Above Street Transit - Klinkman Solar

L. Above Street Transit

L1. Teleport, a Transit System

Science fiction teleportation purportedly takes you anywhere instantly. Teleport Transit is about stepping through an elevator door and stepping out somewhere across town within minutes.

I considered describing many short-term transit improvements that would incrementally add up to the Teleport system in time, but it's better to go straight for the goal that eliminates so many transit problems at once.

L2. Teleport advantages

Unrivaled total urban quickness
Outstanding convenience and creature comforts
Aggressively low lifetime passenger-mile costs compared to motor vehicles
Extreme electricity-efficiency
Near-zero accidents per passenger-mile compared to motor vehicles
Automation
Elegance
Not just ADA-compliant, ADA-friendly
Adaptability to society's needs, almost to the point of getting rid of paved roads.
Immunity to snow

In order to explain this radically different transit system, I'll start by describing existing transit systems. Then I'll explain my own improvements item by item.

L3. Transit and technological innovation, a diversion

Transit innovation faces a legal double standard. On the one hand, vehicles kill 40,000 people per year in the U.S., and 10,000 of these people are pedestrians and bicyclists. We rarely sue automobile manufacturers for their ultimately unsafe product's contribution to these 40,000 annual deaths. Nor do we sue towns and states for building streets and freeways. On the other hand, innovators are held to a strict standard of zero deaths by our legal system. Every new transit system and every innovation needs vast safety testing, on the order of a $100 million dollar effort. For this reason alone, mass transit innovation has been moribund for one century.

Further, passenger rail transit has a limited marketplace of buyers. Many railroad companies and public transit authorities have transit monopolies in the towns through which their tracks pass, so that zero end-users ever vote with their feet. Without a marketplace of many competing consumers, and with most of the railroad ownership being rich and often aggressively rapacious, the transit innovation free marketplace has always been a joke. This could be why urban passenger rail systems continue to use railroad car couplers, air brakes and trolley cars, all innovations from the 19th century. Next, public passenger transit takes such a back seat to moving freight that U.S. passenger train schedules can run many hours late because a private company's freight train needs to drop off and pick up many railroad cars.

It's tough for a tiny company to go into a strange city and convince people that a system is reasonably safe and that they should plunk down huge amounts of money on a first system, even on a small test system. Yet if we must inhibit climate change, we the adults in the room must somehow insure and guarantee that transit embraces innovation.

The State of Rhode Island, to its credit, demonstrated a tiny bit of climate courage when they installed the first five offshore wind turbines on the U.S. East Coast. Nay-sayers complained that the early power was expensive, but because of Rhode Island's early risk, everybody wants offshore wind. Rhode Island taught the entire East Coast that there's no such thing as being too small to try climate innovation.

L4. Wuppertal suspended train systems versus American light rail on limited-access trackage

Most new U.S. rail systems use light rail as opposed to full subway trains. Light rail sometimes uses grade separation in the form of tunnels and elevated tracks. As an example, the Riverside D branch of Boston's Green Line light rail runs on a roadway-separated ground level track through the western suburbs of Boston, through a subway tunnel under Downtown Boston and then on elevated tracks toward Somerville. The other Boston Green Line branches use surface trolley tracks on outlying streets and then these trolley cars merge into the main Green Line subway tunnel that runs under Downtown Boston.

Surface light rail is subject to red lights and rush hour traffic jams. However, laying tracks down the center of a street is far less expensive per mile of trackage than digging a subway tunnel. Wherever local suburban rush hour traffic isn't fierce, on-street trolley cars or ordinary city buses can be a competitive option.

The Wuppertal, Germany suspended train system has a single steel railroad track 10 meters above the ground, with one track traveling in each direction. Train wheels roll on top of the single track and then the light rail-sized trainsets hang below the track. The tracks are supported by stanchions on each side, where sets of support stanchions are about 30 meters apart. Every 1/2 kilometer or so the trains stop at above-ground stations where people can get onto and off of trains. Wuppertal's system was built in 1901. 120 years later it carries 80,000 passengers per day.

photo by Max Grobecker

The Wuppertal suspended rail system's key advantage is its tiny street-level footprint. The train's support posts take up part of the sidewalk but otherwise they don't interfere with existing traffic patterns. Also, much of the Wuppertal line is built ten meters above the center of a small river with support posts footed on either bank. The view for passengers above the tree-lined river is relatively beautiful.

I recommend the Wuppertal system over U.S. light rail systems. In engineering terms, suspending a train below a rail takes less steel and concrete than U.S. monorails that support the train from the bottom. Acquiring the land needed to implement a Wuppertal, Germany-style transit system would be inexpensive per mile of trackage because all of the support posts have a relatively tiny urban footprint. Trains can reach 40 mph. Travel times are quick because there aren't any red lights, stopped cars, stop signs or kids chasing balls into the street ten meters above the street. The 120 year old Wuppertal system has been well-tested over the years and a manufacturer for generation 15 of the Wuppertal trainsets and trackage already exists. A Wuppertal-style system could be built above a street for perhaps one factor of ten lower cost per kilometer of track than the grade separated Riverside D branch trackage of the MBTA Green Line, yet the Wuppertal system's passenger-moving performance times would be similar to the D branch.

The Wuppertal system has three criticisms. First and foremost, an overhead heavy rail system requires an inordinate amount of concrete in all of the bases for its support beams, because a train might be packed with 120 standees. Concrete costs money. That's why I aim to cut my own track system's total weight – cutting the system's weight cuts the system's total engineering costs.

I've seen the Wuppertal system lumped in with Disney-style monorail systems and above-grade light rail tracks that were ten times as expensive per kilometer to build. That's not a fair treatment of Wuppertal's construction costs. Nor is it honest to compare the cost of Wuppertal's system to the cost of a bus stuck in rush hour traffic. True, the low-cost bus will eventually crawl through its traffic jam, but bus patrons won't be as satisfied with their much slower trip.

One weak argument runs that simply because the Wuppertal system isn't popular, it costs proportionally more money. That's a self-fulfilling prophecy. This argument would go away assuming that Wuppertal's system caught on.

