Solar-powered digital mobility networks (Hyperloop and JPods) combine the 470 ton-mpg efficiency of freight rail with the on-demand service of the Internet. Building these networks can mitigate harm from oil-burning roads. See the attached graph.
Unintended consequences triggeringThe Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1916 removing efficiency as a market force:
- 46% of 470 ton-mpg railroads were replaced by 25 mpg highways.
- The 25 mpg efficiency of the Model-T was locked into automobile planned economies.
- Americans were forced to buy 1.8 oil-burning cars to be economically competitive.
- Resource depletion, US Peak Oil was in 1970. And the unfolding oil famine.
- $22 trillion in Federal debt increasing in tandem with foreign oil imports between 1970 and 2008.
- Perpetual oil-wars since 1991.
- Oil-dollar funded terrorist attacks.
- Traffic costs to Americans of $1.7 trillion per year.
- Climate Change.
Oil companies simply filled the demand created by the Federal central plan. The Boston Tea Party was a demonstration against a government transportation monopoly that triggered a war. To reduce the risks of war the Constitution's "post Roads" restrictionseparates the war-powers of the Federal government from a commercial self-interest in transportation infrastructure.
Federal support for slavery was ended in 3 years (Jan 1, 1863 to Dec 31, 1865). This required the 13th Amendment.
The Root Cause of Climate Change can be ended in a day. Enforce the Preamble (restated in Amendments 9 and 10) and "post Roads" clauses of the Constitution. Immediately stop all Federal taxing and spending on oil/coal powered infrastructures.
The oil-powered infrastructure will decay over time.
Lucky for us, solar-powered digital transportation networks will deploy faster than the oil-powered infrastructure decays. Here arenews stories about JPods, Hyperloops, and self-driving cars The Federal highway monopoly has blocked these networks sinceMorgantown's PRT opened in 1972.
This long delay between having the technology and breaking a Federal monopoly exactly replays the shift from rotary telephones to the Internet. Links to:
- 1968 Mother of All Demos(start at minute 29 if pressed for time). Demonstration of most aspects of the modern Internet.
- 1982 Federal courts scheduled the breakup of the Federal communications monopoly.
- 1983 AOL was funded.
- 1990 a tipping point in web servers.
- High Performance Computing Act of 1991
- 1994 Today Show, "Alison, what is the Internet anyway" awakening.
Massachusetts S.1993 provides a tool, "An Act relative to solar-powered mobility networks"?
Here is what aJPods network would look like at LaGuardia.