The Obama Administration has pledged to make as much as $13 billion worth of stimulus money available for high speed rail projects, with an aim to bring the US rail system up to par with those in Europe and Asia. Although Amtrak, the US's intercity passenger rail provider, served a record 28.7 million people last year, this number is disproportionately low when compared to other countries, and part of that is how slow most trains are, and how infrequently they run.

This is partially a structural problem - most tracks were never upgraded to meet 1940's-era Federal Railroad Administration standards due to cost concerns, which keeps trains outside the Northeast Corridor operating at under 79 miles per hour. Lowering average speeds still further is the fact that passenger trains are often forced to idle on the tracks for up to an hour while freight traffic is given higher priority and allowed to go ahead.

Since World War II, most of the US's investments in transportation have focused on planes and automobiles, while Europe and Asia have placed their emphasis on trains, which is a big reason for the current disparity. Jalopnik's Sam Smith argued earlier this month for the necessity of high speed trains in the US, and it appears the current administration agrees. President Obama has proposed the creation of "an efficient, high-speed passenger rail network of 100- to 600-mile intercity corridors that connect communities across America." The obvious American model for such a service is the Northeast Corridor's Acela Express, which runs daily between Boston and Washington, DC.

The only high speed train in the United States, the Acela still lags behind its counterparts elsewhere in the world; its maximum speed is only 150 miles per hour and it averages only about half that speed. By contrast, the French TGV averages about 175 miles per hour, and it tops out at a record 357.1 miles per hour. Indeed, even the 13 billion dollars the Obama Administration has pledged is dwarfed by the investments of other countries; the Chinese have already said they will put over 300 billion dollars into expanding their high speed rail network.

The most promising technology for high speed trains — at least if what you care about is the highest possible speed, as I do — is undoubtedly magnetic levitation. The Maglev train that currently connects Shanghai with its Pudong International Airport covers its 18.6 mile distance in just over seven minutes, averaging 160 miles per hour with a top speed of 268 miles per hour, although its average speed would likely be higher if it covered greater distances.

A Japanese Maglev train managed to reach 361 miles per hour in 2003, just edging out the TGV's record. Here's video of the JR-Maglev train operating comfortably at 311 miles per hour or, as they insist on calling it, "500 kilometers per hour." (I know, right? Madness!)

If you feel like going completely crazy, Maglev proponents have claimed the trains could run at nearly 4,000 miles per hour if operated in a vacuum. If that isn't an argument for space trains, I don't know what is. It would only take sixty hours to reach the Moon!

[Scientific American]

Reporters got a test drive of the U3-X today in Tokyo. According to Associated Press:

Honda's new "personal mobility" device looks like a unicycle, but all you need to do to zip around in it — sideways as well as forward and back — is lean your weight into the direction you want to go. The U3-X ... was designed to take up the same amount of space as a human being to be safe and unobtrusive enough to mingle with pedestrians, according to Honda Motor Co.

Photo by AP/Shizuo Kambayashi

Designed by transportation planners at Systematica, the system is called "personal rapid transit," or PRT. The only functioning PRT is in West Virginia, but Systematica hopes to roll our the Abu Dhabi system very soon.

Treehugger has a great interview up with one of the designers of the system, who describes what the experience of riding in one of the pods will be like:

You will swipe a smart card through a machine, and a welcome message will appear. One option is that the system will recognize you and greet you personally: "Good morning, where do you want to go today?" Perhaps the system will remember your usual path, and offer it to you as an option. After you click on your destination, the system will say something like, "Your car is arriving in 2 minutes at platform number 3." You may have to stand on a line, and you will be able to identify your car by its number.

The second option is that you will enter your destination into the system when you are already sitting inside a car.

Initially, the system will be very simple, with only a couple of stations. During this period, the system will function kind of like an elevator – you press a button and go to the third floor. Think of it as a horizontal lift. Later on it will be more sophisticated, and passengers will be able to get within 100 meters of any destination.

The cars will not run on tracks, but will operate within a kind of grid network, and take the shortest paths to get where they need to be. The cars will have wheels, and will be battery powered.

Read more of the interview at Treehugger.

Top image via visulogik.

It seems like every day, we come across about the "city car of the future." It's usually lightweight and next-gen, with an electric battery, solar panels, and lots of nano-carbon-fibres everywhere. To be honest, a lot of these designs look like kids' toys. Stuff like this. Or this. Not to mention this. Or hey, how about this foldable city car? These super-future cars always look teeny and clown-sized, plus they'll probably cost a fortune and fall apart the moment someone even looks at them harshly. Plus they're almost always one- or two-person vehicles.

