Movement created the world. The Big Bang, the birth of life, evolution, the explosive appearance of the technosphere – all of them are movements. We transfer data, goods, people. But data, goods and people are all very different. They live in different places: data on disks, goods in boxes, people in houses. Also they are moved in different ways. But even now, on the threshold of the 21st century, they use much the same routes and much the same vehicles, which is all terribly old fashioned.
In the future, the hub of all transportation, all movement, will be the movement of data. The transfer and storage of data is already very complicated. It still does not tell all. The movement of goods and people is significantly dependent upon the movement of data.
Now goods move intelligently in drains, water pipes, gas pipes, pneumatic mail or on conveyor belts and transporters in factories. But in practice there are breaks in this movement. Finished products are taken from the factory to the wholesaler, retailer and consumer along a complicated and unpractical route. Accompanied by drivers and vehicles they go from warehouse to warehouse, shelf to shelf.
Now people travels intelligently on bicycles or trains. But they mostly move in enclosed spaces, subject to sudden death, tied to steering wheels, breathing exhaust fumes, poisoning the air, guzzling their children’s irreplaceable resources, spending unreasonable sums on the greatest swindle of the century, the internal combustion engine driven motorcar.
Now information is intelligently transferred by telephone and E mail. Otherwise it goes in the same way as it has gone for centuries. People convey information in the parcel of their own body from meeting to meeting, seminar to seminar. And with them go masses of steel, glass, oil and plastic – even though it is only massless data that should be transferred from one place to another.
All forms of movement have to be reformed. No other sector of the new society will be subject to such revolutionary change as movement. Data, goods and people have to be packed into different, entirely new types of packages. Europe will have to renew its thinking about packages during the next generation.
DATA COMMUNICATION
Manuel Murillo is a postgraduate at the University of Madrid. His subsidiary subject is bovine ethics and the welfare of cows. The day after tomorrow, the 28th May, he has an exam on inflammations of the udder and their effect on the mental balance of cows. He sits in his student pad going through recent research results, articles and films in the field on his wall terminal. It will be a tough exam and he’ll have to spend the whole weekend swotting.
Two things are destroying his concentration. Firstly, he has just learned that Grazziella, the Lisbon beauty of his dreams, is going out with a Russian junk dealer and all efforts to call her up on the screen have failed. Secondly, Professor Ortega has ordered all his students to sit the exam in person. Usually postgraduates sit exams through the terminal, but the university has discovered cheating and for that reason Ortega, who normally treats Manuel in a fatherly and indulgent way, has now demanded stricter exam procedures.
This greatly upsets Manuel, he’s not at all used to this sort of thing. God knows what the creep will think up next! He even considers appealing to the European Student’s Rights Commission.
Development of data communications
The future outlook for the transfer and storage of data are very promising and important, which is why this technology should be viewed in a different way than those in other fields. It is the key to all the other doors.
In 1962 the Helsinki University of Technology had one computer programmed for rather simple mathematical formulae. They were routed by binary codes on 15 mm wide paper tape, with each number or letter represented by a combination of five to six round holes. The tape was fed into a reader and the rows of holes were converted into numerical values on an electronic calculator the size of a Volkswagen. The machine calculated what it had been programmed to do and printed the results on continuous sheet of paper. It was fantastic.
Let us compare the situation 34 years ago with the jungle of computers we have today and then try to imagine developments in a similar period from now onwards. Due to the accelerating pace of developments the future step will go much further, so it is much more difficult for us to visualise the situation tomorrow than it was years ago to imagine today. Probably in a generation from now we shall have a number of inventions which have not even reached the laboratory stage yet. By that time, the technology which we can only just detect on the horizon now, will have become cheap utility goods available to all and sundry.
Perceiving changes and predicting developments in data communications is vitally important, as the rapid transfer and multi-form storage of data occupy a key role in the megamachine discussed in this book. The larger and more efficient data transfer systems we have now are, at least in principle, capable of serving the megamachine, not to mention its technical details. Here I am not so concerned with the details, but with how the systems themselves will presumably evolve over the next 30 years from the user’s point of view. It is around these visions that the great infrastructures of the future will be built.
Like the receivers of today, those of the future will also be fixed and mobile. Within a generation from now we shall in all probability have the technology which, putting it mildly, will fully satisfy all our requirements. Fixed receivers are advanced combinations of present-day telephones, answering machines, televisions, telefaxes and computer terminals. These will be combined into something far more diverse, practical and convenient than imaginably from the present variety of gadgets. The mobile phone of today is but a simple prototype of tomorrow’s mobile receiver. The services it offers will receive new forms and its physical appearance will achieve unimaginable variations.
Terminals
A fixed terminal meets many requirements. In size and shape it can be anything, such as a flat picture-type screen on a wall, for example. It is a window to the outside world. It conveys moving colour images, sounds and other data. It also functions as a remote-controlled video camera, so it can be used as a transmitter which fulfills all the requirements of a videophone. It has a number of optional features which the buyer can have installed. It converts speech into printed text and vice versa. It can translate into and from many languages. It contains all the mathematical programmes which a family might require and also functions as a money manager. Its resolution is at least as good as today’s HDTVs.
The terminal can be controlled from a keyboard, remote-controller or by voice. Colour drawings and photographs can be fed into it in the same way as advance photocopying machines today. This characteristic is parallel to its use as a video camera. The terminal can be windowed so that it is connected to several different receivers simultaneously. Part of the windows could be linked to public networks like libraries or statistics centres, and part with videophone links to private contacts. Interactive contacts between public and private contacts functions in many ways. Each fixed screen automatically fulfills the requirements of mobile, cordless terminals – but not the other way round as fixed units have a greater capacity than mobile ones. Fixed units for public use are as common as telephone kiosks today.
In addition to the above characteristics, the terminal has an almost unlimited capacity to store data going through it and output it in a variety of ways to other compatible units. Furthermore, it can be given an endless number of tasks to fulfill whilst the owner is absent: Sell my Internet shares when the price goes over USD 250, Water the flowers once a day, or Reschedule next week’s appointments for a more suitable time.
The panel should also have the ability to receive and transmit three-dimensional pictures. I do not assume that this will be an everyday practice in homes in 30 years time, but that the technology is so far developed in the laboratory that it would pay to build this option into future systems. Once the network capacity and receivers are advanced enough to transfer three-dimensional pictures, then there would be no need to buy new receivers.
Polymedia applications
I have called the terminal and its associated network polymedia, which graphically illustrates its virtually unlimited communication applications. In the future, as to a certain extent already, polymedia could be used for the following purposes.
Meeting room
Polymedia is a meeting room. It allows people living in different areas to meet by connecting their terminals together and using them as both receivers and transmitters. Thus negotiations, seminars and other types of meetings can be held without the need for the participants to travel physically from one place to another. The meetings can be recorded, so no minutes need to be kept and even outsiders can then see what was discussed at them. Part of the screen could be reserved for private or secret documents, another part would function as a general receiver which during the meeting could be used for checking on statistics, share prices, timetables or even the weather. Polymedia could also be used for lectures for general audiences and because it is interactive it will allow for questions to be asked from the lecturers (Figure 109a).
Funfair
Polymedia is an amusement park, offering films and interactive adventures and games. Even traditional games like chess, draughts, bridge and backgammon are available and the opponent can either be a friend or the computer. Other types of personal contacts are also made easier. Polymedia replaces and improves upon present-day newspaper advertising from personal contacts to jobs. Job ads can be replied to immediately, applicants interviewed, questions asked about the job and a work contract drawn up without having to go anywhere. Temporary jobs and gigs become routines. The labour market is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year (Figure 109b).