On rare occasions decades apart, Wuppertal passengers have needed to be rescued from 20 feet above the ground. A counterargument could be made that on the ground there's so much more that a trainset or a bus can hit. When nobody crashes into anything above the street for several years the city doesn't need to rescue anyone, whereas whenever someone crashes into something on the ground the city sends an ambulance, a fire truck and a police car.

L5. Two support cables versus a heavy support rail

Portland, Oregon Aerial Tram gondola cars are suspended underneath doubled fixed support cables instead of below a single fixed heavy rail. These are known as tricable or 3S systems. As with Wuppertal trains rolling beneath a rail, Portland Tram car wheels roll on top of their support cables and the cars hang suspended below the cables. The tramway needs one support tower in the tram's middle to support cars traveling 1,000 meters horizontally. One tall support tower with suspension cables was easier for Portland to install than a great number of above-street support girders in an urban landscape.

Cables have been known to fail. Having two support cables, not one cable, adds a safety factor. Most new systems have two support cables, not one cable.

The Portland Aerial Tram acts as a horizontal elevator.

A standard ski lift has small gondolas attached to a moving cable at a fixed distance apart from each other. This assures engineers that no part of the ski lift's slack wire cable between any two adjacent support towers will ever be overloaded. Each individual gondola car carries only a few passengers. Still, a long line of moving ski lift gondolas can handle a large number of passengers per hour.

L6. Maintaining only one gondola car per cable section

With a fully automated system it's possible to guarantee that only one gondola car will be hanging beneath any one section of cable. We won't have to overbuild the cable to hold three or five cars at a time, and so this limit of one car per cable section is useful.

L7. Using smaller gondola cars

Using smaller gondolas, setting specific weight limits for each gondola and never putting two gondolas on the same section of cable will assure us that we can maintain reasonable safety standards with relatively lightweight support cables.

One argument for using heavier cars is stability in high winds. I wonder if more stability can be built into smaller cars.

The Americans with Disabilities Act recommends that new elevators should be able to carry a minimum of 1200 pounds, roughly equal to two extremely heavy 400 pound people sitting in two 200 pound battery-operated wheelchairs. I have no particular reason to push back against this limit, and so to stay ADA-compliant I'll assume that each gondola car will carry a maximum passenger load of 1200 pounds.

A Wuppertal Suspended Railway trainset can move 120 standee passengers, with trains running every 5 minutes. A system that can send a gondola with 4 seated passengers down a track every 10 seconds will equally move 120 seated, comfortable passengers every 5 minutes.

L8. Weighing ultralight cars

Teleport weighs every car at the station before each trip. No Teleport car will be allowed to leave any passenger station overweight. Maintaining strict weight limits on the system allows us to engineer the entire support structure for specific weight limits and so we can keep track longevity up and costs down. Our ultralight trackage moves its cars inexpensively.

L9. Gondolas with individual motors and driving wheels

The Portland Tram has two car weight support cables, and then cars are propelled by a tow cables.

Putting motors on Teleport's small individual gondola cars means that if the system has three or more stations and rail switches, each car can take its passengers directly to a specific station just as an elevator car can go to a specific floor. Also, with individually powered cars on the network, a car can wait at a particular station for as long as necessary to get luggage or a disabled passenger out of the car safely. Eliminating the tow rope means that cars can travel down rail spurs in both directions. Finally, if one car ever gets stuck in the air on a cable, the other cars can immediately move their patrons to safety. In so doing they can clear out of the way for a Teleport tow truck to quickly access the stricken car.

L10. Batteries on gondolas

At its core, Teleport is a last mile transit system. Full electrification of the line is possible but it isn't necessary. It's easier to run electricity to specific Teleport stations and then let individual cars recharge while they wait for new patrons.

L11. Support cable options

I favor two parallel aerial suppot cables, not one cable. In the long run one cable can send a car crashing down. Two cables will be notably safer.

I favor slack linked chains, also known as motorcycle chains. In certain situations I favor a flexible suspension bridge cable that supports sections of hard rail. A single link of such a cable has been illustrated in multiple elevator sketches below.

A slack cable has an inherent engineering advantage over a taut cable ; it efficiently supports weight halfway between two support towers 30 meters apart.

L12. Climbing the last meter of a slack cable

A slack cable alone won't succeed. When a car gets near the end of a slack cable it must climb an ever steeper last meter of cable.

My design solution is to install pivoting triangular devices on each support tower. They look like extremely long coat hangers. Cables are connected to the two lower ends of the triangle. As a gondola approaches the support tower the triangle pivots over to reduce the angle of the car's upward journey. In essence, one upper arm of the coat hanger is the last six meters of the slack cable.

The support cable transitions into a fixed rail several feet away from the support tower. The fixed rail travels more or less along the bottom edge of the coat hanger, guiding the wheels of the gondola below the support tower. As the gondola travels along the bottom of the coat hanger, the gondola's weight slowly pivots the coat hanger back up to straight, then over to the next cable. As the gondola finally leaves the coat hanger, its wheels transition from the fixed rail back onto the next stretch of slack cable.

L13. Long cable life

The more slackness in the cable, the sharper the cable has to bend at any spot where a gondola wheel pulls downward. A repeated bending of steel wires, called worrying, can eventually snap the wires in slack wire cables. Motorcycle chains are designed for millions of repetitions of bending and unbending, so it makes sense to use a type of motorcycle chain instead of a wire cable. I've heard an argument that every link in a chain is a potential failure point, but in practice the chance of a link failure is far tinier than comparable failure points such as continually worrying each inch of a wire cable.

Slack chains can take up an expected expansion and contraction from heat and cold. No special expansion joints are needed in most of the system's trackage. Hot or cold, a car's gears will always mesh with the linked chain's gears.

When left out in the open, the gaps on the top side of a motorcycle chain are liable to pick up tree branches, sleet and other hard objects. One solution to getting objects jammed into the chain is to only have an open gap on the bottom side of every link in a Teleport linked chain. The top side of every link has its own tiny peaked roof shape that tends to shed rain and snow. The support wheels are designed to fit against the roof shape of the linked chain. A combination of stiff brushes and a de-icing compound can remove the little ice buildup that can accumulate on top of the links.

