Road Trains
The Europeans believe in state action, so it’s not surprising they’re poised to leap ahead of us in road technology:
Road trains that link vehicles together using wireless sensors could soon be on European roads.
An EU-financed research project is looking at inexpensive ways of getting vehicles to travel in a ‘platoon’ on Europe’s motorways.
Each road train could include up to eight separate vehicles – cars, buses and trucks will be mixed in each one.
The EU hopes to cut fuel consumption, journey times and congestion by linking vehicles together.
Early work on the idea suggests that fuel consumption could be cut by 20% among those cars and trucks travelling behind the lead vehicle.
Of course, their idea requires a lead vehicle with a professional driver — probably unionized. Research trials will be held on test tracks in the UK, Spain and Sweden.
I’ve long thought we could turn those reflectors that demarcate lanes on roads into buoys read by the adaptive cruise control that’s showing up in more and more cars. But then that, too, would require a government that could act. And a citizenry with some faith in it.
Do you guess that if we had to do it today, we’d have the wherewithal to build the Interstate Highway System?
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6 Responses to “Road Trains”
1. “Platoon” organization of vehicles has been one idea considered for years, among other “smart highway” or “smart road” (to use contemporary vernacular) concepts in the USA.
2. A better idea, which is suitable for electric vehicles someday for inter-city travel, would be to put the vehicles under positive system control (automation), which would permit respectably high speeds (such as 250 miles per hour), and which might involve platooning to lower air resistance and energy costs of such a system, but which would favor individual, independent vehicle operation (putting them into platoons or “trains” as and when merited), an inter-city real-world-speed kind of system resembling some long-ago concepts of Personal Rapid Transportation (with individual vehicles) in urban areas.
“adaptive cruise control”
This isn't really necessary, and shouldn't be required, along with other techno-gadgetry like automatic brakes to prevent tailgating or rear-end collisions — nice to have, but overhyped and not essential — and adding unnecessary expense. Certainly it's no substitute for driving skills.
“Do you guess that if we had to do it today, we’d have the wherewithal to build the Interstate Highway System?”
Today's Congress and Executive Branch would be little better suitable for this than for the lunar landing.
And worse still, such an undertaking would be hampered by anti-auto and environmental activists.
By the way, Joe, if you want to see at least one link this time, here:
1993:
http://www.ahmct.ucdavis.edu/images/UCD_ARR_93_…
San Diego and other experiments:
http://www.path.berkeley.edu/PATH/Publications/…
http://www.path.berkeley.edu/PATH/Research/demos/
http://www.path.berkeley.edu/nahsc/pdf/AHS-Tech…
And, to address your thought,
“I’ve long thought we could turn those reflectors that demarcate lanes on roads into buoys read by [...]“
Well, here you are.
“This report investigates the feasibility of using the magnetic markers, already present for lateral vehicle guidance, for longitudinal control. Instead of using a “vehicle-follower” method implied by relying on direct inter-vehicle distance measurement, the use of the magnetic markers gives a “point-follower” scheme, relying on a fixed reference system. …”
http://www.path.berkeley.edu/PATH/Publications/…
P.S. Here's the lateral-control portion.
http://www.path.berkeley.edu/PATH/Publications/…
Ok, count me in.
But only if they make it legal to pee out the window when the rest of the platoon says “you shoulda gone befor we left!”
Getting future electric vehicles up to 250 miles per hour or so for inter-city transport when under positive system control would justify submission to the system's authority (assuming it could be safely done). Such speeds are what would justify such systems eventually, as well as realize the potential of electric vehicles. (Just as with high-speed conventional trains, the efficiency improvement over internal combustion engines doesn't mean we crawl at air-resistance threshold speeds of 40-45 miles per hour for the ultimate energy savings — that is perverse intentional deprivation and deliberate loss of functional productivity that speed confers. What we would do is exploit the efficiency to take speeds to the new, much higher level that we should be able to realize, as with high-speed conventional trains now.) Note that while only some of us who are more interested than most would do it, such speeds would enable us to go coast-to-coast in the USA nonstop if we had the patience and willingness for such marathon trips, in exchange for having our own personal vehicles with us at the destination of our journeys, as we do now with conventional automobiles we operate.
In the meantime, we'd do better to exploit other improvements. Once LEDs or an equivalent become cheap enough, not only does it mean we can vastly increase the amount of roadway illumination (arrays and strips rather than relatively few point sources, as we have now with ordinary lamps and luminaires), which means a greater energy use and cost, but a vast improvement of our roads and their use in exchange; we can also do something as mundane but much more valuable than any fancy automation gizmos, namely embed LEDs or other future small lamps in the roadways to aid visibility during darkness and inclement weather. (We could even have color changes and aimed lamps in the case of reversible-flow lanes, don't forget, which is a good way to improve usage of scarce capacity in metro areas that have commuter flow patterns.) This is already an idea considered to be used for crosswalks:
http://www.tfhrc.gov/pubrds/04jan/03.htm
It's even an alternative to overhead lighting, in particular, in rural areas as well as where there are environmental problems with overhead or more-intense illumination, as in this example:
http://www.dot.state.fl.us/research-Center/Comp…
http://www.airporttech.tc.faa.gov/Safety/Downlo…
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