European Policy Decisions

Laws are like cobwebs: They entangle the weak but are broken by the strong.
(Solon, philosopher in ancient Greece, about 600-560 b.C.)

Anfang he Catch 22 of Infrastructure could be stated as:
"If automatic beam transport systems are such a great idea, why are they not more common?"
The reasons are mainly political: The industry only builds what is already being demanded by the public authorities, and the public authorities only demands what is already being built by the industry.
Infrastructure is the foundation of society, upon which all economic activity is built. Infrastructure is, like education and innovation, a public good. From an econom viewpoint, this means: Concentrated costs for the investor and widely disbursed advantages for society at large. A private developer would be left with all the costs of the investment, but would still not receive all of the benefits - usually, he would get only the ticket revenues.
Unfortunately, it is difficult for public agencies to accept new technical solutions.
First, because public agencies don´t have many entrepreneurs, i.e. people who are innovative and willing to stick their necks out for new technologies that seem risky. Better then to lay low and stick to the old technology.
Second, because public subsidies to traditional transport industry is being used to lobby for these old technologies, since established industry also is risk averse: Better then to lay low and stick to the old technology. Think of the shareholders!
By force of socio-economic logic, PRT and other innovative technologies do not have sufficient vested interests behind them to efficiently challenge established interests. The result of the established vested interests is old solutions to new problems. Aesthetics is another reason: PRT is not invisible and this is the price we have to pay for all the advantages of PRT. Nevertheless, although early PRT solutions were less than beautiful, they may now be made elegant and to a great degree hidden from view.

Road traffic in western Europe
Road- and railway traffic in central and eastern Europe
The railroad traffic between western Europe and Sweden
The ZEUS Project
Standardization of interfaces

1. Road Traffic in Western Europe

Air pollution from the increasing road traffic in the European Union (EU) countries is a huge and growing problem. It contributes to the poisoning of lakes and subsoil water with mercury and aluminum. It raises the acidity of the soil to the point where the forests die, and overly fertilize coastal waters. Pollution is no respecter of political borders. No matter what a country does to its environment, it still receives a lot of the airborne and waterborne pollution from its neighbors.

An important goal for every country is thus to reduce the air pollution at the source. This is best tackled by an effort to, on an international basis, co-operate to promote beamtraffic systems in the big urban areas, where the need is most urgent. This would create a market for beam traffic components that does not have to be protected with custom duties, subsidies and import restriktions, as is the case with the European car industry at the present. Any country that is an EU-member could contribute to the reduction of road traffic within the European Union by demanding that the road traffic should carry its own costs, including its negative effect on the environment!

As regards the environmental costs, this could be implemented with the aid of levies for various vehicle types where one would take the contents of the exhaust fumes into consideration (the amount of carbon dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, sulphur, etc.). One could use levies for entering various zones to counteract traffic congestion in certain areas. One could also use resource levies tied to the production of various vehicle types (for high use of natural resources, such as land, metals and oil). This would lead to a better competitive position for the railroads. These levies must be seen by the motorists and the public in general to be used for the good of all travelers, in order to dampen protests.

This would best be done by promoting means of transportation that are better than today's systems. Other countries could also follow the good example of Californa (and in some measure other U.S. states) and introduce legislation to the effect that the car industry's production should include a growing percentage of electrically propelled cars and hybride cars.

2. Road- and Railway Traffic in Central and Eastern Europe

In Central and Eastern Europe (including Russia) the environment is hard hit by burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas). People in these countries are now increasingly clamoring for private cars. They buy old cars from Western Europe, and the countries themselves borrow heavily from West to build new and better roads. The growing market for cars in these countries has encouraged Western and Japanese car manufacturers to build car factories in Eastern Europe.

This is done both to avoid customs duties and to exploit the cheap labor force available. The net result of this will be further pollution of the environment. To counteract this development, contacts should be taken between the EU and the East European states in order to build a strategy for sprucing up the railroad systems in these countries.

Regarding Terminology
During the Cold War, Europe was divided in Eastern and Western Europe, along political lines; i.e. Albania, Yugoslavia and the countries behind the Iron Curtain were commonly referred to as "Eastern Europe". After the fall of the Soviet Union, the old concept of "Central Europe" has come into common use once again.
Central Europe commonly consists of; Poland, the Chech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Bosnia, Albania and Yugoslavia. Eastern Europe is east of these countries. It thus corresponds more or less to the map at right. But then, one also talks about a vertical subdivision; i.e. Northern, Central and Southern Europe.
The European Union (EU) consists, after May 1, 2004, of 25 countries, spread across Europe and the Mediterranean. Thus, there is also a need to distinguish the EU-countries from the rest of Europe.

3. The railroad traffic between Western Europe and Sweden

With the structure EU:s transport network has today, Sweden will be subjected to increasing transit traffic with trucks, private cars and buses to and from Western Europe, and Finland, the Baltic states, S:t Petersburg and Norway.

