- The Future Of Personal Transit -

The Inteli-Tube Pneumatic

Transportation System
A Proposal By Lyle Zapato

A Brief History Of Pneumatic Tube Technology

Old-style pneumatic tube system used in business.

Pneumatic tubes used for transporting physical objects have a long history. The basic
principles of pneumatics were stated by the Greek Hero of Alexandria before 100 BC.
However, it wasn't until the industrial age that real work was being done on applying
pneumatics to transportation. The first pneumatic tube systems were originally proposed in
the early Nineteenth century by George Medhurst, a London businessman. Although his plans
called mainly for the transportation of heavy freight, his ideas were eventually adopted for
delivering documents and parts by businesses, industry, and government agencies. Those who
operated in large buildings, such as the new sky scrapers, or who had offices spread out over
a city found pneumatic tubes to be an economical and convenient addition to the work-place.
Their use in this area has diminished greatly in the latter half of this century with the rise in
electronic communication devices, making the delivery of paper-based information somewhat
obsolete. Some experiments with the movement of larger cargo (mostly garbage and raw
materials,) via pneumatics were carried out in post-war Japan and Russia but never really
caught on. Today the most likely places to find pneumatic tubes still in use are in drive-up
banks and hospitals, institutions required to deal in the physical.
 Alfred Ely Beach's experimental pneumatic elevated subway, 1867 (top)
and a cross-section of a car from his completed subway (left).

This wasn't how the pioneers of pneumatic tube transportation imagined the future. When the
technology was new, people envisaged cities of tomorrow linked by elaborate networks of
tubing delivering not only mail, newspapers, and business documents, but also larger goods
and, most promisingly, people. The dream of transporting people was with the field since its
beginning: Medhurst's second pneumatic tube proposal in 1812 was for a passenger vehicle.
Where thoughts of conveyor belt sidewalks and rocket ships to the moon were just silly
science fiction, the transportation of people via pneumatic tubes was seen not only as a real
possibility, but as an inevitability. At first the technology to generate the necessary pressure
was not available, but eventually the abilities of science had caught up with these dreams.
Subway systems, now common but usually using electric motors for propulsion, were originally
conceived as working on pneumatic principles. The first New York subway system
constructed by Alfred Ely Beach (only a block long and built as a proof of concept,) worked in
just this way, as did his earlier experimental elevated version for the American Institute Fair
and some European experiments. However various economic and political forces caused
history to take another path and the dream of a pneumatic future was forgotten.

For more on the history of using pneumatics to move objects around, as well as information
on current implementations, please see:

• Wikipedia article on pneumatic tubes

• Tim Howgego's excellent Capsule Pipelines.
• Transportation Futuristics: Pneumatic transportation, a historical image exhibit
from the University of California.
• Scanned version of the 1868 monograph The Pneumatic Dispatch... by Alfred Ely
Beach, with illustations.
• Innovative Transportation Technologies has information on, and links to, many
alternative forms of transportation, including pneumatic tube systems.
• Beach Pneumatic - "Alfred Beach's Pneumatic Subway and the beginnings of rapid
transit in New York" by Joseph Brennan.

The Dream

But is this just a quaint, Jules Verne-esque whimsy? Is there any practical reason to create
this dream of the past? The real question is: can we afford a future without it? The current
transportation paradigm -- based on the inefficient use of polluting and non-renewable fossil
fuels, and characterized by frustrating and costly waits in traffic -- can't last our society much
longer. Alternatives that have been suggested have been based on un-proven technologies,
would offer only insignificant improvements, or would force society to adopt new lifestyles that
it is unwilling to (such as being crammed into close quarters with strangers or having to travel
on a fixed schedule). A pneumatic tube network with individual pods solves our environmental
and economic transportation-related problems while conforming to the desires of consumers
for solitude and freedom.

Imagine a city uncluttered with paved roads, where vegetation grows between the buildings,
cooling and taming the urban environment. Parkways and parking lots become just parks.
Imagine animals never having to risk their lives crossing a busy freeway or interstate, the
sight of road kill as unexpected as the sight of horse manure is today. Imagine goods being
delivered to businesses quickly and efficiently -- even automatically when needed. Imagine
never having to deal with traffic, or getting lost, or refueling your vehicle, or wasting time
driving when you could be putting the finishing touches on your report that is due. Imagine
every home with a tube-port instead of a garage, every apartment building with a tube-shaft
instead of an elevator, allowing people to get into a pod in their home and travel to anywhere
that is hooked into the tube network. Imagine the entire world networked together with
pneumatic tubing.

