Personal Monorail.

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Personal Monorail (MP) Javier Díaz Reinoso Abstract. A public but personal way of transportation is proposed, using ‘transport capsules’ able to be connected to several propulsion systems. This way is possible to combine several means of transportation (vertical, horizontal, suspended, surface or underground) during the same trip. The main form of transportation to be the monorail, because is the least harmful to the environment.. April, 1999 Introduction. During the 20th century the automobile has been the main personal means of transport, but when finalizing the century is evident that their deficiencies are too deep to be able to be repaired with single small patches. Let us review some of these defects: Unsafe, often has been said that if the automobile were a recent invention, they can never be approved since its insecurity is extreme. Let us remember that the deaths in a year in the USA because of the automobiles are near all the deaths of soldiers of the USA in the war of Vietnam but in 10 years. Petroleum as fuel, nonrenewable material make increased carbon dioxide which create global warming. Great numbers and short life, which make a great source of consumption of materials. Asphalt roads, with its great environmental impact, we are turning immense amounts of productive or natural land into dead zones. Additionally this roads when they are constructed in before inaccessible natural sites, are the conduit for their later destruction. All this additionally is subsidized, the roads are seen as public infrastructure and therefore they receive enormous sums of money in subsidies, since these roads are of very short duration, often less duration than the automobiles, an immense bureaucracy in charge has been created to perpetuate the subsidies and the status quo. In order to solve these problems, a lot of patches has been proposed, but all of them do not solve the basic problems because: Insecurity, the main reason of the insecurity of the automobile is to have a human conductor, therefore simple patches like bumpers, or complicated like antishocks designs or bags of impact, are mere palliatives. For a comparison remember that the automobile and the elevators arose in a similar lapse of time, the primitive elevators obvious required also an "operator ", but at the moment they are completely automated, on the other hand, the basic technique of conduction in an automobile, continues being the introduced one by the 1890. It is necessary to change to an electrical system of low consumption, this has been evident during many years, but the ritual answer of the industry has been the electrical automobile, which always is promised for the next 5 years. The electrical automobile has its heel of Aquilles in the batteries, which are inefficient, heavy, short life and many of them toxic. Anyway this can solve only one deficiency, not the other problems. The automobile industry depends on designs with predetermined obsolescence, the continuous and useless change of appearances, the short life, even the antishocks designs in which a small crash causes great damages, all this moves a waste chain, the recycling is only a cosmetic measure. The only form to face this problem is to create a system of long life, taking the resemblance with an elevator, it is necessary to change it every 2 years?. And what about the low percent of use of the automobiles?. Most of them spend its days in a parking lot, obvious this requires great numbers, the only form to solve this problem is to conserve the personal but not the private in the automobile. Using by third time the resemblance of the elevator: if you need to go to a high floor of a building, you need to be riding a private elevator?. If it is thus for the vertical transportation, why not for the horizontal transportation?. If it is desired to go from point A to point B, why an area of massive destruction called road is created?. It is necessary to diminish the damaged area. Additionally, it is necessary to differentiate when it is wanted to have transport of people or transport of materials, is the duality of the present system what allow the invasion to natural zones from a road just constructed. How much cost the automobiles?. The problem is that the automobiles are only a subgroup of the automotive ones, this allows that the roads are used for transport of people in automobiles or transport of load with trucks, tankers and others, also is hybrid systems like light trucks and with buses, massive transport of people. Who subsidizes to whom?. The elimination of the automobile also means the elimination of the others?. In order to be able to answer these questions, one is due to determine: the percentage of use of automobiles against the total in the use of roads and consequently its real cost, cost of introduction and replacement of units, gasoline cost and accessories like tires, oil, etc..., cost lost by accidents and costs in damage of the environment. Only then we can known really what is the cost per capita of the automobile, you can supposes safely this cost always be much greater than the automovile’s sale price to the public. Personal Monorail . The proposal of the personal monorail arises from German ideas about a system of small cars, that would move in rails to mobilize passengers, these proposals of the Seventies, never were developed, probably by the pressure of the automobile industry. Nevertheless the present proposal goes beyond that, the important points are: Electrical system, energy sent by cables, an extra system of energy storage could be used as complement, therefore it does not need to store great amounts of energy. Moreover the system could locally produce part of the energy that uses. Separation between the capsule of passengers and the system of propulsion, this allows several forms of vertical, horizontal, suspended, surface, underground (you can even could imagine aerial and submarine forms) transportation during the same trip. Personal, this is optimized to take between one and four passengers, since most of times that is