Hard sections of rail at switches and on the coat hanger devices will have gear indentations on their bottom sides that fit a car's gear teeth, and they will have the same width and height as the linked chains. Given the power of electric drive motors, traversing seriously steep ramps becomes possible. In many cases we can avoid the expense and extra complexity of installing an elevator to reach the ground.

L14. An end to motion sickness

A car traversing a slack cable will be smoothly accelerating a bit downward toward the cable's center, then decelerating up an increasing slope until it reaches next coat hanger. Apparent gravity will be slightly greater than one normal gravity as the car traverses the cable, then slightly less than one normal gravity as the car traverses the next coat hanger device. I expect that a near-optimum coat hanger curve can be quickly designed.

Most people tend to ignore the slight up and down motions that can be felt inside a modern elevator car. What degree of up-and-down elevator motion in the gondola cars will be excessive for our most sensitive patrons? We'll need testing. Teleport can always be built to any standard of gentle motion.

L15. Hard rails beneath a suspension cable

This alternative rail system most resembles a suspension bridge, except the individual hard rail sections have a certain give to them as a car passes across them. Each rail section is built with a certain slight curve so that even with the suspension bridge's slight natural bend, the car hanging from the rails travels in a notably straight line with minimal up or down acceleration.

L16. Bidirectional cars versus one-directional cars

The Wuppertal suspended railway system has one-directional trainsets. At each end of the railway the trainsets turn around in a loop. In this way the engineer is always sitting in the front of the trainset looking forward.

An automated Teleport gondola is driven by an electric motor that comes embedded within the driving wheel. It can travel equally well in both directions on its track.

All Teleport gondolas come with an elevator door side and a non-door side. It just wouldn't do to have a car pull up to an elevator portal with the car's elevator door on the wrong side of the car.

Bidirectional gondolas won't need the slight extra expense of turnaround loops. Single track spur lines out to remote stations are possible with bidirectional cars.

L17. Teleport switches

Switches mean that any individual Teleport car can be routed from any Teleport station directly to any other Teleport station in town with zero seconds of time waiting for a connecting route. In this way Teleport compares with the convenience of a private automobile. Far better than the automobile, a Teleport gondola can drop its patrons off almost exactly where they want to go. Once the patrons exit the elevator door, Teleport is responsible for its own gondola parking needs. For a private automobile driver, finding an available parking garage and parking the car eats up valuable time.

With a bus and train route system or with an aircraft route network, a patron will often have to wait for a connecting bus, train or flight. Occasionally a connection will be missed. Missed connecting flights teach patrons to avoid connecting flights whenever possible.

I lean toward using active Teleport rail switches, similar to railroad siding switches, versus installing track switching equipment on every individual car. Rail switches save money because there are more cars than switches. Rail switches give the network strong control over potential terrorists who could presumably hijack one car on the automated network.

Basic Teleport is already a low-speed, short-distance last-mile solution, as opposed to a Mega-Teleport system, described later, which adds high-speed capabilities and which might benefit from putting track switching equipment aboard each individual Teleport train. Even a small, basic Teleport system is likely to have enough alternative track routes that one rail switch breakdown won't impede a line of cars from reaching their various destinations. The failure of an individual car's switching equipment could equally gum up a switching junction, and so I don't want to buy a theoretical “more failure points” argument.

My rail switches emulate the switches used on the Wuppertal suspended railway. A carriage holding a straight rail and a curved rail slides sideways, left or right. The straight rail leads to one track and the curved rail leads to a second track. The rail carriage is halfway in between the two rails in the first of these two pictures, and in the second picture the rail carriage is 95% of the way to the curved rail section.

An automated switch must be positively locked onto the main line or onto a siding before any Teleport gondola can pass through. If a confirmed positive lock hasn't been achieved at a switch, the network computer directs all gondolas approaching the stuck switch to come to a quick stop.

50% to curved rail

It's still possible for cars to keep moving patrons if a switch gets permanently stuck on a two track system – cars can all be shunted onto the other track and they can be sent to their destinations in batches, similar in use to a red light system controlling traffic on a one lane bridge. Worst case, the system empties all cars of their patrons at the nearest stations.

95% to curved rail

L18. Elevator doors and elevator micro-stations

Double elevator doors are a century-old concept. The outer doors keep people from falling down into the elevator shaft and the elevator car's inner door keeps people safely inside the car when it's in motion. Elevator doors are ADA-compliant. Luggage rolls into and out of elevators easily.

L19. A Teleport car barn

On a summer weekend, all of the downtown wharf area of Newport, RI is jammed with tourists. Traffic often crawls at 5 mph. Newport has been looking into the idea of shuttling tourists in from a parking lot a mile away, and I've been sketching out a Teleport system for this particular task.

Above is a car barn for the parking lot end of the system.

The car barn is designed to fit hard against a limited access highway or on-ramp on its back side, with the patron parking lot on its front side. The highway location is good for long tracks and for a long ramp up at one end.

The drawing has possible gondola parking spaces marked in yellow, with the two elevator door parking spaces in green.

This building's trackage is designed with only two rail switches. Two rail switches might be adequate for a starter system. Cars can travel from the inbound track to both elevator doors and then to the outbound track without too much waiting. In expanded use, more sets of elevator doors to service more far-flung parking lots will help.

Beside each elevator door is enough room for at least one extra car to wait. If an elevator car door has to be held open because some patron has too much luggage or is extremely slow getting out of the car, a second incoming car full of patrons can come to a full stop on the support rail about ten feet from the elevator door. This stoppage rarely happens.

A rail switch and a minimum number of teleport gondola parking spots will allow two cars to exchange places on the track. Sometimes one car's battery is fully charged but the other car needs to plug into a charging dock beyond the elevator door.

Elevator doors are set up to serve two different areas of the parking lot. In the above sketch I drew the elevator doors reasonably close to each other for a better perspective view of the entire car barn. The two outgoing tracks lead upwards and toward the other end of the system a mile away.

If two tour busses pull up at the same time, extra cars can be summoned from the back of the car barn to service both elevator doors.

