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Physical Internet®

Objective: In cities that adopt the 5×5 Standard replace 60% of car-trips with a combination of:
  1. Mobility As A Service for people and cargo by Middle Mile™ mesh networks of podcars.
  2. Active Mobility made safe for Last-Mile.
  3. Integrate of transport and energy networks into a system so energy is applied to create and distribute value to fill wants and needs.

Layers of the Physical Internet are similar to network layers of the Internet:

Consider that the Internet has roughly 4 layers:

  • Fiber optics for high speed and heavy traffic.
  • Wi-Fi for local area networks.
  • Bluetooth for last-device.
  • Satellites, SD cards, and a vast number of other devices to fill specialty niches.

The Physical Internet® will have similar layers:

  • High speed and heavy lift: Airline, freight rail, and trucking for transport between cities.
  • Commuter: JPods/PRT, Transportation as a Service (TAAS), transit, and cars/trucks provide commuter-range transport of people and cargo.
  • Last-mile: Bikes, walking, scooters, Uber, drones, Local Use Vehicles, etc… provide the last device.
  • Off network vehicles such as existing cars and trucks.

60% mode shift in 6 years from highways to Mesh Networks and Active Mobility:

Example of JPods mesh network to move people and cargo between walkable neighborhoods.

Example of Last-mile options to move cargo and make walkable cities.

Fundamentals:

Commerce and Community are pedestrian activities. Machine behaviors should be adapted to support Community and Commerce. The current Build Environment, dominated by unconstitutional Federal Highways creates linear barriers to Commerce and Community:

Constitutional foundation:

Courts declaring the Federal communications monopoly unconstitutional in (1918-1982) provides a precedent for courts enforcing the Constitution to end the Federal transportation monopoly (Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1916-today).

  • Sept 14, 1787, 8 states to 3 vote in the Constitutional Convention to forbid mercantile Federal infrastructure taxing and spending as enumerate in the “post Roads” and “No Preference” clauses.
  • Federalist #45 explaining that states are sovereign over “internal improvements.”
  • Madison Congressional debate Bounty Payments for Cod Fisheries, Feb 6, 1792.
  • 21 Presidential veto messages enforcing the “post Roads” and “No Preference” Clauses.
  • 10 of the last 10 Presidents issuing unanswered calls to action to end foreign oil addiction, oil-wars, and oil-dollar funded terrorism. The US imports 1/3rd of the oil we use each day.
    • Highways that mandate burning energy to move 2-tons to move a person are 188 times less efficient than freight railroads. Since The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1916 created a mercantile transportation monopoly political influence replaced free market efficiency in making transportation policies. The results are:
      • 45% of 470 ton-mpg railroads have been replaced by 25 mpg roads.
      • Foreign oil addiction.
      • Oil-wars since 1991.
      • Oil-dollar funded terrorist attacks.
      • $33 trillion in Federal debt increasing in tandem with the costs of oil imports and oil-wars.
      • Climate Change
    • Highways and Mass Transit are the wrong networks in cities (video). They created and have not solve traffic problems that cost Americans $2.76 trillion/year.
  • Book, Climate Change Root Cause, Unconstitutional Federal Highway Making Unwalkable Cities.

Key to a paradigm shift is regulations

Regulations that allow network deployment are essential and lacking for transportation and energy networks. Examples of regulatory changes that allowed networks to deploy:

  1. The Pacific Railroad Act of 1864 created a framework that allow private capital to fund and build railroads. Link to the time for private funding of the deployment of railroads.
  2. Timeline for deployment of the Internet. Key markers:
    • 1918, July 22: “Proclamation of Government Control of Telephone and Telegraph Systems” issued by President Woodrow Wilson. President Wilson monopolized communications.
    • 1926 interview with Collier’s magazine: Nikola Tesla, “When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, …. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance. Not only this, but through television…. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket.“
    • 1927: AT&T President Gifford in New York talked on a video phone with Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover.
    • 1968: Mother of All Demos documents most aspects of the Internet and modern computing. Start at minute 30 for 4 minutes to watch the “mouse”, video conferencing, clicking on URLs, etc….
    • 1982: Federal courts declared the Federal communications monopoly unconstitutional and initiated a multi-year de-monopolization plan. Rotary dial telephones were still very common but being displaced by “touch-tone” phones.
    • 2007: Apple introduced the iPhone. This was the first digital phone on digital networks. SmartPhones amplified the Internet by 10X.
  3. Timeline for the Physical Internet:
    • 1972 President Nixon sent his daughter Tricia to open the Morgantown PRT. This is the first grade-separated network of self-driving cars.
    • 1975 Congressional Study PB-244854, Automated Guideway Transit, documented that PRT is a solution to the 1973 Oil Embargo and that government “institutional failures” blocked urban transportation innovation for “four to six decades (aside from some relatively minor cosmetic changes)…
    • 2002 US Patent Office recognized Patent 6,810,817 improvements on the Morgantown PRT:
      • Robots replace the central computer control system: “A method of controlling a transportation System for moving people, freight, and any combination whereof using a distributed network of intelligent devices without requiring the aid of a human driver”
      • Networks are solar-powered: “The method… providing… Solar and wind power generators integrated into the physical Structure of Said transportation System….”
    • 2022 North Central Texas Coalition of Governments voted to allow the building of JPods, Transpods, and SwyftCities pod networks.
    • 5X5 Standard: Privately funded networks 5 times more efficient than roads pay 5% of gross transport revenues for non-exclusive use of the airspace over approved public Rights of Way.
    • In 2024 JPods will begin deploying digital guideway networks in Texas and Georgia to compete with analog roads. The multiple 10X benefit of digital guideways over analog  roads will make self-driving cars as common in transportation as cell phones are in communications.

Grade-separated networks:

  • Freight railroads: Two centuries and 140,000 miles of grade-controlled freight railroads averaging 470 ton-mpg illustrate that transportation networks do not have drive Climate Change.
  • Wuppertal suspended train: This train moves 25 million passengers per year with one fatal accident since it opened in 1901. Grade-separation guideways are radically safer than analog roads.
  • Morgantown PRT: President Nixon’s daughter Tricia opened the Mortantown PRT on Oct 24, 1972. This grade-separate networks of self-driving cars have proven the correct solution for urban transportation.
  • Theme Park thrill rides: For more than a century thrill rides at theme parks have proven that transportation innovations can be both radical and safe. JPods grade-separated digital guideways will make cities as safe as theme parks.

Examples that will trigger the shift to digital, solar-powered urban mobility networks. We can power our urban transportation needs without Climate Change, oil-wars, or traffic congestion. The First Cities of the Sun™:

Currently self-driviing cars (digital devices) on roads (analog network) are struggling:

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