businesses in an area. People would get paid every time a train runs past their house, so to them it would be a financial incentive to take part in the system. Since many cities technically own the curb, many of the barriers to the system could be easily legislated.

The downside is that modifying the curb means ripping it up, then casting a new one. Depending on the actual "rail" itself, it would probably not need more than two shallow channels. The cars would obviously have to be fairly narrow, or else it would interfere with parking and landscape.

[Leopolds Ghost]

45. What about a magnetic tube system the size of a storm drain?

Using inductrak "bumpers" and neighborhood offramps, a 6-foot wide culvert underneath the street could house a fast moving magnetically levitated PRT system containing vehicles as high as a low-cielinged automobile, with recliner-type seats. Because of the tubular shape and inductrak guideways, the vehicle could accelerate and turn in any direction at speed with absolute safety. Because of the small footprint, PRT vehicles, and variety of possible construction techniques, such a system could be dendritic (tree-shaped), much more extensive than even the old postwar trolley systems. The scenery wouldn't be much, but anything wider than a four-lane road in America is often pitifully ugly, as-is.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

29. I stopped driving completely after reading "The Long Emergency"

downsized and simplified my life.

I'm trying to be prepared for what is to come, but I don't think any of us are really ready for the changes we will have to deal with.

[ComerPerro]

30. you have that luxury, but people are still driving for you

[Leopolds Ghost]

42. James Howard Kunstler drove for your sins

No wait, that was Al Gore (really -- he utilized carbon offsets that we may be saved from having to live in energy-intensive houses.)

Me, I am car-free as a matter of choice. I am always amused at how "free" people claim the car makes them when they never want to go places because it is "difficult to drive there" or "difficult to park" or simply off of their daily beaten path.

The reality is that in America, unfortunately, a car makes you free to reproduce, that is what I hear and that's what I'm finding. Don't want
to be considered a marriageable, sane, employable individual? Don't
own a car -- even in NY or DC. It's not like that in most countries.
Change that, for starters. Were the hippies in the 60's expected to own
a car? Were the Katrina evacuees, or the immigrants that are fixing their houses and taking care of their relatives today?

[Jonathan50]

52. Steppenwolf "Born to be Wild"

Was written about one of the band members getting his first car..


Get your motor runnin'
Head out on the highway
Lookin' for adventure
And whatever comes our way

[OxQQme]

44. The Roads Must Roll

Heinlin

[Viva_La_Revolution]

47. you're right. Twice a month I go grocery shopping

and someone drives me. Because no longer is it possible to find an affordable place to live with a store closer than 2 miles away, too far to walk to every few days. and the food I buy (the only thing I buy retail btw) is trucked in from god knows where, because no one produces food locally anymore.

that has to change.

[Selatius]

53. Unfortunately, it will be a forced change...when gas is north of 4 or 5 dollars/gallon.

Economic activity would suffer tremendously if the fundamental infrastructure that it runs upon is not changed to deal with oil energy shortage.

[ComerPerro]

58. Well, its not even the literal "someone drives you"

theres the delivery guy who brings you take out when you order, there's the trucks who ship the groceries you buy and the ingredients for the food you consume... So fuel consumption is promoted by every American, even if you don't drive a car. Unless of course one is entirely self sustaining.

Its good that you recognize that fact, I commend you. A lot of people are quick to say, "well, I don't drive, so I will be fine"

[Blue_Tires]

46. k+r

[HCE SuiGeneris]

48. Reality can be a bitter pill to those

who careen through this world only semi-awake...

[lectrobyte]

51. Kunstler is always entertaining to read, but cars will be with us for a

while yet, be they running off of electricity or ethanol or whatever.

[chaska]

60. k&r

[LeftHander]

61. Great read....we are at the cusp of a great change...

I have written time and time again about a "post oil dependant" future and what we have to do to get there.

1. mass transportation
2. consumption
3. local economics
4. human scale development
5. decentralized food production and distribution
6. defunding and dismantling most of the military
7. reinvesting in education
8. healthcare
9. Investing in alternate energy technology
10. Being brave to become pioneers again.
11. opening the airwaves
12. Redistribution of wealth. (rich must re-invest in society through taxation)
13. Renew compassion and loving kindness for all
14. Stop watching television as it is now. (wasteland, opiate)
15. Election reform (voice of the people not the biggest bankroll)

These are the realities that will face our children. The teen of today will have to have an example to build on and we know...we know that how many of us live today will not be the way our great grandchildren will live. We need to arm our children with the compassion, hope and drive to pioneer our new world that is unfolding before us.

Is it utopian...I guess it is..this is what we are good at, we humans...dreaming...and making life better for those that follow. We need to return to that...

Every day we need to think about it....how to we effect change no matter how small the benefit. Every little step we get closer.

[gravity]

62. I don't want to think about it

Ignorance is bliss

[JanMichael]

63. Agreed. Over a cliff we go.

Not Cliff Richards though but a real energy, environmental, economic, cliff.

[Karenina]

67. All of the above "We'll solve it with technology" posts

ASSUME the infrastructure to do so will remain in place once Mo Nature has her revenge. :rofl::rofl::rofl: