I almost had a wreck. I slammed on my brakes and fortunately the brakes on my Prius held. I stopped just a few feet shy of the car in front of me. Dead stop. Luckily no one was too close behind. I was going around sixty, heading South on I-95. It was after nine at night. I left my daughter’s home near Washington, DC an hour before noon. I was returning alone to South Carolina, the Sunday after Thanksgiving.
The traffic was a nightmare. If I only averaged 62 miles per hour on mostly interstate driving where the speed limit was 70, the driving time would have been 8½ hours. Instead the entire trip took 12½ hours, and excluding stops, I averaged only 47 miles per hour. The “average” speed is misleading. If I could have been driving 45 miles per hour the whole way, the drive would have been far less stressful and far less dangerous. Sometimes I was only going 22 miles per hour, sometimes only 11, sometimes I sat at a dead stop on the interstate, not knowing how long before the traffic moved at all.
The dead stops were the most dangerous. Inexplicably, heavy traffic would rush forward above 70 mph, only to come to a complete halt. I tried to moderate my speed, knowing soon I would have to hit the brakes, but inevitably Nascar wannabees would fly by going 80 in order to get a few cars closer to the finish line. I tried keeping a safe distance between my car and the car in front, but inevitably some idiot couldn’t resist cutting in front of me and squeezing into the space.
In spite of all my precautions I saw myself on an impact collision course with the car in front of me. I am thankful I barely had room to stop without hitting anyone.
Yet this isn’t just a rant about how tough driving is over a holiday weekend. About ten years ago, I published an article on line as to how to prevent such traffic nightmares. I even sent a copy to the Secretary of Transportation. I doubt I told him anything he didn’t already know. The solution just wasn’t politically expedient.
I have a love/hate relationship with politics. I love political issues, or to be more precise, coming up with solutions to problems that can only be solved with political will. But I hate the often irrational politics that prevents solutions from being adopted.
Maglev train going over 250 mph in Shanghai China
In Shanghai, China, a modern Maglev (Magnetic Levitation) train cruises along smoothly at over 250 miles an hour—over five times faster than progress by car on the Interstate.
The problem is too many cars. The Interstate Highway System, built during the Eisenhower administration, was the envy of the world. By the late 1950’s there were about 70 million vehicles. Today there are about 270 million vehicles. Too crowded; too slow; too dangerous.
Planes seemed like the solution. Several years ago I flew from South Carolina to New York, and then rode in a vehicle from the airport to the hotel. The ride using the hotel transit to go ten miles took as long as the flight. Today, with heightened security, it takes so long to get on and off a plane; and so long to get to and from the airport; it just doesn’t make much sense to fly unless you are going five hundred miles or further.
Yet even the friendly skies are becoming hopelessly overcrowded. Technically, it isn’t the skies; it’s the airports. I remember hearing on the news that at bottleneck at the airports in New York can delay flights around the entire country. The problem is, there isn’t room for another big airport anywhere near New York.
Then I got a brainstorm. Why not build an airport 50 miles away from New York City; and connect it to the city using a high-speed Maglev bullet train that can take passengers into the city in fifteen minutes? The more I thought about it, the more I realized that such high speed transportation should be utilized for far more than connecting airports to cities. It should be used for any distance from 50 miles to 500 hundred miles.
The problems with cars and planes for personal transportation, is that they are not enough. They only provide two tiers of transportation. We need five tiers of transportation, each for different distances.
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For up to half a mile, the best mode of transportation is walking.
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For between 0.5 miles and 5 miles, the best transportation is bicycling.
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For between 5 and 50 miles, the best transportation is driving.
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For between 50 and 500 miles, the best is taking a high-speed Maglev train.
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For 500 and 5000 miles, the best is flying.
Flying from London to Australia, about 9000 miles? For that you would need a rocket plane that can briefly fly in orbit.
Traveling in America, three out of these five essential ways of getting around are terribly under-used. We drive everywhere and rarely walk anywhere, unless we go to the mall. Walking is so healthy, millions of Americans drive to a fitness center, park as close to the entrance as possible, and then spend at least thirty minutes walking on a treadmill. This is nuts! Walking is one of the cheapest, healthiest, and least polluting modes of transportation.
Of course, walking has its limitations. For most people this limit is about a half mile. Therein enters the next cheapest, just as healthy, and non-polluting transportation: bicycling.
One of the best reasons for walking and bicycling, is that they take up less space than cars. Even in small cities bicycles can travel faster than cars. Personally, if something is over five miles away I want to drive. However, when I drive I want to be able to drive faster than I could riding a bicycle. Much of the time on the interstate, a bicycle could go far faster than the traffic. In fact, much of the time on my recent trip, a jogger could go faster than the traffic.
