Automobiles and Railroads

Driving and moving cargo in trucks in India is a nightmare. The roads (more often than not) are terrible and crowded. They are extremely unsafe too. As a matter of fact, India has the dubious distincti0n of having one of the highest accident and mortality rate per kilometer on its roadways. And to top it all, petrol (which India does not have enough of) is getting costlier; automobiles are extremely inefficient on Indian roads (where stopping and braking is the order of the day on the highway).

The idea is to, rather than roads, use fixed guideways for automobiles doing the long journey. Let the journey be powered by electric motors fixed within the automobile (receiving power from overhead electric lines, much like the electric trains of today). Let the automobile be controlled by the guideways, so that the only responsibility of the driver is to schedule stops every now and then (bathroom breaks?). Let all the cars travel at a standard speed on the tracks (something like 130kmph?).

How would the automobile be controlled by the guideways? My contention is that there should be only two states possible for the automobile - "GO" or "EXIT". A lever would be provided within the automobile. When the lever would be in the "GO" mode, the car would travel at 130kmph on the track. When the "EXIT" lever is engaged the car would ramp onto the next exit tracks. The car would then come out onto a road - bay, where it slows down and comes to a halt. The driver would then gain control of the vehicle and drive it like a conventional car.

This new method of transportation is going to be quite costly to install at first glance. Building the new guideways, for one isn't going to be cheap. One needs to develop a whole new breed of cars (armed with an electric motor, the "taps" to get electric power from the overhead power lines, and of course, wheels (like those of a train) to stay on the tracks.) too.

It could strike us that we have a lot of the pre-requisites in place aready. The country has a phenomenal railway network; most of it is electrified. All that needs to be done is to build intermittent "road-bays" and by-passes for passenger stations. Existing automobiles could be retrofitted with relative ease; new automobiles meant for the long journey could be manufactured with these settings standard.

These ideas are merely the tip of the iceberg. Consider this: programmable wagons! On this new backbone, one could send an unmanned loaded (freight) wagon from one road-bay to another, as long as they are connected to each other by rail. Lots of Industries in India do not use railways for shipping freight since they do not have access to railway tracks; loading an unloading is a tremendous hassle. Now, suppose trucks were to roll on these tracks instead - this would mean a lot quicker, cheaper and safer transport.

Safety is surely a big plus in this system, primarily because the human element is eliminated entirely. The only thing that the human being needs to do is to depress the "EXIT" lever - and the vehicle exits at the next possible exit. All vehicles on the freeway travel at a constant speed - if any one vehicle slows down, the vehicle is automatically exited. All the other vehicles are slowed until the above vehicle is exited. (I exect the slow-down to be quite insignificant).

Before I get carried away entirely with this "intellectual masturbation", I must summarize the pros and cons of this idea:

Pros:

• MASSIVE energy savings
• Time savings
  
• Safety
• Availability of Infrastructure
• Flexibility
• Lesser dependence of Oil - a commodity that has proven quite fickle of late.
• Larger mobility of masses reduces migration - allows rural farmers to access urban markets directly

Cons

• The economics of this are quite hazy; I don't have any concrete numbers yet
• Retrofitting all automobiles isn't going to be a walk in the park
• Retrofitting them with something as heavy as an AC motor would add to the weight of the car; greater power required to move the thing
• The electric "taps" for sedans, for one, would be extradordinarily large. Drag due to the same might be extremely significant. These "taps" might have to be designed aerodynamically. (Alternatives to these taps need to be considered - perhaps buring primary cables under the track? - but that's a lot of effort)

There's a lot more cons to this thing ... let's just leave this at this for now.

[ I know this idea makes sense. I also know that the best place for such an idea is probably the middle of some Sci-Fi novel. (Note that I have not used the abbreviation SF). And that is because this idea is a massive perspective change on something which is more of a lifeline to India right now. Any democracy is resistant to change; India even more so. Any politician pursuing this agenda would be courageous, and I mean that with a "Yes-Prime-Ministerial" connotation. For India to adopt this, the US would need to do it first. And the US does not need these gains in efficiency.]