Inteli-Tube Solution

The Zapato Personal Pneumatic Tube Pod Mark IV (A) featuring: a pressurized, single-occupancy cabin;
reinforced nose-cones; gyroscopic stabilization; and full on-board electronics including user-friendly
navigation, communication, and entertainment systems. Tapered ends, along with centralized flange
placement (B), allow for handling of tighter curves than old-fashioned tubular models. The dual-purpose
flanges create an air-tight seal for optimum pneumatic pressure and also contain the transceiver that lets
the pod communicate with the Inteli-Tube system. The Inteli-Tube detector ring and routing computer (C)
reads pod navigation information and redirects it to its proper destination. The air-pressure regulation ring
(D) controls pod velocity and direction.

Based on both time-proven pneumatic tube technology and Internet packet-switching

protocols, the Inteli-Tube system can make this dream a reality, moving beyond the dumb
tubes of the past and towards the information-based technology of the future. Instead of
packets of data, pods of people and goods are moved through a network of pneumatically
pressurized tubes -- swiftly, silently, and with little pollution. (Pods will have no on-board
propulsion systems; all energy expended to move pods via pneumatic pressure will be
external and so can be centralized for levels of energy efficiency impossible with individually
powered vehicles. Also, ambient air-pressure differentials between areas on the network may
be intelligently managed to offer all-natural and pollution free propulsion.)

The Inteli-Tube system offers efficiency in the movement of people and goods. Traffic can be
be routed around, thereby optimizing overall pod speeds. Mergers of traffic flows are computer
controlled and globally aware which insure smooth transitions and reduces instances of back-
ups. Tubes can also be bi-directional with no chance of a head-on collision, thanks to the
pneumatic nature of the system. The multi-node, re-routable nature of the Inteli-Tube concept
means that a break-down in one part of the system won't affect operation in another, as was
the case with systems briefly proposed in the 1960's.

And because the Inteli-Tube system is transparently destination-based, it allows not only ease
of use for passengers, but also automatic delivery systems of goods and parts for businesses
and industry. A person selecting a destination is no different from a computer database
selecting one, from Inteli-Tube's point of view. This will be a major feature, even though it is
just a side-effect of how the system works. (For freight larger than a human carrying pod, a
separate network of larger diameter tubes would be constructed. This should be done anyways
since heavy industry has needs that are different from commuters. This freight network
wouldn't need to be as extensive as the commuter/business system. A separate system would
also be safer than the current mixed-use interstate freeway system, where truck accidents
often lead to injury of automobile passengers.)

Since pneumatic tubes can run both horizontally and vertically along the same path, the Inteli-
Tube system can not only deliver a person to his or her office building, but can also act as an
elevator, taking the person to the desired floor. After debarkation, pods can either deliver
themselves to a storage structure and wait until needed again for the return trip or be used
promiscuously among different people, further adding to efficiency. The Inteli-Tube system
can handle both private and promiscuous pod use simultaneously, employing cryptographic
technology to ensure that private pods are used only by their owners.

The Personal Pneumatic Tube Pod

Other alternative mass-transit systems fail because they ask people to sacrifice the benefits of
their cars. Pneumatic tube pods, on the other hand, offer those same benefits plus a few that
cars can't. Pods offer the privacy and comfort of a single-occupancy motor vehicle. (Actually,
the privacy of a pod is greater than that of a car, since they are situated such that no one can
look inside the window. You could even travel naked!) At the same time, the per capita space
used is diminished to even less than that of high-occupancy vehicles via smaller vehicle size,
closer high-speed spacing, and more efficient space usage.

The automatic routing of the Inteli-Tube system means that users need only select a
destination and the pod will deliver them quickly and safely with no additional occupant effort.
In fact, a pod can be made smart enough to wirelessly communicate with your personal digital
assistant or laptop and deliver you to your meeting or reservation without even having to
prompt it. Just step into any available pod and you end up where you need to be. This type of
automated transit will free up time for work, rest, etc. that currently is wasted on manual
vehicle operations.

Manual vehicle operations are also the root of most accidents. People are not as quick to react
in emergencies as computers are. With computers in control, more precise and compact
vehicle spacing is possible with even less chance for errors. This has been shown to be true in
tests of computer-controlled automobiles funded by the Department of Transportation.
However, even those automated vehicles are no match for the safety and efficiency of
pneumatic tube pods. Since pods run in a one-dimensional space (compared to the two-
dimensional space of the robotic cars,) there is even less that could go wrong. Furthermore,
the inherent pneumatic nature of the system makes crashes virtually impossible since the
pods have a pocket of pressurized air between them acting as a cushion. Finally, since pods
contain no flammable fuels, crash-related fire and explosions are ruled out. Pneumatic tube
pods clearly offer the safest form of transportation available.

