Nowadays wherever you go there are traffic jams,
petrol and diesel fumes, unpredictable travel time, and a lot of resultant
anger and frustration.
If you look closely at the cars, jeeps, and vans waiting at a traffic signal you might
just realize something very significant. Most
of these vehicles use just 25-60% of their seating capacity. So on an average, a
car with a seating capacity of 5 people will have just 2 to 3 people in it. Which
means, that if 100 cars fit on a stretch of the road, only 250-300 people are utilizing
that stretch, whereas 500 people could have done so!
What this boils down to is that on one hand we have traffic
jams, and on the other, the people
carrying capacity of roads is highly underutilized. This problem prevails
in many parts of the world to a greater or lesser extent.
Even more critical is the limited supply of fossil fuels. There have been attempts the world
over to use other forms of energy to run vehicles, but with not much success.
Now here is an idea:Why not have roads that move? Right now
the roads are stationary and we have vehicles running on them. But what if the
roads themselves moved? This concept is not so far-fetched, considering that we
already have moving escalators and walking strips at places like airports and
malls. But a moving road would be a true path-breaker; please excuse the pun.
How would a moving road help?
It would:
·
eliminate the need for vehicles for many people,
especially for distances that take upto 30 minutes to commute
·
reduce the current traffic jams, as fewer vehicles
on the road (with their frequently underutilized capacity feature) would free
the blocked space on the road
·
drastically reduce fuel consumption, especially
the kind of natural fuels required by vehicles
Design: It could
be designed like a conveyer belt, or something else. All you would then
have to do is step on to the road, stand or sit till you get to your destination, and then step off the road, as required. There
could even be lanes, with faster moving lanes on the inside and slower moving lanes
on the outside for people to step on or step off. You could also have some seats on the roads at suitable
intervals, for those who need to sit. Solar energy could be used to run them.
Of course there would be a host of practical problems resulting
from the installation of moving roads, but then when has this not been the case
with any new invention? What one needs to do is perform an analysis to evaluate
whether an idea has the capability to provide overwhelming benefit for
humankind.
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