today

My last post implied that there should be some improvement with regsrds to transportation. Clearly when we compare the motor car era to the horse and buggy era we notice that change can appear more of a compromise than it ultimately is. Early cars certainly had disadvantages that horse transport did not, and these took a long time to sort out. We know that in transportation a great step forward was taken with mobile phones, but even there the process was far from immediate and early mobiles were suitcase size which sounds impractical nowadays.

To allow physical motion, one way might be an improved electric autorickshaw with added safety features. Certainly the external aspects could also be stylised enough to provide status, if anyone bothered.The safety features might be the least of our problems (it could be argued that by adding doors, as in Goa, some attempts have been made already) but the obvious improvement might be to use a strong and well designed plastic shell. Obviously existing autoricks are rather impractical. They can't be used closer to Mumbai than Juhu already which looks wise, but they possibly aren't worth dramatic improvements unless for example they can be seen more easily by trucks and are powered electrically, say. Electric power would need an improved bettery source which is not yet available and whilst existing gas-powered vehicles using the cheaply modified petrol engines are a little environmentally better, a big further advantage in electric vehicles would be high reliability which is certainly not a characteristic of existing autoricks. A further improvement would be computerised central control perhaps along relatively predetermined paths or tracks, higher stability perhaps using a Segway-like gyro system and also a radar collision prevention system. These ideas are getting cheaper to implement. Soon implementation costs might not be much more than the cost of providing a mobile phone.A major expense is the shell and another could be provision of guidance tracks though that could probably be kept low as well. But so far there is no suitable battery and this determines success or failure, and ultimately the vehicle specifications. If money were spent on the tracks the ultimate efficiency of the battery might not be quite as important but I can see more problems and cost in providing tracks from a day to day practical viewpoint. Hopefully something like the nanotube battery (at present being developed at various sites such as M.I.T) will eventually come about but until it does the idea is possibly little more than the offer of a glimmer of hope. But at least there is hope that things can get better and other ways can be found too, I am sure.

Other alternatives such as doubledecker trains could be less desirable. Such trains work in low density areas like metropolitan France but where there is constant superheavy traffic they are not such a good idea. Provision of more tracks (e.g. two more tracks to as far as Virar on the Western region) would certainly be good and additional tracks to Virar are planned I think. But there is also the fact that land in such areas is hard to get and can be inconvenient to existing residents.