from
WHOLE ELEPHANT QUARTERLY
Summer 2006
Copyright 2006 by William F. Wendt, Jr.
Permission granted for non-commercial use if propoer credit is given.
FLOODPROOF NEW ORLEANS AND REBUILD TRANSPORTATION
Chicago Angles; Landswap The New Orleans airport remained dry, on
the one hand. On the other hand, who is dumb enough to believe that
anything will reliably patch the broken levees, especially the
crumbly clay, as exposed on PBS News-Hour and seconded by the
American Society of Civil Engineers?
At a late 1980s meeting to oppose a near west side Chicago
football stadium, a neighborhood old-timer said the suburbanites
returning to the city wanted to get away from the flooding out there,
much more than in the city itself. That means both the returning
suburbanites and inner-city Chicagoans are considerably smarter than
the New Orleaneans who want to rebuild flood ravaged neighborhoods in
the same place.
Checking out other stadium sites, the best one in particular, an
abandoned railroad yard being saved for still unrealized upscale
housing, led yours truly into investigating urban renewal.
That sort of thing can be fought, if people study their history
and get their heads together, but this is unfoolable Mother Nature.
There is simply no way to flood-proof the great extent of New
Orleans. Southeast Louisiana was formed by sediment washed down for
eons by the Mississippi. For eons it had been settling ever lower and
topped by incoming sediment. That is, until new sedimentation was
disrupted over the past century or so by development, supposedly
protected by ever extended levees and massive but inadequate pumps.
Such a disaster had been predicted for years. The 18th century
French nobleman who originally located the town was criticized for
putting it in such a precarious location.
Isn't the second one at least as predictable as the first? Maybe
even this year?
Is the rest of the country supposed to shed tears and cough up
more billions on that one too?
The former housing stock of New Orleans is now fit only for
landfills. Unless built on pontoons, any new or rebuilt housing stock
there could easily wind up the same way.
Or merely jacked up, as were buildings in 19th century Chicago to
get them out of the swamp. Two or three feet shouldn't be too bad,
but eight or ten or more in much of the town?
Why rebuild neighborhoods on the same land? Why not put new
housing on the airport land that remained dry? In recent yearsflooded
towns have been rebuilt outside flood plains; Valmeyer, Ill., south
of St. Louis, is one example.
Don't put anything in a flood plain that would be such a tragedy
if it got flooded.
And since the neighborhoods, industry, and transportation have to
be rebuilt anyway, why not look at a flood-proof form of
transportation?
Why not rebuild around a new, so far little tried form of
transportation, one that can do much more for much less?
Let's see how that little tried transit technology could sustain
a comfortable high density for the evacuated, carless poor.
Or simply make better use of existing airports. Every city needs
air travel, with one-third of its economy built on tourism, New
Orleans especially. It is a bit hard, of course, to plan airports or
anything else from 900 miles away, so these are only general
suggestions.
It is quite easy to describe a form of transportation, however,
that only needs columns every eighty feet or so on the ground, not
another swath through city or countryside, creates little or no
disruption of adjacent activities,
and creates many unrealized possibilities. It could allow diversion
of air traffic to Baton Rouge, sixty miles away, with a half hour
ride into New Orleans, faster than into most cities. What an entrance
into an exotic, romantic city!
A high speed intercity version could actually replace much air
travel and make a lot of airport capacity unnecessary, while using
existing highways and rail lines.
Other traffic might be diverted to the New Orleans municipal
airport, already built on fill in the lake, and other small, close-in
airports around the country. Let's try a long-proven aircraft that
can use much smaller airports, has a much greater safety margin at
cramped airports, uses much less fuel, is quiet, and is almost as
fast in the air. This same aircraft could also allow some airport
land to be used for housing while using the rest as an airport, at
least temporarily.
Let's look at a revival of seaplanes. Few population centers are
more than 100 miles from a large body of water; the Navy had a jet
seaplane minelayer in the 1950s that was faster and more efficient
than Air Force bombers of the day.
Given the troubles the airlines are having generally and the
problems with new airport construction, why not some other approach?
