Planes, Trains and Automobiles

Source: Wall Street Journal

Let’s Eliminate Climate Issues First

There is a lot of motivation to reduce carbon emissions due to climate change. One area of focus is transportation. People desire to travel for business and for pleasure, so how can we minimize our carbon emissions and still be free to travel?

It turns out that whether you believe in climate change from carbon emissions or not, Transportation Tunnels are the best way to travel. This is because these new tunnels provide a real path to zero carbon emissions for travel. Of course, for long distance travel planes easily win.

That said, the introduction of Transportation Tunnels will improve our ability to travel and also reduce our carbon emissions. Solar farms with battery energy storage along tunnel routes will power blowers to give a 90MPH tailwind to vehicles travelling inside the tunnels. The tailwind reduces vehicle aerodynamic energy demand to almost zero and this extends vehicle range. Transportation Tunnel vehicles are actually being powered by the sun.

Vehicle tunnels will reduce our carbon footprint compared to internal combustion engine (ICE) cars driven on surface freeways. So if we ignore any environmental issues, what factors cause someone to choose one form of transportation over another?

The Problem with Planes and Trains

Planes and trains are in several ways, wonderful forms of transportation. You board either, sit down, and someone takes care of getting the vehicle from your origin to your destination. Planes in particular are very fast, much faster than driving a car. And in many parts of the world, trains travel at 200MPH (320KPH). America is so spread out that we don’t have many or really any, high speed trains.

But regardless, planes and trains both suffer from an insurmountable problem namely: Schedules. Because these are transport systems that require large groups of people to be heading to the same destination from the same origin, operators are forced to create a schedule demanding that people arrive for a departure at some specific time.

Source: Network Rail Media Center

If a train to your destination is leaving every 5 or 10 minutes, this doesn’t matter. But if a train only leaves once an hour or once a day, then missing that train or plane would entail a longer than acceptable wait. Not to mention that on planes, you might not be allowed to just take the next flight if that flight is fully booked.

The reason this is a problem is because it requires you to arrive at the station or airport well in advance of the departure time.

When I fly out of Sacramento, CA, I need to drive an hour and fifteen minutes to reach the airport. I allow 30 minutes in case we leave late or hit heavy traffic on the way to the airport. I allow 30 minutes to park the car, board a shuttle bus and get into the airport. I then allow 60 minutes to get through airport security and to the flight gate. Thus, when I fly I leave my home approximately 3 hours and 15 minutes prior to the scheduled departure time.

I know many people live closer than I. But many other people live farther than I. So let’s just adopt that many people must leave their home about 3 hours prior to departure time. For a train, with less security the time would be shorter, perhaps 2 hours instead of 3.

If I’m flying to Hawaii, it makes sense. If I’m flying half way across the US or more, it makes sense. But if I’m heading to Los Angeles or Las Vegas, the efficacy of a plane or train is marginal.

Transportation Tunnel Solution

If there existed a Transportation Tunnel from Sacramento to Los Angeles I would never take a plane or a train. The plane flight might be 1 hour if I include boarding and unboarding. But my drive to the airport begins 3 hours before the flight time. This means that if I go by plane it will take me approximately 4 hours to reach Los Angeles. And once their I must either pay a taxi or uber, or, rent a car.

Taking a train might save an hour in my advance departure, but I would lose that hour due to trains moving far more slowly than planes. So again, a train would take around 4 hours total transit time if I include my early departure.

In contrast if there existed a Transportation Tunnel following I-5 between say, Seattle, Washington and San Diego, California, I could simply enter the tunnel in Sacramento and zip down to Los Angeles in 3.5 hours tunnel time plus about 1 hour to get to Sacramento from my home in the foothills. And it wouldn’t matter what time I left because I could enter the tunnel whenever I get there. I would be free of the tyranny of plane or train schedules.

For trips in the 400 mile or 600 km range, Transportation Tunnels are the best solution.

Red Eye Drives

On trains it is possible to book a sleeper car with a bed so that one can go to sleep at night and wake up far from where one had been the day before. On airplanes a red eye flight typically departs late in the evening and then arrives at a destination the next morning. The term “red eye” stems from the fact that the average person is unable to get good sleep sitting upright in a chair. On a train the sleep in a bed is restful making sleeper cars a very nice way to travel on a long journey.

For automobiles a person must drive the car. If two people are travelling together it is possible for one to sleep while the other drives. And seats can recline more than airline seats, but it still isn’t restful.

Tunnels afford us a brand new alternative for overnight travel. Like a sleeper car on a train, it is technologically possible to sleep in the back of a Tesla vehicle on a very comfortable mattress. Personally I have done this my parked car. But in the future, it makes sense that people will be able to sleep in the car while the computer drives the car through the tunnel system. In this way, one will be able to sleep while the car is driving from one location to another.

Every 3 or 4 hours the car will need to exit the tunnel system to one of the rest / charging stops along the tunnel route and the car will need to charge for a while before resuming the journey. But during a 3.5 hour stint the car will have covered around 400 miles. After a 40 minute charging session the car should be able to travel another 400 miles so that overnight a person could conceivably travel around 800 miles down a tunnel system.

To be able to travel 800 miles (1,300 km) overnight in a car while sleeping is quite a new capability. It will take some time to see how people will use this capability in the real world. But tunnel travel at night may become a popular way to travel longer distances.

It would be easy, for example, to program the car to travel 400 miles, exit at a charging destination and then park in a corner of the rest area until the occupants woke up. That would get 400 miles of the journey out of the way while sleeping, without the need to charge and keep going.

Transportation Tunnels will probably eat into the market share for other modes of travel in locations where tunnels are constructed. Whether people adopt the red eye idea of sleeping in the car during travel through a tunnel remains to be learned.