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TRACKED ELECTRIC VEHICLE SYSTEM

Technical Booklet April 2020

This high speed electric car will soon have an unlimited range simply by using an electric guideway called TEV or Tracked Electric Vehicles. TEV will reduce greenhouse gases from cars and light road vehicles, worldwide, within a few decades, not centuries. TEV has Local Tracks and Express Tracks. Local Tracks are for moderate speeds in city and suburban driving. They are flexible and allow many types of EVs to use the track, such as mini-buses, driverless taxis, small vans and private cars. By contrast, TEV Express tracks are for high speed transport for people and parcels and will revolutionize long-distance travel. Journeys of several hundred miles will often be faster, door to door, than with high-speed trains. TEV Express tracks are a serious competitor of these trains because their construction costs will be vastly lower and passenger capacity vastly higher. Less overheads also: no locomotives, no stations, no staff, no office buildings, no bookings, no strikes and no subsidies! Welcome to the TEV system.

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Contents

1. The revolution starts here

2. TEV Local tracks

3. Some basic rules 4. TEV Express tracks

5. Energy consumption of TEV vehicles

6. Safety in an unsafe world

7. Parking in the new age

8. A new revolution of Stations and Stops

Appendix: Management and cost

This electric VW would run nicely on a TEV track.

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Chapter 1. The revolution starts here This booklet describes a revolution of our road transport system that will carry people and light freight. It uses conventional electric vehicles but in a faster, safer and more efficient way. It can be built quickly, all over the world, using the same standards so it does not leave poor counties behind. Like a giant Scalextric-type system it does not produce greenhouse gases. Best of all, it is a low-risk investment that will make a huge profit. Almost all high Speed Trains, by contrast, require endless subsidies. TEV stands for “Tracked Electric Vehicles” and rhymes with BEV as in Beverly. Here is a quick summary:

TEV vehicles are electrically powered so they don’t produce any greenhouse gases.

Many TEV vehicles are “dual-mode”, capable of being driven on ordinary roads as well as on TEV tracks.

All vehicles run on rubber tires, not on steel rails.

Some are Express Tracks with a 120mph or higher cruise speed.

Some are local Tracks used for suburbs and cities and will drive at slower speeds. These Local Tracks will power SUVs, small vans, minibuses and even non-streamlined vehicles, but no large buses or trucks.

The TEV system will form an international electric-highway network with all countries using the same design standards.

System development will be easy and funded by an international consortium described at the end of this report.

TEV is not another well-meaning public-transit scheme for city-folk. It is a practical, down-to-earth transport system designed by engineers, not politicians. It is compatible with city and suburban living and handles public and private transport functions equally well. This was written during the 2020 world wide corona-virus crisis. Using individual automobiles instead of communal buses and trains will reduce virus risk considerably. News flash! TEV may be quicker than a high-speed train! Compared with conventional high speed trains a TEV Express track will often be quicker from home to final destination. Here’s why: A high speed train may claim a top speed of 180mph but the average speed of a journey is less than this and may even drop to 120mph. A major reason for this is that trains must stop at stations along the way - without leaving the track. Therefore, your journey in your own TEV car at 120mph could be faster from your house to Grandma’s house, than in a high-speed train and using taxis at each end. It can also be more convenient because you will have your car with you to take Grandma out to lunch. Your own journey will also be more pleasant because you can take the dog or feed the baby or just plain take a nap. TEV is full of surprises. Here is another one: TEV Express tracks have a theoretical passenger carrying capacity shockingly greater than any highway or railway in existence. This is demonstrated later.

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In urban and suburban areas, TEV will use moderate-speed Local Tracks that can accommodate vehicles that are not streamlined, such as SUVs, station wagons, mini-buses and small delivery vans. This will provide people with much improved access to city and suburban shopping centers. TEV electric vehicles will burn no fuel so mankind can finally reduce CO2, all over the planet, within a few decades. As far as we know, no other transport system can make this claim. TEV will also be sustainable in energy for centuries to come by using the new, clean and efficient nuclear power that is on its way. (Note: Look up liquid fuel thorium reactors. There is nothing wrong with nuclear power if it is safe and clean). TEV tracks will reduce road problems such as traffic jams, highway fatalities, diesel fumes, road noise, city parking tickets, potholes, low visibility, slippery snow and ice, road debris, drunk drivers, speeding tickets, speed traps, road rage and stress. Fortunately most of the basic driverless control technology for TEV already exists so TEV doesn’t need any breakthroughs: no magic batteries, no strange propulsion systems and no wasteful long-term research programs like the now-dead US fuel-cell program. Nothing risky at all. All it needs is competent engineering. Note that these virtues make TEV a very good investment for governments and private investors alike. The TEV system complements an independent program in Europe that aims to electrify heavy trucks with overhead pantograph wires like trains. We wish them success. In conjunction with Elan Musk’s battery powered trucks, these developments will create a non-polluting highway system within a few short decades, with almost no risk of failure. Isn’t that the most optimistic comment you have heard on the environment lately? Autonomous vehicles TEV looks a bit like a 1980s concept called “automated highways” But, due to enormous technical advances in car design since then, that concept is now much more practical. It has also changed its name to “autonomous vehicles” and all the car companies are working feverishly on it. It should be self-evident that driving autonomous cars on conventional public roads must be restricted. It should also be banned for high speed travel. TEV Express vehicles on the other hand, can drive very securely at high speeds because they will be on dedicated, restricted tracks, safely tucked-in between steel crash barriers. Any licensed driver will be able to “drive” on a TEV track, day or night. In fact, some might arrange to travel overnight and catch up on some sleep on the TEV track. TEV tracks can be made from standardized parts, manufactured in factories with modern equipment and superior quality control. The capital cost will be substantial, of course, but due to the enormous traffic-carrying capacity of a TEV track the cost per passenger mile will be low. For example, a two-lane express TEV track will cost much less to build than a 6-lane highway. Yet it could carry 20 lanes of traffic, have a much higher cruising speed better safety, higher energy efficiency and generate no greenhouse gasses at all. .

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Yet another benefit is that the TEV system, in its early years, may accommodate cars with internal combustion engines to help pay the bills if they have TEV controls. That will make TEV a good investment in any country because it will pay for itself through tolls and eliminate wasteful government subsidies that are now given to out-of-date transport systems like trains. The TEV system is suitable for both advanced countries and developing countries. Being an infrastructure project it will create a lot of good jobs everywhere. A consortium of governments and industries will therefore be necessary to steer the development forward. (See Project Management at the end of this Booklet). So, welcome to TEV. We hope that you will become as enthusiastic as we are that this efficient, pleasant and environmentally sensible system could be your gift to your grandchildren. Please help make it happen, wherever in the world you live or work. We also hope that this little book will leave you with a sense of astonishment that such intimidating problems as global pollution, climate change and oil dependency can be solved so easily! Will Jones, Freeport, Bahamas April 2020

Note: Will Jones, the creator of TEV, has a Master’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Wales. He was recruited by Westinghouse Electric R&D Center, Pittsburgh, USA, where he developed his first electric vehicle. His design included a radical recirculating-electrolyte system which charged, watered and cooled the batteries in less than 2 hours, fast even by today’s standard. He then sat on the Board of Chloride Industrial Batteries in the UK as Technical Director and later became VP Technology for the Exide Battery Group in the USA. In the early 80’s he left corporate life to start his own company and now has two beautiful manufacturing plants in the USA and the UK. He has also built battery factories for Chinese clients. Over the past few years he has focused on the development of the TEV system.