It is said that Chernobyl discredited the Soviet government and
contributed to its collapse. Katrina is raising similar questions
here.
Floodproof, Snowproof Transportation
There are monorails and there are monorails. This one is not the
Disneyland or Seattle type.
This monorail technology is flood-proof (and snow-proof), with
all major systems well above ground. An early installation at the
Miami Seaquarium survived hurricanes for thirty years. Yours truly
was in New Orleans in late 1963 when it had a three inch snowfall,
the largest ever at the time, and the place
went into a tizzy.
The vehicle is both propelled and suspended by a sort of
glorified clock motor. There is little more to a linear induction
motor than the grade school experiment in which a kid wraps wire
around a nail and makes an electromagnet. Such motors have long been
used in industry to move metals directly, from powders to ingots,
without intervening machinery. About 3/8" under a steel beam, it
exerts a magnetic force along the beam and about ten times as much
toward it. Acting directly on the beam, it does not need wheel-rail
traction.
Such a motor can easily handle highway grades if necessary. Heat from
eddy currents in the beam melt any snow or ice. Not quite pure
maglev, this technology uses caster wheels over and under the lower
flanges of the beam to keep it from falling or clamping up.
Maglev with training wheels?
The suspended vehicle does not need elaborate suspension or
braking systems, those replaced by the linear induction motor. It
could be standardized and mass-produced. Thus it only costs about as
much as a bus of similar capacity, about a half or a third as much as
a rail car.
The structure is a single overhead steel I-beam, supported every
eighty feet or so. It casts a shadow only two or three feet wide. It
costs about one-tenth as much as an elevated rapid transit structure,
not much more than a busway after land costs. It is inexpensive
enough to pay for itself with land value capture, without federal
funding. It does between buildings what elevators do between floors,
making about as much noise.
Underneath the beam,
the vehicle does not need heavy, elaborate structure to keep it from
tipping. Do you carry a bucket of water from above or below?
The power, 440 volt AC for city transit applications, is picked
up, not by sliding contact, but by induction from insulated wires,
with a moving transformer of sorts. It can also put power back into
the line quite easily. The operating expense of the automated system
would be little more than electricity and security.
The motor and controls are on top of the vehicle, ten feet or so
above the floor. The floor is normally fifteen feet or so above
ground level, although it need only be inches, if desired. Either
way, only the most extraordinary
floods or snow will ever be a problem.
The vehicle could be a skid that a bus could drive on and off.
There could be 30 mile, single-seat rides, one hour bus stop to bus
stop, with computer-matched riders. A switching mechanism (unlike
most other monorails) would allow express runs to by-pass local
service.
A heavy-duty version could get a lot of trucks off the road and
facilitate urban industrial development. Industry has long gone to
the suburbs for room to expand, but this technology could let
factories miles apart function as one. The conflicts that hamstring
high speed rail simply do not exist. The capital and operating costs
would be incomparably less than new rail routes with high speed
equipment.
Such a monorail could be built over existing expressways and
offer high speed service, freight and passenger, 200 mph or more. Its
speed is limited only by the safety and comfort of passengers.
Vehicles with standing passengers can only accelerate 3 miles per
hour per second, or 1/10 gravity. NASA is looking at a version to
launch satellites (Mechanical Engineering, Feb. 2000), the Navy to
catapult aircraft from aircraft carriers. (Invention and
Discovery, Spring 2006)
Transit for High-Density Housing
High density residential development got a bad name with the
tenements of a century ago and public housing high rises of recent
decades. High density housing does not have to be a pesthole,
however; just look at luxury high-rises .
There are profound advantages to high-density housing, even, or,
especially, for the poor, if properly handled. Shopping and many
services are likely within walking distance. Job and business
opportunities need not be so far away. Utility lines are much shorter
and less expensive. Large multi-unit buildings have less surface area
per unit, requiring less heating and cooling. In redeveloping inner
cities, it does not gobble up cornfields and orange groves.
What is the realistic alternative, more suburban sprawl?
The immediate problem is parking, more generally, the automobile.
There are physical limits to the density the automobile can support,
known as far back as World War II, Helen Leavitt, Superhighway,
Superhoax, or known as easily as getting caught in a suburban traffic
jam. High density housing needs some other form of transportation. It
has to do between buildings what an elevator does between floors.
