Information from the book, entitled The Third Generation Roadway: Metropolitan Transport for the 21st Century

by Roger Davidheiser
 


Link to Publisher's book announcement


PROLOGUE

	This book envisions a transportation system for people, massive 
numbers of people, all traveling their unique door-to-door routes, all 
with their unique timing, and all in the comfort of their private vehicle. 
No trucks, no buses, no SUVs allowed. No stop signs, no red lights, no 
intersections. No transfers, no congestion. A transportation of people 
with time efficiency, space efficiency, and fuel efficiency. Automated,
 safe, pleasant to use. 

	The writing argues that each of the transportation systems developed 
to date for people is doomed to failure. Doomed to failure when measured 
against the criteria demanded: speed, convenience, safety, capacity to serve 
many, freedom from congestion, ecological soundness, and cost. Systems 
included are the urban surface street, the urban freeway, and the “public” 
modes of bus, train, and subway. What we have today can be improved. 

	While saluting the automobile and the automobile-based society, triumphs 
of the 20th Century enabling unparalleled mobility and freedom for the individual, 
the text will lament their obvious limitations. The automobile, so amazing in the 
20th Century compared to the horse and buggy of the 19th, is so pathetic in the 21st 
when fettered by urban roadway and then compared to advances which other machines 
have brought in the 21st. The automobile-based society is rightly accused of promoting 
urban sprawl, and of being incapable of supporting dense, livable urban communities. 
Freeways, consuming space and destroying neighborhoods, are clearly incompatible with 
a compact metropolitan landscape. Yet, worldwide, the automobile is on a path to 
quadruple in number by 2050. 

	Surface streets and highways are categorized as 1st generation roadway 
largely built with modern techniques from 1900 to 1950. Freeways built with controlled 
access and interchanges to replace intersections are categorized as 2nd generation and 
were largely built between 1950 to 2000. While these roadways continue to be built in 
areas into which cities and suburbs continue to expand, virtually no new construction 
continues in existing cities. The era in which they symbolized progress is over. 

	Proposed is a 3rd generation of roadway for existing cities and suburbs; 
superimposed upon existing infrastructure, and using existing right-of-way. Small 
structures, supporting vehicles weighing only four times that of a human being, 
replace the huge elevated structures of the 2nd generation, built for vehicles 
weighing 400 times their most common user, the average human. Full, high capacity 
interchanges, also tiny in size by comparison to those of the 2nd generation, are 
to be built above the footprint of ordinary street intersections, and thus allow 
ubiquitous penetration of the urban interior. All traffic flows without interruption. 
Reliable computer networks, redundant sensors, electric motors, and speed-of-light 
communications assume control from human drivers — those marvelously adaptive and 
versatile creatures also exhibiting variable, error prone behavior, with wandering 
attention and reaction times approaching a full second. The computer drives the new 
roadway; the individual drives the local streets. 


	As the 2nd generation freeway is additive to the 1st generation street, 
the proposed system coexists with the 1st and 2nd generation structures. 
But with electronically controlled spacings, uninterrupted traffic flow, and 
very short Cars, the 3rd Generation Roadway can move roughly 50 times 
the number of vehicles that a city street can when configured to fit on the 
small city street, and by a similar margin of 50, for a given width, compared 
to that of a freeway when configured for high speed. Door-to-door transit 
times will be roughly half that of today’s typical surface street trip, or of a 
mixed surface street/freeway trip. Parking density for a ‘public’ garage will 
be 10 times today’s, and allow convenient parking for all commuters to, 
say, New York’s Manhattan Island. Nationally, replacing roughly a quarter of 
all surface travel, the new Roadway’s control will save roughly seven thousand 
lives and half a million injuries a year. Compared to today’s U.S. fleet average 
of 21 mpg, fuel economy for the “car” fleet will be approximately 200 mpg when 
slip-streaming at high speed within a “train” on the new Roadway, and approximately 
100 mpg on city streets. Propulsion by an electrified Roadway will constitute a 
much desired distribution network, and empower electric vehicles with modest,
inexpensive battery packs. The new Roadway motivates the driver to buy a small 
vehicle, and then isolates them both for protection. 


	Thus, the 3rd Generation Roadway will enable a car-based society to 
support larger cities with increased population densities and allow them 
to properly function with convenient transportation. Larger cities will be 
free to safely evolve without traffic congestion, with transportation for 
their very mobile citizens consuming only 2% of today’s U.S. per-capita 
total energy budget. Fast, convenient transportation will allow citizens to 
truly incorporate large metropolitan areas as their neighborhood. 