News agency
Polymedia is also a window into the present. The news can be watched daily as now, pre-selected and edited. But in addition – in accordance with the principle of service – viewers can deepen and diversify their knowledge as well as their opinion of the subject. They can access original, un-edited interviews. They have at their disposal authentic news reports made by private individuals throughout the world. It is no longer necessary to listen to politicians moaning about prejudiced interviewers. Different versions of the same subject can be viewed alongside each other. Polymedia has an extensive but carefully organised ‘Letters’ department in which all can participate in whatever subject interests them and broadcast their comments throughout the world. Polymedia is technically more advanced than Internet and considerably more convenient. At least, in theory, it means an end to the media barons and the oligarchy of anchorpersons (Figure 109c).
Shopping mall
Polymedia changes from a meeting room to a funfair, and the next moment we are in a shopping mall where everyone is free to sell their products. However, this is a buyer’s not a seller’s market. Competing sellers have to display their goods in the same place. In this way the system of the future differs from Internet. The consumer does not shop in a department store where all the goods have been pre-selected, but in a specialist store where, for example, all makes of mountain bikes, both new and second-hand, are on offer. Similarly the ‘Flats for sale’ ads take on a new form. The panel shows films of all available flats classified according to location, price bracket and size. Thus a potential buyer does not need to traipse around viewing flats before he has drawn up a short list from polymedia. Neither do consumers have to collect their purchases as these are delivered direct from the factory. The traditional shop will, to a large extent, become extinct. Polymedia also provides a continental-wide network of wholesale exchanges dealing in anything from scrap metal and tomatoes to energy and design services (Figure 109d).
Service centre
Polymedia also functions as a service centre. All public services are managed by one authority conveniently, cheaply and efficiently without any requirement to attend in person. Polymedia will largely replace the post office. Newspapers can be called up on the panel from anywhere at any time, either as text, speech, photos or film or a combination of all. Polymedia will also include private services. Not only ordering opera tickets, consulting timetables or tax enquiries, but also many medical services can be managed through polymedia. After physiotherapists, doctors are the profession where most physical contact is required. Provided it remains within the limits of decency, most medical services could be taken care of in the future through tele-contact (Figure 109e).
School
Polymedia also functions as a school or university, whose users can attend any of the telecourses they fancy provided by the numerous institutions offering their services. Courses are open to everyone and a small charge could be levied for using text books and other material. The state could subsidise polymedia education in the same way as it does today. In the future education will be a more important area of production. Teaching will be interactive, with students able to repeat lessons and deepen their knowledge of details. Language courses will be partly taught as trips abroad: French, for example, in a boulevard café. Alongside the sound and picture will be text, translation and phonetics. Courses will gradually intensify. The graphics will be top quality because each teaching minute will be prepared without sparing money or labour (Figure 109f).
Library
Polymedia operates as a library in the same way as present-day lending libraries. Author and subject indexes help you find the book or film you want, which can then be perused, read, viewed, or even copied into your own database. One great advantage over the present system is that any number of users can watch the same film at the same time. Different sources can be called up simultaneously. All the material is systematically organised with articles filed in their own compartments, so someone researching a highly specialised subject like the eating habits of wolverines will not have to wade through masses of back numbers of the relevant journals. He can call up “wolverine” straight away, click on to “eating habits”, and then search for relevant articles, films or other material. Polymedia is only a more advanced, extensive and developed version of Internet’s service for universities.
Figure 109. Alternative uses for future information terminals: meetings, personal contacts, news, shopping, doctors and schools
Pocket communicators
In the future the above mentioned possibilities will be available through a fixed terminal. Alongside it, a more humble, mobile version will be developed that fits in the pocket. This will meet most of the requirements of the fixed terminal, but has a smaller capacity. Smallness and mobility entail their own limitations.
The model we have today looks like a piece of baguette and is used like a telephone. It is doubtful if its shape will change much in the foreseeable future, but alongside it a flatter, collapsible model will be developed that will give a larger display unit allowing for more text and pictures: a folding version of the wall screen of tomorrow. The only difference between them is capacity. The wall screen could be up to two square metres in size.
At about the same time as this book went to print, the world’s first mobile communicator, the Nokia 9000, came onto the market (Figure 110).
Network throughput
Before we can develop such systems for the whole continent an agreement must be reached on standards. There is no point to invest in plant and product development or create expensive data networks which turn out to be worthless because an equally expensive but fractionally better system has been developed in the meantime. It is, therefore, worthwhile considering all the technical and economic obstacles that already exist to the fulfillment of the plan.
One important limitation to data transmission at present is capacity. Data is measured in bits, binary digits, expressed as a choice between 0 and 1. The capacity of data transmission is measured in bits. The data contained in a typical diapositive slide, for instance, is about 2 megabits.
When two people are engaged in normal conversation, they convey from 2-20 gigabits of information a second, as much as a thousand slides. This could be considered some kind of optimum or ceiling for transmitting data. How close are we to this figure now?
The screen of an HDTV transmits as much as 100 megabits a second. The main Finnish telecommunication network transfers 2.4 gigabits a second, the same amount as in a typical conversation. The capacity, therefore, must be considerably expanded in order to approach the above mentioned optimum level. The solution to this problem lies in optical fibre cable which is capable of transferring some 1 000 gigabits a second. It is neither desirable or even necessary to lay down optical cables to every home, just to the telephone exchanges. The subscribers served by these exchanges are connected by ordinary cables. By using a fast packet switching technology called ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) it is possible to transfer some 155 megabits of data a second to individual subscribers. In concentrated form this is enough for a six unit HDTV information centre and should satisfy requirements for a long time to come.
The maximum information requirement for mobile equipment in the near future is estimated at 2 megabits a second, about the same as one slide. Broadband-ISDN will allow transfers of over two megabits a second. Once video traffic becomes a general requirement for mobile receivers in the future, the capacity will have to be greater. The experts say that even this is now possible for large receivers in offices and somewhat smaller ones in public places. The ability of mobile equipment to receive information will thus vary considerably from one place to another.
It is purely a question of economics as to how much it pays to increase transmission capacity. There are no technical limits, so my estimates are quite realistic. The three-dimensional version of the ordinary television screen could be built, but its info capacity, likewise its transmission requirements, are about a hundred times greater than a two-dimensional TV.
Exchange criteria
Another possible bottleneck concerns the telephone exchanges. Most European exchanges have been digitalised and computerised in recent years, receiving and transmitting information in binary form. Their capacity has, however, been pushed to the limit. One local area network cannot serve too many subscribers, because any breakdown would lead to a loss of contact with essential services over an extensive area. In densely populated areas the maximum number of subscribers per exchange is about 100 000. The plan envisages building some 20 000 digitalised exchanges capable of broadband transfer in Europe.
A second requirement concerns the number of connections exchanges can make. A high-capacity exchange can process one and a half million calls an hour, which well suits the number of subscribers mentioned above. A third demand concerns the amount of information transferred per second. The capacity of optical fibre cables is extremely high, but for this to be fully utilised, exchanges should be able to transfer considerably larger quantities of information per second than nowadays. Today’s exchanges convert pulses of light into electrical signals, and then perhaps back again into light pulses, which considerably slows down the speed of transmission. However, phototransistors are now being developed capable of dividing light waves very quickly in different directions, thus eliminating the electric signal conversion stage. ATM, which I mentioned earlier on, is another technology that will considerable speed up transmission. The principle behind it is that it compacts information into “packages”, each with its own “address”, so they can be sent in different directions quickly and flexibly.
In the future, optical fibre will solve the problem of network capacity, and ATM and phototransistors the problems related to exchanges. But there still remains the question of the terminal receiver, the video wall screen which in all probability will show three-dimensional pictures in the future.