Slightly more believable are some of the fancy public transportation ideas people come up with, like light rail or maglev trains. Or this crazy (but sorta cool) London bus:

But really, the more we think about it, the more we feel like the future of urban transportation in the first world will look the way it does now in the third world. That is, the boundaries between personal cars, buses and taxis will get blurred, and transport will have to be cheaper and more flexible.

A 2007 paper by the Arthur Morgan Institute for Community Solutions agreed — the Institute suggested a "Smart Jitney" system could be pressed into service quickly, and could reduce gasoline consumption and greenhouse gases by 50 to 75 percent. (Those numbers seem awfully optimistic to me. But you never know.)

As the Institute's report says, most U.S. cities don't have the density to make real mass transit (light rail, etc.) feasible. And electric batteries and hydrogen fuel cells aren't yet at the point where they're feasible for mass consumption. Blame our individualistic, car-centered culture — the Institute does — but we've created a system where only cars can serve our needs.

So we have to look to the jitney instead. Says the Institute:

A jitney is defined as a small bus that carries passengers over a regular route on a flexible schedule. Another definition of a jitney is basically an unlicensed taxicab. Basically, a jitney is a form of mass transit using cars and vans, not passenger buses. Jitneys typically are not required to travel specific routes on a specific schedule as are trains, buses and streetcars. They are both ancient and contemporary.

A friend of mine from Kenya said there are tons of van services there, which compete partly based on the type of music they play. There's the reggae bus, the hip-hop bus, etc. With private operators running their own van services, you could have whatever type of atmosphere, from professional to party bus, you wanted.

Best of all, the "smart jitney" system could use existing vehicles — all those soccer-mom SUVs and minivans are just crying out to be pressed into service.

The "smart" part of "smart jitney" involves using high tech to provide an extra margin of safety. Like, each jitney could have an Auto Event Recorder to make sure the driver is being safe and observing speed limits. You could have an online "reservation tracking system" which you could access via cellphone or internet.

Already, some cities are experimenting with a smart carpooling system, where drivers pick up random strangers. For example, in Oakland, CA, you can wait near a supermarket parking lot, at a smart carpooling stop, and drivers will come looking for people who need rides into San Francisco. Passengers share the price of gas.

These ideas are nothing new. As far back as 1968, the Johnson administration issued a 100-page report to Congress on the future of urban transportation, which hailed super-futuristic ideas such as the dial-a-bus, "a hybrid between an ordinary bus and a taxi." It would use the miracle of computers to keep track of people's transportation orders, and pick up passengers at or near their homes as required. Other ideas in the report included Personal Rapid Transit, a kind of light rail system with individual cars that your family could ride in, and "dualmode" systems that could be cars or rail cars, depending on the situation.

More recently, syndicated columnist George Will has written about the injustice of urban transit regulations. Cities hoard taxi "medallions," carefully regulating the number of cabdrivers and making it nigh impossible for new entrants to come into the system. Even worse, most cities ban "jitney" services, which are often the only way low-income people can get around. (A jitney is basically like a taxi service, except that it picks up as many people as will fit in the car, and then takes them, in turn, to their destinations.) I remember reading Will's columns on the subject a few times, but the most recent one I can find right now is a 2003 column in which he commented that Houston had "emancipated the providers of jitney services."

It's a perfect instance of well-meaning regulations holding back services that could actually help the most vulnerable people. Limits on taxi licenses might help keep taxi companies viable and allow for safety inspections, but they also help to leave tons of low-income people stranded.

According to the CBC:

The JHL-40 takes elements of a blimp and a helicopter to lift up to 40 tonnes in one load and travel up to 320 kilometres without refuelling. It will have a top speed of 70 knots. Company officials said Tuesday the aircraft should help oil and gas companies in particular because they'll be able to use it to transport equipment and materials without having to build roads in remote regions.

The zeppelins are going to be rolled out in 2012. I'm looking forward to passenger model to take me up to northern Saskatchewan, so I can hang out by the lakes all summer long in a land without roads. (Thanks, Andrew!)

Blimp on Steroids [CBC]

In an urban setting, users would visit a terminal (sort of like a bus stop, pictured in a CGI rendering below) and swipe a smart card. Then they'd enter their destination information. The smart card would already have alerted the system to any of the user's special needs. Usually, an empty car would be waiting because the central computer constantly checks where unused cars can be sent to satisfy demand.
The car then travels automatically along a concrete path, which can be seen clearly in the next photo, taking the most direct route to the destination. Other cars are avoided by the computer control system.

ULTra is being produced by Advanced Transport Systems Ltd. Heathrow Airport will use a scaled-down version of the system to carry people from distant parking lots to the main terminal buildings, eliminating shuttle buses. You can also watch a CGI video demo of the system. Photos by: ATS.