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Chapter 2. TEV Local Track for Single-mode and dual-mode vehicles Let’s begin with TEV Local tracks because, in function, they are more complex than the TEV Express tracks described later in Chapter 4. A feature of the TEV Local system is that it uses familiar vehicles such as cars, mini-vans and minibuses as the transport modules for people and goods. Perhaps even pickup trucks will be allowed if they run quietly and have covered beds. As shown later, the vehicles and tracks will vary with the application. Three benefits result:

First, there will be no public resistance to use the new system because it will be seen as a convenient, time saving extension of their present road system.

Second, the enormous expenditure required for developing special vehicles will be avoided because the automotive companies will do that free of charge. Actually most has already been done by Elan Musk and followers.

Third, most of the vehicles will be paid for by their owners and not by the public purse, thereby avoiding much government spending. Public spending can focus on building the TEV Tracks and even that part will be funded by tolls.

Restrictions Large vehicles such as buses and trucks will not be allowed on the tracks and will have to stay on the existing highways. Minibuses and small trucks will be allowed. Express Tracks are made for high speeds for long distances and these will be restricted to cars with good aerodynamic qualities. SUVs and other boxy vehicles are welcome on the slower Local Tracks, in suburbs and cities, but not on Express Tracks. All vehicles on all tracks will be under automatic control. The rules are pretty obvious and need not be discussed here. A third revolutionary feature is that TEV vehicles can be divided into two types: Single-mode and Dual-mode. Single mode vehicles are restricted to the TEV track. Unlike most present public transport vehicles, they are usually driverless and run night and day, on demand, at very low cost and with great security. Dual-mode vehicles, by contrast, can drive on the tracks under automatic control but can also be driven on normal roads by humans just like present cars and vans. The most glamorous of all TEV applications is, of course, high-speed travel for hundreds of miles on Express Tracks, under full automatic control, in privately owned or rented electric cars (EVs).See Chapter 4. But there will also be many lower speed applications, with and without drivers that are discussed later. Some vehicles may have relatively minor advances over existing cars and vans, but others will have radical improvements. Lets start with the private car:

The TEV private car: a truly revolutionary advance; a privately owned, dual-mode personal transport vehicle for the masses.

This “dual-mode” car can be driven manually on normal roads or under automatic control on restricted TEV Local tracks or on Express tracks. It enters and leaves the track network at Entries and Exits. For the present, dual-mode vehicles will need human drivers when

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they are driven on the roads at slower speeds. However, on the Express tracks they will operate at express speeds even without a driver. This is the vehicle that will compete directly with high speed passenger trains. Dual–mode cars may be “pure” electric vehicles, powered by a battery, or a hybrid with an engine-generator on board. On the track, however, they will almost always an EV, running on electric power alone.

A dual-mode commuter minibus This vehicle is a TEV-compatible minibus with a human driver. It can pick up

passengers by road from a bus stop like a normal bus. However, since it can also use the moderate-speed Local TEV track, its operating range is greatly extended which improves its value to customers and increases the revenue to the driver. It’s not revolutionary but a good advance. Its bluff profile disallows travel on Express Tracks.

Single mode vehicles

A vehicle can be used either as a driverless “single-mode” delivery vehicle or a driver controlled vehicle. It uses the same Local tracks but does not leave the track network to exit on to public roads. Instead, it stops to pick up and deliver passengers or parcels at prearranged TEV Stops. These Stops are analogous to conventional bus stops except that the TEV vehicle never stops on the track. (That is sacrilege in the TEV world!) For humans, single-mode vehicles act like horizontal elevators; you get in, the doors close, you are taken to your destination and you get out, even hundreds of miles away.

Robo-van: a single-mode, driverless parcel- delivery vehicle This TEV vehicle could quietly revolutionize parcel delivery. It may be one

of the most important vehicles in the TEV system. Owned by firms such as the Post Office, UPS, FedEx, Amazon and other logistic companies, these robotic vehicles will deliver parcels and light freight, often overnight when energy costs are lower. They can travel at high speeds over hundreds of miles, even internationally, with virtually no labor cost or double-handling. They might even run on the Express tracks if they meet aerodynamic and safety specifications. Very importantly, the revenues from TEV freight delivery services will help to pay for much of the construction cost of the TEV network so we would expect these vehicles to be the pioneers of the TEV system.

Robo-cab: a single-mode, driverless taxi A robo-cab is another quietly revolutionary vehicle that TEV makes possible.

It is a driverless taxi that is summoned from a TEV Stop. You go to any Stop on a TEV

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line and order a cab to go to a destination anywhere in the system, even a hundred miles away. When your cab arrives, it displays your call number. A touch of your phone opens the cab door. Security cameras are on every vehicle, so these cabs can be used safely by children or old or handicapped people and can go across town or across the country if required. The limitation is that robo-cabs will only take you to the your nearest TEV Stop, not to your front door.

Robo-Minibus serves the suburbs Robo-minibuses are horizontal elevators too. They can be used for short

trips on moderate-speed tracks. High-end versions could drive at high speeds on express tracks. They can also use the same TEV Stops as other vehicles. They can be used in convoys for commuter service to replace trains (See the booklet). TEV vehicles do not stop on the tracks, so express mini-buses can bypass stopped mini-buses which increases productivity greatly. . .

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Chapter 3. We must have a few basic rules Should engine-powered cars be allowed on the TEV system? It should be feasible to run combustion engine vehicles on the TEV track so long as they have the same automatic controls as the EVs and the track ventilation is adequate. In the short term, during the startup years of TEV, it might be a great way to help pay for the construction costs of the tracks through tolls. No oil drips are allowed of course! Most TEV cars will be produced by big name car manufacturers The use of conventional cars gives TEV an enormous advantage over other transportation proposals that require special vehicles. The modern car is a highly developed appliance, having had billions of dollars spent on its chassis, suspension, power-steering, air-conditioning, anti-lock brakes, traction-control, electric windows, remote door locks, air-bags, seat-belts and other advanced systems. So, it makes sense to base our TEV vehicle on a superb platform, the modern car. Air conditioning available. A nice feature is that utility powered air-conditioning is available on all vehicles while they are on the track without depleting the energy in their batteries. Restricted access for some vehicles and accessories A deliberate constraint on the TEV car design is that the vehicles must be “track compatible”. For example, large vehicles like trucks or buses are not acceptable because of the enormous extra cost of large tunnels, bridges and other infrastructure required. Small, streamlined mini-buses will be fine for local or long distance express service. Vehicle size will be limited to some degree and those rules will be precisely defined in the Design Review stage of the TEV project. The physical design of the track entrances is therefore important because they must divert all illegal vehicles before they get on the track. Banned on Express Tracks, but not necessarily on Local tracks, will be vehicles with protrusions or attachments such as roof racks, strapped-on packages, trailers of all kinds (except ones certified for use on TEV) and all open-bed vehicles such as pickups and any vehicle which has more or less than 4 wheels. Approved vehicles will carry remote radio transmitters that the track computer can read, similar in effect as the systems presently used for toll-booths. Noisy tires will also be banned. TEV will be relatively quiet, not like those terribly noisy high speed trains! (Check them out on the web). Public service vehicles Public service vehicles like ambulances, police cars, taxis, minibuses and so on will have full access to the tracks. In fact, hospitals and other emergency medical services will be a priority for TEV. Many lives will be saved getting around traffic jams.

