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LA TIMES, JUNE 11, 1972
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L.A.
to N.Y. in Half an Hour?
10,000 - M.P.H. Tunnel Train Plan Developed
by
Times Science Writer - George Getz
 A
Rand corporation physicist has devised a rapid transit
system to get you from Los Angeles to NY in half an hour
for a $50 fair. He said existing technology made such a system
feasible and so does a cost analysis. The essence of
the idea is to dig a tunnel more or less along the
present routes of U.S. highways 66 and thirty.
The tunnel would contain several large tubes for East
West travel of trains that float on magnetic fields,
moving at top speeds of 10,000 mph. Passengers
would faced forwarded during acceleration, backward
during deceleration.
According to R. M. Salter Jr.
head of the physical sciences department at Rand, the
idea of high-speed train travel using electromagnetic
suspension was first put forward in 1905 and actually
patented in 1912. The trains he suggested now would
be single cars rather than actual trains, and would be
big enough to carry both passengers and freight,
including large containers and automobiles.
Could Carry
Automobiles
The cars,
or gondolas, would leave the New York and Los Angeles
terminals at one minute or even 30 second intervals. On
the main line their would be intermediate stops at
Amarillo and Chicago. Feeder lines would meet the main
lines at both locations. Their would also be subsidiary
lines coming into the two main terminals from such
cities as San Francisco, Boston and Washington. The main
idea of VHST, or Very High Speed Transit, developed
originally in thinking about the satellite program and
hyper sonic aircraft speeds." Salter said in an
interview at Rand. "The underground tubes were for
suggested as alternatives, perhaps not quite seriously,
but it was soon apparent that the idea of a tunnel
containing such tubes had a lot of real advantages."
he said.
Conservation
of Energy
In the
first place, he explained there is the extremely
important matter of the use and conservation of immense
amounts of energy needed to move the vehicles at such
great speed.
"An airplane that travels faster than sound
uses up a large part of its available energy supply just
in climbing to an altitude where the speeds for which it
is designed are possible." Salter said. "That's true of
rockets to. Much of their energy is spent and lost
forever and getting above the atmosphere."
This would
not be true for the VHST gondolas traveling on their
electromagnetic rail beds, according to Salter. The
tubes would be emptied of air, almost to the point of
vacuum, so the trains would not need much power to
overcome air resistance. They would not even have to be
streamlined. In addition to an electromagnetic roadbeds,
the opposing electromagnetic loops of wires in the
floors of the gondolas would be super cooled with liquid
Helium to further eliminate electrical resistance.
Breaking
Generates Power
 Just
as important, the gondolas would, like old-fashioned
trolley cars, generate power as they break to a stop.
"Since the trains would be leaving New York and Los
Angeles simultaneously every minute, the power
generated by cars breaking coming into the terminal
would be transferred to the power lines propelling the
cars going the other way."
"For example, there will
be halfway points between each stop. Trains would use
power and getting to that halfway point, and generate
power going the other half of the way to the stop. Each
would use power generated by trains going in the other
direction."
That is the way trolley cars have operated
for eighty years - taking power from the overhead lines
while accelerating or running along at a steady speed,
and putting power back into the lines while breaking or
coasting. The big drawback to the Salter scheme is the
cost of tunneling across the nation. He admitted that it
would be expensive but it does not daunt him. "After the
tunneling was finished, everything else would be
practically free." He said. Even at the low fair he
proposes, the enormous debt created by the tunneling
would be amortized within a reasonable period if the
number of passengers and the amount of freight came up
to Salter's expectations. He figures the tunnel's would
carry seven or 8 million tons of freight a day and that
passengers would take to traveling back and forth
between the Eastern West Coast has readily as they now
fly between San Francisco and Los Angeles.
"The
technology of this is much easier than was developed for
the space program." Salter
said.
And tunnels, he added, need not be so
expensive to dig is people think. The most expensive
thing about surface routes is the acquiring right-of-way
and removing buildings that stand on the chosen route.
The tunnel would not incur this expense. The tunnel,
besides carrying tubes for passenger and freight
gondolas, would carry many of the utilities now strung
across the countryside on high wires. Salter said these
underground power "lines" could be super-cooled with
helium, like the electromagnetic loops in the floors of
the gondolas. He said this would so reduce resistance
that power could be transferred from one end of the
country to the other without appreciable loss. At the
present time long distance transportation of power is
difficult because of the amount of energy wasted.
He said
laser beams could be carried in the tunnel for the
instantaneous transmission of messages. Even the mail
could go cross-country in pneumatic tubes carried in the
tunnel. All this would save money and speed
amortization, thus cutting the overall cost of
tunneling. Salter said approximately 8000 miles of
tunnel were dug in America and Western Europe in the
1960s. That includes mine shafts. But he said
existing tunneling technology could be vastly improved.
Salter said many tunnels are dug nowadays almost as they
would have been in the dark ages. Drilling holes in
tunnel faces, and using machines with rotary bits are
methods of tunneling that can be improved, according to
him. He said the tunnel could be worked on from a great
many "faces," for instance. Salter suggested, too, that
electronic beams or even water be used to drill holes
for blasting. The high-powered electrons would drill
blasting holes almost instantaneously.
Travel by
Airplane
Projections of future airplane and automobile travels in
the United States, and the future train and truck
transfer of freight, show that Salter's tunnel idea
is not a science fiction fantasy. There will be more
room in the tunnels for all the necessary transport than
there will be over any feasible number of Airways and
freeways and tracks. Salter's suggestion, according to
the experts who have had a look at it, is an eminently
practical one for handling all the necessary traffic
cleanly and without clogging up the air and surface
pathways.
But it
will such a system ever be developed? Salter himself is
not optimistic. "Perhaps" is how he puts it.
"I am not
nearly so optimistic about the political aspects of the
problem as I am about our technical capability of doing
the job." He said.
"History shows that some obviously
feasible and practical projects, such as the tunnel
proposed over and over again for connecting England and
France under the English channel, can be put off for
centuries because of political pressure. On the other
hand, societies with relatively primitive technology can
perform such engineering feats as the erection of
impairments."
Is the VHS T too far out? Salter suggested
that to get the right perspective we should look back
100 years.
Comparison
Made
By
comparing transportation a century ago and
transportation today, one gets a better feel for just
how practical VHST is. It appears to be a logical
next step, and much more practical than its
alternatives of filling the highways and Airways with
more and more individually guided vehicles. "This alone
is a compelling reason for the high-speed system."
Salter said. There are others, according to him.
"We
can't afford any longer to continue indefinitely to
pollute the skies with heat, chemicals, not to mention
noise, or to carve up the land with pavement." He
said.
"We also need to get the trucks and many of the
cars off the highway to make the roads available to
drivers who drive the family car for fun and
convenience."
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