I added windows to the car barn because Teleport's car movements are interesting for patrons to watch.

Occasionally a car needs to return to a battery recharging slot. An electronic sign on the outside of each elevator door needs to say “This Car Out Of Service” to keep new patrons from crowding into a spent car. At the same time, a recorded message can tell patrons to wait for a different car.

Cars being recharged can also be preheated before trips on winter days. The colder the day, the more heat patrons will want inside the car for a trip. On summer afternoons cars are pre-cooled. Next, the air inside a waiting car can be circulated through a HEPA filter to remove airborne covid-19 viruses. A bath of ultraviolet light or of dry heat on a winter's day is likely to kill covid viruses attached to any surfaces within the car's interior. We should be able to adequately sterilize each car for each new set of riding patrons. This doesn't happen with shuttle buses.

This car barn also has office space for a tourist concierge desk and for rest rooms. The front door for the tourist desk and for the facilities is at the rear elevator door. The elevator button to get to the network's rest rooms will be marked in every car.

A car cleaning and repair department is in the back of the car barn. A car that has been designated as dirty gets sent to the cleaning station. A car messed up late at night can be parked for the night and cleaned up the next morning. I doubt that the system needs to employ a full-time car cleaner at first.

A truck carrying a replacement Teleport car can back into a loading dock and unload that Teleport car directly onto a Teleport track for cleaning.

L20. A Teleport tow truck

In certain rare cases where a car has lost its power or where the car's electronics have suddenly malfunctioned, the car might be left stranded on a cable in the air. We will want a relatively lightweight radio-controlled Teleport tow truck that can navigate down a track, that can latch onto a disabled car and that can tow the car back to the nearest elevator door, so that we never leave patrons stranded in the air for more than perhaps five minutes. Then the tow truck hauls the empty car away to the car barn's repair department.

L21. Teleport elevators

Teleport elevator shafts aren't a mandatory part of any Teleport system but they're handy in urban settings.

A section of Teleport rail within an elevator shaft can be raised or lowered. If a Teleport gondola is on that section of rail, the gondola will be lowered to ground level.

This type of simple Teleport station has a ground footprint of about one parking space worth of land. It takes up amazingly little room from an urban street or from an urban sidewalk. In this way, it saves money. By comparison, each above-grade Wuppertal transit station must be designed to safely accommodate 50 to 100 people, plus each Wuppertal transit station needs its own disability access elevator to bring mobility-impaired people up from ground level.

At the top of the elevator shaft, the movable section of Teleport rail must firmly interlock to an overhead Teleport rail line. A positive interlock must be made before a Teleport car can roll off or roll onto the movable elevator rail. It will help as a backup safety system to block the Teleport rail off to further gondola traffic while the rail has gone down the elevator shaft.

A slight W-shape or wheel-shaped depression, no more than an inch deep and built into the top of the Teleport rail section, might help cars to settle onto the perfect horizontal spot on the rail every time, so that the car is horizontally positioned right in front of the elevator doors at the bottom of the shaft.

L22. Extra car storage at elevators

On each side of the movable rail section is a fixed rail. At the end of a spur line, the rail on the far side of an elevator creates room for storing an extra car or two.

When the elevator drops far enough down the shaft, a second hard rail descends into place at above-street level within the shaft. This substitution of rails allows a second car to get across to the elevator's aerial storage spot while people are busy getting in and out of a car at ground level. The ability to switch car positions means that recharged cars can be traded for cars with spent batteries.

If a car is waiting at the bottom of the elevator shaft but a second car is coming down the spur line, the elevator has time to raise the empty car away from the doors, deposits the empty car on the far side of the elevator shaft, takes the incoming car onto the movable rail, lowers the full car to ground level and lets those patrons out.

L23. More Elevator types

Some elevator shafts need to only raise cars perhaps 10 feet so that the cars clear pedestrians on the sidewalk. From the 10 foot level, cars can roll up ramps to reach a higher street-clearing level.

In certain cities light rail stations have been positioned down the center of an interstate highway or in the center of a six lane urban street. A Teleport elevator can deposit a patron directly onto a subway platform or onto an elevated train platform, starting from a faraway sidewalk. One Teleport system can replace an expensive array of ADA-compliant elevators. With Teleport a wheelchair-bound, frail, slow-moving or legally blind patron won't have to race across a busy or dangerous intersection with a short “walk” signal in order to reach their first elevator door.

Eventually an exclusive apartment house or a dormitory will want limited access to a certain station on the Teleport network. Apartment and college dormitory dwellers will want key cards that Teleport them into their individual buildings after hours. Teleport weighs all cars, and all suspiciously overloaded Teleport cars could travel first to a centralized security desk to check for unauthorized visitors in the car.

It should be possible for a person to buy a monthly subway pass, then get into a Teleport car, swipe their pass and choose to arrive on the inbound or outbound platform. Teleport will already know the patron's typical weight so that an extra 50 pound child riding in the Teleport car would be suspected when the car is weighed. If the car is alarmingly over this particular passenger's expected weight, the car will be rerouted to a local ticket booth to observe whether 100 pounds of luggage is aboard.

Certain apartment complexes are reserved for senior housing and housing for the disabled. Why not directly connect the lobby of one of these buildings to a nearby subway station with Teleport? A mile of Teleport track isn't that costly.

L24. Teleport-capable buildings

One or more Teleport-capable elevator shafts can be incorporated into a new building or can be attached onto the side of an existing building. Teleport cars can then be sent to any floor within the building from the sub-basement to the rooftop. Every floor in the building becomes a Teleport station.

Moving from an apartment in one Teleport-capable building to another Teleport-capable building becomes notably easier. Each piece of furniture and each piece of baggage needs only be rolled into a Teleport car once and rolled out once at the destination floor in the other building. There aren't any stairs, parking lots or walkways to negotiate.

Many Teleport elevator doors belong indoors. Why would anyone want to go outside and wait for an undependable connecting bus in snow, in heat or in rain in their good business clothes when a Teleport car can whisk them and their rolling luggage to their next sales call on the fifth floor of some building across town? People will enjoy Teleporting without a coat from one indoor station to another indoor station. Teleport can in time evolve beyond being a substitute for a series of bus lines to becoming a next-generation transit tool.

