Transit Structures - Linking people and transportation
To travel around the world, people use a variety of methods that employ a variety of technologies. We use wheels, combustion, airfoils, magnetic repulsion, bouyancy, and bi-pedal actuation. We sometimes use quadripedal actuation, and it is often in the leisure capacity. No matter how we get around as individuals, we often have to travel in large groups using a common conveyance. Our culture therefore uses an infrastructure of transit systems that are comprised of roads, rails, shipping lanes, flight corridors, interstate highways, canals, waterways, bike paths, horse trails, and walkways. We share these public accessways with neighbors, visitors, and commuters. Reaching our point of destination is usually the most challenging aspect of using these systems. They are vast evolving networks whose capacity varies hourly, daily, and seasonally. The use and capacity is often predefined, and rarely in agreement with the demands. The challenge of any complex network is adaptation.
People and behaviours are very often the most complex design element to any structure. The range of users and their very make up across a variety of design elements make them the biggest square peg for the round hole solution. People use the transportation infrastructure uniquely. Each person sees transportation as a personal experience that must address their specific needs and demands. It must provide personal service, minimize the time commitment and be responsive to the demands of their schedule. Transporation must be reliable, safe, robust, and be capable of addressing the various states of the user when they change their function from individual, shopper, parent, mover, partner, business trraveler, vacationer, athlete, and first time user. Getting people the varied amounts of space, comfort, and reliability is easy when you set the rules under which they must operate. The challenges faced include getting the people from a central hub or station and providing the means for them to access businesses, services, and their homes within a reasonable distance. The solution to this challenge is often addressed with the following:
- Multi-modal transit stations
- Single mode transit stations (bus, taxi, train)
- Rental vehicles (taxis, buses, shuttles, cars)
- Airport trams, lightrail
- Subway, elevated light rail, monorail
The infrastructure that links these elements all together are the roadways and highways that interlace across the entire continent. So the question becomes one relating to the “how” of connecting people to the transportation infrastructure. Is it walking, bicycles, cars, buses, subways, trains, planes, or ships? How do we get people from their homes to their jobs, and the businesses whose services they rely on day to day? Many suggestions are present.
Some suggest providing better public transportation networks comprised of mass transit rail (subway, light rail trains, monorail) systems to cover an entire city complex with a secondary network of buses, taxis, and local conveyances. The question of scale arises. When is this method the best solution? The city population, geographic and geological elements all play a big part of this solution. Others suggest concentrating the populations into city centers where access is available as pedestrians. This limits the amount of transportation required because the needed elements are close in proximity. This method usually brings up questions related to quality of life, health and safety. The counter to this argument is to improve city services and municipal safeguards. Then the question is one of individual action and freedom of movement. Additionally, the concentration of populations has historically contributed to an overwhelmed waste management system and social friction related to geographic status. This arrangement also contributes to a highly volatile property and valuation structures exaggerating economic earnings, inflation, and socio-economic divergence. This solution does not address the question related to the distance that goods must travel to reach the city.
Other arguements are against a phenomenon referred to as ‘sprawl’. This is the expansion of consumer bases far in excess of city and/or county resources. It is seen as a commercial venture that isolates communities and requires that greater costs and efforts be provided to introduce goods and services to the community. This relates to the cost of fuel, the impact of the additional travel and the lack of local production of goods. Residents are further and further removed from the source of their supplies.
A conversion of these structures to accomodate local production, as most production is performed outside of the country with the exception of perishable goods and some durable goods products, would provide a needed reprieve and additional resource. These communities, that are comprised mostly of housing, with a few basic services and conveniences located in the community, are unable to maintain themselves without a constant stream of goods. Trucks, trains, and aircraft bring in all of the goods that the community utilizes. Power, water, waste, and gas are all transported over great distances to fuel and service these communites. The arguement against this arrangement is associated with the added costs and burdens to the central supply stations. They are overwhelmed and must consistently produce equal or greater goods to satisfy the growth and consumption that occurs annually.
So the solution to all of this? I would offer that cities, counties, districts, municipalities, and towns take inventory. I see it this way. We cannot look outside of our community for the things we need to live. If we lack a fundamental capacity, such as water, fuels, or electricity, then an agreement must be made with neighboring communities to supply to them resources which they lack in exchange. It is a symbiotic relationship with a few additions. Initially, cities should help each other build the necessary infrastructure for them to maintain health and planned growth. The city should plan for the means to generate its own resource pool. If electricity is lacking, plan for a solar, wind or geothermal solution. If water is lacking, plan for catchments, reservoirs from reprocessed water sources, including rain, waste water, and runoff. If food is lacking, resource land for sustained farming methods that rotate crops, plots and processing those goods. Support and provide supplemental assistance to home growers, home generators of electricity, and private property water reclaimation efforts. Additionally, it would be a great idea to leverage city management across an entire district of homes rather than centralizing the city services. People should be able to install in their neighborhoods, homes, and communities water reprocessing facilities that use local energy generators and trained labor for managing the resource for maintaining landscape, farming, and secondary water uses. It would also be great for a local neighborhood or HOA to invest in a battery storage system for emergency power requirements and to harvest excess energy generated by individual home systems. Local communication hubs that use encoded direct communication systems similar to fire departments across the country that utilize direct microwave communication networks that support their individual cellular or radio communication infrastructures. Once the basic operational systems are in place, then additional local health resources, fabrication facilities, repair services, educational resources, and other services that are necessary for the maintanence, growth, and replacement of infrastructure can be introduced. Each home and building should be capable of standing alone or working in a symbiotic relationship with its community. It should be capable of giving more than it takes in or at least breaking even when it is attached to the city infrastructure. If you’re off the grid already, then you have faced your demons and done something about it already.
Getting from one place to the other used to be an adventure and not a convenience. Transportation has become such a key element to the success of America up to this point. Providing a public means to convey people from one place to another to provide an equal opportunity for everyone to succeed in their endeavors. There is no gurantee of success, only an equal opportunity to pursue happiness. Bringing people together to do great things and providing them the opportunity to see this great land is the mission of transportation infrastructure. It is time that we valued and re-examined our infrastructure to ensure that we continue to endure, succeed and maintain our historical directive for achievement. We will not perish from this earth if we think about the future we want to live in and act as individuals to improve our selves, community, and relationship with our resource pool. Why are we wasting money, effort, and time relagating our health, safety and welfare to people thousands of miles away seperated from our needs?