	Presented is a vision. But only a vision. While sufficient detail 
is given to communicate this vision to the university academic, the transportation 
professional, the politician, the enthusiast, and to the average Joe stuck at 
a traffic light, each will read the book differently. To the academic it is a 
proof of principle or notional design. To the urban planner it is an idea to 
be measured against various proposals for future urban scenes. The politician 
or sociologist may see a daunting challenge with potentially massive impact. 
But to a local or regional transportation department the detail is utterly, 
totally inadequate. More than a dream, less than a plan. Perhaps the average 
Joe should simply ask, “When?” and “How much?” 

	Formatted to engage the reader by illustrating societal impact, 
technical feasibility, and overall affordability, the proposed approach, although 
buttressed here with sound logic, will need further critique and study. The 
writing’s tone is that of an observant citizen, a veteran of the wars; a citizen 
who can’t do the politics, but can do the math. It is half commentary on a 
society wrestling with a difficult problem, half focused on first principles 
like a poor man’s Feynman physics lecture. Intended as an easy read, at 
least for the numerically literate — better yet for the numerically facile and 
empathetic — the writing guides the reader to see what the numbers mean, 
feel the driver’s plight, hear the din of the ensuing traffic jam, and then, 
to understand the changes the 3rd Generation Roadway would bring. It is 
neither an engineering text nor a scholar’s book, but comes without footnotes, 
generates simple models, and attempts to engender critical thought 
using traceable calculations derived from easily verifiable data. 

	Harbor no doubts, the approach is futuristic. In evaluating impact 
on individuals, communities, and nations, many technologies and operational 
approaches are assumed at full flower. Paradigms need disruption. And 
paradigms do not fall easily. But the book details elementary examples of 
the necessary components and highlights a number of maturing technologies 
now emerging in use. How such a system would be operated is clearly 
outlined. Thus all but the most cynical of readers will find plausibility
 —and wonder, “Why not?” 

	The dream is not new. Many mull similar thoughts. But though many 
a bored fourth grader, staring at the map on the schoolroom wall, cleverly 
concluded Africa and South America must once have been a single land mass, 
success for the Theory of Continental Drift came only with an understanding 
of its fundamental mechanisms, its profound effects, and the ability to see 
it happening today on the ocean’s floor. So too for the 3rd Generation Roadway. 
The trick is to understand its potential, to engineer it, make it real, 
to make it happen. 




TABLE OF CONTENTS

Prologue ................................................................  5
Figures & Tables ........................................................  9
U.S. Transportation Statistics and the Models to be Used Here............  11

Chapter 1: An Introduction                                                 14 

Where we are today ......................................................  16 
A Brief History of Roadway ..............................................  27 
Some Plans for Tomorrow. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .   29 

Chapter 2: The Intersection as Villain                                     46 

Today’s Intersection ....................................................  47 
Failures of the 1st Generation...........................................  57 
Freeways: The 2nd Generation . . .. . . . . . . . . . .. . . . .. . . .    69 
Public Transportation ...................................................  83 

Chapter 3: The Rail Car                                                    94 

Size, Weight, & Power....................................................  100
Top Speed, Fuel Efficiency, & Safety ...................................   109
On the Rail ............................................................   119


Chapter 4: The 3rd Generation Roadway                                      128 

The New Urban Grid: Where do we Build it? ...............................  129
The Roadway Above the Streets: What do we build?.........................  148
Interchanges and Interfaces .............................................  184


Chapter 5: Parking Structures                                              206 

The Public Parking Structure. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  208 
Street and Lot Parking . . . . .. . . . .. . . . . . . . . . .. . . . ..   212 

Chapter 6: Automated Traffic Control                                       216 

Sensors: A World of Capability...........................................  220
Distributed Control: Checks and Balances ................................  226


Chapter 7: Anticipating the Cost                                           236 

Acceptable cost..........................................................  238
Probable cost............................................................  247


Chapter 8: A Thousand Ways to Die                                          254 

Opposition: Death by a Hundred Blows ..................................... 256
Challenges: Road maps, Research, and Priming the Pump..................... 265

Commentary and Suggested Reading.........................................  280
Epilogue ................................................................  286
About the Author.........................................................  288

TABLES & FIGURES

Fig. 1–1 Truck on a Highway............................................   28 
Fig. 1–2 Automobile Platoon on the Intelligent Highway. . . . . . . . . . 31 
Fig. 1–3 A-F Developments in Personal Rapid Transit...................... 37–39 

Fig. 2–1A-C Intersections ............................................... 47-48
Fig. 2–2 Man and His Freeway............................................  71
Fig. 2–3 Evening Traffic on the 405. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  75
Fig. 2–4 L.A. Traffic at 5 pm...........................................  75
Fig. 2–5 Sixteen Hours of LA Traffic...................................   77–78
Fig. 2–6 Space Needed for Various Travelers.............................  79
Fig. 2–7 Miles traveled on US Roadways.................................   81


