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Hallitube Answers (Updated July 5 v.2, 2005)
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(H-tube running outside office building with room attachment)

We thank the many individuals in transportation engineering, design engineering and urban planning departments at various universities and research centers who participated in developing and answering these questions. Also see these diagrams


General Questions: What are the components of a Hallitube system anyway ? Why is it called Hallitube ? How would I ride it ? What are your growth projections for the ridership ? Will people find it acceptable to go to 130 mph and then after 5-7 miles have to stop again..? Can I take baggage into the Hallicart ? Will this ride be noisy ? Does this have to be built along the highway ?

Business Questions:

New types of mass transportation projects always result in cost overruns,
then they don't operate reliably, and then they are shut down. Why should it work here ?
What type of mass transit are large firms like Raytheon, Otis, GM, GE and the Japanese working on ? Presumably they know more about it than you...?

Do you have any idea how much it costs to manufacture curved specialized rails, like on modern steel rollercoasters ?
What makes you think people will lie down in a cart for their commute ?
Why not run in visible plexiglas Hallitubes, like some segments in the images ?
Do Highway lanes have to be closed for Hallitube construction ?
What about during the winter, when it gets freezing cold in some parts of the country ?
What about the handicapped ?
What are the costs of comparable transit solutions ?
What would be a practical example of a San Diego deployment ?
Isn't the real killer of this project and public transit in general that people still have a distance to go once they have used it, and before they can use it ?
Specifically, what is the throughput/profit of one of your pipes, in the first point-to-point installation - say a San Diego to Carlsbad line ? (This is unrelated to comparative throughput speed at a given point on a highway, as we are counting exit and entry)
What is the comparative highway throughput, looking at a lane of traffic vs. a single Hallitube ?
Should Hallitube throughput be compared to highways or light rail ?
What about building an express line from SD to Las Vegas - or to S.F. ?
How about a San Diego LAX line ?
What is the overall profitability time frame ?
Why not build the well-documented high-speed gondola system recently profiled in LA Times Magazine ?
Would we not see such as system first in Europe or Japan ?
Is this another scheme to extract funds from religious or wealthy groups, like in El Toro, where LDS and other churches were robbed to the tune of 100 million, or the Kantner San Diego case where the money was diverted abroad, or the Dominelli ponzi scheme in the 80's ?
Will people like and use this ?
The problem is that people really are not concentrated enough at a central point, and leaving to a central point
for this to be profitable, isn't it ?
Other PRT systems have physical test tracks, you can see people get into them, and yet they don't get approved. Contrast your's with the others.
Before we support this, should it not be "demonstrated" ?

Engineering Questions:
tubecongestion

You are going to pay millions for a centralized control system, it's expensive to do custom hardware/software engineering, it never gets done....?
Is there anything really technologically new here ?
What is the real novelty in the concept ?
So, here comes a road overpass crossing the highway, what does that do to the tubes?
Your concept is flawed: A rider can cause a massive traffic jam and keep everybody hostage by slamming on the brakes !
Your concept is still flawed: What if a cart gets stuck in the tube without bad intent by the driver - now you have one gigantic traffic jam ?
How do people get out if they get stranded or a cart gets immobilized ?
Large Highway Exit signs will obstruct the tube installation, won't they ?
What if the highway rises from the ground, on pylons itself, i.e. climbs ?
What happens when the straight line of tube running alongside the highway is disrupted by an exit ? How can you claim the system is non-stop when one tube runs from downtown, to multiple sequential suburbs ?
How do you handle merging into, as opposed to exiting from an existing tube ? I've just taken my exit with a cart, cruising at 100 mph, how is my speed dissipated ?
Would a thin structure not vibrate itself to death from the cart passage ?
How do you resolve cart shortages (i.e. one commuter did not drive home with a hallicart, leaving you one short at the surburban location in the morning)
If you store the carts condensed in apartments functioning as stations, won't the holders of the winches rip out of the ceilings ?
You use rider-trigger central switches. Other PRT systems propose to put the actual switching mechanism in the cabin, i.e the cabin forces the realignment. Is that not a better idea ?
You want to convert the carts to be steerable in a major oil crisis. Isn't that pretty complicated given how condensed and tight fitting they are now ?
Should the flow-thru of this system not be simulated to gain more certainly about its capacity ?

Safety Questions:
eva

What if one of the carts jumps the track at 120 mph and someone gets killed ?
Heartattack ! What happens to the rider ?
What happens to a rider if a car on the highway below runs into a pylon ?
What if there is a power failure far away from the next station, how do the carts get there with their riders ?
What if one car bumps into another ?
Won't drivers electrocute themselves on the third rail ?
How do you handle electrical fires in these enclosed tubes ?

