Blog

Future Transportation

By Brian Dijkhuis

In the past a carousel was situated at the yearly fair in my village. On this carousel a spaceship was present. This spaceship could go up and down and featured a steering mechanism. My dream was to fly to my primary school with such a spaceship. Unfortunately to date this has not been possible. In this article I will talk about some future transportation ideas. From a flying car to a train that picks up passenger without reducing speed. Nothing is too far-fetched because after all, everything is possible in the future.

I will start with the idea that comes closest to fulfilling my dream. The Terrafugia Transition is a street-legal airplane that converts between driving and flying modes in under a minute. The airplane fits in a single car garage at home. The Terrafugia Transition has a steering wheel, gas and brake pedals when in ground mode, while a stick and rubber pedals provide responsive control in flight. The Terrafugia Transition is the only light aircraft which meets the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards. As an extra the aircraft is also equipped with a full-vehicle parachute for extra safety. The airplane has a cruise speed of 160 km/h and has a range of 660 km. The required take-off distance is around 520 m. For only $279,000 you can buy your own Terrafugia Transition. This would fulfil my dream. However there is also a downside, namely safety. The inventors love to ignore the safety aspects. The amount of road accidents is relatively high and if you imagine that everyone uses this sort of airplanes, combined with the fact that an air crash is defined to be more deadly than a car accident, then there needs to be a lot of work done to make my dream safer.

The second idea I’m about to discuss could fulfil one of my other dreams; not having to wait in traffic jams. This idea is called the straddling bus. The straddling bus is designed by the Shenzhen Hashi Future Parking Equipment Company and the Hashi Future Parking Equipment Company. The straddling bus makes use of the existing infrastructure. It uses small tracks positioned between lanes of traffic and rolls on stilts above the traffic. The passengers get on and off at elevated bus stops. The idea emerged in 2010 in Beijing. The city had to deal with a lot of traffic jams, which could reach lengths of about 90 km. In these traffic jams you could be jammed for 9 consecutive days. The straddling bus allows the urban roads to increase their carrying capacity. One more advantage of the straddling bus is that there is no need to build completely independent track systems. Compared to metro systems the straddling bus is cheaper and more flexible. The straddling bus will travel up to 60 km/h and it can carry up to 1200 passengers. Youzhou Song, the bus’s designers, estimates that it could substitute up to 40 common buses. This means that 860 tons of fuel can be saved, leading to a reduction of up to 2,640 tons of carbon emissions.

Finally I will talk about the idea of the train that does not have to stop to pick up passengers. This idea is once again a Chinese one. China already has maglev trains operating from Shanghai's Pudong Airport to the city center at speeds faster than any other rail service on earth. Maglev trains are magnetic levitation trains, which means they levitate due to magnetic fields. With this technique it is able to save energy compared to regular trains which are diesel or electrical-powered. However the newest idea overrules the maglev train. The idea of the non-stop train has a big advantage, it does not have to stop to pick up passengers. The passengers can get on the train by entering an elevated compartment which will automatically attach to the train when it passes by. If the passengers want to get off the train they can enter this elevated compartment which will uncouple at the next train station. Basically the train will drop and pick up a compartment every train station. This has as advantage that the train does not have to stop and accelerate again, which consumes a lot of energy. The second advantage is the travel time. According to scientists it takes on average around 5 minutes for a train to arrive and depart from a station. So if a trains travels along 10 to 12 train stations this concept could save you up to 1 hour.

All these ideas seem to be perfect. However none of them have ever been used in real-life and thus far cannot be used by the big audience. Maybe in the future these ideas can be developed further and eventually implemented as real means of transport. So maybe, in the near future, I will be able to fly to school with my own spaceship instead of taking the bike.