L25. Better than Stations

Teleport should become the world leader in ADA-friendly solutions because at its core it's an elevator system.

L26. Using pods and tractors

Container ships and tractor-trailer units move individual freight pods. It would make no sense to move entire trucks across an ocean along with their freight containers. Separating trailers and pods from tractors means that pods can sit for days while valuable tractors keep working. In a similar manner, Teleport freight pods can be carried beneath Teleport tractor units and can also be stacked in pod warehouses.

A street can move just about any imaginable cargo from a wedding party to fresh cement, and so can Teleport. A closet pod full of seasonal stuff can be uploaded into Teleport's “cloud” from a Teleport elevator door installed in a condominium's wall. In addition, special tractors can transport certain extra-long construction items such as rafters down Teleport's trackage.

Private passenger cabins with windows are a type of pod. Any automated Teleport tractor, owned by the region's local transit system, can deliver a private passenger cabin to someone's garage or elevator door.

People can carry all of their personal stuff – a change of clothes, boxes of sales brochures, a bicycle – all over a city within their own private passenger cabins. It's possible to have a cot and a fridge in a passenger cabin.

A freight pod or a privately owned passenger cabin can be loaded onto a special truck and driven into the countryside as needed.

L27. Higher speed trains

Individual Teleport cabins aren't designed to minimize air friction on slow Teleport short hauls. Rather, passenger cabins and freight pods are designed to be packed together on longer-haul Teleport passenger cabin commuter trains.

Higher-speed medium-haul Teleport trains can be constructed at a slightly higher altitude above street level so that they don't interfere with short-haul Teleport operations. The trains and trackage might be designed to handle as few as five pods within a short-haul micro-train or as many as 100 pods on a faster medium-distance automated train.

Trains will always be constrained to strict total train weight limits, and the network computer constrains trains to specific speeds over various track sections. A fully automated network will be able to insert passenger cabins into the train on a just-in-time schedule and can empty the train on a just-in-time schedule, for seriously quick service combined with premium local Teleport performance. A large enough Teleport train can support one or more coffee shop pods and one or more rest room pods for a more civilized commute. Intercity Teleport trains can run on existing railroad tracks. Teleport becomes Mega-Teleport with the addition of modular trains.

L28. A Teleport community

Teleport's software has a goal of minimizing the sum of the squares of seconds of everyone's waiting time on the network. By cutting a particular gondola's portion of the “sum of squares” calculation in half, or doubling that gondola's portion, Teleport can offer off-peak freight transit rates, economy “standby” passenger travel rates or platinum travel rates based on a particular traveler's or company's budget and needs. A small train's departure might sometimes be held just a couple of seconds later for the arrival of a platinum commuter's passenger cabin, so that the platinum commuter doesn't wait two minutes for the next mini-train. Freight pods can be transported when a train might otherwise be sent off half-empty and underweight.

Teleport rescue vehicles might get 100 times as much sum-of-squares weight as each normal car on the system. We might let a Teleport ambulance speed just a bit down our trackage for a somewhat shakier and more electricity-consuming ride but with a faster travel time. A Teleport ambulance car should log a much faster total response time than a gasoline-powered ambulance in a downtown area. It can directly transport a patient from the interior of a multistory building to the door of an emergency department's surgical suite as needed.

Teleport's network is tasked with figuring out when certain repetitive weekday events are likely to happen again. Does a commuter train station regularly need a rush of extra cars at a certain particular weekday minute when a train pulls in? Teleport will also service irregularly scheduled events such as home baseball games.

L29. A Teleport-enabled condominium

Individual condos, houses and apartments might need private Teleport elevator doors.

Walk into your private passenger cabin within your apartment and get out on your floor at your job. Teleport can move you and a wheeled grocery cart directly from the checkout counter to your refrigerator door. Teleport can store five closet pods of your stuff in the Teleport cloud, in some warehouse. You can ship three cabins worth of your possessions straight to Florida for the winter, and you're not driving them anywhere. Moving all of your furniture to another apartment across town becomes surprisingly easy. Teleport can automatically deliver a hot pizza at top speed.

L30. Teleport and commerce

Teleport can quickly deliver air passengers to their specific connecting flights, with instructions to hold the flight for these passengers, and to far-flung parking lots. Gone are the days of slow passenger trams being driven through terminals.

Coffee shop baristas can see when their incoming Teleport customers are 3 minutes away from arrival at the shop, and that's when they can start taking their customers' orders. Optimally when each customer's Teleport door opens, there's the coffee on a shelf. The customers can say hi, they pour the milk, then the elevator door closes and they're gone. A proper morning commute should consist of a leisurely breakfast in a private Teleport passenger cabin with a friend.

Emptying a large sports stadium quickly would involve letting fans walk onto Teleport public mini-trains labeled with the general destination directions of north, south, east and west. Fans might transfer to their personal Teleport pods a mile away from the stadium. Because Teleport can always add more lines above a street to handle huge rushes, traffic jams may become obsolete.

High-rent prime locations such as rooftop restaurants and food carts can be quickly resupplied by Teleport from lower-rent prep areas across town.

L31. Industry

A Teleport walking crane can automatically deliver a complete building rafter or a modular piece of a new Teleport line to within an inch of its final position. Teleport can help to build its own new Teleport lines.

Teleport can bring all of a contractor's tools onsite each morning. Tools roll out of their pods on wheels. When extra lumber or a specialty tool is ordered, it shows up quickly. A machine shop across town can make specialty parts on demand and ship them in.

Teleport turns a city into one large assembly line. Everything gets less expensive when the delivery cost of all freight, both retail and industrial, plummets toward zero. All sorts of goods and tools show up at people's homes as needed.

L32. Teleport as a set of bus lines

A Teleport patron can start across town in seconds. The Teleport experience is nothing like waiting 15 minutes in heat, heavy rain, darkness or snow for a connecting bus. Sitting in your own Teleport car is nothing like standing in a screeching, smelly subway car while being squashed by total strangers who might have covid or who might be pickpockets.