Answers
Also see these diagrams

What are the components of a Hallitube system anyway ? A Polyurethane tube, lampost+-size pylons (shown too large in the images), luge-like carts with high quality bearings running along highways on a rollercoaster-like rail system, ending in malls, residential areas, industry, with local and express lines, and rider operated rail switches.

Does this have to be built along the highway ? With a minimum track of 7 miles (this is not a short-distance system) you would have at least 70 lawsuits from the roadside businesses inconvenienced by the construction. Think of the many customized advertising signs bending into the road where the tube would run. The tube is open at the bottom so that any dropped mechanical part object cannot obstruct the tracks, so you have to build catchbaskets. But now, you are not as far away as the monorail is from the ground, so the catchbaskets would interfere with buses.

The tube needs to have open sections to dissipate turbulence - would you like to go at 110 mph through a partially open tube where neighborhood kids can shoot ballbearings at your windshield with a slingshot? Theoretically, these things could happen on a highway too, but highways are more isolated. You park your vehicle and a cop appears. Parked vehicles are noticed. From moving vehicles, aiming is difficult. For many reasons, the highway is both much cheaper and safer as base for the system. Even if you used wire cages on the open section of the tubes, juveniles would climb up for graffiti, or use birdshot, it is just not safe to conduct cars in this situation at very high speeds.

Most modern faster PRT proposals seek to use the highway, however, they are silent about the effect of overpasses on their systems, (which is explored on the complaints page). A portion of the tube will always go into neighborhoods, of course, but that section goes much slower, with a higher cart density, and therefore it does not have to move in a near straight line, giving you the ability to curve the system to make use of landmarks.

Why is it called Hallitube ? After Hallidie, inventor of the SF cable car. (Early concepts used carts w.o. motors with the user pulled by multiple high speed cables.)

How would I ride it ? You take a cart from a rack, place it on a sloped carpet segment, hop in, close the windshield, you are carried to a narrowed area forcing the cart onto rails, push accelerator.

What are your growth projections for the ridership ? Explosive growth. Because you get a new leisure hour for your day, more time in bed in the morning....

Will people find it acceptable to go to 130 mph and then after 5-7 miles have to stop again..? Yes, because it is much less stopping then light rail, and coming down from high-speed every 5-7 miles is quite comfortable. Info about intersectiond demand by others is available to the rider in advance through simple LEDs mounted in the
tubes.

Can I take baggage into the Hallicart ? About one shopping bag, it is placed between your legs. There is no baggage compartment, the front has the motor, and both sides use available volume for a combination of gelpacks /inflated cushions and shock absorbers as the cars are intended to touch.

Will this ride be noisy ? A little louder than a car, but you have to compare it to a car sound when it is pushed to 130. The brushless AC motor will be well insulated, and the rails will be smooth. Your plexiglas windshield/hood is completely closed.

New types of mass transportation projects always result in cost overruns, then they don't operate reliably, and then they are shut down. Why should it work here ?The hallitube concept is new, but composed of simple existing technologies, and, cost wise, cannot be classified along existing mass transit technologies. (It costs 3 % (sic) of subways, 4 % highways, or 8% - 12% of train systems - the thin structure and the emphasis on user control changes everything, because the massive cost of a customized automation system with its own high end software engineering staff falls away.

What type of mass transit are large firms like Raytheon, Otis, GM, GE and the Japanese working on ? Presumably they know more about it than you...? Good news. They read and weep. Mass Transit has been the FIELD OF FAILURE. Overengineered heavy vehicles you have to wait for. Nobody thought of requiring user agility. Look at the competing systems sections on bottom of the home page. Other PRT systems do not have a heavy supply of vehicles at the start of the commuting morning, which imposes a unidirectional demand, there will be no arriving vehicles. (Nobody commutes in the morning TO the suburban neighborhood.) The currently propsed PRT systems are great for shorter distances, but not for the long-haul commute of 20 miles, they are somewhat slow, and have high air resistance.)

Granting that it works mechanically, isn't it too involved to try to build these tubes over existing property... The pylons holding the tube up are not much bigger than lamp-posts. (Well, about 4-5 times the diameter, with new carbon composites less) There is no need for much excavation, or large concrete foundations. Minimal interference, low noise, color adaptation of tubes, covered by biolungs.

You are going to pay millions for a centralized control system, it's expensive to do custom hardware/software engineering, it never gets done....? There is no centralized control system. A rail switch request is done by the driver.

What if one of the carts jumps the track at 120 mph and someone gets killed ? Carts have low center of gravity, unlikely to derail. In some design versions, the rider sits below or at the level of the track. At any rate, regular traffic has fatalities too. Finally, one can use "clasp" wheelsets holding the cart to the rail from below.

Do you have any idea how much it costs to manufacture curved specialized rails, like on modern steel rollercoasters ? Software to design these exists already. Note: both support pylons and rails are hollow, old hat task since 1960 start of modern winding rollercoasters. In addition, the final word has not been spoken on rails: It might be preferable to run the cars on a flat surface with a recessed center for the body of the cart, with horizontally mounted side wheels for directional stability. Keep in mind that this is a very light system. We are also examining pre-stressed concrete as attractive option.

