One topic we haven’t really brought up here on MetroBlogging yet is the whole commuter rail thing. I’m not really sure what to make of it yet, it was kind of a shock to hear that some decision had finally been made, but I’m not really convinced that the CSX track really goes anywhere that people want to go. I’ve always thought at the least the lines need to run along the same routes that the traffic already does, which is the highways.

I’m no civic engineer but it occurs to me that we have the routes that work already laid out, it’s just that we have a whole mess of people on them at the same time in one spatial plane. Building a double decker highway everywhere just seems overly costly and darn it, I really don’t want to drive to work and back. I mean, I’ll give up that freedom to run errands at lunch or on the way home (I can always get in the car when I get home and then head to the grocery) if it means I can do some reading or extra napping while being whisked to my job and back. So what’s a good solution that is forward thinking and sellable to the cost concerned citizens of Orlando?

This morning while running through the dial I happened across Pat Campbell over on the AM talking to a guy from MegaRail, a company that has developed a really fascinating concept. It’s a multi-use rail system that uses cars with rubber tires that can enter and leave the track. It’s like a frickin bus that can run a route that includes driving on roads and then getting on a dedicated above ground rail line and haul butt across an expanse, then hop off on a road again. But they also have come up with other flat cars that people can drive their cars on to and it then behaves like a ground based car ferry. I envision WiFi on that sucker with maybe a big screen at one end for people in their vehicles to watch a sponsoring news channel (how about it Channel 13?) and get audio by tuning their car radios to a specific station. Takes some of the wasted time out of the commute doesn’t it?

Wow, that is just some smart thinking all around. So you can have multiple options and combinations to create a rich and flexible mass transit solution and the cost is the same or less than what we are already looking at. Campbell’s main point was why haven’t any of these newer innovative technologies even been considered, and I have to agree. Here we are in the place where Disney planned to seed his Experimental Prototype City Of Tommorrow trying to solve our traffic congestion problems with a technology that I thought we had all agreed has been on the fast track (heh) to obsolence for decades now.

Related posts:

1. We’re a city of terrible drivers
2. Don’t Stand in Traffic Part 2
3. Ride Lynx For Free Today
4. Over The River and Through The Woods…
5. Studio 6