Figure 110. The Nokia 9000, the world’s first mobile communicator went on sale in autumn 1996 at the same time as this book
Terminal criteria
The problems of the terminal receiver, however, still lie ahead of us. Today’s receiver is not a flat screen but a bulky object because of the picture tube behind the screen. This has to be fairly long to allow the cathode beams to be fired onto the screen. Something about two square metres in size cannot be hung on a wall like a picture, so the technology has to be changed. A flat screen requires electroluminescence, liquid crystal or plasma. Plasma is considered the most advanced and the Japanese have made great strides in developing it. Plasma is best suited for the large screen as the other techniques form grids on the screen. The surface consists of grids of flat pixels measuring 0.3 mm x 0.3 mm. The resolution of the screen depends on the number of pixels (pixel = unit of an image on a computer screen) and the technical problem is the demand for absolute accuracy. Distortions appear because the distance between two faulty pixels is damaged.
All three of the above mentioned technologies are being developed simultaneously. The difference between the first two is that liquid crystal allows light to penetrate, whereas electroluminescence requires phosphorous which illuminates itself. The principle of the latter is the same as in a television, the only difference being that the colour quality is better in a television. Although the technology has yet to be finalised, it is certain that a laboratory solution will be reached within the next decade. Another decade will be need before they are hanging in every home.
The significance of data communications
Even today, data communication is still far from the ideal and suffers from the problems mentioned above. Nevertheless, there is not the slightest doubt that within the next three decades we will have reached the stage where today’s embryonic technology will have become an everyday reality for people and our dreams will have reached the laboratory stage. Even if development remains at its present level, the great systems outlined in this book can still be implemented. All it will mean is that computers are larger than now and the transfer of data slightly more primitive and slower than I have visualised.
What this means is that there are no technological obstacles to starting work soon on introducing transcontinental energy and raw material exchanges or the kind of passenger transport control system outlined in the following chapter. It just emphasises the auxiliary role of new data communications in physical production. It is here where it most clearly shows its claws.
ARTERIAL PASSENGER TRAFFIC
Vladimir Ilyich Oblomov reaches St. Petersburg’s west-bound maglev station in good time, at 22.07. His small bag is classified as hand luggage. He walks to his table in the restaurant coach, just a couple of steps from where the cybercab has stopped.
A preordered campari is brought to his table and the waiter asks whether he’d like a snack before going to sleep. Vladimir orders a bowl of salted peanuts and a whisky on the rocks as a nightcap. Shortly before the train departs, he is joined by another passenger who, surprise, surprise, turns out to be his old friend and colleague in the antiques business, the Bulgarian Petko Kamenov. Vladimir is a dealer and Petko a restorer. They place a pocket interpreter on the table just to help them communicating between Bulgarian and Russian. Petko orders a whisky. Soon they are deep in a discussion on mid-20th century furniture, the structural techniques, joints and adhesives used and their restoration and maintenance. Talking is such thirsty work that they decide to order another whisky each. A panoramic scene of the Russian town of Luga flashes past as Vilna-bound passengers transfer to the feeder train.
It is eleven in the evening when Vladimir decides to turn in. Before he goes the good friends exchange codes as Petko has promised to show Vladimir an old Bulgarian technique for treating beech wood from a mixture of beeswax and linseed oil. Petko remains in the restaurant coach as he will change at Warsaw to the Sofia-bound feeder train. Vladimir orders an early breakfast in bed; bacon and eggs, fresh grapefruit, lemon juice, toast and marmalade, African coffee, and as a special treat, a print-out of the football results!
Replacement of air traffic
Flying is an unpractical and old-fashioned way of travelling from one town to another within the same continent. Just think of it: you start your journey with a taxi from your hotel or home in one town, drive to the airport, queue at the ticket, passport, security and customs controls, hang about in the transit hall, then onto a bus to the plane, climb the slippery steel steps, push your way down a narrow corridor with all your bags and belongings to your numbered seat, strap yourself in and wait for takeoff. On the journey poor incarcerated you is consoled with sweets, refreshing towelettes, plastic-tasting meals, headphones and airline magazines. Eating is so awkward that you can barely move your fingers. Often the plane makes an intermediate landing so off you get again, complete with luggage, onto a bus to another transit hall to hang about for hours waiting for another bus to another plane to sit in another cramped seat until you finally reach your destination. But your journey’s not over yet. You endure the same process as at the beginning, only this time in reverse. After all the waiting, queuing, sweating and questioning, you finally reach your hotel or home in another town. Even the shortest of flights can last up to a day.
Aeroplanes destroy the ozone in the upper atmosphere, consume tons of petrol, cause a hellish noise over wide areas when taking off and landing, kill migrating birds and people. Thousands of people have been killed up to now, far more than the much maligned nuclear power stations. The number of aeroplanes must be reduced.
In the future there will only be a few airports in Europe. Planes will only be used for special journeys to other continents where speed is imperative. Journeys to America, for instance, will be usually made by ship as there is no hurry.
New arterial traffic
Internal continental flights will be replaced by comfortable, fast and safe trains. Many countries in the world already have high-speed trains in operation: Italy, Spain, Germany, France, Sweden and Finland in Europe, and Japan in Asia. Among them two top-notch, competing systems can be differentiated. The more traditional is the steel-wheel train which nowadays travels at about 300 kilometres per hour. The newer alternative is based on magnetic levitation technology whereby the train rises about 1 mm above the rail and thus moves forward in the air. This system has been experimented with in Japan and Germany and has achieved speeds of about 450 kilometres per hour.
Considerable progress has been made in developing rolling stock during the last decade and it is not unrealistic to suppose that in some 40 years time, about the time aimed at in our plan, the most advanced systems dreamed of in today’s laboratories would be everyday realities. As it is not my intention to daydream about an improbable utopia, the transportation technology for Europe which I favour is magnetic levitation. The train has to be fast in order to compensate for the plane. The Maglev train is a realistic form of transportation for the future.
There will be tracks for long distance and local feeder trains. The long distance trains will travel at 500 kilometres per hour and the local trains much slower, at 200 kilometres per hour. Local trains will operate on all European tracks, whereas the long distance trains only on trunk lines to the different parts of the continent (Figure 111).
Present situation
How close are we to an intercontinental high-speed train network now?
The German-developed Maglev train glides forward on a track built on a frame powered by a magnet. It is faster than any other alternative and speeds of 420 kilometres per hour have been reached on the trial track every day. This runs between Lathen and Dörpen, but the decision concerning a normal service between Hamburg and Berlin has already been taken.
The company and ministry responsible for the technology hand out brochures praising the superiority of the maglev track. These claim that its energy consumption, noise level, space use, pollution and costs are considerably less than any other alternatives. A thoroughgoing environmental analysis of high speed trains has been made by a group of independent experts (European High Speed Train Network, 1993). This analyses the effects of high speed trains in general rather than the relationship between different types of high speed trains. Apart from a few minor critical remarks, the overall conclusion was favourable. It compares, for instance, the land use, energy consumption, air pollution, noise level and safety aspects of three different alternatives.
One alternative is based on the prevailing system and another on the assumption that this will remain unchanged until 2010. Alongside these two a third possible future scenario is considered in which transportation has expanded more rapidly than anticipated, but the modes are the same as now. The conclusion is that high speed transportation is the most advantageous alternative for the future. The only criticism concerned two deficiencies: high speed transportation does not solve the problems of feeder transportation or freight traffic. This is perfectly true, so new systems will have to be developed for them.
I have travelled on the maglev line in Germany, so my opinion of its advantages is based on the personal experience of moving at a speed of 420 kilometres per hour. The train accelerates very evenly and powerfully from 200 to 400 kilometres per hour and its movement can be considered very smooth. When it negotiates a curve with a radius of 1700 metres at 350 kilometres per hour, tilting at 12 degrees, you experience no discomfort whatsoever. The train is considered so safe that safety belts are not required, and you can easily walk back and forth whilst it is moving.