In the future, when the Inteli-Tube system has become a fact of life, we may not even need
homes anymore. Your personal belongings can be placed in privately owned and
cryptographically secure pods that will be available to you at any tube-port on the planet --
the pods automatically following you through the system whenever you travel so that they are
never more than a few minutes away. Need a change of clothes? Just visit a public tube-port-
equipped dressing room and order up your wardrobe pod. At night, you can simply climb into
your personal pod and drift off to sleep as the Inteli-Tube system silently carries you through
the network, constantly routing you and your fellow pod-sleepers around so as to avoid
bedtime trafic. These pneumatic nomads (or "pneumads") may one day even transcend
national borders, waking up in a different part of the world every morning, their itinerary
automated with simple visual scripting languages or intelligent agent software. As you can
see, the Inteli-Tube system promises not only a new way to get around, but a whole new way
of living!

Conclusions

The world of tomorrow we are creating for ourselves and our children will be one of traffic
congestion, pollution, and an ever-dimmishing natural world being covered in asphalt. We
need to change our transportation policies -- we all know this -- but the question is: in what
way? Pneumatic tubes transporting people via individual pods, operating on Internet based
protocols is, as has been shown, the best solution. This will give people their freedom and
space; reduce pollution, both chemical and noise; end costly, stressful, and unproductive
traffic jams; increase safety; decrease dependence on foreign oil; and, most importantly,
usher in the future that technology has been promising us.

Newest

The Monorail Vs. Pneumatic Inteli-Tube

Lyle Zapato | 2004-06-01.6010 LMT | Cascadia | Monorail Danger | Pneumatics
(Fire enhanced by ZPi for dramatic effect.)

Yesterday, a Seattle monorail caught fire -- the blue one, to be precise. No one was
seriously injured, but the incident only further highlights the inherent danger in
monorailular transportation methods, that of spontaneous combustion.

Some in the Republic of Cascadia -- mostly Federalists -- are pushing to have our
entire nation monorailized. However, in their irrational zeal to chase after some failed
1962 vision of the future, they are overlooking a much better and safer solution to our
nation's transportation problems: the Inteli-Tube Pneumatic Transportation System.*

The ITPTS is immune to the sorts of uncontrollable fires that monorails experience.
Because pneumatic tubes are designed to create pressure differentials to push the personal
transportation pods through them, they can be easily depressurized in an emergency to
quickly extinguish any fires. Let's just see the monorailists try and depressurize Seattle!
Furthermore, instead of oxygenated air -- which acts as a fire accelerant and through
which monorails have no choice but to travel -- pneumatic tubes can be pressurized with
inert gasses such as argon to completely eliminate the chance of a fire starting. None of
these safety benefits have any effect on commuter comfort since passengers are safely
sealed in their pressurized pods.

How many more monorail fires do there need to be before Cascadians realize that
monorails are dangerous and that pneumatic tube transportation systems offer us our only
hope, for both the future and today? If you ask me, one is already too many.

Welcome Aboard!
The Seattle Center Monorail is the nation's first full-scale commercial monorail system
which provides a fun, quick and convenient link from downtown Seattle to Seattle
Center.

The Seattle Center Monorail currently is in Winter Hours: 8:30 AM to 8:30 PM Sunday
through Thursday and 8:30 AM to 11:00 PM Friday and Saturday.

The Seattle Center Monorail departures every 10 minutes from two stations:

• Seattle Center station, across from the Space Needle

• Westlake Center Mall station, at Fifth and Pine Street

Each trip takes two minutes to travel the 1 mile route.

The Seattle Center Monorail is a favorite part of the Seattle skyline and the Seattle
Center, home of the Space Needle, Pacific Science Center, the Experience Music
Project and a host of theatrical and cultural experiences. For a complete listing of all
there is to see and do at Seattle Center, visit SeattleCenter.com or, for a complete one-
stop listing of Seattle's favorite attractions and experiences, visit the Puget Sound
Attractions Council's website.

• Mechatronics
• Electronic Circuit Design
• Embedded Real-Time Microprocessor Systems
• Kinematics
• Sensor Technology
• Pneumatic System
• Hydraulic System
• Mechanical design
• Electro-mechanical engineering future
• Robotics
• Synergistic Engineering