Buses have obvious limitations, notably getting caught in traffic
and several coming at once. Special bus lanes need too much land.
Housing is built around transportation. Delores Hayden, Building
Suburbia. "Streetcar suburbs," as she calls them, were quite
successful a century ago, if not really that high a density, and
still are today, even without streetcars. They, too, however, get
caught in traffic, and require expensive
tracks and trolley wire.
Grade separated rapid transit offers high speed and capacity. It
is, however, very expensive, especially in a subway. Older steel
girder elevated structures are noisy and obtrusive; newer concrete
troughs with railroad ballast are quiet but extremely bulky. Stations
are also bulky and impractical less than a half-mile apart.
There is a people mover technology with automated rubber tire
vehicles, each operating on two reinforced concrete beams. Each beam
is about four feet high and ten inches wide, held aloft by columns
about eighty feet apart. Columns and stations are the only footprint.
There is no conflict with traffic.
Boarding at the enclosed stations is like getting on an elevator,
through two sets of sliding doors. A 1.4 mile example of this
technology effectively unifies the Clarian hospitals in Indianapolis
with a 5 minute ride.
The concrete beam structure, however, cannot allow switching from
one track to another. Each vehicle can only shuttle back and forth on
its own track. A top speed about 28 mph limits this rubber tire-
concrete beam technology to short trips.
The monorail beam is much lighter and less obtrusive than just
one people mover beam, Without track and running gear underneath, the
vehicle floor is four feet or more closer to street level. It need
only be inches above the street, if desired, for stations at street
level, say, at a shopping center. The headways could be much less
than rapid transit, allowing shorter trains and less obtrusive
stations. Vehicles could be built for fifty passengers or more, if
desired, thus allowing similar capacity or greater.
Such a technology should facilitate comfortable, convenient high
density residential development at a reasonable cost. .
The table below is calculated on constant acceleration of 3
mphps, or 1/10 gravity. Distance in feet is 1.5 seconds squared.
Average speed is half the speed at any instant.
sec v (ft/sec) v(mi/hr) vav(ft/sec) vav(mi/hr)
sec2
d(ft)
d(mi)
10 30 20.5 15 10.3 100 150 .028
20 60 40.9 30 20.5 400 600 .113
30 90 61.4 45 30.7 900 1350 .255
40 120 81.8 60 40.6 1600 2400 .455
50 150 102.3 75 51.7 2500 3750 .710
60 180 122.7 90 61.4 3600 5400 1.022
At 51 seconds the vehicle has gone 3/4 mile and reached a speed
of 153 mph. Thus it covers a mile and a half course, as in
Indianapolis, in 102 seconds, stop to stop, decelerating at the same
rate.
With a speed limit of 60 mph, the 1.5 mile distance takes 120
seconds.
With flat floors, the centrifugal force around curves would also
be limited to 1/10 g. Elevators, however, can accelerate 1/8 g. The
suspended monorail vehicle, swinging like a pendulum around curves
and pressing occupants into the floor, not along it, could thus take
curves that much faster.
Electra-fy the Airlines
Why not free up dry airport land for New Orleans housing? And why
not use close-in airports, not the least of which is Meigs?
The Electra is a 1950s turboprop that was quickly overshadowed by
jets back then. For today's needs, however, it is a long proven
aircraft that lands at about two-thirds the speed of jets, with half
the momentum. Thus it has much greater margins of safety in cramped
airports such as Midway.
It is also much quieter, uses much less fuel, and is almost as
fast in the air.It is the only large airliner quiet enough for the
Lake Tahoe airport.
The Electra was designed to be profitable on stages 100 to 3000
miles and use small airports. It flies almost 400 mph, thus giving
away little to 500 mph jets on short hops, much less if using small,
close-in airports.
Before going into O'Hare or Midway an Electra could easily stop
at Gary or a restored Meigs. If we really need south suburban
service, it could get into a slightly expanded Lansing airport,
rather than blow hundreds of millions on a Peotone boondoggle and
devastate the area. It could also stop at Rockford or Milwaukee,
where airport capacity, like Gary, goes unused.