the amount of passengers of an automobile. Light, if one is going to take four passengers with a combined standard weight of 300 kilos, why is needed a car of 1500 kilos for that?. There is no reason a system cannot be created with a weight of less of 300 kilos, perhaps only 150 kilos. This translate to low consumption of energy as well. Security by quality of software, if the quality is good, is no reason so that the system does not become the safest form of transport. Anyway is very difficult to even emulate the low security of the car, in spite of the collapsable body, reinforcements parts, security belts, air bags (frontal and now lateral) , etc..... An advantage of software it is weightless, unlike all the named accessories. This maintains the weight and price low. Personal but not private. There are several other systems of transport, like buses or subways, but these are not personal, force people to adapt to the system not the system adapts to people. We want a personal system, but this does not mean that it must be private, to obtain a high percent of use the system must be shared, only then the number of units can be diminished, with only 20 - 25 percents of units can be offered equal or better services. This as well reduce in similar percentage the costs. The monorail is proposed as the main form of transportation. If it is desired that the system is completely automatic and you do not want to run over pedestrians, the system needs to be underground or elevated (in spite of the dreams of " automobiles robots " nothing practical has been obtained) and for long horizontal transport with little impact, the monorail is the more efficient way. Compared with a road, the impact can be reduced to a post each 30 meters, moreover this configuration allows to maintain the track covered, guaranteeing long life; the top can be covered with solar cells and produce part of the energy for the system. This locally produced energy, would allow to lower the costs of transportation of energy, compared with a centralized system. Transport capsule. In figure 1 the transport capsule is represented, of ovoid form to obtain a good aerodynamic efficiency. The view is lateral with the sliding doors closed, in figure 2 with the opened doors, in figure 3 without doors, and in figure 4 in cut. It is necessary to notice the symmetrical form of the capsule, this way it would be possible to inverted the movement or select wich one of the lateral doors it is opened for access. Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3 Figure 4 The monorail. The main innovation here is the connectors, one in the top and another at the bottom of the capsule, these connectors allow the connection with the propulsion systems, the advantage to have two means that it is possible to transfer from one to the other without loosen the capsule, therefore could be transfer from a vertical to horizontal way, as it is in figure 5 . Figure 5 One of the problems of monorail systems is the rail itself, if it is sufficiently rigid then it is heavy and it requires great number of posts. In order to solve this problem a system similar to the suspension bridges is proposed, this way a steel cable would maintain structurally the rail , therefore would not need to be very heavy, the rail would be compound of rigid sections interconnected by flexible unions to support lateral forces. This is in figure 6. Figure 6 The rails would have a rectangular section with a groove in the bottom for the suspension arm of the capsule, in the interior would be the bearing surface, which would be covered, lateral rails of electrical connection and communications, guides for the wheels of the motor mechanism and conduits by which an optical fiber cable could go for communications. The union between the motor system and the capsule would take place with an arm that would contain an electronic shock absorber, which would reduce the vibrations of the movement, this along with a section of the motor system is in Figure 7. Figure 7 The motor system could have three or more rigid parts with articulate joints to be able to turn in intersections, each part would have two rigid wheels of ceramic (for long life and low noise) connected individually to electrical motors, some form of electrical storage like ultracapacitors or similar could exist, that would serve to maintain the energy in disconnected sections of the rail (perhaps not more of 300 meters of rail) , to the front and back is radar or sonar sensors to detect obstructions of the channel, this is in figure 8. Figura 8 The advantage to have motor modules is to have several configurations, thus for local movement could be used three units and obtain for example cruise speeds of 60 kph, for the equivalent of a freeway, could be changed on the fly (similar "to enter" a freeway) by units with 5 or 7 sections and then obtained cruise speeds of 90 kph. Intersections. In order to select between two routes a Y connection would be used, the joints between the motor modules could turn these, selecting the channel (Figure 9) . Figure 9 Although there is a discontinuity in one side of the channel, that nonserious problem since is a small section and is several wheels. Using the service. The form to start using the transport service would be with a small remote control, RF or IR, when activating it near a vertical post of access, would request a capsule, would assign a number in the queue and when arriving the modules, would allow their access in the correct order. An advantage to design a transport system at the moment is that we can use the fashionable paradigm, the Internet, like a model, therefore the movement of one module of the point A to point B can be considered similar to the shipment of a package of data in the Internet, in fact the transport system would be integrated to the Internet. Dedicated servers would control sectors of channels, monitoring the modules in their sector, reserving time for future modules and coordinated handling of congestion. Finally if the destiny is a private residence, verifying if the person who travels is acceptable or not, this decision could of