We don't need to get off oil for only the environment, we need to get off oil for the economy.

[originalpckelly]

Even though the price of oil is much lower now, it is still exacting a large toll on our economy. We may believe that cheap crap from China on our store shelves is the reason we have a massive trade deficit, but it's actually our addiction to foreign oil that causes most of it.

If for no other reason we need to eliminate or dramatically reduce the consumption of oil products in this country.

The only real way I see to do this at the current time, with current technology, is to focus on removing cars from the road. After doing research on the the train systems of foreign countries, I do not think models solely based on passenger rail will solve our problems. To be sure, in high density areas, rail is the way that people should travel.

Most of America is not like this, most of America gets around by using cars and roads and highways. I think it's pretty much impossible to rip cars out of the hands of Americans and we need roads for cars to travel on, but let's talk about highways.

Highways, if you sit down and think about it, work very much like train systems. There is a well defined route, more defined than normal streets are. The road is optimized for a fairly good turning radius at higher speeds. The on and off ramps act, oddly enough, like stops on a passenger rail system.

And that's where the idea of rolling highways in this country comes from.

With electricity, we can power big trains that carry cars like a highway. This would remove cars from actively driving under their own power, which would reduce the consumption of oil, considering highways are often used for the longest commutes.

With investment in producing batteries for individual vehicles, we miss the major problem with that, it will take years and years for turnover to occur. People have to buy those cars on their own. On the other hand, a new transit system that allows people to travel in their cars, while on the back of a fast train allows anyone to immediately take advantage of investments in that technology.

We can more rapidly transition away from oil, and I theorize that it would even have synergistic effect with the development of electric vehicles, because one would not need as much range in an individual vehicle, as that could be supplemented by the train that carries the car. It means that we can sell cars powered by electricity with today's technologies, and remove the concerns of limited range.

It would also burn the candle at both ends as it concern economic recovery. Not only would we be reducing the trade deficit, which is a major impact on the poor credit practices of America, it would also put tons of people to work.

We can use the routes of existing highways for this system, those routes are already close by many of the housing/commercial developments in this country that make highways so essential to American commuting.

People can drive their cars on to specially made wide trains, a computer/traffic light system would automatically guide them to a place along the track where there is a corresponding space on the train. They would then either travel directly to their destination, or in higher traffic areas, "suffer" through a couple of stops.

The trains could be automatically controlled, like trains are at airports. If that's unsatisfactory to people, we can always hire drivers.

But because of the strict control over the routing of traffic, these trains would almost certainly be safer than actually driving the route itself. We can reduce the number of injuries and accident on highways, places where cars are moving fast enough that accident can easily involve many many more drivers/cars than a normal street accident.

I can pretty much gaurantee the same speed of travel, and it might even possible to move these trains faster. To help them accelerate after leaving a stop, we can use a hybrid maglev system to push/pull the train externally without having to carry the extra weight or more power equipment/bigger engines. Trains would also use these maglev strips running underneath the train at stops, to help slow down the train faster. In emergencies, the trains would be able to stop and start moving again along the tracks without these little helpers, but that's something bound to be a rare occurence compared to the everyday use of the maglev strips.

In Germany that same hybrid technology was used to power the M-Bahn:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Bahn

I say that instead of using a totally maglev system, because conventional rail technology is much cheaper to build than a maglev, and at speed, the advantage of a maglev system is not worth the exorbitant costs.

Maglev trains are inherently flawed, because they require the entire track length to be a "linear motor" which is like laying the expensive motors of a conventional train out in a straight line over the entire length of the track. The metals used in that are more expensive than steel/concrete/ballast stone used in conventional rail technology.

If we build the tracks/wide trains like I think we'll be able to, then we can basically build two standard gauge tracks side by side for each way. If we want to, we can run passenger rail trains along these routes as well, and they would only need standard gauge. So that means we can run two passenger trains along the same route as one of these wider trains, for those people who don't own cars.

This is not a totally new idea, in fact the Eurotunnel has a shuttle service in which cars are loaded on high speed trains to travel between France, Belgium and the United Kingdom. In Austria and Switzerland, trains actually carry much heavier 18-wheelers. The problem with those systems, is that it takes a long time for cars/18-wheelers to drive on and off the train. We can eliminate this problem by using a side to side system, where vehicles drive across the width of the train to load and unload, instead of down the length of the train.

WE CAN DO THIS AND WE SHOULD!

You may see some pictures of another system of solving this loading/unloading time problem here:
http://www.lorry-rail.com/gallerie/?PHPSESSID=07e186fce1eea4174065eb6c81296414

I think that one isn't as good as mine, mainly because you need to rotate the car carriers, which adds mechanical complexity and takes up more time.
Here's Wikipedia's article on rolling highways (the ones that transport 18-wheelers)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolling_highway

Here's their article on the Eurotunnel Shuttle Service:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurotunnel_Shuttle

[originalpckelly]

1. I should so make a video of this,

because I could easily demonstrate this in a video, and I think more people would pay attention.