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Rubber tires versus other drive systems Steel wheels, like the ones on used on trains, have the technical appeal of a low rolling resistance, about 6 times lower than rubber tires. Unfortunately, they are also very slippery, which results in problems such as a tendency for wheel-spin during acceleration, an inability to climb hills and an extremely poor braking ability. For example, the Tokyo Shinkansen, the top of the line in modern high-speed trains, has an official, published, emergency-stopping distance of 4 kilometers or 2.5 miles, and even more if the track is wet. By contrast a TEV car on a dry day could stop from cruising speed of 200km/h (120mph) in less than 200 meters, the length of two football fields. That could be improved further with aerodynamic spoilers that create more drag force and downforce. Rubber tires already exist as part of the modern car and are matched with very sophisticated technology such as disc brakes and anti-skid systems. Therefore, no radical new developments are needed here either. Also, modern tire technology has reduced the rolling resistance of older rubber tires. These new tires run cooler and are well suited to high speed travel of 200km/h (120mph). But the best argument is that the higher drag of rubber tires is not a big a drawback because, at high speeds, aerodynamic drag is the dominant energy consumer. Rolling resistance accounts for only 6% of the total drag of a TEV car cruising at 200km/h (120mph) so further reduction has diminishing returns. Note also that the use of close-coupled car convoys can reduce the aerodynamic drag per TEV vehicle by as much as 40%. High speed trains are appallingly noisy. TEV is much quieter Check this out on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwrjlzUlT60 Rubber tires are much quieter than steel wheels. In fact, steel wheels on steel rail are so noisy that Japanese high-speed train engineers say that noise is the HST’s single biggest technical problem. Neighbors would agree! Korean villagers are trying to sue train operators so that they can regain their peace. It really is a big secret problem. Run-flat rubber tires, essential for the TEV system, are already available and tires are easy to replace by the owner when worn. The rubber tire, therefore, is a surprising but worthy winner. It is thoroughly practical, efficient, flexible, simple, inexpensive, reliable, quiet, and also immediately available and replaceable without a major development program. In any case, one must have tires to drive on normal roads!

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Chapter 4: Now let’s put the focus on the high speed TEV Express Track. It is clear that the TEV express tracks are fast. But what is not obvious is the benefit that a consistently high, non-stop speed has on passenger carrying capacity. The capacity of any people-mover is measured by the number of passengers it transports in a given time past a given point, The TEV capacity calculations involve the following assumptions:

Medium size TEV cars are compact having a length of about 4 meters (14 feet) with four seats and room for luggage.

On the TEV Express track, these cars are grouped into convoys of 10 or 30 cars with about one meter between cars during the cruise mode. This concept is a big contributor to high capacity and fuel efficiency. Our studies at Newcastle University in the UK shows that a group of 10 vehicles in a convoy reduces the average aerodynamic drag per vehicle by about 40%.

Note that this benefit cannot be duplicated on a conventional highway with human drivers. People’s reaction times are much too slow.

A likely cruise speed of 200km/h (120 mph) on TEV Express Tracks is also a big contributor to track capacity. It is fast without being unsafe.

For this calculation, the maximum “load factor” of the track is arbitrarily restricted to 75% so that convoys of 30 cars are followed by gaps of at least 10 car spaces. This high capacity will seldom be required except in evacuations of cities, so convoys of 10 cars or less will probably be the norm. The cars can also go on the track individually if alone.

TEV capacity in the equivalent of road lanes. If a TEV Express track is loaded to a 100% capacity with all the cars traveling at 200km/h (120mph), the number of cars passing a given point will be 37,200 cars per hour. However, since we are reducing the maximum track loading to about 75%, our capacity is about 28,000 cars per hour. To show how enormous this capacity really is we must compare it with other transport systems. Compare with highways A very logical rule in the UK Highway Code for spacing manually driven cars is to maintain two seconds between cars, one second for human reaction and one second for braking. From this we can tell that the maximum capacity of a single lane of a conventional motorway is 1,688 cars per hour. Compare this number with the 37,200 TEV number above, you will see that a single TEV track has the astonishing capacity of more than 20 lanes of motorway.

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But that is only half of the story. In very high-density traffic near some cities, it is possible to have double-deck TEV tracks in the space of a single lane of motorway. In this case, the theoretical capacity of a pair of TEV tracks would be 40 times greater than the single lane appropriated. Clearly, TEV has a capacity potential of enormous proportions. This will change the economics of all public transport. Compare construction cost per unit capacity. If construction cost is compared, the TEV superiority widens further. A modern interstate highway with 3 lanes each way can cost $10 million per lane-mile to build in open countryside. The cost in town is prohibitive compared with a simple TEV tunnel. By contrast, a TEV track with one lane each way will likely carry many times the traffic, cost a fraction of the money to build per unit capacity, and have a tenth of the environmental impact, during both construction and operation. To be fair, the traditional road has enormous flexibility. It will carry everything from bicycles to huge trucks. But that is also what gives it a low capacity. The virtue of a TEV track is, by focusing only on people and light freight, it avoids most of the compromises of “flexible” road travel so its capacity is dramatically increased. Observations confirm calculations Observations from bridges crossing 6-lane highways in the UK and USA showed that the actual number of cars per lane in every case was far lower than the 1688 vehicles per hour estimated earlier. It was more like 1200 vehicles per hour in both cases. The reason was obvious: the two “slow lanes” were occupied by heavy trucks trying to pass each other with long spaces in between. The car drivers, not wanting to share the truck lanes gravitated to the “fast” lane, which then became clogged with cars driving too close together for safety. TEV gets it superior capacity by closing the wasteful gaps and having all vehicles maintain the same high speed in great safety. How do high-speed trains compare in passenger carrying capacity?

One of the advanced high-speed trains in service today is the French TGV (Train a Grande Vitesse). This masterpiece of engineering cruises at speeds up to 290 km/h (180 mph) on dedicated high-speed rail tracks. It also runs more slowly on older, conventional tracks. It is a successful and popular innovation in France and competes strongly with

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the airlines. It is therefore a prime yardstick for comparison when future passenger systems are discussed. Financial note: While high speed trains (HSTs) are popular in Europe, they are not necessarily a good investment. Only two of many lines in the world were profitable in the year 2015, the Paris-Lyon line and the Tokyo-Osaka line. Both were built in early days when money was cheap. Some say that future systems will never pay back their capitalization which implies a permanent subsidy. While we cannot confirm that opinion it seems reasonable given the monstrous cost of proposed new HST rail constructions in California and the UK. The passenger capacity of a single HST track, in terms of people carried per hour, depends only on the number of seats per train and the number of trains per hour. Since trains usually stop in stations along the way, the maximum cruising speed is not a direct factor in the capacity calculation as it is with the TEV system. Most French TGV trains still use the older single-deck cars with a capacity of 500 persons. However, to be generous, we will use the latest, most advanced 800-passenger, double-deck version as our yardstick. Assume that all seats are filled. That will maximize capacity. Allowing for uncertainty in public statements, the maximum frequency of TGV train service is 12 trains per hour which, multiplied by 800 passenger seats per train, makes the capacity per track equal to 9,600 passengers per hour. According to our earlier definition, this is about equal to only two lanes of motorway. Hmm! That is not very impressive. But that is not even the biggest limitation of the HST; there is an even more fundamental one. The train stations must be far apart or else the train’s average speed drops substantially. To illustrate, if an HST train waits for 5 minutes at stations that are 50km (30 miles) apart, the average speed of the train drops to 200km/h (120mph) which is about the same as a TEV car that doesn’t stop at all. So, a high average speed for a HST train depends on having a few hurried stops. The present target time is three minutes which may seem short for people in wheel chairs to exit. But it works! The French are great engineers. Note that this limitation is a fundamental one because stopping on a track, as high speed trains must do in stations, is a tremendous waste of capacity. The fastest TGV trains cruise at 180mph or 3-miles a minute. Therefore, a 3-minute stop would require 9 miles of empty track between trains to avoid one train bumping into another, obviously a major waste of capacity. By contrast, TEV cars should never stop on the track. Therefore, a small gap of less than a meter between cars will be sufficient, not 9 miles. Further, a TEV “destination” is a simple exit like that on a motorway where a car leaves the highway to stop for a coffee. In doing so, a TEV car does not hold up the other TEV traffic which therefore continue at full speed. That is a big advantage because TEV can have dozens of exits without affecting the average speed of the through traffic at all.

