Karen, You're quite right, of course, in saying that railways are far more efficient than roads.
The problem with railways (in this country anyway) is that railway crashes are given undue publicity, even though they're rare and only a relatively few lives are lost (averaging less than 10 per year compared with over 3,000 deaths a year on the roads). The result is that safety features being planned are likely to make railways uneconomic in the future. Railways made a seriously wrong turning about 150 years ago when Brunel was developing railways in this country. Two different systems were being proposed: (1) Pneumatic railways by which widely separated pumping stations would draw trains (without locomotives) along partially evacuated tubes; (2) locomotives drawing individual trains. Even then was clear that the former was even more efficient (and safer) than the latter. Indeed, two highly successful demonstration pneumatic railways were built in London (1864) and New York (1870). Unfortunately, they were then seen as short-distance metro systems and high city land prices knocked pneumatic railways on the head. (A pneumatic system is retained today by the Post Office in London to move mail around the city.) Attempts were made to revive the idea in the 1960s when Lockheed engineers proposed a Boston-Washington route, and then again in the 1990s when the Swiss proposed a 250-mile pneumatic metro system connecting Basle, Lucerne, Lausanne, etc. through the mountains. At the same time as the Swiss, I was proposing a pneumatic system for England mainly for freight transportation when I was in a gung-ho technological phase of my life and it was given 'serious' consideration (so officials said) by our Ministry of Transport. Anyway, they sat on it for some months before declining to take it further (without giving me reasons). (Indeed, a retired senior Ministry of Transport official told me later, after I'd given a lecture on my proposal, that there was nothing wrong with it -- just that officialdom were simply not mentally equipped to respond to something so radical.) I wrote a 20-page pamphlet on my proposals in non-technical language suitable for the layman (and lavishly illustrated by yours faithfully!) which is still quite readable and relevant. In view of what Brad (in cranky mood?) wrote yesterday about long postings, I won't attach it here, but I'd be happy to send a PDF to any FWer on request. Keith Hudson ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------- Keith Hudson,6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England Tel:01225 312622/444881; Fax:01225 447727; E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ________________________________________________________________________
