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The Project 21* monobeam is an elegant prescription for grave problems that plague Americans:
- Global warming and local air pollution
- Long commutes in congested traffic
- The cost of owning, operating, and insuring multiple cars
- Rising taxes to expand the highways.
What is this monobeam? Our video from a CNN broadcast tells a lot. The system was highly praised after that 1996 unveiling. However, Futrex, the company over which I presided until then, abruptly changed course, as discussed below. But first, let's discuss the context.
Automobiles, for most of us the only practical way to get around, have proliferated until they dominate our lives. City dwellers were happier when they rode the ubiquitous trolleys. Today, those who can't afford a car or taxi have no choice but to crawl along in buses. (Manhattan, with numerous subways, is an exception.)
Now the developing countries are hell-bent on repeating our mistake. It is predicted that China and India alone will add more cars by 2050 than exist in the entire world today, worsening their congestion and air pollution and boosting the price we pay for oil.
Metros, also known as subways, serve some city dwellers. But with a typical cost in excess of $150 million a mile, they can't possibly match the need, and the Government has served notice that brand-new Metros won't even be considered for Federal funding.
With autos, trucks, and buses saturating the roads, why is there so little overhead transit? "Elevated" systems existed 50 years ago, but their looming bulk was too much, and they were dismantled nearly everywhere. Then monorails and elevated people-movers were tried in a few cities, but just weren't viable. Why so? The seldom-recognized reason is this: although they are OK in a big loop or shuttling between A and B, they can't form networks of two-way traffic. Unable to branch out or even to make sharp turns, they will never allow the widespread networks that trolley cars once provided.
The Project 21 monobeam cuts this Gordian knot, as you saw in the video. That's what makes it a world-class breakthrough, backed by decades of research and refinement. The recommended form for Project 21 above city streets is shown in the Mini-trip.
All at once it is possible to have
- On one slender beam, swift electric trains that serve as many people in both directions as ten lanes of surface traffic.
- Enclosed stations for those trains, compact enough to fit above typical city streets and just a quarter the length of the usual Metro station.
- Time-saving features such as prepaid fares and level boarding.
- And the branching capability to allow diverse networks of two-way traffic.
As noted above, in 1996 the new Futrex management departed from what had just been demonstrated. Despite my protests they announced larger trains, higher speed, automated operation, and other changes, all to be available at the outset. They never found a buyer with all these expanded claims. And they didn't attract sufficient investment for demonstration of the redefined system, even though the Federal government appropriated some $6 million to get underway. But the comprehensive 1996 designs are still on the shelf, security for a $1.25-million loan.
As inventor of Project 21 and founder of Futrex, I now seek a deep-pocket entity that will buy out Futrex, settle its debts, and proceed with quick exploitation of the 1996 design that is still locked up. I can help to arrange the buyout and implement that design. Also, I expect to patent significant improvement of a critical feature. Past retirement age, I don't aspire to lead the effort.
Till now I have favored completion in the US because this is a potential source of national pride and thousands of jobs. But I don't favor Federal support because, sad to say, the Federal Government has never sponsored a world-class advance in rail transit.
Here is a unique and affordable technology, already researched and praised by experts as well as books and the media, that can make a huge difference in global warming, the price of gas, and other major concerns.
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*This system was known as Project 21 for over a decade and then as System 21 from 1987 to 1996. Today Project 21 applies to the documented 1996 version and System 21 is whatever the remaining Futrex "management" proposes.
