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Physical Internet®

Transportation and energy networks will digitize just as communications networks did. Analog highways will be replaced by:
  • Highways are the wrong networks in cities (video).
  • We know 188 times greater efficiency is practical (Warren Buffett). The 140,000 miles of US freight railroads average 470 ton-mpg. This is 188 times more efficient than moving a 200 pound person with the 25 mpg efficiency of the Model-T.
  • In 1973 the US, Sweden, and Denmark all had the same safe record and oil use of 44 megawatt-hours/person/year. Following the 1973 Oil Embargo Sweden and Demark diverged from car-centric sprawl to make cities more walkable and bikeable. The US continued car-centric sprawl. Per person oil use was reduced to 60% below that of the US. Road-kill of bike riders and pedestrians was reduced 400%.

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 corrected defects in the preexisted decades beforeDigital telephones existed for decade before they became common in everyone’s pocket:
  • The Motorola Razr was an extraordinary engineering success of digitizing devices on the analog network.
  • Apple’s 2007 iPhone release of digital devices on digital networks caused me, and most other Razr owners, to immediately abandon the Razr for the  iPhone.

Digitizing devices provide 2-5 times (2X to 5X) benefits. Digital devices on digital networks provide mulitple 10X advantages. There is a general rule that 10X benefits are required to drive a paradigm shift. The following graph illustrated cellphone adoption since Apple released in iPhone in 2007. Also shown is the iPhone (digital network) impact on the Razr (analog network).

In 2023 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.

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

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™:

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