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A High Efficiency Ground Commute System Concept
by James Edward David ClineABSTRACTThis is to suggest utilizing some of the surplus aerospace capacity for creating a backupground transportation system technology. The concept was an outgrowth of the gas stationlines of the early-70's, with its spectre of losing all crude oil imports from other countries, andthe transportation energy crisis resulting in our widespread form of living. The concept grewfrom speculation on what could be done with existing resources if cars could not generally befueled anymore: how to get the commute function going again. From there the conceptevolved into one in many ways superior to the existing commute system based onautomobiles etc. It preserves the individual vehicle ownership and possession feature of ourcustomary way, yet uses a distributed energy technology which greatly reduces the vehicularmass, and has inherent automatic guidance and routing functions.It may be easier to convey the concept by describing its evolution from that hypotheticalsituation where all crude oil imports cease indefinitely.The basic technology might be labeled "Pull Band" transportation, in that its most rudimentaryforms consists of a person grabs onto a moving rope or moving metal band, and is pulleddown the street by it, as the person rolls along on roller skates or other wheeled support. Theropes or steel bands would be in a continuous loop around each city block, and powered bythe then surplus car engine scrap pile. From that humble, get-system-going-again start, theconcept evolves into a Pull Band commute system where multiple pull bands of increasingspeeds pull streamlined lightweight shells of wheeled vehicles containing the commuter(s),accelerating into interstate environmental tubes with moving air and air bearings supportingthe shell vehicles at velocities in hundreds of miles per hour.Creation of a High Efficiency Ground Commute System Concept:Could we have a commute system that has the convenience time efficiency of personalautomobiles while also having the energy efficiency of mass transit systems? How could it bedone?As I sat in the long gas lines circa 1974-75 in Northridge, waiting for my share of scarcegasoline to run my car, I pondered that question a lot. Other questions were centered aroundthe wisdom of spending some 80 billion dollars a year for foreign oil, which we just burned upin cars and power stations, and then we had, as a nation, pay for it with our very real estate,the only thing they wanted in return. But real estate remained, while oil was burned and goneforever. Was this wise?So I began to create scenarios in my mind, there in the captivity of the gas lines, and later.What if all the oil were to be permanently shut off from foreign sources? How would we as acountry cope? How would we get to work? With no gasoline for any personal cars, merely fortrucks and pre-existing busses, how would the Los Angeles area get back functional again,with people again able to go to work and the grocery store?There seemed to be a lot of possible ways to explore. I consider such problem by use ofanalogs. Qualities of ski lifts, cable cars ... a cable could move around each residential block,driven by stationary engines, and upon which people could grab onto and be pulled down thestreet wearing roller skates or some other small wheeled gadgets, a skateboard maybe.Letting go to coast across each intersection, to grab onto the moving cable or belt there,
 
continuing on down the street. And maybe a bit further into the street, a cable or belt could runat a higher speed go for many blocks before reversing direction in its own endless loop; askated person could grab onto faster moving belts from a slower one. Then whenapproaching destination, reverse the process to ever slower cables or belts, finally to let goand be on the sidewalk next to one's home or one's workplace. Such an emergency startingplace for a ground commute system might work, get the area up and running in mere weeks,perhaps. For intercity runs, trains, busses, ships and airliners would provide the long hauls atfirst, even of lightweight shell vehicles used instead of just skates.Years went by, and occasionally an idea would occur to me as to improvements andexpansions of that idea. Whenever I could get someone to listen, I would tell them of thisconcept: it seemed important that the country get freed from the burden of 80 billion dollarsburned up each year as imported crude oil, unrecoverable, and often paid for by selling ourreal estate to non-Americans. But I could not figure out how to get others interested enough tobuild a prototype system, or how to even contact people who could do something about it. Ieven attempted to write a fiction story which involved the concept, in outline form, "UnfinishedTransportation Story" .I stumbled onto an employment ad from a major automobile research facility in the area, andso wrote my concept up and sent it to that personnel office asking it be forwarded to theappropriate R/D office. They never acknowledged my offering, however, although strangelyseveral weeks later I discovered that my files had been pillaged, and my copy of that letterhad been stolen as well as everything I had written on the concept prior to then, except thatunfinished transportation story... even my computer, an obsolete Coleco Adam computer, hadits transportation concept files all gone except for that attempt at a fiction story involving thepull cable commute system: apparently somebody was interested in my concept, but not tomy benefit. Life was tough for me already, and this was just one more problem; I stoppedfurther conceptualization on it since that clearly would merely invite more expert burglaries ofmy files.By then the concept had grown and improved to use thin stainless steel belts around eachresidential and business block, to provide the pull power to the individual vehicles, whichwould be lightweight wheeled streamlined shells normally garaged at one's home, just likecars are now. These shells would be pedaled from one's garage to the adjacent street, whereit would clamp onto the first speed level pull cable or belt. The person now rode in this shellwheeled vehicle, not on skates as the original idea would have used at first. Thus it providedshelter from the environment during transit, and a secure place for belongings while outshopping later, just as a car does.This vehicle would switch to a faster adjacent pull band/belt, to cross intersections and easethe commute; the clamp shift between pull-bands would be mechanized and sock absorbed tominimize the abrupt changes in speed at each switch to a higher or lower speed pull band. Ifthe vehicle had a very long way to go, it would switch out to further pull bands fast enough sothat the vehicle could now air-sled on the surface of an enclosed commute tube, with the aircolumn going in the same direction as the stream of pulled vehicles, very high velocities couldbe efficiently achieved, perhaps over a hundred miles per hour or more.The sequence of clamp shiftings could be automated, entirely guiding the passage of thevehicle with a sleeping passenger to its destination, then awaken the passenger. With suchlightweight shell vehicles, ramps could be built up sides of office buildings, enabling directaccess to one's office from one's vehicle parked right outside the window... or door in newlydesigned office buildings. For families, a standard shell built for a maximum of two peoplewould be connected to a second such vehicle for children or elderly family members to ride in,like a trailer vehicle.The power to drive all these moving cables/belts/bands initially could come from anything that
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