Putting this system into operation requires no special changes to the geometry of the tracks. In actual fact a maglev train can rise to a vertical position or move along a rail suspended from the roof. The planned maximum gradient of 10 per cent is much greater than existing tracks and the only restricting factor is passenger comfort. Perhaps in the future, when passengers would enjoy a bit of a thrill in addition to safety, there will be maglev trains going over the Alps in accordance with the actual terrain. In any case, the need for tunnels will be reduced.
Rendezvous technology
The goal is to build a maglev link between all the major cities of Europe. However, this leads to a contradiction. As maglev trains go very fast it is uneconomic and stupid to keep stopping them at intermediary stations. Fast services assume that trains will only stop at the termini. On the other hand, there is no sense running trains between St. Petersburg to Lisbon that only carry passengers bound for these destinations. The solution is a four-track system in which the middle two are for TGV (train á grande vitesse) trains and the outer tracks for local trains. In future I will refer to trains using the outer tracks as feeder trains. In between stations the feeder trains reach exactly the same speed as the TGV trains, and whilst they are moving parallel to each other passengers can change trains. Another great advantage over aeroplanes!
Figure 111. European arterial traffic system. High-speed train network in red
For the system to work the outside train must be able to accelerate to the same speed as the inside train. Both travel at 500 kilometres per hour for long enough to link up and open the interconnecting doors. When these are open passengers change trains. In other studies of this system (Brilon, 1986) it has been called “rendezvoustechnik”. The problem, however, is that passengers cannot transfer unless the trains are moving on a completely straight track without any tilting, otherwise the doors will not be flush with each other. This would require at least 10 kilometres of straight track. As this is extremely difficult in view of track geometry, the idea was abandoned.
In view of the above I suggest that the four-track system be built in accordance with Figure 112. This will remove the obstacle of track geometry at the passenger transfer points. Thus the timetable for the St. Petersburg-Lisbon train will show the following intermediary stations, irrespective of the fact that it never stops during its journey (Timetable 1). In order to illustrate the speed of the train, the timetable gives the times (after time zone differences have been accounted for) when passengers reach their destinations.
TIMETABLE
Departure St. Petersburg 18.00
Vilna 19.20
Warsaw 19.40
Poznan 19.42
Berlin 20.11
Hanover 20.41
Cologne 21.12
Paris 22.00
Bordeaux 23.05
San Sebastian 23.29
Madrid 24.17
Arrival Lisbon 24.26
One interesting and rather curious fact emerges. Stations cannot be very close to each other, certainly no less than 40 kilometres. As the main line train is moving at a speed of 140 metres a second, the feeder train has to accelerate to that speed and then slow down again. It requires some 5 kilometres to accelerate and a similar distance to break. The docking and undocking of the trains, plus passenger transfer, all takes time. Sufficient time has to be allowed for safe and unhurried transfers, and passengers should not be rushed even if they only have a few steps to take. A good idea of how long this takes can be gained from observing underground trains.
Figure 112. Cross-section of track. The pipe in the middle is for freight transport
What happens, for example, between Bonn, Cologne and Düsseldorf (Figure 113)? When the long-distance train is about 10 kilometres from Bonn, a feeder train from there accelerates towards Cologne. The long-distance train catches up with the feeder train 5 kilometres out of Bonn, at which time they are both travelling at full speed. They dock with short telescopic, airtight corridors, and 8 kilometres further on the doors open to allow passengers to transfer. Those coming from Bonn board the TGV, and those bound for Cologne leave it. Fifteen kilometres on the doors shut, the trains undock, and the feeder train starts breaking in order to stop at Cologne. At the same time another feeder train from Cologne accelerates towards Düsseldorf to allow passengers from Cologne to board the TGV and take on others bound for Düsseldorf.
Figure 113. The TGV and feeder trains meet between Bonn and Cologne when the distance between the stations is 30 km, the long-distance train speed is 500 km/h and the feeder train accelerates and breaks at 2.2 m/s
Phase 1. Long-distance train undocks from feeder train for Bonn 4.5 km before Bonn station. Feeder train from Bonn accelerates towards Cologne.
Phase 2. Long-distance train passes Bonn 35 sec. later. Feeder train from Bonn 1.1 km in front on parallel track.
Phase 3. 1 min. 4 sec. later. At 4.5 km from Bonn the feeder train reaches a speed of 500 km/h and runs parallel to the long-distance train. Trains dock.
Phase 4. 1 min. 19 sec. later. At 6.6 km from Bonn the doors of the docked coaches open and passengers from Bonn board the long-distance train and Cologne-bound passengers board the feeder train.
Phase 5. 3 min. 19 sec. later. At 23.4 km from Bonn the doors shut and the trains start to undock.
Phase 6. 3 min. 34 sec. later. At 25.5 km from Bonn undocking is completed and the feeder train starts to break in order to stop at Cologne. Simultaneously another feeder train leaves Cologne and accelerates towards Düsseldorf.
Passengers sitting in other coaches and not wishing to alight at these towns do not notice anything in particular. They may be a bit annoyed by passengers leaving the train or walking down the corridors, but at least they do not have to wait at stations. Once people have become accustomed to the new system they would consider it quite untenable wasting time waiting on stations they were not travelling to. Moving from one moving train to another may at first sound daring, even dangerous, but that’s what many thought years ago when the first plucky people went up in the new-fangled flying machines.
Local feeder services
Technically it is far easier to control main line rail traffic than any other form of transport. It becomes more complicated when the various local rail networks throughout Europe are integrated to allow people to travel conveniently. Once feeder technologies are developed and people become accustomed to them, they will no longer accept hanging about on drafty stations, lugging their bags from one platform or train to another, worrying about timetables, ticket inspectors, and a host of other inconveniences. People will demand smooth travel from one station to another, without stops, irrespective of whether there is a direct connection or not. Thus another application of feeder technology is required for local rail services. These trains only travel at 200 kilometres per hour and it will not be necessary to convert all lines to four tracks. The system to be introduced is called end-to-end (Figure 114). The last coach of a train always remains at the station and new coaches appear before the moving train at subsequent stations. In between stations the train drops off the last coach and takes a new one in front of it. Thus nobody ever has to wait whilst other passengers are getting on and off.
As the train only travels at 200 kilometres per hour it allows for much shorter distances between stations than on the trunk lines. As new coaches are coupled to the front of the train and the rear ones uncoupled, new coaches can be connected and people moved without any special hustle or delay. It is not possible, however, to just travel from one station to the next, as you will then have to wait until the coach is coupled and then hare down the full length of the train in order to reach the last coach before it is uncoupled. A third system of public transport exists for such people, which I shall discuss in the next chapter.
Figure 114. The principle of the end-to-end system for two-track local rail services
High-speed, long-distance trains use the red inner tracks and the slower feeder trains the outer black tracks. The local train always has ten coaches. At each station it leaves the last one behind and picks a new one up in front. The configuration of the train thus changes as follows:
1. The feeder train passes station 1 picking up passengers from the TGV train at some point along its route. The last coach remains at station 1 and a new coach from station 1 appears in front of it.
2. When the train reaches station 5, the first coach will have come from station 4, the next one from station 3 and so on. The last coach will remain at station 5, the penultimate at station 6 and so on.
3. When the train reaches station 10 it will leave behind the last of its original ten coaches. The train divides into two and the last four coaches go off on the inner “red” route and the first five coaches on the outer “blue” route. The coach from station 10 is coupled to the front of both parts.
4. At stations 10 and 11 on the blue route two coaches appear in front and one is left behind, so the train has now grown to 8 coaches. The train on the red route continues its journey to station 21 five coaches in length.
5. When the train on the blue route reaches station 21 it is still 8 coaches in length. The first one has come from station 20 and the last from station 13.
