High Productivity Truck and Bus Lane

Travel over intermediate distances is awkward. A typical air trip has a 600 mph line-haul speed with a 45 minute "access time" on each end. Cars offer much better access time but the line-haul speed is only 60 mph. This ten to one "speed gap" results in inefficient use of scarce infrastructure capacity, on both highways(everyone driving his or her own car) and runways (short-haul airline flights). There is a national need for a system with higher speeds than an automobile and lower access time than an airplane. Research in the area of high speed ground transportation (HSGT) has proceeded very slowly, but recently there have been some interesting developments. Most activity has been confined magnetically levitated vehicles (maglev). The Germans, who spent three decades developing their Transrapid maglev system, have abandoned their commitment to build a maglev system between Hamburg and Berlin. The Japanese maglev efforts appear to be having great difficulty making the transition from a research program to an actual system. In contrast, the Chinese have decided to jump into the maglev arena with both feet. First, they decided to buy the German technology and install a Transrapid system between Shanghai and the Shanghai Airport. Second, they are considering the construction of a repulsive maglev system using superconducting magnets in the city of Chengdu. In the U. S., maglev has been an on and off affair. As with Japan and Germany, there is resistance to making a commitment to actually building a system. The U. S. seems to be stuck in a dilemma — there is recognition that simply building more highways is not a wise choice, but there is also very strong preference for incremental investments rather than the type of lump sum financial commitment which has characterized previous HSGT concepts. The best way out of this dilemma is to identify a way that HSGT could be developed incrementally.