Billions Available to Fix Traffic
Abstract
Federal policies that caused oil-powered highways to displace freight railroads and stifled liberty to choose transportation infrastructure created the defects that we see as congestion, climate change, oil-wars, rising oil prices, etc.
By restoring the Rule of Law to provide liberty to choose infrastructure, niche markets will form. It is the author’s opinion that in some niches of highly repetitive urban traffic, alternative networks could convert 90% of gasoline, accident, and congestion costs into profitable revenue and customer savings. This 90% conversion of cost to value provides access to at least 1/3rd of the $36.8 billion per year wasted on traffic in New Jersey and the $19.9 billion wasted per year on traffic in Massachusetts. Relative conversion of costs to value is practical in most cities.
As with communications, once the Rule of Law allows for innovation, networks that convert costs to value will displace networks that have been protected from competition by Federal monopoly for a century.
This article uses transportation innovations in Massachusetts and New Jersey to illustrate that billions of dollars are available to fix urban traffic. The people of New Jersey spend $36.8 billion per year on traffic ($13.8 billion for gasoline, $14.4 billion for accidents, $8.6 billion for time lost in congestion). The people of Massachusetts spend $19.9 billion per year on traffic ($9.9 billion for gasoline, $6 billion for accidents, $3 billion for time lost in congestion). Converting some of these costs that people hate into value they appreciate provides the funds to build sustainable mobility networks. However, in order to earn these dollars, we have to adopt the Rule of Law to support liberty, define Metrics, and apply Technologies.
Rule of Law to Support Liberty
In the mobilization to fight World War I, on August 1, 1918, President Wilson monopolized communications, power and transportation infrastructures, claiming them as “natural monopolies.” This monopolization of infrastructure continued for most of the 20th Century. In 1935, President Roosevelt’s Rural Electrification Administration removed energy self-reliance as a market force causing bankruptcies in the distributed energy industry and the abandonment of 600,000 water and electric windmills. President Eisenhower’s Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 removed efficiency as a market force for transportation causing railroad bankruptcies and the abandonment of nearly half of the freight railroads in America (120,000 miles).
These laws had intended good but suppressed liberty. Their harm can be seen in climate change, dependence on foreign oil, oil-wars since 1990, funding of terrorists with oil-dollars, resourced depletion, and national debt.
After the Rule of Law restored liberty to people to choose communication infrastructure in 1982, niche markets formed, capital was invested, and long dormant innovations such as the Internet (created in 1969) and radio-telephone networks (created in St Louis in 1946) scaled to commercial viability. Nearly a century of rotary telephones was displaced as better services created millions of jobs delivering better value at lower costs.
Secaucus, NJ Ordinance 2014-23 and Massachusetts Senate Bill #1837 restore liberty to choose transportation infrastructure based on Performance Standards. These laws allow companies to build innovative transportation on public rights-of-way when they: 1) use private capital, 2) move a person at the equivalent of 120 miles per gallon or better, 3) meet the safety standards used in the amusement ride industry, and 4) pay 5% of gross revenues to the aggregate owners of the rights-of-way. The full text of the Secaucus law is below.
AN ORDINANCE OF THE TOWN OF SECAUCUS, REGARDING PERFORMANCE STANDARDS FOR GRANTING RIGHT-OF-WAY ACCESS FOR TRANSPORTATION INNOVATIONS
WHEREAS, returning communication infrastructure to a free market in 1982 resulted in vast innovation, better service at lower costs and millions of jobs;
WHEREAS, privately funded freight railroads average over 400 ton-miles per gallon efficiency;
and
WHEREAS, establishing performance standards based on economic work accomplished per unit of energy consumed may allow free market solutions that repeat communication infrastructure success in transportation infrastructure;
and
WHEREAS, the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment Study PB- 244854 (1975) identified Automated Guideways and Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) networks as a solution to the 1973 Oil Embargo and the PRT network at Morgantown, WV has delivered 100 million oil-free, injury-free passenger-miles since starting service in 1975;
NOW THEREFORE BE IT ORDAINED, non-exclusive access to City rights-of-way may be granted to transportation system providers meeting the following free market principles :
(1) Privately funded construction;
(2) Privately operated without government subsidies;
(3) Exceed 120 passenger-miles per gallon, or equivalent efficiency; and
(4) Exceed safety performance of transportation modes already approved for use.
AND THEREFORE BE IT FURTHER ORDAINED, regulation of free market innovations shall be based on :
(1) System design, fabrication, installation, safety, insurance, inspection practices consistent with the ASTM International, Committee F24 on Amusement Rides and Devices;
(2) Environmental approvals will be granted based on a ratio of energy consumed per passenger-mile of the innovation versus transport modes approved to operate in the rights-of-way; and
(3) All taxes and fees assessed on the transport system providers, passengers and cargo shall be limited to 5% of gross revenues and paid to the aggregate rights-of-way holders by transportation system providers;
AND THEREFORE BE IT FURTHER ORDAINED that any individual projects shall be processed and considered in accordance with all relevant municipal and state regulations.
Metrics
Four metrics are important for understanding Performance Standards and their impact on the economy : Net Energy, Disposable Energy, Energy per Unit of Economic Work, and Parasitic Energy Ratio.