Example: When a passenger on the TGV train wishes to go to station 14, he transfers to the first coach of the feeder train. Because this coach is scheduled to remain at station 10, he walks through the train and after station 8 enters the coach connected at station 8. This is just the coach that will be left at station 14. This may sound complicated, but as each coach has an indicator panel showing its final destination there will be no confusion.
Integrated rail services
The problem in travelling by rail is not getting from Paris to London or Berlin, but from Hankasalmi to Pýrgos even though both of them have a railway station nowadays. And where on earth are Hankasalmi and Pýrgos your might ask. Well, Hankasalmi is in central Finland and Pýrgos in Peloponnese, Greece. I have never heard of anyone going from Hankasalmi to Pýrgos, least of all by train. Except perhaps interrailers.
In the future, however, when continental flights and cars are replaced by the new efficient rail system, it should be easy to travel by train from one European station to another, irrespective of where they are. Our hypothetical journey starts at the break of day at the Hankasalmi Morning Dawn guesthouse, with our traveller leaving his bags in his room, informing the porter of his destination, and seeing them next just before going to bed at the Hotel Evening Star in Pýrgos. Unburdened by luggage our traveller has a comfortable non-stop journey from Hankasalmi to Pýrgos. But how will this journey differ in the future from the present?
Even now it is possible to travel by train from Hankasalmi to Pýrgos, but it’s pretty complicated and time consuming. It requires consulting timetables in several countries, comparing connections with a travel agent and reserving the necessary tickets. The journey itself involves long-suffering moves from one station to another, hauling bags from platform to platform, trying to make sense of announcements in different languages and waiting, waiting, waiting everywhere.
In the future the journey from Hankasalmi to Pýrgos could be organised in various ways. Either from home, the Morning Dawn guesthouse or on the Hankasalmi train itself, our traveller types into the train router the address of the Hotel Evening Star in Pýrgos, indicating other preferences such as cost, travelling time, route and speed. The router offers the cheapest and fastest route within the same day, connections via Berlin and an optimal combination of all our traveller’s wishes. And off he goes! Twice during the journey he has to change trains: once from the local feeder train to the continental TGV and then to Pýrgos-bound feeder train. Sometimes this is not enough and another change has to be made. In any case, he will have to walk through the feeder train to reach the coach due to be left at Pýrgos. But nowhere will our traveller have to wait at stations.
Once our traveller has made his choice, the router informs him of the times of arrival at intermediate stations and also when he has to move from one coach to another. His luggage is transferred automatically, all our traveller has to do is to look after his personal effects.
As the rail system also functions at the local level, the planning of integrated timetables for the whole continent is a complex mathematical task. At each stations the trains lose their rear coaches, like lizards lose their tails, but then become whole again by acquiring new ones in front.
Problems
One problem may be the dearth of passengers, so coupling a new coach in front may not always be economical. Sometimes there is only one passenger. However, with the disappearance of cars, there will be a multiple increase in the number of people travelling by train. Nowadays a train stops at a station even to let one person off, and aeroplanes are often almost empty. In the future it will be easier to strike a balance between station densities, train frequencies, lengths and the number of coaches to be coupled because the whole train only needs to stop at the terminus. There will be a radical fall in energy consumption.
Although it will be possible to get a trunk-line network functioning throughout Europe fairly soon by using feeder trains, local services will take much longer. Trains will still be stopping at branch stations for a long time to come, but they will be more like metros that can quickly accelerate and break.
What people feel when they are travelling is not so much influenced by the speed of the vehicle, but the time spent in it. The comfort factor determines what is an acceptable time. A journey strapped down in a plane compares unfavourably with one by ship, which is almost like a time-out holiday. The more comfortable a sea voyage is the longer you wish it will last. On the other hand, nobody wants an air flight to last longer than is absolutely necessary.
In the above I have only talked about passenger transportation. In the future, as now, the railways will also carry goods. Most goods, however, will be conveyed through vacuum pipes, but some will still have to go by rail. Thus freight rail transport will be both necessary and significant in the future. Energywise it is quite senseless to transport goods at speeds of 200 kilometres per hour. The tilting of trains travelling at slower speeds is so great that there would be a danger of derailment. This sets limits to track geometry if freight trains run on steel bogies. With a maglev train this problem does not arise as it can tilt to any degree without fear of derailment. The rolling stock, however, must be designed to withstand the strain of tilting.
Local service connections
Trains are the backbone of the transport system and will cover the continent. But they will not stop on your doorstep or even run short distances. For such journeys another system has been devised: capillary passenger traffic. We shall now discuss this essential link to the feeder train system.
CAPILLARY PASSENGER TRAFFIC
Vladimir Ilyich Oblomov, an antiques dealer from St. Petersburg, and Grazziella da Silva, a photographic model from Lisbon, have been having a love affair for a long time.
It is the year 2035. As dusk descends one May eve, Vladimir snaps off his lengthy virtual reality date with Grazziella. During it he had become possessed by an uncontrollable desire to see his beloved and reacts impulsively. Immediately the screen fades, he reserves a ticket on the maglev train to Lisbon and packs a bag.
Vladimir has phoned for a cybercab to pick him up at the parking slot on the curb outside his home. As the Lisbon maglev departs at 22.10 hours, he inquires from the cybercab communications centre’s logistics service how long the journey to the station will take. The centre replies that, after taking into consideration traffic congestion and weather conditions, he should leave from the parking slot k-2859 in front of his home at 21.49.27, and for a 99.99 per cent safety margin at 21.48.22 hours, in order to reach parking slot k-8833 by the door of the train compartment in time. He increases the probability of arriving on time and leaves home at 21.47 hours. It’s best to be on the safe side in matters of great importance, he thinks, as he leaves his house and steps with his small bag into the waiting cab, slots his card into the logistics unit, types in the train’s departure code, settles back into the armchair, dreams about tomorrow, watches the small catamarans cruising on the Neva and orders a campari to be brought to a table in the train’s Italian restaurant. The time forecast was correct and Vladimir reaches the door of his compartment with three minutes to spare. At 7.12 tomorrow morning, in the Praca do Comercio in Lisbon, he will meet his beloved Grazziella in the real world.
Hegemony of the car
The car is as old-fashioned as the plane, and will soon suffer the same fate as the horse. It will become a nostalgic memory of times past, something to ride in at funfairs on Sundays.
The car is not only antiquated, but harmful. It pollutes the atmosphere, changes the weather, depletes our most precious natural resources, fills our world with noise and filth, and in Europe alone kills, maims and injures hundreds of thousands of people every year. At this very minute it binds the time and attention of millions of people to the tedium of driving. Cars cover thousands of square kilometres of space in Europe. The lust to own a car is an unnatural relic. Buying a house, for example, is far more justifiable and understandable. It would be a good idea to abolish cars for ever as they are not a symbol of freedom, but of slavery.
In order that it runs smoothly the car requires a vast back-up organisation: factories producing hundreds of parts, rolling mills and aluminium smelting plants, robotised assembly lines, oil rigs and refineries, a transcontinental service-station network, car dealers and driving schools, road planners and traffic police, whole batteries of excavators and asphalt spreaders. The environment is not destroyed by the car itself, but by the multiple effects of the giant mechanism behind it.
Cars are associated with many unpleasant things, although only some are harmful to the environment. Oil resources are depleted, the air polluted. Would the electric car be the answer? Some of the new electric vehicles resemble traditional cars, others are more radically designed (Figure 115). If the petrol-driven car is replaced by a hydrogen or an electric-powered one but the electricity is still generated in coal-burning power stations, the world would not be much better off. In the chapter on Energy I discussed the production of electricity from the sun or other renewable resources. Non-polluting energy can be produced, this will not be the reason for the electric-powered vehicle to fail. But even such measures will not solve all problems.