What makes you think people will lie down in a cart for their commute ? If you are offered a Japan airlines lounger instead of economy, which do you take ? You are reclining, not lying down completeley. It is very comfortable. Most people "lounge" given the opportunity.

Is there anything really technologically new here ? Yes. Materials science has given us new types of high endurance urethanes which make long-lasting high-speed wheels a reality. The cart, made from high-tensile strength plastics, is also very light. The provisional patent has over 90 clauses: novelty lies in recombining existing things in new ways, not necessarily development of a single mechanism. Progress in electric motors puts the speed record for electric vehicles now at 170 mph, with small motors inside (!) the wheels. But the real novelty is requiring mass transit riders to have a set of skills which are examined by test.

What is the real novelty in the concept ? Emphasis on construction speed through minimalist design, highway-compatibility, one-person per car , no awaiting of a vehicle arrival, very high speed, low tech operation, fraction of the cost of other systems, operated as private franchise giving more responsibility to the rider, increasing thrill, and saving massively and most importantly, the ability to integrate into existing spaces.

So, here comes a road overpass crossing the highway, what does that do to the tubes? They fit under the overpass. In very old LA overpasses, the tube is narrowed a bit there, and 30 inches of concrete are scraped out and resecured with the tube in the upper right (left) corner. Most modern overpasses will take 14-20 tubes.

What happens in an earthquake ? The pylons end in a loose U-joint, within which the tube and railing can move a few feet feet. The structure might not be damaged at all, or it will bend. Elevated highways are no fun either during an earthquake.

Your concept is flawed: A rider can cause a massive traffic jam and keep everybody hostage by slamming on the brakes ! No he could not. Remember that the wheels, because of the lightness of the cart do not have that much friction. This means that even if one rider keeps his foot on the brake, four carts behind him could push him to the next intersection, which would probably not be possible with an automobile because of the greater tire surface. These carts are made to touch. Finally, the example is a fallacy in a comparative sense: On a highway, it would be far easier to create a disruption by abandoning a car with a bomb. In a Hallitube, however, the driver creating the disruption has to stay with the car, and will face severe criminal penalties, and be apprehended by the drivers behind him, be caught on videotape, and likely face a very angry crowd. Hallitube riders have had background check, and have agreed to be videotaped.

Your concept is still flawed: What if a cart gets stuck in the tube without bad intent by the driver - now you have one gigantic traffic jam ? The relevance of an objection is tied to its probability. So we must look at the factors that could cause this. 1) Brakes: The carts do not have any locking brakes by which the Hallicart could be immobilized. They only have standard mechanical brakes. These function only if pressure is expended by the driver in forcing a breaking surface against the wheels. In other words, the low energy state is non-braking. There are no cases known to us where an automobile (w.o. automatic brakes) suddenly magically causes the braking surfaces to be pressed against the disks so that it stops. So brakes are an unlikely cause of a stuck cart. 2) Jumping off the track. We have almost 40 years experience now with high speed rollercoasters, and ways to insure that carts stay tied to the tracks, typically via bottom wheelsets. 3) Cart collision. Eventually, that will happen. But the carts are light, and the force of the collision is passed on to the next cart, just like in the set of wooden balls hanging on strings in science museums. With each cart pushed forwrd, friction reduces the total energy, collision of carts is no reason for the carts to leave the track: just to relay the force forward. And yes, the barriers at the intersections are built to absorb such impacts. Surely someone will be injured, but there is no upward or sideways force, so the carts will stay on the tracks. In the case something does happen we have not forseen here, the rider has been trained, and actually completed the task of getting out of the tube by opening the top. It may even be feasible to store an attached winch or two in every tube so that a cart can be expelled from the tube by the rider so that other carts can proceed. This should take about 5 - 8 minutes. Finally, 4) Wheel falls off: we are using a six-wheel design, the cart remains stable after losing a wheel. This falls below the rail and cannot contact the next rider.

How do people get out if they get stranded or a cart gets immobilized ? Push windshield up, (slide forward or to side) reach up, open the tube-top, walk on ledge (perhaps w. safety belt) climb down rungs attached to every 3rd pylon. Evacuation skill is part of license test. (Image on right: Airplane part crashed into Hallitube)

On your front page, the tube going into the house looks too thin to allow somebody to remove the windshield of the cart and have enough space to put it somewhere to escape. Correct, the artist should have made the tube slightly thicker in relation to the window. Note that the slimmest diameter of the tube is only used when it goes under overpasses, where space is at a premium, then it become wider again.

