Rolling Highways: Save money on gas, get there faster, and get there safer without having to drive.

[originalpckelly]

Even if you don't use this proposal, it will lower demand and thus lower gas prices.

Even if this period of high gas prices passes, then the speed and safety of this method travel will ensure this system would not go unused.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8faYMD8xlGE

[Mountainman]

1. We have autotrain

[originalpckelly]

2. Indeed we do.

But Autotrain is only the start!

This needs to be a system of trains that run along the interstate highway system, sort of like an ulta-fast lane.

[originalpckelly]

3. Plus, aside from Acela, AmTrak sucks ass.

:puke:

This would be a part of the DOT or a separate private company. I don't care, it's just the idea of running rail lines parallel to highways, to function as an ultra-fast lane.

[librechik]

5. Republican Congresses for last 16 years make sure that it does

by underfunding and bad-mouthing. Who knows how our train transportation systems would improve if we had a congress willing to make the investment in supporting rail travel and shipping. Other countries do it, why not us?

[Cleita]

4. Funny I always thought we should do something similar to this, but

let everyone have an individual car that they drive to the station and then get hooked up on the rails, kind of like riding ferry except on land. I don't know if it would be practical and workable though.

[Staph]

6. I'm waiting for the kind of moving sidewalk

described in Robert Heinlein's 1940 story "The Roads Must Roll". These "roadways" went long distances (the story takes place on the San Diego-Reno roadway), they carry passengers and freight (but you don't have your own separate vehicle), and they have a top speed of 100 mph. You board on a series of parallel moving strips, each one about five mph faster than the next.