Teleport elevators should replace ADA subway elevators. It should be possible for a legally blind patron to get into a public Teleport car at their apartment building, swipe their monthly pass and Teleport directly onto an inbound or outbound subway platform, usually catching the next train with precision timing.

Teleport scan cards might remember each patron's favorite stations so that a patron can swipe a card and then touch a button for “home”, “office”, “gym” or “supermarket”. A student might receive a limited card that will only take them to their school during school hours except by a teacher's or a parent's permission.

Certain issues surrounding Teleport passion pits have yet to be addressed.

L33. Teleport networks

There's a lot to the hardware. I'm a rather thorough inventor and Teleport needs to be safe beyond most people's imaginations.

My cables have gone through several iterations. My rails are new and so are my support towers.

I want wheels that really grip the cables well in any potential disaster. In rare cases when one of the two cables gets snapped away by whatever, a car should be able to hang by one cable and reattach to the second cable or rail, then continue.

I want Teleport airbags in the rare case that a ground-based cement mixer knocks down a support pole at exactly the wrong moment.

I want anti-terrorism equipment sniffing certain cars for explosives

I want properly designed airport departure and arrival gates, so that if terrorists manage to send a large bomb to the airport arrival station, the bomb's force is directed upward and everyone in the airport is still safe.

I want movable rest room pods on the trains that automatically are transported to special stations for regular cleaning.

Passenger pods need energy-efficient heat/cooling, lighting and creature comforts.

For a perfect coffee sale, the pod's elevator door opens and there's someone right there behind a counter for the customer. Add your own cream and sweetener, then your elevator door closes and you're on your way.

Special tractors and cars are designed for fire, police and ambulance vehicles because Teleport is far quicker than ground vehicles. One second of extra waiting for a priority vehicle can be weighted to equal 100 seconds or 1000 seconds of extra waiting for regular customers, so that priority vehicles get through the network at top speed. Normally, the network computer tries to minimize the sums of squares of total customer waiting time.

Special tractors can haul oversized 30 foot prebuilt rafter sections down the same tracks to a construction site.

Above-grade trackage maintenance cars are another specialty item. If one cable of the two at a time is replaced, Teleport can inexpensively perform much of its own track replacement and maintenance.

A Teleport ariel rescue car can usually haul a broken down Teleport car back up the cables, to a maintenance garage, or can at least enable the damaged car's occupants to get a ride to safety.

Next, there's a lot to the software, from computer network security issues to optimizing network flow given emergency vehicles and various freight discount rates.

Inquisitive new patrons should be brought in to a central station for a free introductory pass (it being their first day) plus a brochure and a gentle sales pitch.

Teleport cars holding persistent scofflaws can be redirected to the police station for a lecture from the desk sergeant.

Full and/or heavy passenger cars might be assigned premium waiting times by the network computer at rush hours.

Emptying a large sports stadium quickly would involve letting fans walk into elevator cars labeled with the general destination directions of north, south, east and west. Fans might then transfer to their personal Teleport pods a mile away from the stadium. Because Teleport can always add more lines above a street to handle huge rushes, traffic jams may become rather obsolete. For more city-wide solutions, see the next Teleport page at Teleport Networks

L34. A city-wide network topology

Long-distance rail lines need to be reasonably fast and they need to have a higher throughput than simple cables above the street. Teleport pods are designed to be carried singly up elevator shafts, singly by Teleport one-pod trucks that hang below cables or below rails, and in larger groups on Teleport-compatable train systems.

Below I’m going to be describing an ideal topology for four-pod (the number "4" is rather arbitrary for now, capacity may vary) above-street Teleport trains.

My current ideal for four-pod Teleport train coverage of a flat, rectangular city combines a number of L-shaped four-pod Teleport train tracks. Your urban district may have hills and crooked streets.

Not shown in the diagram below are the secondary above-street feeder slack cable lines that solve the last mile problem from people's houses or from street-level elevator doors to the four-pod trains. Also not shown are connector tracks at every place where two tracks cross, and various sidings at the terminuses of the rail lines.

Two of these tracks cross at the very center of the city. Those two tracks are straight.

All tracks have both of their terminuses out in the city's suburbs. The network allows four-pod trains to travel from a particular suburban terminus directly through a city to one other suburban terminus. On rare occasions a train will travel between these two points without stopping.

The network is designed so that every track crosses over or under every other track at least once. At these transfer points, entire four-car trains might drop individual pods off for automated transfer of the pods, or an entire train running express from one terminus to a certain other terminus might switch tracks on a siding.

The completely automated network will try its best to pack cars onto a four car train so that the train can run rather directly toward its destination. The ultimate destinations of each pod was earlier set when the owner got into that pod or when they otherwise programmed the pod's trip, so the scheduling computer has had a few minutes notice beforehand for all pod trips.

The other eight tracks on this topology (or twelve or sixteen tracks will also work) all bend in an L shape around the designated center of the city. Each track has its ell in one of the four quadrants around the center, northwest, northeast, southwest or southeast.

In this configuration, all eight ell-shaped tracks run within two units, two square blocks, of the city center. The other side of each ell swings wide of the city center. I’ll expect that one square equals ten city blocks by ten city blocks, or about 1/2 mile square. And so, every track somewhat services the populous city center.

Every suburban terminus has multiple sidings (not shown) where idle 4-car trains can sit and wait to be filled with cars, preferably all going toward one specific area of the city but occasionally trains can be packed willy-nilly. Every suburban line is a single track with regular sidings (not shown) where traffic traveling in one direction can pull off the main line to let traffic traveling in the other direction through. Pulses of 4-car trains can travel in opposite directions on the suburban spurs of each track, passing each other at these sidings. A typical siding connects to the main rail line at both ends of the siding. If one switch fails, the other siding switch allows the system to continue functioning, even if the throughput will be slower until the switch is fixed.. Also not shown, a slow network of cables allows pods to be passed around any out-of-operation section of track. In the event of a track failure at rush hour the network computer can swarm the area with extra cable trucks to reduce the jam-up.

