INTRO: Last night, transportation planners and engineers met at the University of Michigan. U-M wants to build a train line to move around its campus. The challenge will be making it easy to get on and off. Michigan Now’s Chris McCarus reports.
For years, north campus felt far away from the main campus downtown. Then in 2007, Pfizer closed down its own campus even further north. The University acquired the land. Now, the university wants a campus train to link up and reuse these sprawling areas.
“It simply offers an opportunity for us as that property is populated, to ensure that there’s good connectivity and mobility.”
That’s planner Sue Gott. One of the speakers on last night’s panel was Chuck Fougnies. He says there have to be enough people walking nearby. But you can’t make them walk too far.
“Multiple access points are critical. If people can’t get to the train and get on it they’re not gonna use it.”
Fougnies’ modest train moves 2,000 people a day around 3 hospitals in Indianapolis. U-M’s might move 80,000. Richard Murphy works for the non-profit Michigan Suburbs Alliance. He says universities and hospitals cluster enough people in one place to make small trains worth the investment.
“Certainly it has applications for other places like the Woodward corridor with Wayne State and places like Kalamazoo or East Lansing.”
The Indianapolis train is called a people mover. Apparently, the name carries no stigma, as it does in Detroit.
Tubular Rail Inc. [www.tubularail.com] thought this transportation technology forum last night important enough that I made the drive from Columbus to Ann Arbor to be there to introduce our technology, and to share our story.
There may be no more important issue that truly touches of all us than – transportation.
With it, we have civilization. Without it, we don’t. It’s as simple as that.
The officers and board members of Tubular Rail Inc. asked me to express their appreciation to U-M President Coleman, for launching this exciting process — and for being in the audience to taste the first fruit from it. We also thank Prof. Patrick Spicer and the students who undertook this important effort for performing it. To Jim Kosteva, who set the right “thought” tone for the evening when he asked everyone to explore the possibility of new ideas, some which might make you go “Hummm?” pensively, on your way home, we thank for guiding the discussion and public comment section.
The train technology TR holds patents on in the U.S. and selected countries around the world is advanced in performance, but simple in concept. TR technology reverses the relationship between active and passive aspects that have historically defined conventional steel wheel railroads.
Seeing is understanding:http://www.tubularrail.com/video.htm
We think our train technology will simplify operations, reduce capital costs significantly by eliminating the need for a continuous guide way, offer an impact-sensitive approach to existing infrastructure and achieve speed and safety through grade-separation.
We also know it will create jobs across many labor categories, but especially manufacturing jobs. The 80,000 manufacturing jobs Michigan lost last year, when combined with the number Ohio lost, would fill to overflowing either the football stadium in Ann Arbor or Columbus.
Jobs are critical, but equally important is addressing the 3 Cs of climate change, congestion and cost of transportation, for here and in developing countries.
Last October, TR and potential private sector partners participated in a technology forum in Las Vegas, sponsored by UNLV’s school of engineering. Several weeks later, we received a letter from UNLV inviting us to come build our demonstration prototype on land Nevada owns, that would be converted to a transportation demonstration park state, sort of a Disneyland for transportation innovators like TR to come play in.
How you think about transportation, especially trains, is key to understanding that the train of yesteryear, no matter how romantic it seems, for good reasons should not be the train technology of tomorrow.
TR technology represents a breakout from status quo transportation. We are a game changer, a paradigm shift from anything currently being used.
The people at The Discovery Channel and Popular Science found us interesting enough to include TR in a show on “future trains” and a feature article on rebuilding America’s crumbling infrastructure. As excited as we were that these visionaries saw our merits, we really got excited when 5th graders in Oregon, working in a science competition, explored us, thought we were cool and built a working model of TR out of Legos.
By pursuing this process, U-M will set itself apart from others, like its Big Ten rival in Columbus which hasn’t seen the future yet, as a real leader in transportation. We’ve seen nothing new for over 60 years.
All we are saying is that there has got to be a better way, one that respects property rights yet meets the need for acceptable pricing. Detroit put the world on wheels. Maybe it’s time the world gets off them.
By the looks of what Michigan Congresswoman Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick thinks about linking Ann Arbor with Detroit with a commuter rail system, TR intends to continue to contribute to this process, so regional transportation goals might be achieved along with local plans to leader by doing.
Our technology, which is cost competitive because we eliminate the need for tracks and is fast, green, effective, not disruptive and, is ready , will induce modal shift because we;re fast in speed and offer impact-sensitive deployment that can fly over infrastructure ,ment and fast to rungame changer -
We love technoogy forums because they offer us an opportunity to introduce leaders, academic, private and public, to our revolutionary “trackless train” technology, patented in the U.S. and selected nations around the world, that uses existing transportation technologies in a new way. TR reverse the relationships, that reduces capital costs, flys over infrastructure with minimal disruption, is propelled by electricity, above grade, so assure safety and speeds of 150 mph, , of which there are a paucityintroduce Tubular RailSpeaking as the director of Ohio