Thus passengers could change planes at three airports or
disembark at a more convenient destination without changing at all.
The extra stops would take less time and bother than getting off one
plane and on another at a monster like O'Hare. Even the Chicago
Transit Authority does not make riders transfer all at one place. A
restored Meigs would be an extraordinarily convenient Chicago
destination.
Figure, again, the Electra would have plenty range to continue
another 500 miles or more, to, say, the Twin Cities, Omaha, or Kansas
City.
See the extensive article in the May 2003 Airpower on the
Electra. Also see Boyne, Beyond the Horizon: The Lockheed Story, that
it was designed by the same team as the C-130 Hercules. One is a
commercial airliner, the other a military assault transport that
needs a loading floor close to the ground. Yours truly once saw the
Hercules for the Navy Blue Angels land on the 3900' Meigs runway and
use barely half of it.
The Navy P-3 Orion patrol plane, in production for 40 years, is
merely an Electra with a shorter fuselage, so retooling is not a
problem. Orions on research flights into hurricanes rode smoothly
enough for people to walk in the aisles. The "short, rigid wings seem
to soak up turbulences, like a racing car suspension." Air & Space,
Aug/Sept 1999
The jet that crashed at Midway, heading northwest, landed into a
substantial tailwind. It did not approach the other way, or so this
publication hears, because of conflicts with O'Hare traffic patterns.
Who knows, the Electra might allow less conflicting patterns.
Meanwhile, too, as James Fallows reported in his June 2001
Atlantic article and recent book, the overall average speed for "hub
and spoke" airline passengers is a whole sixty miles per hour. A
resurrected Electra could easily beat that and put short haul air
travel on an entirely different basis.
Wet Airports
"... 70 percent of the world's surface is covered with
water... 80 percent of the world's economic activity on land takes
place within 150 miles of the sea. Most of the world's capital cities
are situated on the coast or on the banks of a river... water runways
cannot be destroyed by natural disasters or bombs..."
So concludes David Oliver, Wings Over Water: A Chronicle of the
Flying Boats and Amphibians of the Twentieth Century, a well
illustrated but still quite inexpensive history of seaplanes. His
last chapter anticipates a rebirth of seaplanes, citing Canadian,
Russian, British, French, American, and Japanese
developments, including a proposed nifty 40 passenger Japanese
amphibian jet STOL feederliner.
Seaplane airliners had their heyday before World War II, when
large aircraft needed long take-off runs and airports were scarce.
After the war, however, airports were much more common and landplanes
had become much more capable.
The aircraft industry generally considered seaplanes less
efficient than landplanes, due to the weight and shape of their
hulls. In the late 1950s, nevertheless, the Navy tested the Martin
P6M-2 Seamaster, a four jet, 75 ton, Mach 1 minelayer, as efficient
aerodynamically as Air Force bombers (Knott, The American Flying
Boat: An Illustrated History) or more so (Wings, December 1986),
despite being a seaplane, even designed to operate continuously
off water.
Furthermore, the "blended body" airliners on the drawing boards
for twice the passenger loads of jumbo jets could easily be designed
as seaplanes with little weight or aerodynamic penalty.
Do we really need to expand O'Hare or confiscate some 23,000
acres for a Peotone airport, even assuming projected air travel
growth?
We already have, then, an "airport" in the lake, minus the
electronics and landing lights for aircraft and a few buoys to warn
watercraft, perhaps with sonar to warn of floating debris. We have
long had, of course, Meigs Field right on the lake and the Gary
airport not far away, plus various harbors that might be converted to
seaplane use. Who knows what seaplanes might do to airport
controversies in the Chicago area?
Or for reconstruction of New Orleans?
There were safety and weather objections to the proposed airport
in the lake of about 1970, to be surrounded by a dike. Thetraditional
problem of seaplanes, to be sure, is hitting floating debris. The
Russians have considered VTOL and ground effect ideas to allow
operation on ice.