We shall replace long-distance travelling by plane, car and outmoded steel-wheel trains by high-speed, magnetic-levitation trains, hurtling through the continent at only a few millimetres above the track. As even these trains will not take people literally from door to door, we shall need a system for capillary traffic which provides this link. Otherwise the transport system would be like a clockmaker without fingers.
Cybercabs
Electric cars require very powerful and massive batteries in order to move independently. The distances they can cover are limited as the batteries need to be continuously recharged. The driver is still incarcerated as he has to steer the vehicle and therefore cannot use his time more pleasantly. The electric car no more liberates than the petrol-driven one. The driver is only freed when he can decide both his destination and how to use his travelling time. An automatic, destination-controlled cybercab that follows the terrain fulfills this condition (Figure 116). Such a cab is not normally steered, but is remote controlled. It takes its power from cables under the road and directions from a communications centre. Passengers can spend their time reading or writing, looking out of the window or watching TV, playing chess in a special two-person chess cab or billing and cooing in a kissing cab. It is even possible to take a nap in a sleeper cab. The strain of driving is transformed into the pleasure of travelling. Everyone has their own private chauffeur.
However, cybercabs are not private property, but part of the public transport system. You pay for them as you do for telephone calls today with phonecards. Their core element is a tiny, smart chip that offers passengers a multitude of services. Passengers inform the communications centre of the address by pointing to it on the screen map or typing in the nearest parking slot number. They could just type in the name of the person they are going to visit as the centre has a list of all the addresses in the zone.
This new mode of transport should not be evaluated by comparing it to individual objects, such as cybercabs and cars, but systems, and by weighing up the advantages and disadvantages of the new system. How will energy production and the spare-parts industry change? How will it change the everyday lives of people? How will it affect people when they are no longer proud car owners, but just users of another public service like the post office?
The cybercab system
The new system will cover the whole all Europe, but cybercabs will not go everywhere. The continent will be divided into some 2000 zones each some 2500 square kilometres in size or containing a population of about 250 000. The system is the same everywhere so that people moving from one place to another do not have to adjust to local variations. It would also be possible to journey slowly across Europe, moving from one zone to the next at intervals of about an hour. In the canton of Vaud, Switzerland, with its population of about 600 000 in an area of 3000 square kilometres, the northern part could well function as one such zone. As it has a railway, it allows the town to be connected to the rest of the continent (Figure 117).
The core of the system is not the individual cab, but a computerised communication centre controlling all the cabs in the zone and ensuring that the system works flawlessly. It sends cabs for maintenance and recycling at regular intervals, calculates the best route for each one before it sets out, ensures safety, steers individual cabs, optimises the flow of traffic, and makes sure that passengers pay for their journeys. It up-dates the address files and maps, provides information on timetables, and sounds the alarm if something goes wrong or if one of the cabs disappears or breaks down. It is also possible to control the inter-zonal movement of cabs.
The cybercab, like the car today, requires its own vast production mechanism. The cabs will be made in underground, robotised assembly and dismantling plants, capable of recycling some twenty million units a year. These plants are supplied by others making spare parts. One consolation, however, is that the cab needs far fewer parts than today’s car. This is because it is only a glorified sedan chair, that modestly protects its occupants from the elements and conveys them safely from one place to another. It needs only a small battery to power manual operation over short distances of up to 5 kilometres. The steering mechanism and address file, on the other hand, are routine computer products.
It will not be necessary to build new roads as the cabs are designed to use existing networks. Actually they will use today’s roads more efficiently as their turning radius is minimal and thus are considerably easier to park. Obviously, when the time comes to renew road networks this will not be done with cars in mind, but cybercabs, just as long ago the transition was made from horse-drawn to motorised transportation. Thus both the infrastructure and vehicles using it will change over the decades into one uniform system.
Cybercabs are not always in use, so they will have to parked somewhere. However, because they are in collective use, fewer of them will be idle than today’s vehicles. The average car today requires a parking space of 25 square metres. Cybercabs require only 2 square metres because they can be parked nose to tail. As they are all the same, you just take the first one in the rank. Furthermore, as the overall number of vehicles will diminish, most of the space now reserved for urban parking will be freed for other uses. Although the idea is to use existing surface and multi-storey car parks to begin with, future parking areas will be tailored to the requirements of cybercabs. So even parking areas will become a natural part of the infrastructure (Figure 118).
Cybercabs, like other consumer durables, have to be serviced. Even this is automatised. They are serviced at regular intervals, normally during the quietest period of the day. There they are checked and cleaned, and the necessary repairs carried out to make them fully serviceable again. Over longer periods they are returned for recycling, where they are dismantled, each part thoroughly tested, and then reassembled as good as new. Recycling is robotised and the process is coordinated with the communication centre.
Connection to rail transport
Absolute safety has to be guaranteed. In the first place, cybercab lanes are not fenced in, just clearly signposted. The lanes, however, have to be separated from other traffic like pedestrians, cyclists, skiers, and the occasional heavy-duty freight transports. In towns there will be pedestrian crossings and traffic lights, with secondary traffic controlled from the cybercab communication centre. In the countryside bridges will have to be built for light traffic. Even though the cab lanes are not enclosed, they will be lined on both sides by optical alarms. A dog straying in front of a cab, for instance, will cause the traffic to stop far more quickly than nowadays when it only does so after a multiple human chain reaction.
Collisions between cabs must be avoidable even if the central computer breaks down, so a reserve system has to be built. In addition to these safety measures, the electric cables have to be buried deep enough to make them safe for pedestrians. I will return to this subject at the end of the chapter. All in all, moving by cybercab and maglev trains in the future will be far safer than in skyscraper lifts today and infinitely less dangerous than by car. Safety will be further increased by the complete restructuring of goods traffic.
Each cab will have its own registration number, and both its location and the name of the last user known. This will ensure that publicly-owned cabs are not be stolen by joy-riders and also that hooligans can be traced.
Cybercabs can also be steered manually, because it is not economical installing cables up to everyone’s front door. The battery does not weigh hundreds of kilos as now, because it is only intended to power distances up to 5 kilometres. It is also required at crossing points where it is not possible to take power from the cables, but this is a very minor technical problem to overcome.
The smooth functioning of the overall transport system requires close coordination between trains and cabs. Future stations will be built so that passengers enter and leave their compartments from and into cabs on different sides of the train. Cabs will stop exactly in front of the doors. Today’s stations, with their ticket offices and other services, will no longer exist. Tickets are bought, seats reserved, timetables checked and enquiries made from the coordinated cab and train communication centre.
Perhaps, however, there will still be restaurants and cafés for those who crave the nostalgic ambience of old railway stations.
Figure 116. Scale drawing of a standard one-person cybercab
Construction of the cybercab
Now for a few remarks on the actual construction of the cybercab. It is quite stupid to make single-person cabs only. Equally as silly is to make multi-seat ones, because there are plenty of them and people should not take up unnecessary space. The idea, therefore, is to make standard cabs for one person, for one person with a lot of luggage or accompanied by children, cabs for two persons facing each other (chess cabs) or sitting side-by-side, and others for conveying goods, the handicapped and people wishing to take a nap. The drawing in Figure 116 is of a standard one-person cybercab, the details of which can be left to international design competitions later on.
But still a few other details about the ordinary, one-person standard cab, just to illustrate the principles involved. Basically, it is only a covered chair, rather like the sedan-chair of times past. It is at least as comfortable as the best office chair: it can be raised and lowered, and both the back and the headrest are adjustable. Only the casters are missing, because such a chair would demand too much space. The cab should have ample windows offering passengers an all-round view of the landscape they are moving through. Functionally, the best shape would be a trapezium or shuttle, as this allows easy parking. Such shapes well suit three wheels, which are otherwise more suitable to a vehicle with a small turning radius. The tiny boot is under the seat. The main feature of the cab is the terminal with a keyboard on which to enter instructions at the beginning or during the journey. The traveller can also access information and send messages. The screen displays that segment of the map in which the cab operates and this can be magnified to show very small details, like individual houses.