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By the way, we should also mention that having high-speed trains tearing through a neighborhood at 180mph, making a tremendous racket, is not exactly a benefit for the local community. In sharp contrast, by using many exits, a relatively quiet TEV track could join up many small villages into a real extended community. Further, a TEV enclosure with a roof and side curtains can be made even to absorb most of its own tire noise. The practical problems that future HSTs face are many. For example, in the USA the Acela train from New York to Washington DC achieves 150mph in places but averages only 84mph for the whole journey. It is still living in the days that trains and people went from city center to city center. But those days are gone forever. A TEV car, which averages 120mph, would be much faster on any count, especially if its door-to-door superiority is included. So, why waste money building a noisy railway that is not really fast. The average-speed problem of HSTs can be minimized by having long distances between stations. But that is inconvenient for passengers who live in-between. Fast trains are therefore inter-city expresses, much like airlines. They cannot compete with TEV vehicles except between major cities that are relatively far apart. For most suburban people in the USA and elsewhere, TEV will be faster door-to-door than any railway, including the latest high-speed trains. We have already mentioned that trying to get a dedicated high speed railway line into old cities would now be crazy. Therefore, HST stations tend to be built outside cities which seems equally crazy. By contrast, TEV cars are flexible so old railway lines or tunnels could easily be converted to TEV Local Tracks. A TEV driver could then exit the Express track and drive non-stop on Local Tracks, in the same vehicle, into the hearts of a city or out to their own suburb. It is their choice. It is clear, therefore, that TEV is a much more flexible system for an ordinary person to use than a train. It forms a natural two-dimensional network as all road systems do. Trains will always be point-to-point, station to station, one-dimensional systems that are fundamentally out of date. But times they are a-changing. Even freight trains are losing business to road-going trucks as a means of serving new distribution centers and factories. This is true in Europe as well as in the USA. Railway tracks, usually built on river banks to avoid the train problem of going up hills, are already in service so this trend is not likely to change. Trains will remain as bulk carriers of coal, grain and other dense cargoes transported over long distances. But future industrial zones may now be built in valleys or in hill country using modern electrically powered trucks. We recommend Musk battery trucks and Scania-Siemens overhead power wires. No brainer! How do city commuter trains compare? Most people would assume that commuter trains, crowded with harassed passengers, have the highest passenger-carrying capacity of all. They would be wrong. Even though

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they are cramped, uncivilized and unhealthy, commuter trains can’t come close to TEV for capacity. Once again, this is because the train must stop on the track in a series of stations. To match the maximum capacity of a single TEV track, a commuter rail line would have to provide one train, with 500 passengers, every 15 seconds. Obviously, this would be impossible because the train must stop in each station for several minutes. Observation in a London Underground suburban station showed that, at peak travel times, a train rolled by every 10 minutes or so. In that case, the capacity of that rail track will be about 3,000 passengers per hour. This is equivalent of 750 cars and only half the capacity of a single lane of highway. This makes the commuter train the worst people mover of all. But remember, the passenger train was invented in 1830, nearly 200 years ago. It is an old system and ready for retirement. Conclusions on capacity For a fair comparison we must compare passengers carried per hour per lane or track. Here are the results: SYSTEM Speed (mph)

Vehicles per hour

Passengers Per hour

Equivalent road lanes

Motorway One lane

70 mph 1668 cars 6,752 1 lane

Commuter train One track

Slow 6 trains 3,000 0.5 lanes

High-speed train one track

180 12 trains X 800 passengers

9.600 1.4 lanes

TEV track 120 28,000 cars x 4 passengers

112,000 17 lanes for single track

According to this calculation, one lane of TEV has a maximum theoretical capacity of 17 lanes of motorway. Investors please note: The TEV system requires very little capital equipment to buy, maintain and replace hardware compared with railways. There are no locomotives, no passenger carriages, no repair sheds and no stations. There are also no drivers, no workforce, no unions and no strikes. Private contractors can maintain the track and car owners will repair and replace their own cars as they do already. What an enormous reduction in overhead cost that will be relative to any train system. Now let’s compare the passenger capacity of different systems. The Japanese and French train operators are the world’s most experienced and by any standard do an excellent job. They claim to run about 12 trains per hour at peak periods, one train every 5 minutes. However, that means that the stop periods in a station must

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be shorter than 5 minutes or they will slow down the following train. The maximum number of people that can be transported on the biggest French 800 passenger train at 180mph is, therefore, 9,600 passengers per hour. Going faster will not help. Only adding more passengers will help which is the reason for the double-deck trains. TEV cars, by contrast, don’t need to stop on the track. They exit the track at speed and then slow down and park, just as cars exiting to a motorway café or restaurant do. Therefore, for TEV, blocking the track is never an issue. Convoys on TEV can drive continuously without stopping which results in a theoretical capacity of 112, 000 people an hour, more than 11 times as many as a continuous supply of TGV trains. Yes, that is correct. One low cost TEV track has a potential capacity of 11 incredibly expensive HST tracks. The remarkable conclusion, therefore, is that a simple, low-cost TEV track has a much greater passenger capacity, equivalent to 17 lanes of highway or 11 lanes of TGV track. TEV’s combination of speed and capacity truly puts it in a class of its own. In practice, it means that replacing existing train tracks with TEV tracks could increase passenger capacity dramatically.at a very low cost. This capacity advantage obviously has large operational benefits, as follows:

TEV tracks are possibly hundreds of times cheaper to build than HST tracks.

They carry many more passengers per hour

Passengers do not need any advance trip planning.

There are no tickets to buy. Just pay toll later on the web.

Fees are charged per car not per passenger.

One can get off the track at any exit without holding up other travelers.

Exit anywhere on the journey for food, toilets or a stretch.

Drive at night, fast asleep. The 1,000miles from Philadelphia to Florida would be an 8-hour sleep. San Francisco to LA would be a 3 hour snooze, door to door.

TEV is a quiet neighbor to trackside living people, HSTs are very appallingly noisy.

TEV cars can easily go up and down hills. By contrast, trains are flat-landers. They must avoid hills that cars would not notice due to risk of wheel-spin. That is why their infrastructure requires so many expensive tunnels and bridges.

Even for a small country, TEV will save billions of dollars for track installations alone.

We are obviously biased but, in our opinion, all future High-Speed Train projects should be put on hold until a competitive TEV system is thoroughly investigated. Critics may quibble with some assumptions: that the gaps between cars should be a little more, or the load factor should be a little less, and so on. Leave this to the engineers because it is equally likely that the cars could be made shorter, the speed could be made higher and the load factor raised to 100% in special circumstances. Further, two TEV tracks can be stacked, which would double the capacity to 34 equivalent lanes. Surely that ends the debate. For capacity, there is nothing close to the TEV system.

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Note that we do not expect TEV to carry these huge passenger numbers during any real event-except perhaps an emergency evacuation. Our point is to illustrate the lack of constraints the TEV system has. Just to be conservative, let us reduce the claimed capacity of TEV from 17 lanes of highway to 10 lanes to make a nice, round number. Few would argue with the conclusion that one TEV track is equivalent to at least 10 lanes of highway. That is enough advantage to justify construction of the TEV system.

