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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MrLucky who wrote (473038)	2/20/2012 9:02:59 PM
From: SmoothSail	2 Recommendations Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 794033

By way of example, the City of L.A. began discussing high speed rail or a tube between downtown L. A. and LAX in 1961. Guess what? It never happened. Environmentalists, local communities, noise and cost. Wait a second: It did happen ... sort of. They put in the Green Line that connects to the Blue Line, wihch goes downtown. The Green Line runs from Norwalk to Redondo Beach - about 2 miles from the airport. Supposedly there's a bus you can then catch to the airport, but you're lucky if it ever goes by. In the original design, the line did go to LAX but the cab companies put up such a big stink that they altered the design and diverted it so it ended up 2 miles from the airport. Too far to walk and too short for a cab to be interested in picking you up. They say there's a daily ridership of 45,000, which is very hard to believe. There are 2 stations close to where I live. I never see anyone waiting for a train at one station and very few at the other, which is the end of the line.

To: MrLucky who wrote (473038)	2/20/2012 9:45:38 PM
From: Maurice Winn	3 Recommendations Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 794033

The "high speed rail" "tracks" are already in existence, and are just waiting for more technological improvements. They are roads. The progress will be incremental and is well underway. Already there are proximity detectors for vehicles and auto-brake and auto-accelerate systems. Google has auto-drive vehicles under test and they work just fine. Cars will travel in platoons [tests have been done for years]. Then a "platoon lane" will be allocated and only platoons will be in them, traveling at 200 kph. As people left in the slow lane in an hour long traffic jam or paying a big congestion toll get sick of waiting, they'll buy a platoon car or rent one or pay the "platoon fare" for a passing vehicle. That will take so many vehicles out of the other lanes that another lane will be able to be taken over to grow corn or something useful, such as building a superconducting maglev and linear motor lane. People will then abandon the platoon lane and catch the maglev which will be a low level aircraft rather than a train, albeit suspended on efficient magnetic fields than horrible inefficient air with vortices. Then another lane will be converted to a tube design with pressurized maglev units traveling at 1000 kph, with photovoltaics on the roof of the tube. Even bird strikes, let alone children chucking stones from overpasses, will be avoided. But before that happens, the whole reason for travel will reduce as Cyberspace in 3D and stereophonic delivers reality door to door in a second. Technology is going to make existing roads more than sufficient. The idea of 2 tons of steel with a thrashing industrial revolution combination of pistons, cams, crankshaft, gearboxes and hundreds of moving parts burning hydrocarbons at 30% efficiency to move 70kg of person will be abandoned as an industrial revolution anachronism. 100 kg of vehicle, with one moving part, [the vehicle], will easily and efficiently move 70kg of person in safety, comfort and at high speed, with 3D Cyberspace on tap during the journey. High speed rail like Shinkansen is so last century. Airlines have got limited life too. Security lines will be a thing of the past. There's no security check on a city bus and Al Q can get on a crowded bus any day. With individual passenger vehicles [or two seater, 4, 6, 8 depending on what people want], there will be even less damage an AlQaedist can do. Mqurice