Large Highway Exit signs will obstruct the tube installation, won't they ? They help it. If you have looked at the posts for these signs, because they lean over the highway, they have to be very strong, so they make good supports. The franchiser takes off the plate of the sign, replaces it with one with a hole for the tube(s).

What if the highway rises from the ground, on pylons itself, i.e. climbs ? This case is actually cheaper, as the tube requires no pylons: it is clamped to the side and you ride above the abyss, but secured quite tightly.

Heartattack ! What happens to the rider ? One, the age constraint makes this unlikely. Ok, he/she could be doing drugs. But the outcome is better than on a highway: There he may lose conscioussness and not be able to steer, ramming into other cars, then riding against an overpass wall or signage. Much better to be on a rail that does the steering for you. Unless the heartattack happens just as you are supposed to be braking, you slowly come to a halt, and will be pushed into the next station by the riders behind you.

What happens when the straight line of tube running alongside the highway is disrupted by an exit ? Near exits the tube is held up by cables, not requiring pylons. Arc designs can also be used, they allow larger inter-pylon distance.

What happens to a rider if a car on the highway below runs into a pylon ? They would run into a concrete base protecting the pylon, which is bent back so even a truck tilting across the base would not touch it with force. We have animated 3d simulations of this event.

How can you claim the system is non-stop when one tube runs from downtown, to multiple sequential suburbs ? The system has exits working with user operated switches. There is a slowing as a rider exists, but such braking waves do not travel rearward very long. See diagram on queuing. Keep in mind that entry in to the main line is by a compressed group of typically 20 carts, all sharply accelerating, much faster than a car would in entering a highway. The carts have cushioned bumpers, are short and light, and meant to touch.

How do you handle merging into, as opposed to exiting from an existing tube ? The merging is most efficient while others exit. A switch is set after the exit. San Diego residents know that the the brief slowing at the El Toro immigration checkpoint on I-5 does not cause congestion backwards for more than an eighth/ quarter of a mile. See queueing diagram, from homepage. It appears that it is also possible to merge two rail lines of non-steerable vehicles without a railswitch by slowing them somewhat, switching to a carpet surface with grooves, ordering the carts to be non-paralell, and than "funnel" them together through a narrowing sidewall pressing on their horizontally mounted sidewheels/wheels.(Main wheels have little friction when off-rail) Engineering finepoints and issues are not exit from, but rather reentry onto the rail system: you don't want the wheels to slam against the rails too low, so you alter the angle of the cart just a bit. This is experimental and not essential to the system. Regular rail switches have worked for 100+ years.

What if there is a power failure 10 miles away from the next station, how do the carts get there with their riders ? Two methods: 1) Exit via evacuation technique if prolonged power failure or 2) Wait for company battery or combustion car to push carts to next station like a locomotive. Subways run for years w.o. prolonged power failures. In northern climates, pylons can be equipped with emergency power generators to push hot air into tunnel.

I've just taken my exit with a cart, cruising at 100 mph, how is my speed dissipated ? 1) You push the brake on your cart. 2) The cart is slowed from below or from the sides by central brakes as found on rollercoaster tracks, or by cushions constraining it from the side.

What if one car bumps into another ? The carts have a thick foam/gel/air cushion in front and in the back. Also, there is ALPHAGEL, which has shock absorbency characteristics so good, that a raw egg dropped from a building on top of a 2 inch sheet will not break ! The cars are intended to contact, they have low mass, thick cushions.

Why not run in visible plexiglas Hallitubes, like some segments in the images ? Plexiglas acts as a lens in sunlight, so we use it only for short stretches. The tube has windows, though, and large open segment to dissipate the turbulence generated by the cart.

Do Highway lanes have to be closed for Hallitube construction ? No. Even swapping obstructing signs with Hallitube-compatible signs can prob. be done from the side. In LA, there will be brief nighttime dulane closurese the the old narrow overpasses.

What about during the winter, when it gets freezing cold in some parts of the country ? Forced heated air is in tube, usage of cart based electric heaters. The turbulence characteristics of the cart determine the extent to which the tube could be heated.

What about the handicapped ? The Americans with Disabilities act is not all inclusive. Like motorcycles, hangliders, small airplanes, the outside rails of a SF cable car, or ski lifts, not all transportation systems are covered by the Act, and this system helps the handicapped as their vans are on time due to vehicle traffic reduction.

What are the costs of comparable transit solutions ? Las Vegas: $ 650 million for a 6-mile monorail. San Diego, 425 million for a 4 mile (UTC) light rail system extension planned. To get an idea where this comes from, consider the vehicles: the typical light rail car seats 50, and can hold 150 standing, and costs a million dollars. Light rail cost in California has been calculated to come to $42,000,000 per mile (sic) (and sick!).

Won't drivers electrocute themselves on the third rail ? No. This is the "ATMCD" or a "tiny movement causes disaster" principle: But you accept that when driving in a two-way line with your car, making a false 10 inch movement on your wheel will kill you immediately as you enter opposing traffic. In addition, most positioning themes we are looking at make it impossible to reach the third rail, at least while in the cart.