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Chapter 5. Energy consumption of TEV vehicles Question: If we had a magic battery that gave electric cars the same range as gasoline-powered cars on normal roads, would that option be as good as TEV? Absolutely not. TEV’s energy-efficiency is superior because it uses power directly from the grid and not from a battery. Also, there is virtually no stopping and starting on the track. It is improved further by the combination of smooth track surfaces, low-resistance tires, streamlined car bodies, banked turns, direct supply of electrical power to the motors, and aerodynamic drag-reducing techniques made possible by using convoys. The energy used will always be less.

Modern cars can have very low drag coefficients but still look normal Because of these “natural” advantages, we would reasonably expect TEV vehicles to consume less energy per passenger-mile than conventional cars on a normal road system, even if those cars had magic batteries. However, we would certainly not expect TEV cars to be competitive with streamlined High Speed Trains running on steel wheels, would we? Let’s find out. A Japanese “Bullet Train” traveling at 160 mph is reported to consume only 55 watt-hours of energy per kilometer per passenger, and that is counting half the seats as occupied by passengers. The French TGV train is said to consume the same amount of energy per kilometer, but at 180 miles per hour, and with all the seats occupied. In both cases, the consumption figures equate to a continuous power draw of 10kW per counted seat which is a very useful comparative measure. So let’s compare TEV with high speed trains on that measure.

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Two drafting NASCAR vehicles doing 200mph (322km/h). Note that they are less than one meter apart and can do this endlessly quite safely. To match the figure of 10 kW per seat, a four-seat TEV car would have to draw just 40 kW of continuous power at 200km/h (120 mph). With some simple calculations, we can estimate the power consumption of a TEV vehicle, recognizing that some of the drag forces are difficult to compute, especially the possible increase in aerodynamic drag of the cars within the partial enclosure of the track and the very substantial reduced drag from the “drafting” effect of convoys. Therefore, we will generously ignore both factors, expecting them to cancel out. (Note: The reduction of drag in a 10-vehicle convoy has been calculated by our engineers at 40% lower than for 10 separate vehicles on the track. It is a supporting factor for the superiority of TEV. But again we will ignore it just to keep the calculations simple.

Assume that the TEV car is a compact car, weighing a substantial 900kg (2000 pounds), having a frontal area of 1.85 m2 (20 square feet) with a very streamlined shape giving us a drag coefficient of 0.15 which is achievable in practice (e.g.: GM Precept, and Aero 2002 below) and, therefore, should be made the target.

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. This GM Precept experimental car built in 1999 had a claimed drag coefficient of 1.5 to 1.7. It looks very practical.

The GM Aero has a drag coefficient of 0.14, the lowest we know in a reasonable-looking car. This is on a flat road surface. On a track, where the shape of the track floor can be optimized, the drag coefficient might be a little lower still. The resulting aerodynamic drag force at 120 mph would be 52 newtons (116 pounds force). The rolling drag of the special low resistance tires, is estimated to be only 3.74 newtons (8 pounds force). Therefore, we get a total drag force of 56 newtons (124 pounds force). The power required is 40 brake horsepower or about 30 kW. Allowing for some energy conversion losses, the actual power consumed by the vehicle would be about 40 kW or 10kW per seat, an amount identical to the TGV train doing 180mph and double that of the Japanese Bullet Train doing 160mph.

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Thus, the total amount of electricity used by the TEV car is quite low. For example, a journey of 120 miles could be done in one hour with an energy consumption of just 40 kWh which, even at 10 cents per kWh would only cost $4.00 in “fuel” costs. By contrast, a fuel-burning car on a normal American road, consuming gasoline at a frugal 30 miles per gallon would use 4 gallons on the trip, going a great deal slower than 120mph. Using American gasoline prices at $3.00 per gallon including taxes, fuel would cost $12.00 - or 3 times more than our clean EV while going much slower. Using expensive European petrol prices of $6.00 per gallon, it would cost $24.00, 6 times more. Of course, petroleum prices everywhere are largely made up of taxes these days, but it shows that the cost of TEV is lower than present systems and not inevitably higher, despite its faster speed. To put it another way, for the investment community, there is plenty of room for profit in the TEV system. It is important to note that EVs will always be more efficient when driving on TEV tracks rather than driving on conventional roads using their main battery. The reason is that, on the TEV track, the electrical current goes from the electrical power line, through the transformer/rectifier, or other power supply, and directly to the drive motors. Very little energy is wasted. By comparison, an EV which drives an intermittent charging cycle, namely driving on battery power and then recharging that battery intermittently, always loses a substantial amount of energy with each of these “cycles”. This cycling also ages the battery faster which will, one day, involve a large cost to replace the battery. The use of high-power super-chargers makes this inefficiency worse, not better. There may be a few aerodynamic tricks that TEV can play that would not be sensible on conventional road roads. One is that the TEV cars on the track may be raised a little to let more air flow beneath the car. This may seem counter intuitive because race cars all have very low clearances. But that low clearance is to suck the car down to increase tire grip for cornering. For a cruising TEV car, a smooth underbelly and a higher ground clearance may substantially reduce drag. We are not interested in producing downforce during cruise. A passing note: The weight of the advanced German ICE high-speed train is 1265 kg (2,790 pounds) per seat. A typical compact car weighs less than this for 4-seats! Trains are amazingly heavy beasts. This is a sure indicator of old technology and one of the reasons for the expensive rail tracks.

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Chapter 7. Safety in an unsafe world The basic definition of a TEV track is: a single-lane, limited-access roadway, electrically powered, with no intersections other than Entries and Exits. There will, of course, be variations. We must now face a difficult subject, safety at speed. Here, the laws of physics rule without conscience.

TEV cars travel at 200km/h (120mph) while the latest HSTs travel 50% faster at 300km/h (180mph). However, due to the stops on the journey, the average speed of a TGV train is closer to the 120mph (200km\hr) of TEV vehicles.

A high-speed train weighs about 800 times more than a single TEV car.

The center of gravity of a TEV car is about 24 inches (600mm) high. A train center of gravity is about twice that height.

Energy is defined as mass multiplied by the square of the speed. That becomes a huge number when a massive train travels at a very high speed. In a crash, all that energy must be absorbed by something, and that can do terrible damage. An Airbus with 500 people onboard has a similar characteristic: it is very unlikely to crash due to its superb engineering but if it did crash, the result would be terrible. By comparison, thirty cars in a TEV convoy are much lighter than a train full of 800 passengers so the total energy of a TEV crash is tiny relative to that of a train. Our research shows that high speed train crashes are, thankfully, very rare. But when they do happen the results are horrific. And they do happen. In 1998, the advanced German ICE train damaged a wheel, derailed and crashed into a bridge abutment killing over 100 people and seriously injuring hundreds more. Fortunately, it was only doing 120mph at the time, not 180mph. In 2011 two Chinese high-speed trains collided head-on. Each train was doing 60mph, so the combined speed was 120mph. About forty people were killed and 200 injured, many of them seriously. A TEV car is also safer in a deliberate attack by villains. For example, consider a terrorist setting off an explosive charge on a TEV track as a convoy of cars approached at 200km/h (120mph). The occupants in the cars would have protection from the superb passive safety features that are already part of the modern car. This is the sequence. The TEV system would sense the blast and trigger an emergency stop procedure bringing the convoy to a screeching halt at a 1g deceleration rate, or even better if it were using automatic spoilers. This would take 5.5 seconds and about 200m (600 feet) of travel, about the length of two football fields. If the explosion were further away than that, none of the cars would be damaged and none of the passengers injured.

