{"id":475,"date":"2019-03-12T17:47:11","date_gmt":"2019-03-12T17:47:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ajhassoc.com\/?p=475"},"modified":"2019-04-20T22:32:24","modified_gmt":"2019-04-20T22:32:24","slug":"fantastical-transportation-options","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ajhassoc.com\/index.php\/2019\/03\/12\/fantastical-transportation-options\/","title":{"rendered":"Fantastical Transportation Options"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"entry\">\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Warning:&nbsp; Sarcasm\nahead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Goodyear has apparently just invented a wheel that would allow a regular-looking car to fly.&nbsp; They are helping us baby boomers realize a dream from the pages of <em>Popular Mechanics<\/em> from the 1950s.&nbsp; An Intel guy says, quite seriously, flying cars will be here in five years.&nbsp; Uber agrees. &nbsp;Just think, instead of miserably slogging through stop-and-go traffic in jammed freeway lanes, we will be able to miserably slog through stop-and-go traffic in jammed air lanes.&nbsp; Such is progress.&nbsp; I am OK with the idea, just so long as I am no higher than two feet in elevation and I can literally drag my foot when I need to stop suddenly.&nbsp; I am reminded that the required spacing between smaller jet planes when approaching an airport under VFR conditions is 3 nautical miles, a slightly higher spacing than the 1\/45 mile for a freeway lane at capacity.&nbsp; Oh, and the fuel economy of a helicopter with the same payload as a Prius is only 6 times worse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I am disappointed to see no major cities in the US yet connected by maglev trains.&nbsp; Maglev promised exceptionally high-speed operations, maybe competitive to airlines. &nbsp;Oops, all real implementations of maglev to date have performance characteristics similar to good conventional rail.&nbsp; Perhaps 300 mph technology is not all that well suited to \u00bd mile station spacings.&nbsp; Maybe we haven\u2019t been ambitious enough.&nbsp; California might be persuaded to consider maglev for revitalizing their high-speed rail project.&nbsp; Then if we were to connect it to a system from San Diego to El Paso, it could do double duty as a wall, eliminating a lot of expensive grade crossings with long bridge spans!&nbsp; This could be the political compromise we have all been waiting for.&nbsp; A PPP would make it even more attractive.&nbsp; We should ask Elon Musk for his list of Tesla investors; they will invest in anything with enough tech appeal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Speaking of Tesla, since maglev is now a proven concept, we\nneed to go the next step and start building Elon Musk\u2019s hyperloop train\neverywhere.&nbsp; Could this be the solution\nto our transportation woes?&nbsp; 155 mph\noperation with an autonomous vehicle?&nbsp; I\u2019m\nsold!&nbsp; Unfortunately, Musk\u2019s concept is\nnot a good candidate for my proposed San Diego to El Paso line.&nbsp; Too many spots for grade crossings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Last week, a journal sent me a paper to review, and that\npaper assumed these obvious benefits of autonomous vehicles before plunging\ninto some heavy network theory:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Autonomous vehicles will greatly increase the capacity of traffic lanes;<\/li><li>Autonomous vehicles will greatly reduce a driver\u2019s subjective value of time;<\/li><li>Autonomous vehicles will greatly improve fuel efficiency; and<\/li><li>Autonomous vehicles will not do anything for passenger safety, or at least not enough to merit any mention by these authors.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Of course, none of this was backed up by analyses or\nempirical studies. &nbsp;I am thinking these assumptions\nmust have been drawn from conventional wisdom.&nbsp;\nGreat! &nbsp;Let\u2019s base all our\nacademic research on conventional wisdom.&nbsp;\nIt\u2019s lots easier than actually doing background research.&nbsp; I opted out of writing a review.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It would be far better for these concepts if we were to ignore principles of traffic flow, driver behavior, traveler behavior, political constraints, safety, and community impacts.&nbsp; I propose a $10 million research project devoted entirely to finding ways to suspend these inconveniences.&nbsp; If you are from FTA or FHWA, please write the check directly to me, personally.&nbsp; I will deliver the final report soon after we build our border rail project.&nbsp; However, I do not propose to suspend the laws of physics.&nbsp; One must have some degree of integrity!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It was just announced that Uber will not be charged with a\ncrime for the March 18, 2018 crash of a self-driving car that killed a\npedestrian.&nbsp; It seems Arizona has no laws\nto prevent unsafe operation of autonomous vehicles.&nbsp; There was an undisclosed settlement between Uber\nand the victim\u2019s family, and litigation is continuing between the family and\nthe City of Tempe.&nbsp; However, this\nlitigation does not involve the self-driving aspects of the car; rather the suit\nboringly relates to alleged roadway design flaws.&nbsp; We are starving for case law on autonomous vehicles.&nbsp; It is clear to me that we need completely\nunregulated environments, such as was brilliantly created by Arizona, for\noperating these vehicles so we can build up case law as quickly as possible.&nbsp; To further speed deployment, we should lobby Congress\nto give big subsidies to self-driving car owners, just as it does now for\nelectric vehicles.&nbsp; This will insure us a\nhuge self-driving fleet well before we have the laws and infrastructure to accommodate\nit.&nbsp; We will be grateful for all those\nwrongful death lawsuits, so we can upgrade our benefit-cost studies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As my mother would say, \u201cGoodness gracious\u201d, we are fortunate\nto be at the cutting edge of so many interesting technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Alan Horowitz, Chapel\nHill, March 12, 2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Notes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Honestly, my mother never said goodness anything in her life.&nbsp; Had she been asked, she would likely have said, \u201cwhat a big load of crap!\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I grew up in Arizona.&nbsp;\nI know first-hand how brilliant the state government can be.<\/p>\n\n\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Warning:&nbsp; Sarcasm ahead. Goodyear has apparently just invented a wheel that would allow a regular-looking car to fly.&nbsp; They are helping us baby boomers realize a dream from the pages of Popular Mechanics from the 1950s.&nbsp; An Intel guy says, quite seriously, flying cars will be here in five years.&nbsp; Uber agrees. &nbsp;Just think, instead &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5,7,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-environmental-impacts","category-research-philosophy","category-scenario-development","anons"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Fantastical Transportation Options - QRS II Page<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/ajhassoc.com\/index.php\/2019\/03\/12\/fantastical-transportation-options\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Fantastical Transportation Options - QRS II Page\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Warning:&nbsp; Sarcasm ahead. 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