What would be a practical example of a San Diego deployment ? These are urban planning issues under discussion with community leaders, and depend on surveys. Basically we want to make point-to-point connections on I-5/805 between downtown, industrial areas and residential areas. Chula Vista has a massive new suburban neighborhood of upper middle class homes, they all commute away from there. UTC is completely congested also. The referendum calls for precise user surveys before a private entity commits itself to line construction.

Isn't the real killer of this project and public transit in general that people still have a distance to go once they have used it, and before they can use it ? Hallitubes end directly in neighborhood homes/apartments, you can leave a bike or scooter there, but soon an endpoint will be so close you will walk. Keep in mind that much has changed in recent years in the personal transit engineering world. The Segway scooter attracted vast financing, and there are Chinese clones w.o. the balancing feature available providing a similar ride for about $ 280. For $ 90 - 175 fast and responsive long-running electric scooters are available. These do not take up much space, and are parked easily at the Hallitube endpoint, typically a garden if in a residential area, or dedicated rooms. Bikes are another healthier way to make the ride. The fitness movement and the realization that we are all overweight is an additional incentive to set aside the ride to the station. For wealthy 20 year olds, there are powerful electric skateboards with remote controls available now. It goes w.o. saying that sidewalk improvement in the area will be taken on by the initiative, as well as assurance of the right to use scooters and bikes on sidewalks, as is done smoothly and without complaints in Asian countries. (In Korea, obnoxiously, heavy motorcycles are ridden briskly on sidewalks for brief distances.) We don't have to go that far, but we need to implement a simple code of behavior for the rider and the passenger in these instances.

Specifically, what is the throughput/profit of one of your pipes, in the first point-to-point installation - say a San Diego to Carlsbad line ? (This is unrelated to comparative throughput speed at a given point on a highway, as we are counting exit and entry) A user queue is dissipated at a rate of one rider every 15-20 seconds, 3 departures per min., 180 per hr., 2880 per 16 hr day, with a quadtube 11520 per transit day, about 4 million per 340 day transit year. The fee will be about $ 5.00 per ride, w.o. cost of qualifying exam, so a unidirectional quad setup generates twenty million dollars per year. Add a return tube, and you get 40 million on a small investment. The 20 second exiting rate is facilitated by conveyors moving carts laterally from the arrival area. Note that at first thought, this is quite slow compared to a busy highway lane, but remember that it includes something we are not counting when measuring automobile highway throughput: the time to open automobile door, backing out of the parking lot, going into forward gear. This can be more than 20 seconds in many parking lots, but is not included when we measure pure US highway lane throughput. We included it here because it affects the profit of a given highway , i.e. more money for this specific route user segment could not be made, entry into the tube is the limiting factor. Note that this measures one exit and entrance only, which is overconservative. However, this is not the throughput of the highway Hallitube system. For this, see below.

One can also use a single tube as two-way tube, drastically reducing the cost. Unlike in the above
example, using a tube with single endpoints spread out through a Y fork, one gets much higher
throughput as the switch can handle 10-20 carts at once, so the tube has actually 3-4 physical ends
at the same endpoint.

What is the comparative highway throughput, looking at a lane of traffic vs. a single hallitube ?

Carts shaped like rockets, with the driver recumbent, and having little air resistance will travel at peak speeds of 120 mph between exits, and at lower speeds after exits (acceleration phase) and before exits (braking phase). Carts have inflatable/gel packs in the front and back and are intended to touch when coming to complete halts. Under full, rather than initial utilization of the system, departing drivers are grouped in packs for a given exit (each tube only has a third of highway exits) to minimize periods of "switch ownership" by individual carts, thereby maximizing exit and entry from and into the main track. Throughput therefore forms a curve with a high plateau between exits, with carts passing a point every 2 seconds while still maintaining significant separation, and slowing briefly to about 8-12 seconds near the exits, depending on whether the rider composition was in a "pack". When comparing a Hallitube throughput with a highway lane, it should be noted that the density and effectiveness of the highway lane is not derived from a single, but from many exits that have contributed cars to it. Similarly, the major Hallitube arteries running as Quads or more alongside modern highways have received input from more than one exit, thus the car throughput is much higher than the throughput-profit example above, which measured the interval necessary to put a cart onto the system to determine how much money could be made from that route. We have 3d simulations illustrating exit and entry into the system, from all viewpoints.

Should Hallitube throughput be compared to highways or lightrail ?