At every intersection where a track crosses above another track, both tracks have a siding. A connector track runs between the two sidings, allowing individual 4-car trains to switch tracks. 4-car Trains are pre-loaded with cars all going to approximately the same place, and then individual car-trains can make only one single track switch to get to their destinations. For the most part, trains always travel forward toward their general destinations. The exception would be near the edge of the city. A car-train trying to get from one suburban terminal to an adjoining suburban terminal would most likely be better off switching two tracks rather than going all the way through the city’s center twice.

A ten track system gives us a total of 2 x 10 = 20 terminal sections of rail heading out into the suburbs. In an idealized situation, the 20 suburban rail spurs would radiate out in a 360 degree circle, all ending in terminals about 15 degrees around the circle from the next terminals in the circle.

In this idealized network north-south tracks are always above east-west tracks, or else east-west tracks are always higher.

All sidings are equipped with the ability to transfer Teleport pods between a car-train and Teleport one-car carriers that are capable of traversing a pair of slack wire cables hung above individual streets. Individual Teleport cars should be able to speedily go anywhere in a city to within a block of any destination. Many stores will have indoor Teleport stations, and many buildings will have Teleport-ready elevator shafts.

Also, individual cars can be hoisted from one siding on cables to a nearby siding to wait for another car-train to come by, one that is headed in the right direction for that car. Teleport is akin to (fully automated) hitchhiking in a sense.

For Teleport car-trains, right now I’m thinking in terms of only four cars per train. The track will only have to hold 4 cars at a time, because trains won’t be allowed to get closer. 16 car larger trains are always possible. Intercity railroad trains capable of carrying perhaps 100 pods are likely.

With a fully automated and complex network, we only need one track per line, not two. We need regular sidings to move trains off the main track so that opposite trains can pass.

L35. Rush hour and after midnight system performance:

These are for the most part single-track lines. During rush hour a number of 1-way tracks will naturally form around the city center. Many 4-car trains will need to exit onto 1-way tracks going their way.

Remember that the entire trackage is automated. Almost as soon as a patron steps into a Teleport pod, the system knows specifically where that pod is headed. For this reason, the server already knows how many pods are arriving, exactly when they are arriving and where they need to go. The network is programmed to minimize the sum of the squares of the waiting times in seconds that individual patrons are forced to endure. Note that the waiting times of high priority vehicles, police, fire and ambulances, have 100 times the weight of individual cars, so that they get through in excellent time. Teleport can also overweight full pods during rush hour and it can underweight freight pods if the shipper wants to save some money. Empty 4-pod trains are only a priority because more suburbanites are going to want to ride with the morning or afternoon rush.

Given one pod on the system that is needed to complete a four-pod train and then the train can be sent down the track, that local pod will either be hurried by the local system or the four-pod train will be sent off partially empty. It's not good to keep the other three pods waiting.

After midnight the coast is clear and 4-pod trains, often carrying only one pod, can often speed to their destinations without stopping. Not stopping is rather energy-efficient and it's certainly time-efficient.

L36. Caravan ordering

A colleague once told me that high speed rail tracks are at the mercy of balky rail switches. The next car or train coming down the track needs room and time to stop in case the switch ever gets stuck halfway between the main track and the siding.

My first fix would be to have longer multiple-car trains, in order to limit the number of switching motions that the switch needs to perform. Beyond that I recommend caravan ordering of all cars and mini-trains before each caravan enters the main track. The ordering is based on where each sub-caravan of trains in each caravan will exit the main rail.

For the following example, I'm going to assume that two medium-speed one-way rail lines merge into a high-speed rail, and then at the far end of the high speed rail are a number of rail switches to medium-speed rails. For input line A I'm going to always sort each inputting caravan into five sub-caravans numbered 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. On input line B I'm going to always sort each inputting caravan into sub-caravans numbered 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1 in reverse order. At the merge point a caravan from line A merges onto the main line, then the rail switches over, then there's a pause of time, then a caravan from line B merges onto the main line, then the rail switches back, then there's a second pause of time. So, on the main line the cars or trains are sorted into the following order: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, a gap, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, a gap, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, a gap, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, yet another gap, and this series repeats forever.

The next siding happens to go to station 5. Certain trains in the mega-caravan slightly slow down on the track to create the following caravan gaps: 1, 2, 3, 4, a gap, 5, 5, a gap, 4, 3, 2, 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, a gap, 5, 5, a gap, 4, 3, 2, 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, and this series repeats forever. Now the 4, 3, 2, 1, 1, 2, 3, 4 caravan can continue down the main track, we've left time for the switch to safely flip over to the station 5 siding, the 5,5 caravan goes down the siding, the switch flips back, and this series repeats forever.

The next siding leads to a spur line that goes out to stations 3 and 4. The remaining trains form into the following caravan groupings: 1, 2, a gap, 3, 4, 4, 3, a gap, 2, 1, 1, 2, a gap, 3, 4, 4, 3, a gap and this series repeats forever. The spur line switch again has time to switch back and forth safely.

This caravan pre-sorting system can extend backward and forward for quite a large network topology.

Cellular transit networks

Breaking a large network into cells reduces the entire transit system to a more easily handled level. It also reduces the chance of system-wide blackouts.

Each cell is given the times that new cars will enter the cell from neighboring cells. The cell tells the system control computer the estimated times that cars will leave the cell for an adjoining cell. The local cell controller must also anticipate what local patrons might walk up to local stations. If a cell controller fears that it may become overloaded and jammed, it negotiates with the central computer. Naturally there are backup control systems if any particular primary control system goes on the blink.

L37. Off-network transportation – modules with steering wheels that fit onto truck pods

Somebody will want to Teleport themselves in their personal passenger cabin loaded with all of their gear to the outer end of an urban Teleport network, then lock their passenger cabin onto the bed of a special truck, then manually drive their pod up a mountain on a camping trip.

L38. Costs

I price Teleport cables at about 1 cent per passenger-mile. The cost of building Teleport public passenger cabins (non-luxurious models, at least) and tractors would be another cent per passenger-mile. The electricity needed to move a tractor and cab one passenger-mile would be yet another 1 cent. The total system cost (not counting R&D) is about 3 cents per passenger-mile. No automobile and freeway system could compete financially with this transit system, not without vast built-in political subsidies for their buggy whip technology.