course be interactive. All these calculations could even be made before the person enter a capsule, if for example she has prearranged a button ("Go home") , otherwise using speech recognition in the interior of a capsule to indicate the destiny, the final result would be that in the beginning of the trip you know the approximate time of it and of course would not be needed GPS or to consult electronic maps of highways for a simply "Go home" trip. All the communication between the modules and the servers could take place through rails or using the inner cavity of the rail like conduit of microwaves; the communication would use the normal protocols of Internet, once arrived at the section servers these could pass the communication to optical fiber, thus each capsule will be also one workstation of Internet, any necessity of security, support and Internet general access can be easily supported. Variations. Here we will review some possible variations and extensions. A way of versatility of the system is based on the separation of the transport capsule and the system of propulsion, allowing to the capsule to change on the fly of a system of propulsion to another, more powerful one or in different direction (vertical instead of horizontal) . Another way would be in different types of capsule for different classes of trip (or people with special necessities) , also exists the possibility of adapting the system to transport of light load, next some of these aspects are reviewed . Transporting cargo (light) . If the design of the capsule is reviewed note that it does not have any provision for luggage transport, as would be in an automobile. This is intentional, the main reason of the system is transport of people not cargo, but what if parallel to the transport of people a system of transport of light cargo is created?. Modifying slightly the form of the capsule (more square) , eliminated the windows and extending the doors, but not increasing the weight, remember that the channels are common, then only a mechanism of load and unloading of packages would be needed, perhaps an robot arm a tags reader in the end would serve. This would allow an automated system of packages distribution, that complement the rising capacity of purchases by Internet, eliminating the surrealist spectacle of a person of 60 kilos in a vehicle of 1000 transporting 10 kilos of food from a supermarket. The system could be improved with a "special port" for cargo in the houses (perhaps in the basement) , by which it would load provisions and the garbage would be sent automatically, supposing that the present level of garbage production lowers. High speed. The system of electrical propulsion with 3 to 7 motors would serve in the lower rank of speed, but it would be possible to make systems with greater consumption of energy and much more speed. Considering that the bullet trains of Japan and the French TGV go in the 200 to 300 kph, the system would be needed modifications if it would be desired to obtain those speeds. It seems for example that one would need to move the capsules to tunnels, since the possibility of a collision at high speed (with a bird, for example) would be much more dangerous in a light capsule that with a massive train, could be used a design of "sleigh" instead of one of suspension, with a system of magnetic suspension to avoid the friction (Figure 10) . Figure 10 If a transport could really be obtained that worked in the rank 240-300 kph, it would be possible to compete with short airplane trips, specially considering the great amount of time that is wasted in the airports. Climb mountains. In mountainous zones it is possible to observe the difficult form as the automobiles climb, normally with interminable zig-zags. If on the contrary one changes from horizontal transportation to a vertical one, it is feasible to climb a slope quickly (Figure 11) . Figure 11 This capacity to change from horizontal to vertical could be taken advantage to complement to the elevators in a building; the capsules could ascend by one of the faces of the building and arrive directly at the high floors. Conclusions. In this description intentionally many details have been omitted, like what are these connectors? or how much power needs the motors, because these details are not critical, the described system can be: Safe, if the software that controls it is. Electrical, perhaps creating part of its own energy. Long single life and 1/4 to 1/5 in number with respect to the automobile, offering better services. Monorail, lower ecological impact. Less costs, less bureaucracy, less subsidies. There is of course much created automobile infrastructure, specially in the USA, Europe and Japan that makes change difficult, but the automobile industry sees with ambitious eyes Popular China and other developing countries, trying to repeat the same errors. Even so is time to eliminate this possibility and choose a less onerous system in ecological impact, lives and resources. Extra references Asphalt Nation : How the Automobile Took over America, and How We Can Take It Back , Jane Holtz Kay, Crown, 1997: This book is divided in three parts, the first part summarizes all the problems that the "car culture" has created, the second part however seems too long, if we have already decided that the automobile is obsolete, why use 140 pages to its history?, perhaps an executive summary of 14 pages had been better. Finally the third part, in spite of protest of the author has much of nostalgia in it, certainly the indicated measures can reduce the growth of the automobile, but they cannot revert it, only a complete solution as the PM can, nevertheless is a quotation to think: “We must question why we travel at all, why we run -- or rather drive -- in circles.” Engineering the EV future , IEEE Spectrum, Nov. 1998. Special report on electric vehicles, one of the articles have what is probably a prediction, if this is really the future (page 28) : “It would be hard to view electric vehicles as an environment triumph if their popularity led to millions of batteries being buried in landfills” © 2000-2003 Javier Diaz R. Up