Comparisons are complex, because the speed of highway lanes varies, both regionally and by lane position. Additionally, the de-congesting effect of a Hallitube project obviously varies with the number of congested lanes on the "competing" highway: the more there are, the smaller the effect of the tubes. In addition, in some areas of LA, only a single tube fits under the very narrow overpasses built in the 50's, so there, a tube looks good as a lightrail alternative only. However, many national and international highways are two or three lane systems, often in mediums sized SMAs (standard metropolitan areas), and here a Hallitube-quad makes a massive difference in congestion. The critical point though is that a Quad system can convey its drivers faster, and closer to their neighborhood than a light rail system, and the money is spent largely in the US. Also, the cart portion of the system is extensible in case of "peak-oil" the widely feared quadrupling of the oil price in which we all will have to crush 5 people to a car to get to work. What is the density of the tube system we are using to compare it to a highway or light rail ? The point is that a single tube by itself is profitable, and that this alone is sufficient reason to build it, even though it by itself does not remove that much traffic from a highway. With one tube being demonstrated as profitable, investor willingness to build additional tubes, and to invest in automation goes up, and with multiple tubes running alongside highways the critical 30% of vehicle reduction can be achieved, bringing the highway back up to the speed limit during rush hour. However, the initial justification for a Hallitube system is always that it is much preferable to light rail.

What about building an express line from SD to Las Vegas - or to S.F. ? Not impossible, and very fast, but there may be riding comfort and remote area issues.

How about a San Diego LAX line ? Works, but will still take almost an hour, and suitcases, like in Japan, must be transported to LAX earlier by a service. There is considerable interest in building a billion dollar Maglev line running above 5. We are not certain whether the $ 127 million per mile price quoted by the advocates includes the elevation or is the pure Maglev price. Also, the maglev would take a decade, whereas the Hallitube there can be built in a fraction of the time as it is not elevated, and just a metal rail going under, rather than over, overpasses.

What is the overall profitability time frame ? The third year. It will take one year or about 9 months to complete the design and build carts, but we believe tube construction for a point-to-point system as mentioned above can be done in a matter of 4 months, and the carts can be produced very rapidly as many of the parts already exist, with only the fairing and frame and pantograph custom designed.

Why not build the well-documented high-speed gondola system recently profiled in LA Times Magazine ? Based on images provided by the web site, the gondolas would not fit under highway underpasses, or would interfere with a lane. But building them over underpasses would mean a 3-4-story height because trucks driving on the overpasses have to clear them at least by a yard. This height necessitates huge pylons, extremely difficult and expensive to work on because of the altitude. Also, this system is not intended to be user-skill based. The gondolas are intended to stay on the line, and this vastly increases the complexity and cost of stations.

Would we not see such as system first in Europe or Japan ? The reason the PC came from the US to Europe is that the US population "adopts" new things more readily than Europe and Japan. The successful implementation of Hallitubes requires that religious and business groups join together to find a common advantage, this is most likely to happen in California. The European population does not allow itself to be influenced well, and has adequate transit used by the middle class. In Japan/Korea too, public transit is almost fancy, and has a safe atmosphere. After the US establishes a standard here, this system will then become fashionable, and can be established elsewhere. California continues to initiate trends for the world. Heavy licensing fees will be paid to the United States, if only to atone for non-participation in our oil-securing international adventures, though this won't be said openly. ;-)

Would a thin structure not vibrate itself to death from the cart passage ? The structure is similar to what is called a "deadweight bridge", but still heavier. This refers to a structure which largely has to support itself, with the carrying weight maybe 1/8 of its own weight. You have to imaging that there are large gokarts in a line of about one every 10 meters at peak capacity. Yet the structure could hold a 100 in the space between pylons. Concrete has a fabulous capacity to resist compression, and expansion is prevented by the principle of pre-stressing, in which it is wrapped with tightened cables. If it were not for overpasses, such a structure could hold sedan cars in the same spacing, offering a new, elevated lane. The passage of the carts is "not noticed" by the mixture of steel and concrete. Metal would also work, as it does in rollercoasters. The behavior of the structure can be predicted mathematically with perfection. We will move from very conservative to "less conservative" in implementing the system. Due to the thinness of the structure, if excess pylon separation is discovered late, additional support girders can be added later under the stressed section. By building thin you buy modifiabilitylater on.

Is this another scheme to extract funds from religious groups, like in El Toro, where LDS and other churches were robbed to the tune of 100 million, or the Kantner San Diego case where the money was diverted abroad ? We do not accept money from individuals or congregations, and we publicly display where we put money. This is only for VC funds, which tend to make their money through the appreciation of their holdings after a public offering. Once the public can buy stock, accounting is exchange regulated. All persons affiliated with this system live in middle class circumstances and would not want to exchange that life for becoming fugitives. Venture capital funding will be announced on the site.