I estimate 90% lifetime energy savings over a gasoline and ground-based freeway system, plus the last 10% will eventually be almost 100% renewable electricity.

L39. Early implementation costs - not cheap but vastly worth it

Dreaming and drawings have been relatively inexpensive. Our planet needs far more dreaming and drawings.

We need to continue to nail down what we want to build. We need to prototype Teleport's subsystems. Our goal is always to minimize the project's biggest questions and financial risks first before we commit anyone's money to the project.

Proper crash testing could take on the order of a $100 million dollar investment. Remember that future automated systems and current vehicles/roads are treated far differently in our courts. Congress can shoulder most of the blame for allowing this double standard.

Displacing almost the entire automobile and freeway construction industry is a trillion dollar domestic market. Changing transportation would displace 20% of all worldwide greenhouse gas production. That's a bargain. It demands funding.

Teleport Transit will be far less expensive than transit planners can imagine. Without red lights or traffic jams, the electricity equivalent of miles per gallon could be in the range of 200 mpg. Arteries with 100 times the carrying capacity of a freeway might be cheaply built above an existing freeway. People would not be able to afford any form of transportation (cars) that kills 42,000 people a year and that causes enormous stress.

300 mpg-equivalence
Aggressively competitive with cars in cities
Notable ADA-compliance
Compliant with covid-19 social distancing requirements
Lifetime costs of 3 cents per passenger-mile including the above-street trackage

L40. Teleport safety principles

No system is safe unless engineers can think of ten ways that the system can fail.

Individual car batteries are safer than a central electrical grid

A cellular network survives disasters.

Individual cars can sense, by the tension and the position of the linked chains,

Two chains will mean nearly zero falls

Even with rigorous inspection, one linked chain might suddenly fail someday. If the second chain is in place, the car won't fall 20 feet to the ground.

When in doubt, go slow

A 20 mph gondola or automobile crash inherently causes far less injury than a 50 mph goldola or automobile crash. This is especially true if there's a nonzero chance

To go faster, collect a number of passenger cabins into a notably safe higher-speed train. That's the advantage of modularization.

Teleport safety devices and network algorithms

L41. Specific Teleport designs for airports

Airports need specific arrival-only Teleport stations with doors that would focus any bomb blast away from any people. Teleport may have recorded suspicious loading weight data to indicate a that a bomb is aboard a car. A suspicious car can get redirected. A sniffing device can help.

L42. Runaway cars

The network computer needs to move all occupied cars out of a runaway car's path. Installing a few runaway car ramps, where a car's gear teeth are disengaged from the cable, won't cost that much. Sometimes putting a slow-moving unoccupied car in the path of a speeding car to slow it down will be the best strategy.

L43. Devices for cable failure

A lack of cable tension ahead will be transmitted through the coat hangers to the next cable, and so each Teleport car can sense when a broken support cable is ahead. If one Teleport car detects a trackage problem, an entire line of cars can all stop quickly.

If a Teleport cable ever snaps while in use, the Teleport car's driving wheel will often be hanging on to a residual piece of the cable by its gear teeth.

Cars need to deploy exterior air bags and right-side-up steering parachutes if they ever free-fall 20 feet. Internal air bags will also help.

L44. Network failures

All Teleport cars on the tracks need to come to a stop in the event of network-wide broadcasting failure. One by one, with plenty of extra time allotted, cars need to go back to nearby stations and safely unload their passengers. A Teleport car can sense when another Teleport car is occupying the next section of cable.

In the event of a statewide electrical blackout, Teleport first needs to deliver its existing passengers to stations. Battery-powered Teleport cars will still be able to lift a very few additional priority Teleport passengers to their destinations during the blackout. A backup electrical generator at one Teleport station would help to recharge a few cars.

We need a network operator to shut down Teleport in the event of a tornado warning. Teleport cars are pretty tough, but their windows can shatter.

I want Teleport airbags in the rare case that a ground-based cement mixer knocks down a support pole at exactly the wrong moment.

I want anti-terrorism equipment sniffing certain cars for explosives

I want movable rest room pods on the trains that automatically are transported to special stations for regular cleaning. A passenger stuck in the lavatory is taken off at her stop, and a new lavatory is inserted onto the train.

Above-grade trackage maintenance cars are another specialty item. If one cable of the two at a time is replaced, Teleport can inexpensively perform much of its own track replacement and maintenance.

A Teleport aerial rescue car can usually haul a broken down Teleport car back up the cables, to a maintenance garage

A Teleport chain replacement car can, while hanging from one chain, disconnect and reel in the other worn chain between two towers while reeling out and connecting the new chain. No bucket truck will be necessary.

Next, there's a lot to the software, from computer network security issues to optimizing network flow given emergency vehicles and various freight discount rates.

Inquisitive new patrons should be brought in to a central station for a free introductory pass (it being their first day) plus a brochure and a gentle sales pitch.

Teleport cars holding persistent known scofflaws might be redirected to a police station for a warning or ticket from the desk sergeant.

Full and/or heavy passenger cars might be assigned premium waiting times by the network computer at rush hours.

Emptying a large sports stadium quickly would involve letting fans walk into minitrain-sized cars labeled with the general destination directions of north, south, east and west. Fans might then transfer to their own personal Teleport pods or to public cab pods a mile away from the stadium. Because Teleport can always add more lines above a street to handle huge rushes, traffic jams may become rather obsolete.

op. Traffic congestion is seriously simplified. Perhaps 100 times as many Teleport cars can be fit above a freeway as autos on the freeway.

Busier Teleport networks will have one-way circulator routes and multiple cable routes between most stations. In rare circumstances a zip line may be put out of service by a leaning tree caused by a hurricane, or a cement mixer on the ground might possibly damage a support tower someday. Teleport needs to detect such problems almost instantaneously. Then, lines of individual cars are quickly halted and automatically rerouted around the bad section of track. The days are numbered for a gasoline tanker truck rollover at rush hour causing a five mile backup of uninformed freeway drivers.