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But even if the explosion were closer and the lead car hit some debris, it would do so at a much reduced speed due to the 1g deceleration rate of the car. If the lead car impacted the debris from the explosion, its crumple zones would absorb a lot of energy and reduce the speed further. The airbags would inflate and the seat-belt straps tighten automatically. Therefore, even the passengers in the lead car could escape serious injury. The following cars would suffer little or no harm. That is a tribute to the superb safety systems in the modern car. The prospect of killing a hundred people in a TEV crash is almost inconceivable. So TEV must be rated as very safe. But perhaps the best safety feature of all is that criminals would know that targeting a TEV track would be pointless. It would be far easier to strike an ordinary bus or train. Therefore, the best safety feature of TEV is that nobody is likely to attack it. Are High Speed Trains safe? The answer is yes, they are very safe, but with qualifications. The French and Japanese systems have had crashes but only one crash with fatalities in France. As already said, they are safe in the same way that airplanes are safe. It surprises most people to find that HSTs have no seat belts, no crumple zones, no air bags and little hope of stopping at anywhere near the 1-g deceleration rate of TEV cars. The truth is that seat belts cannot save passengers in a hard train crash at 300km/h (180 mph). Trains like planes must avoid crashes at all costs. The official information given for the stopping distance of Japanese trains is 4 kilometers.That is 2.2 miles! We must be fair to the train designers because French and Japanese high speed trains have a superb safety record in their countries. However, we now live in an age of terrorists. If trains go faster and faster and carry more and more people, then these ambitious goals will incur additional risk. Better brakes are under development, but fast trains could never match the intrinsic safety of TEV. (Note: You can witness a video of a real-time crash of an HST in Spain, caused by the driver going too fast around a curve. You can find it on You-Tube or RT but we will not link it here). Are TEV cars safer than cars driving on normal highways? Comparing TEV tracks with conventional roads shows that a TEV track provides a much safer environment.

TEV cars are equipped with the same reliable brakes, air bags, seat belts and crumple zones as normal cars.

Additionally, the TEV tracks have crash barriers on each side to keep the vehicles on the track and keep outside vehicles like trucks from penetrating the track.

Unlike many highways, TEV has no obstructions to hit: no trees, no telephone poles, no walls, no ditches, no animals, no opposing traffic, no intersections and no obstacles of any kind. It is a very safe environment.

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All this is possible because it is a highly-segregated transport system, concentrating on carrying the most precious cargo of all, people, plus some light freight to help pay for construction and maintenance. We must all agree that public safety is our highest priority. Stacking of tracks In the UK and many other developed countries there are disused railway tunnels and associated rights of way. The UK railway specifications for tunnels, for example, would allow two double-deck TEV tracks to be installed,, side by side in a single tunnel. The resulting enormous passenger capacity could be used in city tracks to eliminate traffic jams during rush hours. On low-speed local lines, cities like New York could convert one of the Holland Tunnels from a two-lane road doing 40mph to six TEV tracks carrying passengers and light freight at 90 mph. The same applies for one lane of the George Washington Bridge or any other commuter bridge. People could come to work in speedy TEV driverless minibuses, cabs or private cars and save hours every week on travel. TEV tracks can also be laid down in several other ways, as follows: Old railway tracks and commuter tracks. This is one of the lowest-cost options and has huge potential. In many developed countries, there is a large existing network of railway tracks that not only cross the countryside but also drive right in to the centers of major cities. Often these tracks are shockingly underutilized. To waste such a valuable assets as a right-of-way into the very heart of a big city for such a crude 19th Century mode of transport as a commuter railway, is a tragic lack of vision. The low height of each TEV track allows a stacked pair of tracks to fit easily inside a regular railway tunnel. So, TEV could replace each rail line with double-deck TEV tracks and provide a huge capacity for carrying passengers that could reduce the commuting time for hundreds of thousands of workers, many by an hour or more, each way, on each workday. Imagine the time saved. Here is an example In Manchester, UK, where many old, elevated railway tracks enter the city, there is a traffic jam every morning on the incoming M-602 motorway. Next to that motorway is a twin railway line that appears to carry no traffic most of the day. This 35-mile long line would probably cost a billion dollars to build if it were constructed today. Yet, nobody seems to notice the waste. Rail and road systems live in different worlds, apparently. Note: This particular railway line was the first in history to carry passengers between two cities, Manchester and Liverpool. The train was hauled by Stevenson’s famous Rocket locomotive. The date was 1830, nearly 200 years ago, (Doesn’t that hint strongly that railway travel is out of date?) This railway could now be replaced by a twin TEV track for very little cost. TEV could eliminate the traffic jams simply by dropping off the humans in the city and driving their cars back, with no driver, out of the city to park.

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The capacity of TEV is so great that those two lanes have enough capacity to handle all the commuters coming into Manchester in real time - if only they would all be nice enough to move to Liverpool! But you get the point. Recycling old railway lines is a tremendous opportunity in developed countries because cannibalizing under-used railway tracks and converting them to TEV tracks is a potentially huge resource for the TEV system. The world is littered with such lines. They should never be damaged or destroyed. Converting them to bicycle lanes, as the UK has done on occasion, is a waste of resources. Better to put a flat roof on the TEV track and let the cyclists have their own track up there. Replacing the “fast lane” of a freeway with a TEV track? (See our animation video on TEVproject.com). Here is a way of cannibalizing under-used assets, place two TEV tracks in the two “fast lanes” of a 6-lane highway, one track in each direction. As usual, install a strong crash barrier to protect the TEV vehicles from other traffic. This option has the advantage that there are many existing three lane highways already available. The huge capacity of the TEV tracks will not subtract from the capacity of the highway, it will add enormously to it, at a very low cost. The structure of the bridges, tunnels, etc., are not affected. With one TEV track replacing one road lane, the yield is the equivalent of 10 extra highway lanes, each way if full speed can be maintained. In practice, the 200km/h (120mph) express track speed of the TEV vehicles might have to be reduced during rush hour. . On US Interstate highways there are often wide grass median strips that separate, say, a north-bound lane from a south-bound lane. This would be an easy place to build new TEV tracks at a very low cost. Much of the US Interstate Highway system would be candidates for this upgrade. Europe may not have such a wonderful option, but with creative thinking, a lot more could be done. For example, one could locate TEV tracks above the emergency-stop lanes that run on the side of most highways. Stick them on pillars! (See our video). This is a good option for quiet new tracks to cross farms or parkland or pass through low-density suburbs. It provides for minimum environmental impact for both local people and for animals. It also allows the double use of land, like farming, which would be extremely valuable in crowded countries. Such a track could be supported on slim reinforced concrete pillars which is all that is needed for the relatively lightweight TEV structure. A train would be far too heavy. Proper landscaping will be necessary to reduce the visual impact to a minimum. What a great view we could get from a track like this! They could even be used in the African bush, for example.