Will people like and use this ?
We are currently conducting an opinion poll, in which we merely ask: "In order to save 30 minutes on a hour+ commute, would you be willing to travel at high speeds in a small cart at the height of a telephone pole, inside a tube, and take a day long license examination to do it ? Generally, we get an aggressive "of course" from young people. Amazingly, two young looking 60 and 61 year olds we asked also insisted that they wanted to use it, even though we are not aiming at this population segment. So far, the only "no" came from a young women who said she was scared and does not go onto any amusement park ride. It should be kept in mind that taking the tube also avoids the "cruising for parking" segment at the end of any automobile trip.

The problem is that people really are not concentrated enough at a central point, and leaving to a central point , for this to be profitable, isn't it ? (This objection is not unique to Hallitubes, but to Light Rail in general. ) Let's take two examples..1) The Costa Verde/UTC housing area in San Diego. Here are at least eight huge, high-end apartment complexes and condominiums grouped close together, and lots of private homes. Masses of people who live there line up for highway 5. Sometimes the entrance congestion is so high that the queue forming there blocks sidestreet access, so instead of joining the queue, you may have to turn, drive to the end of the queue and make a u-turn there. With this high density, a destination study is made, and it is likely that UCSD ,Torrey Pines research park, as well as downtown and Kearny Mesa Industrial area are targets. 2) Waikiki to the North Shore in Hawaii. Much of the route is over a single lane highway, and parking at the North Shore is absolutely missing. Once people are at the North Shore, they all go to the same nearby locations. There are lots of examples like this throughout the nation. Note that with the cheap cost of fast, battery operated scooters, renting people one is not an issue anymore, and will become part of the system membership.

Other PRT systems have physical test tracks, you can see people get into them, and yet they don't get approved. Contrast your's with the others. (See also our Hallitube/PRT comparison chart) Three huge differences: 1) Speed (Appeal - it feels like a rush, people pay $ 40 per ride on rollercoasters to experience this) 2) Cart availability at peak times. (3) Hallicart size. (See image, the little green carts at the wall are Hallicarts, the red boxes are PRT cabins) What makes Hallitubes profitable is that a commuting system mainly involves unidirectional rushes, exhausting local cart supply. All the other PRT systems are based on cabins. Now think of a large suburban station for a PRT system, serving a 2 mile radius. Where are you putting those carts ? They have to be in place and ready. You can't be waiting for them to arrive. As standard PRT systems are non-portable (ours can be pulled on special wheels on its side, but it is heavy) you now need a massive structure to hold these PRT cabins. They won't fit into existing buildings. They are big on top and slim at the wheels and fall over if not held by a track structure. Standard PRT systems are automatic. So you end up with an automated dedicated station having to hold about 300 big boxes. Where exactly are you putting those ? When you look at the common cabin PRT simulation you see all these stations. There are lots of them and they are each massive. Where do you want to put them, how will you pay for it. It is not profitable if it has to consume space and requires new construction.

These automated system will for safety reasons always be conservative, speed wise. So now your commute takes longer than the old, pre-congestion car commute. Now consider an electric motor breakage, discovered in the morning at the station. Because users cannot take the cabin off the track, (it would take 4 to lift one) you now need (within this storage area) another expensive switch to take dead motors out of the queue. Before you know it, you have a small train station. All we have is two tube ends, with each having a conveyor at the end, and winches on the walls for high density cart storage. The secret is, we are having unpaid workers: the participants. This choice uses a carefully honed feature the US has and Europe lacks: harmony and cooperation through a more peer based upbringing, together with a high rate of self-reported religious affiliation, which to sociologists means good compliance behavior. So. we don't have test tracks, and we are a bit grungy: we save on automation, but our tubes make money for the owners. And it takes profits as an attractant to get these systems rapidly replicated in each city.

How do you resolve cart shortages (i.e. one commuter did not drive home with a hallicart, leaving you one short at the surburban location in the morning)

With the gear in idle, the carts are so easy to push and light that a single cart can push a whole group w.o. riders late at night to rebalance a suburban station. Since this is really a private system, users get credit for communicating their use intent via cell phone or computer, and cart availability can be interrogated from cell phones or PCs and be seen some distance from the station. As the tubes have many open sections to decrease pressure buildup in front of the carts, a gasoline based high-torque cart can also be used to return carts in larger number in one drive. Generally speaking, commuting users will return from their commute with their cart, as they have no vehicle and Hallitubes will tend to be deployed where there is no light rail yet. Early on, for simplicity, one can penalize a non-returning user simply by asking him to commute one way by bus or carpool the next morning.

