Monday, July 6, 2009

Solving the Oakland Airport traffic problem

The Oakland airport people moving problem and the San Jose people moving problem can be solved in similar fashion, without concrete guide ways. In the case of Oakland, the solution involves Green Lanes on the lanes of Hegenberger road. By simply using Green Paint and licensed Tram Bots, rapid, fast, efficient movement of people and freight from the Rail hubs, including Bart and the Airport becomes low cost. Like the Diamond Lanes in California, crossing the Green Lanes to make left turns would be legal, but otherwise human auto traffic could share the Green lanes under the same Diamond Lane rules.

The driving test for Street Bots would naturally include their ability to negotiate the few large intersections. However, like Light Rail, special traffic signals would aid their progress through complicated intersections. Human drivers would be no more confused than they are with standard light rail.

The appeal, of course, is our ability to replace concrete guide ways with microprocessor vision Street Bots and Green Paint. The barrier is, naturally, the desire of airport transit planners to "own" the road for their own purposes, hence vendors take advantage of the hubris of transit planners, forcing them to purchase expensive and unnecessary concrete structures.

Transit planners have to understand that Street Bots very soon will be more efficient drivers than humans. By providing them with a few cues and signals today removes the need to build large concrete structure which will only have a few years of use before being replaced anyway. Remember the California towns which built street vars tracks for only a few years in the 1920s after which all those rails were ripped out to make way for the automobile. We have the same transition point with Street Bots.

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