Motor Railroads

There are several instances of early pioneer motorists travelling on railway tracks for lack of a suitable road. These are of course the exceptions, travelling in places whare cars were as yet unknown. In countries where cars would become common there was already a network of good, smooth road, thanks largely to the campaigning of early bicyclists (many of whom were now pioneer motorists).

Despite the obvious dangers from oncoming or overtaking trains, motoring on rails had advantages in speed, smoothness and lack of dust and hills. Is there any way that this could have become the norm, and it was accepted that vehicles which travelled faster than a 'scorching' cyclistated or a catering horse did not belong on the public roads, and that if special rights of way had to be built for them, then rail was a better option.

How could such a network evolve?
 
Only with full public ownership of all the rails with CTC control with block signalling so Ma and Pa Kettle don't get rammed by the 20th Century Limited.
 
Forgive me if this is off topic sorta but a version of a "motor rail" is currently underdevelopment in Europe and to a lesser extent Asia and the USA. Taking the European perspective the EU government is fully committed to carbon reduction. Solar and wind might be able to handle the load for the electric grid but wheeled ground vehicles are a problem. Even assuming reasonable expected improvement in battery energy density it will be difficult to convert automobile driven long distances into electric vehicles. The problem is you just can's store enough energy in a battery having reasonable volume, mass and cost. Now consider tractor trailer goods trucks. The problem is even more difficult.

The EU government is working on a concept that involves cutting a slot down the center of the highway lane and then placing adjacent wireless ( induction) vehicle charging coils, the coils being activated sequentially as the vehicle moves down the road. In this way the vehicle draws its power from the grid, the on board battery is only needed when transverse non-electrified highways. This means the on board battery can be sized for dozen of miles of range not hundreds of miles.

There are no physical rails in this concept but the vehicle would dive itself and keep itself centered in the lane which I argue functions much as a virtual rail.

There has already been demonstrated a 100 meter long dynamic test track in France last April. I witnessed the test.

Wireless power transfer efficiency is 90% or better and a full cost analysis including the reduced cost of such electric vehicles including an allowance for much reduced maintenance looks entirely acceptable without including rewards for non-local CO2 emissions ie a negative carbon tax.

Of course the infrastructure cost is not insignificant but in the US the average cost of urban light rail is in excess of $150 million dollars a mile. Using existing infrastructure- ie existing roads- drops the cost per mile by an order of magnitude. Greatly reduced energy costs even in the new era of cheap petroleum can be applied to the initial capital cost.

Converting a mile of US interstate highway to electric highway will be much less expensive than the original cost to build the highway adjusted for inflation. Think of it as the interstate highway project for the new millennium.
 
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