How do you handle electrical fires in these enclosed tubes ? First, the tubes are not fully enclosed, there will be many open sections as turbulence studies will dictate. Second, the motor of the cart has thin metal coverings which do not directly touch flammable plastics. We are looking at placing the motor in front: using this positioning the rider will get an early "whiff" of overheating, and the there is nothing that can be ignited near the motor. Should the tube be firebombed, or some other unforeseen cause result in dense smoke and fire, this system is much preferable to a buried tube. The rider pops off the fairing/windshield, he sits up. The top of the tube has a breakable portion thick enough to let a rider climb out. After breaking this out, he can either climb on top of the tube and secure himself with one of many supplied belts either from his Hallicart or from the tube ceiling itself. He then walks or slides toward the next pylon. The whole procedure is trained under realistic conditions (with smoke and shouting) during the training. In the remote case that the user is stuck in the condensed portion of the tube where it crosses overpasses, the rider either has to slide his cart back, or forward, and if that is not possible, pull himself on top of his cart and the next cart and so on until after a few meters where the top of the tube is no longer covered by the overpass. The Austrian ski train accident, where 140 users perished in an enclosed tunnel is no possible analogy to Halllitubes for three reasons: 1) The passengers were untrained and walked up (capturing the toxic gases), 2) The fire was started by installing home fans with plastics near a leaking, open hydraulic oil line, which caused the fire, and 3) It happened inside a mountain, rather than in a tube designed to be opened and escaped from.

Before we support this, should it not be "demonstrated" ? Rollercoasters have been in existence since the 19th century. The practice of using small carts on rails is well established. So is switching rail vehicles. The performance and endurance of electric motors is known, and is improving constantly. Simulation systems exist to demonstrate traffic capacity by input of specific parameters. The only things that have to be determined in advance are usage levels, perhaps by pre-committment, and by commuter destination surveys. Otherwise there is nothing to demonstrate. Remember Plato's notion that ideas existed separately. This is like that. It is deductive, and can be derived from existing technologies. Almost more critical than the technology is the political preparation: 1) A debate on how to get to the Hallitube endpoint. (Local sidewalk-use ordinances may need to be reviewed, and 2) Methods to determine eminent domain application in case owners of large apartment complexes do not voluntarily want to rent a few adjacent units to the system. But none of the many engineers we have spoken to were able to point to a technological flaw.

If you store the carts condensed in apartments functioning as stations, won't the holders of the winches rip out of the ceilings ?
The winches are only assist the user in pulling the cart to an upright position, but the cart is not suspended from the winch. The weight is on the wheels, or on the buffer front or rear portion of the cart. So the stress on the ceiling is only during the few seconds the cart is aligned upright. If the ceiling turns out to be too soft, one can easily place a cube shaped aluminum bar cage into the apartment to hold the winches. Cheaper than buying land and building stations, by a factor of 10.

You use rider-trigger central switches. Other PRT systems propose to put the actual switching mechanism in the cabin, i.e the cabin forces the realignment. Is that not a better idea ? Well, if you have 800 cabins in that system, how many cabin-born switches can fail ? Rail switches are simple substitution devices, you can power them with two separate motors, and a weight-based forced either-or-return, i.e. no middle position. If a switch failure happens, users will NOT be constrained by the tube, in those areas they can walk upright to the switch an manually reset it if necessary. Switch portions have stairs and are easily accessible from the outside.

You want to convert the carts to be steerable in a major oil crisis. Isn't that pretty complicated given how condensed and tight fitting they are now ? The smaller a vehicle, the more road space there is for a larger turning radius. We are not looking to install steering wheels, but instead will use two handles at the rear to control wheel position in the first version, replacing an axle system, but not adding a complex steering column. Remember that Hallicarts, given conformance to General Transit specifications, can be supplied by private vendors. There will be intense competition to improve these vehicles and sell them to users.

Should the flow-thru of this system not be simulated to gain more certainly about its capacity ? Yes, and luckily, these simulations already exists. The PRT sites of the University of Texas and other advanced transit sites contain such simulations you can watch as AVI movie. This system is similar in that you have local tracks leading to stations connected to express tracks, and the vehicles loop back and forth. The diagram below shows tube space vs. Hallicart group length, 100 carts waiting. It is important to remember that PRT (individual cabins) is a concept that has been simulated for some time, with similarly-sized routes and rider expectations.
tubecongestion

Finally a question to you from us:

For the last 100 years the assumption has been made that rail transit has to involve the rider as a passive passenger. Anything having to do with vehicle management was either delegated to personnel or to automation. Laboring under this assumption, nothing new has happened in the last 40 years, really. Can you see that if one takes a completely different approach, and trains the public in the same way as for a license test, the design options for transit systems suddenly multiply, and system complexity declines. This system annoys some transit engineers, and is probably experienced as painful by people who planned systems in the last decade while laboring under the old assumptions. By converting the passenger into a controlling rider, we have violated a sacred, but unoticed assumption about transit. But, right now, there are 60 cars lined up to get on a highway that itself is not moving. We need to try unorthodox things. At stake is not only the flow of commerce, but the perception that our elites are no longer managing their own house. Won't you take a risk here and do whatever you can to help ? Favor our plans.

Please contact us by email for other questions. Major Media: Use the phone number provided on the press release we sent you. Please contact Mr. Maizlish only for major interviews.