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Stopping Crime (and Corruption ?)

Corruption and crime are impediments in the path of progress of all developing nations. The already insufficient law enforcement infrastructure of these countries just cannot cope up with spiraling crime rates. Rapists go scot-free; murderers too. Recovering stolen automobiles may just be forgotten about. Bribes may just be thought of as an unofficial part of the economy.

The scenario might look quite gloomy right now. But, I do believe that there is hope. Surveillance.

For, the price of video cameras is dropping day by day. You can get a cheap thingamajig (of the web-cam variety) for less than $20 (or 1000 Rupees). Also, it's bound to be cheaper when you order in bulk. Suppose you install them all over the city (covering all public spaces) and link them to various terminals monitored by cops in distributed control rooms, and keep the videos recorded for a week or so. (After all, memory is cheap now-a-days). 10,000 cameras would cost a paltry 1 crore - a sum which is not even a small fraction of the total crime that this will help prevent. We would roughly need 20Terabytes of Memory, available dirt cheap today.

Suppose a crime were committed. Even if the incident were not monitored by a cop, it would be recorded. The pertinent file can be recalled and the criminal could be recognized subsequently. This would, surely, bring about a virtual stop to almost all crime in public urban areas. (In this respect, India has it easy, as our cities are small and our population densities are phenomenal - a smaller number of cameras would cover a lot more people).

This would, for one, help in convicting the guilty in court. Lots of people have been acquitted for want of evidence. Any all-pervasive surveillance would change all that.

For personal security, it is proposed that all houses (and automobiles) come equipped with an electronic "black box". In the case of a home, it may be hidden in an unspecified location, storing surveillance data continuously. In case of an automobile, it may establish a wireless link with a cell phone company.

Such measures would be considered draconian in the U.S.A. But when you look at the rut that most third world countries seem to be in, such drastic measures would actually end up protecting civil liberties.

One must bear in mind that it is excessisve sbooping of this kind that has proven invaluable to the London police in the recent London explosions. This idea isn't new, in that respect. It's just that it is an idea just right for the third world - especially the rapidly growing parts of the third world, like India.

Your comments are welcome.

Cheap Comfort Conditioning

Motivation

It is impossible to imagine any enhacement in the standard of living of the masses in the third world without a corresponding enhancement in the accessibility of personal comfort conditioning technologies. Currently, intolerable excesses in temperatures are just "borne out" by residents of the third world, for energy prices are way too high for any air conditioning of any sort.

Since most of the third world is tropical, it is ample enough to design for extreme heat and humidity. The need of the hour is an air cooling/conditioning system that is economical to purchase and run. To many, that would be the holy grail of air-conditioning. Such a device would sell phenomenally well in India, for one, where middle class incomes are on the increase, as are electricity prices.

Technology

The average middle class room in India is 3m x 4m x 3m. The average bed in would be 1.5m x 2m in area. Suppose, we consider a mosquito net 1m in height above the bed - the volume of the air within the net (on top of the bed) would be 3 cubic meters. The amount of air in the room would be 36cubic meters.

Suppose an air conditioning system were designed to be effective just within the mosquito net. The compressor could be housed in a unit outside the mosquito net. We note that the electricity consumption is potentially twelve times lesser than a full fledged air conditioner for the room. And also, the initial cost in not expected to be much either - the compressor is expected to be of a lower rating - lower than that of a refrigerator too! And the compressor unit need not be housed outside the house: it can just be within the house like a refrigerator.

A refrigerator cools a slightly lower volume to a lower temperature. The power consumption of this device, I am confident will be slightly lesser than that of an average refrigerator.

And what is more, this device can be run on solar cells, should their cost ever become comparable to fossil fuel based electricity. (150 W is not much). Of course, a solar VARS system could be envisioned, but that would be messy and would need a solar collector interchanging fluids with the air conditioner.

A cheaper alternative could be the cool blanket, described here.