A Suburb Without Roads!

How do you tell when you run out of invisible ink?

Could you imagine building a suburb with predominantly one-family houses, without other roads than for walking and biking? That idea is not as utopian as it might sound at first. Before the advent of the automobile only about a 100 years ago, the standard of the road network was rather deplorable. Most people (those in the countryside) lived in houses that were not accessible by other means than by walking, riding or using horse-drawn carriages. Had you put a car in those surroundings, it would have gotten nowhere, unless it was a four-wheel drive. And there is now a revolt against the motorcar in many countries. One such group is "Reclaim the Streets" in the UK. ook at the picture at right! Wouldn´t you like to live like this? That beamcar, waiting for you after you finished breakfast, is either yours, or you have leased it, or you have a subscription arrangement, wherein it arrives every monday thru friday at 7.45 sharp, to pick you up and whisk you away to your work. Automatically, of course. And no stopping on the way. No traffic snarls. You´ll be there in 15 minutes. Guaranteed. And there will be a car waiting for you at day´s end, to whisk you back home again. No more spending a sizeable time of your waking hours behind the wheel of your car, or on public transport vehicles. Think about that. Sounds good, no?

Figure 1.

Figure 3.

It´s pretty hard to imagine that up to about 100 years ago, there was no vehicle traffic on the roads or in the city streets to speak of. The photo above, from Amsterdam in Holland, gives an apt illustration what western cities looked like before motorcars became common. Already at that time, both city planners and ordinary people objected to the fact that motorcars were noisy and polluting, leading to a deterioration of the city environment. But the motorcar won out, because of its obvious advantages. There simply were no viable alternatives.	Figure 4.	There were electric cars, to be sure, but gasoline was cheap, and the electric cars had to be maintained in a more awkward manner than the motorcars. And new generations of city dwellers got used to motorcars, as an integral part of city life. Well-to-do city people noticed, of course, what happened to the city environment. Before the motorcar, it was most desireable to live in the city. As cars became common, people moved to the suburbs. Environmental deterioration was only half the reason for this change of attitude, but it was a reason, nevertheless.

Motor vehicle traffic in residential suburbs is a huge source of inconvenience. On the one hand, those who live there usually need their cars, and they thus also need quick and easy access to their houses. Consequently, residential areas are criss-crossed with thru-fares where the speed is relatively high. On the other hand, nobody, especially not families with kids, want to live along those streets. They prefer small dead-end streets or, failing that, they enforce considerably reduced traffic in front of their houses, for instance by constructing bumps in the streets, or planting concrete flower pots on alternating sides of the streets, forcing cars to weer from side to side. Which defeats the very purpose of the thru-fares.	At the same time, these residents are irritated about such speedtraps in other similar neighborhoods that they have to pass through in order to get to or from their own neighborhood. In Sweden, it has happened that residents have paid for bumps in the streets out of their own pockets, and after a while these bumps have been so many that they have become an impediment for the traffic. Whereupon the city authorities have ordered the removal of most of them. Money could certainly be spent on better things! A rather cynical but money-saving solution to this would be to allow the streets to deteriorate to the point where traffic speeds would have to kept low, in order to negotiate potholes and such. That would be cheaper than first spending money on good road maintenance, and then some extra cash to provide for impediments to the traffic!	Figure 5.

ooking at the 3 illustrations at right, figure 5 shows a rather old suburb, where the streets were laid out before motorcars were as common as they are today. The attractive lots, away from thru-traffic streets, are depicted in orange, and they are relatively few! They are found only along the few dead-end streets that may exist. Figure 6 shows a common method to counteract this, with U-shaped streets that lead nowhere except back to the main street from which they originated. This solution makes for somewhat better living conditions; attractive lots (depicted in orange) are proportionately more than in the foregoing picture.

Figure 6.

The best solution, from the residents point of view, is dead-end streets, as shown in figure 7. For the visiting motorist, however, the area often seems like a maze of streets, with a lot of unnecessary driving-around before he finds his destination. Clearly, motor vehicles are a necessary evil in residential areas. So; automatic, electrically driven beam cars, removed from the ground, would be the ideal answer! Also, consider new suburbs or residential areas that are in the planning stage. Erecting beams would be cheaper than building roads, once big-scale production gets started. Maintaining the beams would also be cheaper than maintaining roads.