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In “cut and cover” tunnels TEV tracks can also be placed in low-cost cut-and-cover tunnels under existing parks, fields, and other open spaces for carrying people in and out of cities. This will do wonders to make cities more livable. The tunnels are so small for their carrying capacity that their cost is a tiny fraction of any other tunnel system. They are then covered over to complete their construction. In small-bore tunnels Now for a new opportunity. One of the most exciting options is the creation of small tunnels bored under our cities. These would provide an underground network that would virtually eliminate the city’s once intractable traffic problems. What an amazing change that would be. But most importantly, it would not be done by restrictions that say you can’t drive here, or you can’t park there. But it would be a city of opportunities where you can go where you like and have plenty of parking for private cars and robo-cabs and other public transport. Enjoy your visit! For people who work in a city, it would be a dream come true. They could zip from the commercial center of a city to the airport in minutes, in the middle of the day or night. They could live in the suburbs without having a dreadful commute each day. They could dress up nicely in the evening and drive into town in their own cars or in a robo-cabs in civilized comfort, to visit theatres, museums, restaurants or galleries without using fuel or dumping smog fumes on the people who happen to live in areas in between. As we have said since the beginning of the TEV project, modern tunnel-boring machines are extraordinarily efficient machines and have reduced the cost of tunneling very significantly. The cost of a tunnel is closely related to the amount of material (or “muck” as they call it) that is removed, so the larger the tunnel, the costlier it is per mile. However, a very small tunnel is costly too because the muck cannot easily be removed. Thus, the least costly tunnels are ones with a diameter of about 10 to 20 feet. The 10-foot tunnel will do a single TEV track while the 20-foot tunnel will do a double TEV track. There would be some extra room for pipes, cables and other utilities that will bring in a lot of extra revenue. Rights of way are extremely valuable assets. So, we can easily bore many of these “micro-tunnels” under cities and bring the TEV system into the heart of metropolitan areas without disturbing the people on the surface, all at a relatively small cost. (Note: We note that Elon Musk has agreed. with our long-held position on tunnels by purchasing a tunnel boring machine for his new company called “The Boring Company”. We are glad that he approves.) Furthermore, existing tunnels under rivers and channels could have their capacity vastly increased by converting to the TEV format. Think how much money that would save. Road or rail bridges across large spans would likewise have their capacity increased tremendously at a very low cost.

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Can TEV tracks be open to the sky? Theoretically yes, but it depends on the climate. TEV tracks can be made fully open and that might be a suitable low-cost approach for long runs in remote areas like the American prairies. However, for most applications, a roof on the track will be a worthwhile enhancement both for the travelers on the track and for the local population. For travelers, a roof is a benefit in snowy regions because it keeps the tracks clear. Snow-plowing would be unnecessary and the tracks would be usable under almost all weather conditions, even if their roofs become covered with snow. In rainy regions, a roof keeps the track dry, enhancing tire friction and eliminating water spray. In very sunny climates, a roof shelters the cars from solar radiation and reduces air conditioning loads to conserve energy further. In sunny climates, like Dubai or Saudi, the roof could be a location for solar panels which could produce a part of the electric power needed for the TEV vehicles in conjunction with battery energy storage. This might become a breakthrough of sorts. An enclosure would also keep out the sand in windy periods. For the local people who live near a TEV track, an enclosure on the track would reduce the noise made by TEV vehicles which is mainly tire and wind noise. The use of sound absorbent materials inside the enclosure would trap most of this. In addition, the sides of the enclosure can be partially or completely enclosed with glass windows or even mirrored glass windows. The latter would not only make the noise disappear but also make the cars inside disappear visually. Speaking about noise, in case you thought that high speed trains were nice, quiet, things, you might like to check on the noise made by an ICE train doing 300km per hour (180mph) in Germany in this YouTube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_mSRb79gOU&feature=related TEV with its rubber tires will be much quieter but there will still be some noise. Therefore, TEV tracks, as a good neighbor, should be equipped with noise-blocking side windows when passing through built up areas or sensitive countryside. It will all be up to local planners to decide. Track construction and repair TEV track structures like roadways and bridges will have a light construction compared with roadway construction because they do not have to carry heavy-truck traffic. Track sections could be mass-produced like shipping containers in factories and brought to the site for installation, a much quicker and less disruptive method than that used in current road building, not to mention the greater precision and quality control. The speed of construction for TEV would be breathtaking compared with conventional highways, especially in built-up areas. (Note: A new 40 foot mass-produced container costs only

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$10,000. TEV can capitalize on this low cost mass produced approach as our construction video shows).

Maintenance and repair of the TEV roadway, or “friction surfaces”, is also easier to maintain than conventional roadway maintenance. The friction surfaces of the track are twin ribbons of artificial “roadway” on which the tires run. These will probably be made from tungsten carbide particles bonded to steel in a clean factory with engineered accuracy, not on site with the slapdash method of roadway construction. The friction surfaces will be designed in conjunction with the vehicle tires to minimize both noise and rolling resistance while still retaining good grip for acceleration and braking. Repair does not involve noisy jack-hammers but is rather a matter of taking up the old friction strips, which are recycled back to the factory, and installing new ones. All this is done “on the fly” with automatic “pick-and-place” machines traveling on the track itself, inside the enclosure. .

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Chapter 8: Parking in the new age

Parking in big cities anywhere in the world is now almost impossible. This makes the TEV idea of driving private cars into cities seem ridiculous. Where would the cars park? One Idea already mentioned is that they would drop off their owner and park outside the city, where there is plenty of space to be stored and recalled as required. One could also use Robo cabs to take one to a specific destination. In the longer term, we predict that TEV tracks will be underground or elevated in most cities to avoid squabbles about rights-of-way on the surface. This will be cheaper in the long run. A city parking example. A TEV express track splits into branch tracks that go to different parts of the city. On each of these branch tracks there are TEV Stations where the passengers can disembark and make their way to their destinations on foot or taxi. The driverless cars don’t stay in the Station because that would be too expensive. Instead they move automatically to low-cost TEV-Parks. These could be nearby or miles away, even out of town. In New York City, for example, the parking could be across the river in New Jersey. The computer already, knows where the parking spaces are, and the entire exercise is more like storing data on a hard-drive than conventional parking. The driver doesn’t need to know where his car is parked. With no traffic jams, car recovery might take 15 minutes. As mentioned, the Holland tunnels into New York City have dimensions that would allow six TEV tracks, three wide and two high, in each tunnel. At an “escape” speed of 60mph, New York could be evacuated in a few hours! When a TEV car is recalled by its owner from a TEV park, it must be told which station to go to. This can be any station in the network, even in another city miles away. Or it could even be told to go back home. On arrival at the station, the empty car, for a small fee, goes into a short-term parking area and waits. If the owner does not turn up, the car will be sent back into long-term storage at a lower parking rate, all automatically. Therefore, the insoluble problem of city parking is soluble after all. The cars never need to come up to the surface. They can get in and out of the city quickly, even in rush hour. In effect, they are completely invisible yet provide a level of convenience and service to their owners that no other mode of transportation can hope to match. And don’t forget, what the private cars do, public cabs and minibuses can do also. All transport would be by electric vehicles so even the surface roads can be permanently free of the stench of diesel fumes. The city can be returned to pedestrians with more trees, more landscaping and more wildlife. The air will be cleaner and the noise level muted in all cities.

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Chapter 8: A new evolution of Stations and Stops A criticism that is made of some proposed automated transport systems is that the exit rate of vehicles from the track is too slow, creating choke points and, therefore, reducing the track capacity. That is not true in the case of TEV as now demonstrated. Note that when we say Station, we mean a drop-off and pick up area. There are no people behind windows collecting tickets, and certainly no trains. The sketch shows a medium size TEV Station with eight bays. The same bays can be used either to Embark or Disembark. The cars enter from the left and are automatically directed to one of the eight bays. Passengers step out promptly on to the platforms (C), walk up a small ramp or escalator (B), and exit the Station via the low overpass (A). Many equivalent designs are possible. Here is a schematic of a TEV station

A 15 second free stopping interval is allowed in the bays. So, the Station can handle 32 cars per minute or 1,920 cars per hour, which is more traffic than one lane of motorway can supply. At this rate, the cars can enter the Station continuously at an average speed of 5.4 miles per hour. Similarly, the bays may be segregated into private passenger cars and cabs in some bays and mini-buses in others. That is, on one day the traffic may be heavily biased in favor of mini-buses (e.g.: sports fans going to a stadium). On another day, it might be biased in favor of private cars and cabs (theatre or concert fans). There are variations of this theme that can add capacity. For example, if batches of two or three cars at a time are allowed into each bay, the capacity is immediately doubled or tripled, and so on. In a very large Station, if such were ever required, there could be 20 bays, serving batches of, say, 6 vehicles at a time. The capacity in that case would be nearly 30,000 cars per hour. With four people in each car, that could fill a 60,000-seat sports stadium in half an hour. Obviously, there is no limit here. The vehicles shown in the sketch, which can include robo-cabs, robo-buses and private vehicles, leave the