In the canton of Vaud, which I mentioned above, there is a town of 15 000 inhabitants on the banks of Lake Geneva called Nyon. The number of cabs permanently in operation would be about 1500, equal to about a tenth of the population. The parking space needed for them is shown in Figure 118. When the cars that are nowadays parked along the streets are removed, a great deal of space would be made available for the new small-scale cybercabs (Figure 120). The cab’s screen would show the traffic network for the whole area, the parking slots, and, if required, people’s addresses and houses. Once the destination has been entered, the route, nearest recommended parking slot, present position of the cab, and estimated travelling and arrival times appear on the screen. The cab can be left at any point along the route where it will be automatically directed to the nearest parking space, just like taxis today return to the nearest rank (Figure 119).
Figure 117. Main transport connections in the canton of Vaud today
Figure 118. Detail from Nyon town plan showing the parking area on the corner of Place Pertems
Figure 119. Sketch of a cybercab’s screen
There are innumerable parts in present day cars which are unnecessary in the new cybercabs. It has no bumpers because the computer eliminates collisions, no headlights as it is unnecessary to know what is in front, and no direction or breaking lights, windscreen wipers, unnecessary seats, gear boxes, safety belts or any of the other gadgets which have been fitted to motorcars for the simple reason that they driven by imperfect people who are at the mercy of other imperfect people. Cybercabs are incredibly simple compared to cars. They can transport luggage and goods, children, the handicapped and elderly, even those on a bender, automatically and safely from one place to another. As a huge number of parking areas will be freed, there will be a saving in supervision and costs. Driving schools can be closed down as cybercabs do not require a driving licence. There are no traffic regulations, only safety instructions. Traffic cops can be transferred to other duties. Cybercabs are to the train like fingers are to the hand, digits of a complete entity. And like trains, it is not necessary for cybercab passengers to know how they operate.
Finally, a couple of details to prove that the above idea is realistic. Power cables should be buried under the roads in the way shown in Figure 121 because under no circumstances should they get wet or give anyone a shock. The gap in the road is too narrow for a bicycle wheel to get stuck in it. The cables should have an electric resistance so they will not freeze in winter. There are two insulated cables with a 600 volt tension between them. The control cable is separate. As the cables cannot cross, the cab switches over to battery-operation at these points without passengers noticing anything special. None of the technical problems are unsolvable. Political problems, on the other hand, abound, which is why I have written this book.
Urgent measures
In the event that the above ideas receive sympathetic understanding in EU circles, a trial area should be built as soon as possible. It would then be possible to test all aspects of the proposed system. I suggest that either Lathen or Dörpen would be a good place to start as they already have a maglev test track operating between them. The suitability and safety of power cables sunk under the tarmac requires testing at different times of the year and under varying weather conditions. As regards building the cab and its operational requirements, valuable experience could be gained from studying different prototypes. The computer system for the communication centre should also be thoroughly tested in practice. Before going ahead and building the first truly operative maglev track, careful attention should be paid to developing the kind of feeder connections which a modern rail transport system requires. Neither should the idea be ignored that even a feeder system could run without wheels, magnetically.
Within a few decades time, land communications in Europe could be so advanced that someone leaving Ulitsa Dzerzinskovo in St. Petersburg late one evening could arrive the following morning at a friend’s home in the suburbs of Lisbon, without suffering the inconveniences of waiting in airport transit halls, being packed like sardines into planes, dining at station cafeterias, or stuck in traffic jams on some transEuropean motorway. No longer will it be necessary to lug bags down unending corridors, stand for hours in ticket queues, worry about traffic congestion and accidents, or be bored to death behind the wheel of a car. Instead our traveller goes as he pleases from one place to another, free of pollution, noise and danger. Perhaps you may think that such a life is too sheltered, too easy?
Figure 121. Drawing showing the principle of locating power cables under the road
MUSCLE TRANSPORT
Figure 122. Motorised transport has assumed many forms …
Figure 123. … but so has muscle transport. Rollerbladers in Germany …
Figure 124. … and outside Christophe Marzais’s rent-a-bike store in Tours, France
Figure 125. Gratis-loan bikes in Kolding, Denmark
Figure 126. Cycling to work in Beijing
Figure 127. When there’s ice, skate …
Figure 128. … and when its melted, row
GOODS TRAFFIC
Margit Herczeg is working the night shift on Saturday. Her job is to see there are no hitches in the flow of goods between Vienna and Budapest. She works in Budapest, in the former Sasad metro station, which has been converted into one of the many goods sorting yards in the city. The main goods pipeline between Budapest and Vienna is one of the most important in Europe as it handles all the traffic between Western Europe and the eastern countries. Margit only works the one shift, from eight on Saturday evening to 6 on Sunday morning. The rest of the week is free.
The control room wall is covered with information panels which closely follow the goods flow into and out of Budapest, as well as deliveries to stations in between. If everything runs smoothly the controller has little to do. Goods traffic at all stations are forwarded along their own secondary pipelines. These, too, are monitored from Budapest as well as the Vienna central control centre. Controllers in both centres are in continuous contact with each other. Over the past couple of years Margit has befriended one of the Viennese controllers, Antje, who even works the same shift. Antje also has a daughter of school age. If there’s not much else going on during the night, Margit and Antje tell each other what they have been doing during the past week. Whereas the friends talk a lot about their daughters, Margit seldom mentions her son Sándor.
The alarm rings in Tata, where there is a breakdown in distribution. The transfer to a local cybervan of an encapsuled consignment sent from Frankfurt two hours earlier has failed. Margit studies the panel, notices that the package will not fit into the cybervan, so she moves it and the capsule to one side to await manual handling in the morning. All problems that appear during the night are dealt with in the morning. Having overcome this problem, Margit carries on telling Antje about her daughter’s puppy.
Linking factories together
Traditional production only concerns the processing and movement of materia. Earlier on I have dealt with the continental machinery of production which begins with the extraction of raw materials, continues with processing, the generation of energy, the production of parts and their assembly into finished products in robotised factories, and finally, for the sake of completeness, the wholesale and retail sale of goods and their distribution routes to the consumers. This is the gigantic megamachine that produces the goods Europe requires.
But this megamachine can only be fully integrated and properly functioning when transport links between the factories and plants operating within the production process are combined into one unified system. The present system is like a factory suffering from recurring breakdowns in supplies leading to pile-ups of raw materials, parts or semifinished products. The legions of managers in this irrational plant argue among themselves on the best way to transfer semifinished products from one conveyor to another. Ultimately they are carried manually, one at a time, to the next stage in the production process so the whole operation can continue to function rationally until the next breakdown. The production process for even very simple products, like telephones, involves dozens of stop-start phases.
The reason for these breakdowns is that an individual enterprise or even a whole sector has never thought of building a goods pipeline, say, for instance, between Rotterdam and Berlin. It would not be economically intelligent to build separate pipes for each company or different products. Responsibility for this kind of infrastructure should no more be left to private enterprise than the post office, motorways, district heating and electricity networks. It could only be carried through as a transcontinental project, which is why it has never been done. The public sector is too slow and conservative to take such radical and creative decisions. Thus the megamachine would experience irritating breakdowns every time goods move from a private company into the public infrastructure. This must be corrected.
Production is the movement of masses of materials and goods, with hundreds of millions of tons of them traversing the length and breadth of Europe every year. Even in the industrialised countries, this aspect of the machinery of production still functions at an almost pre-industrial level compared to the robotised, electronically-controlled systems operating within the factories themselves. We shall thus have to develop something much more modern, so let’s see what this ideal goods flow system looks like.