Fig. 3–1 Photoshopped Smart Car .......................................   101
Fig. 3–2 A Small Second Model..........................................   102
Fig. 3–3 The Volkswagen 1 L.............................................  105
Fig. 3–4 A-B Top Speeds and Accelerations...............................  113
Fig. 3–5 Car Profiles Showing Rail Adapters.............................  123


Fig. 4–1 Areas Needed for Interchanges................................  130
Fig. 4–2 Local Rail Line Routes for Manhattan Beach...................  132
Fig. 4–3 Metropolitan Rail Line Routes for the Los Angeles Basin .....  134–135
Fig. 4–4 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Generation Roadway Comparisons.............  143
Fig. 4–6 A-B A Simple Span Using Cables; A Suspension Bridge .........  154
Fig. 4–7 A Concrete Skeleton Design...................................  157
Fig. 4–8 A Vertically stacked Roadway Span............................  159
Fig. 4–9 A-C A Compressed Arch Design ................................  160–162
Fig. 4–10 Another Suspension Type Bridge..............................  163
Fig. 4–11 A-D Various Roadway Alignments..............................  165–168
Fig. 4–12 Roadway Rails and Wheels....................................  170
Fig. 4–13 A-B A Monorail Doobie & the Seattle Monorail ...............  172
Fig. 4–14 A Ski lift Doobie...........................................  173
Fig. 4–15 A-B Rail Interior Doobies: a schematic & a photograph.......  173
Fig. 4–16 The Railroad Switching Scheme...............................  174
Fig. 4–17 A Ski lift Switch...........................................  176
Fig. 4–18 A Rail Interior Switch......................................  177
Fig. 4–19 A Gliding Supporting........................................  179
Fig. 4–20 A Magnetically Levitated Support............................  183
Fig. 4–21A-B A Round-about Interchange Schematic and Illustration ....  187
Fig. 4–22 A-B A Cloverleaf Interchange Schematic and Photograph.......  191
Fig. 4–23 Cross Sections of a Barrel Roll Interchange ................  193
Fig. 4–24 A-B A Barrel Roll Interchange Schematic and Illustration ...  194–195
Fig. 4–25 Anticipated Accelerations...................................  198
Fig. 4–26 A-B A Four Level Interchange Schematic......................  200
Fig. 4–27 A High Speed Interchange Schematic .........................  201
Fig. 4–28 An Interchange Size comparison..............................  202


Fig. 5–1 A Rail Car Parking Garage—Illustration ......................  209
Fig. 5–2 A Volkswagen Automobile Storage Facility.....................  210
Fig. 5–3 Lot Parked Rail Cars—Drawing.................................  213
Fig. 5–4 Street Parked Rail Cars—Drawing .............................  213
Fig. 5–5 Street Parked Smart Cars—Photograph..........................  214


Fig. 8–1 The Chicago Elevated Rail.....................................  260
Fig. 8–2 A-B The Seattle Monorail......................................  276



Table 1–1 The Automobile as Major Killer................................  23


Table 2–1 Traffic Data for California Highway 1 . . . . . . . . . . . .   52
Table 2–2 Intersection Traffic Data.....................................  53
Table 2–3 Delay at an Intersection......................................  53
Table 2–4 Average Speeds................................................  54
Table 2–5 Urban Average Speed vs... Speed Limit.........................  54
Table 2–6 Small Town Street Capacity....................................  60
Table 2–7 Big Town Street Capacity......................................  65


Table 3–1 Specifications for Various Vehicles on the Road...............  107


Table 4–5 Travel Times Comparison.......................................  146

 

About the Author  

Roger Davidheiser’s career extends over several decades of developing 
futuristic technologies within an industrial context catering to national 
defense, NASA, and NSF interests. He has published and lead substantial 
 efforts in superconducting electronics, passive millimeter wave imaging, 
high speed electronics, developments for the wireless and cell phone 
industries, and studies of exotic systems such as space-based solar power 
farms. During the 1990s he managed the space electronics research and 
development program for what is now Northrup Grumman. 

The author is a graduate of the California Institute of Technology with 
a BS in Physics, and of the University of Southern California with a PhD 
in Electrical Engineering and a minor in Material Science. Employed by 
the California Division of Highways, he spent college summers supervising 
highway construction and soldiering preliminary survey. He lives in 
Manhattan Beach, California, drives an old Volvo, and sometimes thinks 
his favorite games are Tetris and Rush Hour. 
Graphics were created by Jorma Beckstrom


Last modified: April 20, 2011