A

B C

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Station to the right and can either go back on to the express track, or to an automatic TEV park, or anywhere else the owner decides. For example, a private car could drive itself the car dealer for scheduled maintenance while its owner is at work, or it could run through an automatic car wash before parking itself. The possibilities are endless. The Station is flexible in its response to changing situations. For example, at any one time, the bays may be given completely different assignments such as Embark or Disembark or Handicap Use or Emergency Use and so on. The system lends itself to a degree of flexibility that is unheard of in public transport systems. To minimize human confusion, the bays at one end might be segregated to one mode while the bays at the other to the other mode. The computer would have no problem organizing all of this. Special cases The TEV Station can handle an enormous amount of traffic, and do so with a wonderful, disciplined grace. The vehicles arrive and depart as if they are choreographed. This is quite unlike the usual chaos found, for example, in an airport arrival area. With TEV there is no traffic noise, no stench of diesel fumes, no danger of collisions, no ugly parking lots, and no dithering drivers who are lost and don’t know where to go. Another special case for a Station is a city hospital. The TEV system would permit fast delivery of emergency patients to any hospital, local or distant, saving many lives. Area hospitals could coordinate their services as a result. That could save your life or mine. Likewise, TEV could initiate another revolution by connecting regional airports to reduce noise footprints or to relieve flight congestion. For example, a city like London could have Heathrow, Gatwick, Luton and other local airports coupled together with a transport system that gets passengers from one to the other in a matter 15 or 20 minutes. That would create a single, enormous “virtual” airport. If bad weather or other incident closes one airport, the others could pick up the slack. Even a backup airport 100 miles away would cause less than an hour’s delay with a TEV system. In fact, this application might be ideal for a prototype test program for the TEV system. Please note that all these features will be very simple to use so people will love TEV. Thanks for reading the booklet.

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Addendum Project Management Project management and cost factors are boring to most people but we include some general information because there is no point in designing our future if we don’t build it. In the long term TEV will be funded by drivers paying tolls. Even here the news is good because TEV should quickly become profitable, unlike High Speed Trains which, according to some experts, will likely never pay back their capitalization. The following is a simple plan that makes commercial and developmental sense. First, we must organize a Consortium. This may be a powerful group of interested companies and government agencies. Each will contribute a substantial amount of money to set up and fund the first phase of the consortium organization. The contributions will be greater for large companies that for smaller ones and a major player will be the governments who will underwrite the capital expenditure. The cost per mile will be tiny compared with any HST system. The growth of the consortium will be fast because the individual companies will be delegated to contribute in the areas of their expertise. There may be many automobile companies, tire companies, road building companies and so on, each involved by contributing a large or small amount of cash depending on their ability to contribute to the startup. The ownership of the intellectual property of the consortium will be shared with the members in a fair and efficient way. Therefore, by sharing the development effort, all countries will get the same information and technology so no one will be left behind. Just imagine the rate of improvement there will be in CO2 emissions worldwide working with such a base. A vital, and early action will be to build a prototype TEV express track several miles long where dual-mode vehicles can drive successively from road to track and achieve full cruise speed. The track must be a real system, complete with Entries, Exits and other features along the track. The track should be converted to public use as soon as possible. The construction of such a test track would have a trivial cost per consortium member. It would also have a great appeal both to development engineers and later to the public which should keep up with the development and get rides on it from the start. . This writer’s preference, if the members agreed of course, would be to build the test track in a modern attractive and safe country where members could have their regular board meetings, say every 3 months. The working staff of engineers would also be encouraged by the Members and would be part of the exciting progress. Our suggestion is the

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Emirates connected together or Saudi. With no snow or hurricanes, the climate will support the development work all year round. The two-way standardized test track should run between two cities, preferably 100 miles or 160km apart. This will allow modified cars to enter from the street, run on the track autonomously at 120mph – or perhaps faster - and then go back on the street. By now, everyone around the world would see the sense of the TEV system and how easy it is to operate and use, especially the public who will now want to buy and use their own electric cars. The car manufacturers may have their own test tracks, of course, but this “official public TEV track” will give them the best publicity of all. The host country would be out greatest fan and draw a lot of attention. The prototype TEV track could become a big draw for the cities involved. Interested parties all over the world would come to see and experience the new system so, perhaps, tracks soon be built in each country. Hospitals would love to get sick patients to their facility quicker. The test track could even be used as a practical method of connecting airports: if there were fog in one city, for example, a plane could land in another airport and have the passengers take a 30-minute ride to a clear airport on an automatic TEV bus. In the meantime, the test track would be racking up miles and miles of real-world usage, allowing engineers to optimize the detail design of the track: the software, the road repair equipment, the air brakes, the power optimizing, the noise control, and so on before the final design of the system is frozen. Any country in the world will be encouraged to partake in the development so that they can plan its introduction into their country. The most important step would be to define the design standards for TEV tracks formally so that every country in the world could build to that standard and ensure that they are not left behind in the future. This will involve a standards organization consisting of governments of various countries, car companies from all over the world, industry, business, finance experts and so on to form an executive committee to steer the TEV project into a well-developed, safe and reliable system. Who pays for commercial construction? This final section is concerned with how such an extensive project as TEV can be implemented in risk-averse world. The answer is the same one it has always been: make it pay for itself with a good return to investors. TEV must be a financial success story before it can be a technical, environmental, or political success story. Most people would think that government subsidies would be essential to bring the TEV system to life. But that concept is no longer true in many parts of the world. One reason is that many governments are already too indebted and don’t have the money to spend. So, it is best to work under a public/private partnership arrangement using private capital.

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Having said this, there is no reason to avoid government subsidies either. During a the 1930s depression, the US government subsidized the building of roads and bridges all over the USA. They created lots of jobs and radically improved the road infrastructure. It is probably the BEST form of government spending possible because it increases wealth of the country in the long term). With respect to the preferred private capital, William Reinhardt, an expert in Public-Private Partnerships (P3s) in the transportation construction industry, made the following practical statement: “Two decades of experience have shown that private investment is attracted to large, complex and expensive transportation projects that add new capacity to the US system and can be supported by a new revenue stream, usually by tolls”. That fits the description of TEV precisely. Of course, government support in the form of approvals and oversight is necessary so TEV must be developed by using a public-private partnership approach. The governments may also oversee the projects, but investors should take the risks and be fairly compensated via toll revenue. There is plenty of wealth available in the world to invest in any organization that has a good profit potential. The good news is that TEV could become one of the most profitable investments in the history of mankind. In short, TEV will not need permanent subsides like high speed trains because it will be much cheaper to run. For example, it has no locomotives, no carriages, no fancy stations and no workforce. It is just a very fast and safe electric toll road. We therefore propose the founding a consortium of companies and government entities to steer the development of TEV. Consortium members will fund the project via a cooperative agreement to share technology, to maintain common standards and to measure technical and financial performance of the TEV project. Joint stock companies were how the railways and other radical projects of the industrial revolution were developed in nineteenth century Britain and elsewhere. (Indeed, the East India Company was a joint stock company). It is time to return to using these strong and innovative entities for large projects such as TEV. Progress on the entire TEV development project will be reported to members on a continuing basis via a website complete with technical and financial performance reports. All members will be able to see what is happening directly. Therefore, TEV will also become an exercise in open development by multiple states. ______________________________