The system for transporting raw materials, semifinished and finished products must be an integral part of the production machinery and also pose no danger to passenger transportation. Semifinished products and goods should be transferred from one plant to the next, unpacked and automatically, without human effort, just as they are within modern factories already.
The megamachine is a total system, not a number of individual production units linked together like a string of beads. The megamachine is a complete recycling chain, which begins with mineral prospecting and only reaches its intermediate stage when finished goods are delivered to the consumers. The next stage begins when consumers tire of the products and return them for reprocessing.
Electronic markets
A precise ledger must be kept of the quantities of all nonrenewable resources and their investment and use. This is already possible with existing data technology, but in the future it will be a routine task. Once the bookkeeping exists, it will be a simple matter to create a transcontinental system of electronic exchanges. This would enable a bicycle manufacturer, for instance, to see immediately the kinds of saddles, chains and inner tubes different European producers are offering, and their output for the next few weeks. He can invite tenders for specific parts, receive them straightaway, make his choice, and the goods will be delivered within hours. Much the same thing happens with somebody wishing to buy a bicycle. He no longer needs to go shopping as the store is on his wall at home. He just types in his requirements, studies the range available, places his order, and it is delivered to the nearest goods depot. Wholesaling and retailing will disappear as all goods are delivered direct from the manufacturers.
Pipeline network
These operations will only run smoothly if the goods transportation infrastructure functions. It cannot work like today’s congested roads. Smallish articles or batches, under a metre in size, can be conveyed down a network of pipes crisscrossing the continent.
For this network to function properly it must have two special technical features. The first is that it saves energy. Goods are transported down the pipes packed in bullet-like capsules, which move with the aid of magnetic levitation in the same way as trains. But unlike the railways, where most energy is consumed overcoming air drag, this problem does not exist as the pipes are vacuums. Although the capsules move at colossal speeds, energy consumption is minimal. Such a system allows capsules to be literally fired from one end of the continent to the other. If the pipe is circular in cross-section, its structure does not need to be very strong in order to resist one atmosphere of external pressure if it contains a vacuum.
The second part of the system consists of the capsules themselves, which are standard products and made to withstand moving at high speeds within the pipes (Figure 129). They are guided with the aid of magnetic levitation down the centre of the pipe in order to avoid friction. They are most effective when their diametre is almost the same as the pipe. Unlike the pipe, the capsules are subject to external atmospheric pressure. The same capsules can be used continuously. The goods they contain need not be packed. If they are carrying refrigerated food these are delivered direct from the factories to the consumers, who will not then need their own freezers.
These metre wide pipes are not connected to every home. The main pipeline network is the same as for the future railway system. And like passenger transportation, goods traffic is also joined to local feeder services at stations. Local goods traffic takes on various modes depending on the size of the area. A two-tier system operates in large towns, with the size of the shipment determining which one is used. Small shipments are delivered direct to homes through the local pipeline network. These are also vacuum pipes, but smaller in diametre. All pipes are standardised in size and geometry, and the same throughout the continent. Most of the goods people need in their everyday lives are delivered down the small pipes: food, clothes, letters, books, newspapers and so on. Even libraries use them. It may sound silly, but you can even order a couple of screws from a factory, but even more silly is the idea of fetching them by car.
The two important fields of food and waste management in large towns will be dealt with in detail in the following chapter. They demand special consideration because of the vast quantities innercity pipes will handle every day. Such pipes will be 30 cm in diametre and all homes will be connected to the network.
Outsize shipments
Many of the goods to be transported, however, will not fit into these narrow pipes. Examples spring to mind like present-day fridges and TVs, and doubtless there will be similar gadgets in the future, although their purpose will be different. In large towns outsize goods will be delivered by cybervans. These are loaded automatically and the goods delivered to homes in accordance with the original delivery instructions. In apartment blocks it will still be necessary to manhandle them into lifts or up the stairs.
It will not be necessary to build pipelines to small rural villages straightaway. Much the same thing will happen as earlier with telephones, sewers, district heating and the post. The first stage will be the extension of the network to a local collection centre. For a long time villages will live within the white stripe of the zebra: using pushcarts for final deliveries. Ultimately, in the interests of personal comfort, the network will extend to every home in a village.
The principal system for transporting goods is based on the main pipeline network. This is supplemented in rural areas by pushcarts and cybervans, and in urban conurbations by secondary pipeline networks and cybervans. But even this is not sufficient, as there are still objects that vary considerably in size and shape from those mentioned above. The problem is not with long and thin objects, but flat ones like sheets of steel or plywood, or for that matter any others that are disproportionately large. Nowadays, such goods are normally transported by rail or ship. There is no reason to discontinue the practice in the future as there is seldom any great hurry with the delivery of bulk goods.
Special consignments
An important link in the above system is the station where capsules are opened and transferred to cybervans or narrow-pipe capsules. These stations are designed and built to function non-stop and automatically, immediately redirecting shipments down the correct pipe. This is no problem, as the capsules are furnished with a precise address in the form of a bar-code sticker, which ensures that they reach their destination automatically.
Figure 129. Cross-section of a vacuum pipe
Scale cross-sections of Swissmetro’s design for a vacuum tunnel underground railway and the goods pipeline discussed above.
One problem remains. How to deliver really large objects, like three dozen sheets of 2 metre square plywood, to your back yard? No train stops there, and the general idea is that roads in the future will be reserved for passenger traffic only. Noise, polluting, heavy-duty petrol-burning lorries will not be allowed down them to pose a threat to human life. However, here and only here, we will have to compromise and allow special deliveries to be made by large vehicles similar to today’s lorries. Even if they are electric-powered, they will still look pretty monstrous when seen from the window of a tiny fragile cybercab. In towns, these manually-driven juggernauts will travel at low speeds and send out warning signals of their approach. As they are equipped with a direction transmitter, their routes can be monitored by the cybercab control centre so collisions with cybercabs can be avoided. Furthermore, once the plan has been completed, there will be little new building going on, minimal transportation of building materials, no automobiles, so special consignments will be exceptional.
European pipeline network
One metre-wide pipeline is enough to convey all the goods carried each year over the Alps or from the Nordic countries to central Europe, from the British Isles to the continent, or from Holland to France. The speed at which goods travel down the pipe is at least ten times that of a lorry. The flow is uninterrupted, day and night, everyday of the week, and there are no safety problems. A huge capacity is essential as the pipes will be used for two purposes in the future. They will not only carry goods from producers to users, but return used goods to factories for recycling. They could also be used for transferring natural gas or hydrogen.
It would be more practical to build the primary network as a two-way system, for then it would not be necessary to regulate traffic so that it flows from north to south at night, and south to north during the day. The secondary network of narrow pipes could be one-way as the distances are short and in different directions. During the small hours the narrow pipes could be used to carry waste.
As with many of the other proposals in this book, you may also query the costs involved. Naturally it will cost, but any calculation must take account of the saving that ensue. The new system will make the post office and much of its equipment redundant, most lorries will disappear and so will the shops. Once the new system becomes operative and all these intermediary stages eliminated, the consumer can expect a considerable fall in costs.
Realities
The idea of a vacuum pipe is not new. Switzerland has progressed far with its design for a metro-type train running in low-pressure mountain tunnels to diminished air drag (Figure 129). Suction systems have been developed in the Czech Republic and Sweden whereby low-pressure technology can be used to remove all waste from a hospital or even part of a town to a central collection plant.
There are thus no insuperable practical obstacles to the development of the vacuum pipe. But one thing is required above all else: an international agreement that would operate in accordance with the same principle as all those signed up to now covering such diverse fields as postal services, customs, transport standards and trade.