Sweden ought to take measures so that the railroad traffic through Sweden to and from Western Europe flows without disturbances. At the present, the interfaces between trains and railroad tracks in Europe as a whole are far too different (we are here talking about electric power supplies, signalling systems, speed standards, gauge of the tracks, etc.), to enable the railway traffic to flow easily, without reloading and changing of trains.

4. The ZEUS Project

T he project for Zero and Low Emission Vehicles in Urban Society - ZEUS - was a EU-financed project, whose aim has been to demonstrate the use of alternative vehicles in urban traffic. 8 cities in EU volunteered to purchase in total 1200 vehicles propelled by electricity and/or natural gas, and use them in public service. Thus, experience was gained, which would benefit other cities that might catch on, and a growing market for such vehicles might be created as a result.

Athens in Greece has been testing 25 electrically driven cars and 5 buses that run on natural gas.
Bremen in Germany has tested 100 natural gas vehicles and 2 advanced diesel-electric buses.
In Copenhagen, Denmark, 50 electric cars are being used for transportation of people. The city has also tested 4 buses, which run on dimetyl ether, and provided 600 bikes for its inhabitants.
7 communities in Greater London and Coventry have tested altogether about 500 vehicles.

Helsiniki in Finland has used 16 buses with alternative fuel.
Luxemburg has used 45 so-called RME-buses in trafic, i.e. they are running on rape seed derivates.
Palermo in Italy is investing in 100 electrical cars. 80 of these are available for short-time leasing by private drivers. 20 other vehicles are to be tested in a car-pool. Palermo has also used buses, taxis and cars running on CNG.
The city of Stockholm, Sweden, has tested 222 vehicles with alternative fuels.

This project ended with a 2-day conference in Stockholm, Sweden, on June 20-21, 2000. It has been running for 3 years, and this sharing of experiences gained will hopefully inspire other cities. The big challenge would be to remove the market barriers to this kind of vehicles; they are far too expensive for ordinary people.

5. Standardization of Interfaces

n traffic systems, one can distinguish at least three important interfaces, of great importance to the travellers and shippers of freight.

In the case of the road traffic it is

The interface between the motorcars and the traffic conduit (i.e. the road. This is very simple; it is just a level roadbed of asphalt. But between
The users and the vehicle, the interface is considerably more complex (including, for instance, doorlocks, seat, steering wheel, ignition key, accelerator, break and gear change, and the little matter of maintenance, etc.), and requires long training for the user. This also goes for the interface between
The user and the traffic conduits (mainly consisting of learning all those traffic signs). Also, there is an interface between
The user and the energy system (we are here talking about gas stations, various gas qualities, prises and methods of payment).

In the beam traffic system, it is the other way around. The interface

between the beam and the propulsion vehicle (the one inside the beam) is more complicated and consists of both roadbed, energy supply and information interchange between the vehicles and the surrounding world. But the user does not have to bother about this. Instead, the interfaces
between the user and the vehicle, and
between the user and the traffic conduits are both relatively simple. The interface we labeled as
does not exist.

In the beam traffic system, the use of open interfaces is planned for, between all the cooperating parts of the entire system hierarchy. A listing of such advantages with using open interfaces has been provided at this website.

A necessary and urgent measure is to devote all resources in this field at attaining a clear specification of all interfaces in the beam traffic system. This specification ought to be accepted on the broadest possible basis; worldwide, or at least on a European basis, in order to create largest possible market. Especially important are the three interfaces mentioned above, labeled 1), 2) and 3).

If the interface 1) between the beam-carried vehicles and the trafic conduit is not properly specified, a number of manufacturers are going to make beams and vehicles where the vehicles won't be able to drive along other beams than those from the manufacturers the vehicles are designes for. We would get many de-facto standards, like the many standards we got for Personal Computers, Color-TV systems and the like.

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Urban areas would then be interwoven by beam traffic systems that could not co-operate. Even if various cities decide on a system that would ultimately cover the whole city, this system might not later on be able to communicate properly with neighboring cities. The situation would then be even worse than it is now, with a number of systems for public transportation, where people have to change from one system to another to get where they want. This is precisely the situation we have to avoid, if the system is to compete successfully with private cars and with other public transport systems!

The beamcar system would be easy and straightforward for the traveler to handle. Children as young as 5 years of age are deemed to be able to travel alone with the beam traffic system. But if the interfaces are not properly specified (those interfaces indicated by 2) and 3)), the travelers would have to go from one booking terminal to another and from one vehicle to another when changing to vehicles belonging to another system.

They would also have to learn how to handle the different systems whenever anything more than the basic services are desired. Nor in this case would the solution be competitive with the road traffic. This is the reason why it is so important to, at an early stage, specify at least these three basic interfaces. We should at least aim towards a European standard and one for North America, but the ideal is, of course, if we could achieve a world-wide standard.

Copyright © 2004, SwedeTrack System.	Last Updated: 2007-01-17	Webmaster	This site is maintained by Johnson Consulting