Figure 7.

o, imagine building a suburb according to the model in the aerial view at right (figure 13). From a further distance, it would look like in figure 15 below. In figure 15, the beams enter the yards att right angles to the main beam, a somewhat cheaper solution than the one at right. The poles and beams are erected first, by construction vehicles that can negotiate rough terrain. The building material is transportet to the site on the beams as the beams are being put in place. Many railways were built in the 19:th century in a similar fashion, over roadless terrain. Now, what would be the point of not having paved streets? Well, most of all economical; no roads to build and maintain. Instead, the money could be invested in the beams. Rescue vehicles and general transportation could get through just as easily along the beams. The people living here could not have cars (but certainly motorbikes, if they wanted to). Instead, there is one (or more) shunts from the main beams, leading into every yard, and right up to the house. Why not to the second-floor balcony? How did you like the top picture on this page (figure 1)? That´s just as feasible and comfortable as today´s car ports.	Each family could then have one or more cars of their own (or lease their vehicles), or they could be satisfied by just booking a vehicle on a regular basis or whenever the need arises. Or, they could join the local car pool, with the neighborhood garage at C in figure 15 below. These vehicles would be integrated with the rest of the network, insofar as you would not have to walk anywhere to fetch your vehicle. You order it over the phone, and in a few minutes you will find it in your yard or on your balcony, waiting for you. Beam vehicles that don´t use lifts could easily be handled, by building the houses "right" from the start. Such vehicles could use an upper-floor balcony for docking, as shown in figure 1, and in the aerial view shown above. If the beam traffic is fairly heavy, this solution is not so good, because vehicles would have to reverse their travel direction, either when they are leaving or when they arrive. In such a case, the solution in the view below would work better (figure 14). Here, the vehicles could enter and leave the beams a lot quicker. The drawback here is that this solution needs somewhat more space for the beams.	Figure 13.

eams that intersect on the same level with each other are not really part of the FLYWAY® concept (which does not preclude that such solutions could be found, see "Crossings and Roundabouts"), and two parallel beams might not be motivated considering the sparse traffic intensity within the area. So, the simplest solution would be to apply one-way traffic on all the connecting beams, as is shown by the arrows in figure 15. If the person at A wants to go to the shopping mall (marked B down in the right corner of figure 15), one could imagine the vehicle choosing the route over the nodes 7, 1, 2 and 8 going to the shopping mall, and the nodes 8, 5, 4 and 7 when going back home.	This would mean that the vehicle would have to reverse its direction of travel at node 8 (i.e. at the entrance to the shopping mall) going to the shopping mall, and at node 7 going home. The shopping mall in figure 15 would of course be entirely built to accomodate the beam-carried customers. One could for instance imagine the vehicles being parked in one or two levels above the shopping mall. The shopping mall itself would mainly be at ground level, but that´s certainly not a requirement. Elevators or escalators in the building would then ease the transportation of merchandise to the beamcars.	Figure 15.

This idea is further developed in the area's big shopping center, figure 16 at right. At such places, the beams could be built in two (or even more) levels, which would make possible crossings such as X. The parking area (B) could then be in 2 levels; outdoors on ground level (if the buildings are on pillars with parking underneath, which is common in the tropics) and indoors one level above ground. Indoor parking would then provide easy access to the stores.

Figure 16.

The idea of allowing the beamcar to enter and leave every private yard without having to reverse, could of course be applied to both sides of every throughfare. The switches would come very close after one another, as shown in the illustration at right (figure 17), but it would work quite well, considering that the speed in this area would not exceed 45 km/hour (about 30 miles/hour). Figure 17.

Providing extra parking space The short beams entering the private yards would typically not have parking space for more than 2 beamcars. So what if you throw aparty and expect many guests? There are several ways to solve the parking issue for the occasional appearance of many beamcars. 3 suggestions are illustrated with pink lines at right (figure 18). A shows how thru-beams through 2 adjoining lots, with one outlet at each end, would provide space for 10-12 cars, provided that you have a little neighbourly cooperation. B shows how a loop in a parking yard, set aside for this purpose, would provide space for about 15 cars. Example C shows how a beam in the street in front of each yard, parallel to the thru-beam, could provide for about 8 parked beamcars. These are just examples. Considering that the parked beamcars would be hoisted up in the air, alternative B could very well be combined with - for instance - the neighborhood playground. Figure 18.

he neighborhood sports arena would of course require a regular parking area for the beam-carried vehicles. There would be 2 reasons for this: Many vehicles are leased or owned by visitors to the games, or belong to a certain car pool. There will be less traffic on the beam net if a majority of the vehicles could wait in the vicinity until it's time to leave. This is of course assuming that the vehicles are not needed elsewhere in the meantime.	Figure 19.	An elegant solution to this would be two or more concentric rings of beams around the arena, as shown in figure 19. The outer ring will serve as embarking/disembarking area, while the inner ring will serve as parking area. Whenever a particular vehicle is wanted, which is locked in place by other vehicles, the node computer in charge of the area could move all the parked vehicles around in the ring until the desired vehicle can switch out into the outer ring. The blue lines in the figure are the beams. The grey areas are for regular automobiles. One has to accept the fact that other neighborhoods are not as far advanced as ours, and have to use the regular motorcar. And we have to let those poor fellows visit the games too, don't we?