Of course, for distances over five miles you can’t expect walking and bicycles to create more space for cars. From five to fifty miles cars are perfect. From fifty to five hundred miles cars become more and more a dangerous monotonous stressful boring headache. I’m not sure if human beings are too intelligent to drive cars safely, or too stupid to drive cars safely; but our brains are not designed to pay attention to unchanging stimuli for long periods of time. Thus we distract ourselves with cell phones, GPS devices, conversation, listening to the radio or whatever. We don’t know what we don’t see, unless we crash into it.
So why not take a train when traveling a couple hundred miles? Because America has not adequately modernized its railroads in hundreds of years. Railroads, literally cars riding on rails, are obsolete and only suitable to move products, not people. Riding on iron rails was fine a hundred years ago, but not today. On antiquated rails, trains can’t run safely over 80 miles an hour. Maglev high-speed trains run on a cushion of air. They can run safely over 250 miles an hour. At the beginning of the recession, the stimulus package almost included building the first maglev train system in America. It never happened.
Proposed high speed train routes between Atlanta and Charlotte
I think the first high-speed maglev train route should go from Atlanta to Charlotte. These two major cities in the South are 250 miles apart, the perfect distance for a maglev bullet train. By car, the trip will ostensibly take four hours. Realistically, it will probably take five hours. The flight time by jet is less than one hour, but anyone who flies knows how much extra time it takes just to get on a plane, or how much extra time the plane might be delayed before takeoff even after you are on the plane. USA Today recommends arriving at least an hour early at the airport to have enough time to get on the plane, and that’s only if you only have carry-on luggage. So a 45 minute flight still takes about two hours, twice as long as driving. However, if you take a maglev bullet train, which can cruise along at 250 miles an hour, the train can go the distance in about an hour. This assumes no stops in-between. The train should stop at the Greenville-Spartanburg Airport, about half way in-between, to allow passengers from these two cities to take the train either to Charlotte or Atlanta.
Recently a friend of mine made a similar trip to Washington during the same Thanksgiving vacation. He flew. At first I thought I should have flown, too, until I realized he had to drive from Greenville to Charlotte, just to get the flight he wanted. With a high-speed Maglev train, he could take the train from Greenville to Charlotte in about twenty minutes.
The iron horse united our country beginning in the 1830’s. Railroad passenger traffic peaked in the 1940’s and has been downhill ever since. The interstate highways system paved the way to progress in the 1950’s, but can no longer accommodate four times the number of vehicles is was designed for. Nor can we fly everywhere as in some Jetson’s fantasy. The sky may be limitless, but airports are limited.
We need not just cars and planes, but also trains. Private industry isn’t going to do it. American taxpayers subsidize our highways and airports. Such an infrastructure project can only happen if and when politicians recognize the only real way to truly “make America great again” is to rebuild the vital transportation infrastructure that we need to prosper.
Trains may not be as sexy as cars or as thrilling as flying, but trains provide a vital third tier of transportation that allow the other two to function properly. Moreover, trains are far more energy efficient than cars. Because I own a Prius, I got fifty miles per gallon on my sojourn to Washington and back. Meanwhile, millions of other cars were burning gas. Polluting the air, and exacerbating global warming, even as they sat dead stopped on the interstate. At a time where climate destabilization and global warming should be top priorities, efficient high-speed maglev trains can help preserve the planet without restricting our freedom to travel around the country.
Anyone who frequently rides a bicycle knows how much air resistance can slow you down. In a car we forget how much energy is needed just to push the air in front of the vehicle out of the way. Yet unless one tailgates like Nascar drivers or bicycle racers, each vehicle, usually carrying only one person, has to push the air out of the way all over again. The advantage of planes and jets is that they can fly high where the air is thinner providing less air-resistance. Of course, it takes a tremendous amount of energy to lift a plane high enough to take advantage of less air-resistance. The longer the flight, the more efficient flying becomes. Yet aerodynamic Maglev trains only have to push the air away once for hundreds of passengers. Even at ground level such trains are far more energy efficient than cars.
In a world of rapid technological advancements it is possible to have “too much technology.” For some problems, you need a computer. For others, you need a pencil and paper. For short distances, all the technology we need is a good pair of walking shoes. Yet when it comes to trains our country has too little technology. The old trains are obsolete. New modern ultra-fast maglev trains are the vital missing link in our transportation infrastructure. There is no reason to plug along an interstate at thirty miles an hour in heavy traffic, hour after hour, when you can hop on a train that can go eight times faster—and allow you to take a nap or send a text without endangering anyone.