In 1945 the Glenn Martin Co. proposed gigantic seaplane terminals
with U-shaped tugboats. Large, expensive airports and heavy landing
gear would both be unnecessary. Ice and waves did not present
insuperable problems. The Marine News, January 1945
Evacuation by Bicycle
What if the stranded New Orleans masses, too poor to own
automobiles, a few desperate enough to walk, had
bicycles? Let's do some back-of-the- envelope calculations.
For some years now Critical Mass bike rides in Chicago have
attracted several dozen to several hundred riders for lighthearted
rides of an hour or two, meandering around near downtown
neighborhoods. They generally average 5 mph or somewhat more. Mid-
winter rides to a polka bar on the other side of Midway, about eleven
miles, were considerably faster over more direct routes, about an
hour and a half on the road.
Ten hours of riding, thus, should get one out of a disaster
zone. No gas is necessary. As with getting around the city every day,
it beats waiting for a bus.
Figure each bike in such a convoy needs roadspace about fifteen
feet long and five feet wide. It can easily take fifteen minutes for
several hundred to pass by. That is still much more efficient use of
the roads than
automobiles.
Figure, too, that bicycle campers generally carry about 30 or
more pounds of gear. Bicycles with 500 pounds of gear were often
walked down the Ho Chi Minh trail.
There are various seats and trailers available for the younger
generation. Some even have pedals to help burn off the excess energy,
however long that lasts.
There is a bike winter movement in Chicago that encourages riding
in cold weather. It is much more practical than the uninitiated
realize. There is a website and a public instructional meeting around
Thanksgiving. What can you do with a bike that you can't with a car?
Carry it.
Bicycles can generally be carried in other vehicles, although
small cars without racks are a problem. They can be ridden
through several inches of water and walked though two or three feet,
although that has obvious hazards.
For such purposes one would avoid racing bikes with delicate
tires, also racing and mountain bikes with uncomfortable riding
positions. One would want rugged tires and an upright riding
position, probably a touring or hybrid bike.
A decent new bike can be had for about $300, used ones for less.
A bicycle can be easily replaced, of course, if necessary.
As with a battlefield situation, one would not want to face such
a situation unprepared and alone. Anyone who has not ridden a bicycle
for a while will have to develop some new muscles quick, physical and
mental.
There are lively bicycle social scenes in Chicago and elsewhere
that could accomodate total strangers in time of stress. Getting
acquain-ted beforehand would obviously be much to the better, for,
shall we say, a Critical Mess ride.
There has been considerable hue and cry about the neglect of poor
blacks in New Orleans, amidst speculation that the powers-that- be
would have been more concerned about whites. That speculation,
however, is speculation. Right or wrong, it could be very foolish for
white people or anyone else to rely on it, or on the tender concern
of any bureaucracy.
From here it seems the difference in neglect happened before
Katrina, not after. Not speculation is the white sheriff of
Plaquemines Parish saying they would have died if they waited for
federal aid and refusing to talk to FEMA representatives, nor the
white president of Jefferson Parish accusing the federal government
of murder. Don't expect centralized bureaucracies to care
about anything but themselves, but that is a continuing topic.
.
An article in the November 2005 Liberty said everyone in New
Orleans who had a car got out. To which yours truly sent a letter
which opened, as printed in the January 2006 Liberty:
"Has Randal O'Toole ever heard of Houston? Or Rita? Or the 100
mile traffic jam? Can the automobile really evacuate a whole city?
Sure, it might work when only part of the population uses it, "Riding
Out the Storm," November 2005. Hasn't he ever been caught in a
traffic jam?
His article on saving passenger trains in the April 2006 issue
got this response, in part:
"Not so trivial is citing some unnamed government source alleging
negligible subsidies for air and highway travel, as if they were
creations of a near
free market..."
"Nor is expecting an antiquated technology, even of such blessed
memory, to meet future needs. The thumbnail area of contact between
wheel and rail might be a hallmark of efficiency for hauling coal and
grain. For passenger vehicles, however, it requires large, rigid
masses in constant impact, concentrated stresses, complicated,
expensive suspension and braking systems, and tank-like structures
with million pound buff and draft capability for safety on the
main line...."
Add to Address Book 
Add Mobile Alert 