Net Energy measures how much energy is useful to the economy per unit of energy required to harvest that energy. In the early 1900s the Net Energy of oil was 100:1, meaning that 100 useful barrels were obtained for each barrel expended extracting oil. Oil was a very attractive and cheap source of energy. But as oil fields depleted, Net Energy decreased towards 3:1. Energy Economics (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvqEi7XRKY8) provides more depth on the importance of Net Energy. Discussion here is limited to showing that the Net Energy of solar energy is 6 times better than the Net Energy from fracking or oil-sands.
Technology to use solar energy to power transportation is covered later in this article.
Disposable Energy1 measures how much energy (using gasoline prices) people can buy with their take-home-pay, how much energy is available for people to pursue happiness, and how much energy is available to build momentum into the economic flywheel. The following graph shows a correlation between Oil Supply Growth and GDP (Gross Domestic Product) Growth (both decreasing towards zero between 1960 and today). Disposable Energy shows increases as efficiencies increased and decreases as China and India began competing for oil imports in world markets in the late 1990s.
Gasoline prices ratchet erratically higher. But on average they have increased 7.3% per year since US Peak Oil in 1970 and 15.1% per year since 1998. The gist of Disposable Energy is that never again will cheap oil power economic expansion.
Parasitic Energy Ratio (PER) and Economic Work per Energy Unit (passenger-km/liter) are highly correlated. Parasitic Energy Ratio is a rough guess based on the kinetic energy of the moving mass divided by the kinetic energy of the payload times the number of applications of power (start-stops). The velocity squared and constant cancel, simplifying to the moving mass divided by the payload mass times the number of start-stops :
• “Beam me up Scotty” has a perfect PER of 1. There is no parasitic vehicle mass and only one momentum shift, one start-stop. This is the smallest value possible.
• Bicycles have a PER of about 6 for a typical commute with 5 start-stops (77 kg (mass, or weight, of a person) plus 11 kg (mass, or weight, of a bike) divided by 77 kg (the payload, which is the mass of the person) times 5 start-stops equals about 6.
• Moving two tons to move a person in a car or three tons per passenger on mass transit results in PERs in the hundreds.
The result is that massive vehicles in congested travel use enormously more energy than is required to move just a person. Radically more efficient transportation is well understood; the 225,000 km (140,000 miles) of freight railroads in the US average 476 ton-miles per gallon.2 This efficiency is accomplished by a combination of rail rolling efficiency and reducing the number of start-stops.
High mass and repetitive applications of power for cars, commuter rail and buses result in Economic Work per Unit of Energy that is less than 1% of freight railroads’ efficiency: 16.8 km/liter for cars, 19.7 for commuter rail, 13.9 for buses (or in miles/gallon, 32.6, 27 and 32.8, respectively).3
Paying attention to these metrics provides a foundation for economic growth based on tapping solar energy and increasing efficiencies by removing the parasitic mass of vehicles and repetitive start-stops.
Technologies for Sustainable Transportation
Life requires energy. Oil is finite. Economies powered by oil are terminal. US Peak Oil in 19704 and the deterioration of Disposable Energy since 1998 underscore the deterioration of oil-powered economies. Forecasting winning technologies and companies in the shift from oil to something else is difficult. So this article is limited to the author’s understanding of Personal Rapid Transit (PRT or podcars) with JPods as a specific example.
Consider that the Internet is a distributed collaborative computer network that moves data packets. JPods’ patent is for the use of distributed collaborative computer networks to move physical packets, the Physical-Internet™. Ultra-light robotic vehicles travel suspended from overhead rails using 1/10th the energy of cars, buses or passenger-trains. Solar collectors mounted over the rails gather 40,000 vehicle-miles of power per mile of rail per day.
Efficiency. The PER of JPods is about 3 [(220 kg vehicle plus 500 kg of payload) divided by (500 kg of the payload times two start-stops)]. Reducing the parasitic mass of the vehicle and the repetitive applications of power reduces the energy costs per vehicle mile by about 90%.
Safety. Grade separation provides safety. The PRT network in Morgantown, WV (link to letter from the Mayor of Morgantown on the effectiveness of the network in his city)5 moves about 16,000 people per day, with no accidents since it opened in 1975. In the same period of time that Morgantown’s PRT has been injury-free, approximately 1.7 million people have died on US highways. Morgantown’s PRT is self-regulated, so it does not provide a repeatable regulatory model. It is for this reason that the Performance Standard Law uses the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) International standard for theme parks. Although theme park rides are designed to be more intense, they have a safety record nearly as good as PRT.
The 467 ton-mile per gallon efficiency of freight railroads and zero injury safety record of Morgantown’s PRT provide clear examples that radically more efficient and safer mobility networks are practical. Yet the abandonment of 120,000 miles of freight railroads and failure to deploy more PRT networks illustrate the 1974 warning stated in the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment Study PB-2448546 :
• Federally sponsored R&D [Research & Design] has not included a coordinated program for conversion of successful products into operational systems.
• UMTA’s R&D programs [US DOT Urban Mass Transit Administration]... have neglected near-term... impler approaches to correct transit problems.
• Finally, institutional failures may have hindered implementation.
- http://oilprice.com/Finance/investing-and-trading-reports/Metrics-Replace-GDP-with-Disposable-Energy.html
- https://www.aar.org/newsandevents/Press-Releases/Pages/The-Nations-Freight-Railroads-Average-476-Ton-Miles-Per-Gallon.aspx
- http://cta.ornl.gov/data/chapter2.shtml
- http://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&s=mcrfpus1&f=a
- http://www.jpods.com/blog_1973oilcrisis
