Physical Internet®

Transportation and energy networks will digitize just as communications networks did.

Key to a paradigm shift is regulations

Regulations that allow network deployment are essential and lacking for transportation and energy networks. Examples of regulatory changes that allowed networks to deploy:

The Pacific Railroad Act of 1864 corrected defects in the preexisted decades beforeDigital telephones existed for decade before they became common in everyone’s pocket:

The Motorola Razr was an extraordinary engineering success of digitizing devices on the analog network.
Apple’s 2007 iPhone release of digital devices on digital networks caused me, and most other Razr owners, to immediately abandon the Razr for the iPhone.

Digitizing devices provide 2-5 times (2X to 5X) benefits. Digital devices on digital networks provide mulitple 10X advantages. There is a general rule that 10X benefits are required to drive a paradigm shift. The following graph illustrated cellphone adoption since Apple released in iPhone in 2007. Also shown is the iPhone (digital network) impact on the Razr (analog network).

In 2023 JPods will begin deployiing digital guideway networks in Texas and Georgia to compete with analog roads. The multiple 10X benefit of digital guideways over analog roads will make self-driving cars as common in transportation as cell phones are in communications.

Currently self-driviing cars (digital devices) on roads (analog network) are struggling:

Capital cost to users ($10k per year for a car that is parked 95% of the time)
- Ford takes $2.7 billion hit as it drops efforts to develop full self-driving cars
- Even After $100 Billion, Self-Driving Cars Are Going Nowhere
Complexities of sharing the analog plane with people.
- Tesla deliver 3 billion self-driving miles on roads and a 9X better safety record.
- Grade-separated theme park thrill rides have a 10,000X safety record.

Grade-separated networks:

Freight railroads: Two centuries and 140,000 miles of grade-controlled freight railroads averaging 470 ton-mpg illustrate that transportation networks do not have drive Climate Change.
Wuppertal suspended train: This train moves 25 million passengers per year with one fatal accident since it opened in 1901. Grade-separation guideways are radically safer than analog roads.
Morgantown PRT: President Nixon’s daughter Tricia opened the Mortantown PRT on Oct 24, 1972. This grade-separate networks of self-driving cars have proven the correct solution for urban transportation.
Theme Park thrill rides: For more than a century thrill rides at theme parks have proven that transportation innovations can be both radical and safe. JPods grade-separated digital guideways will make cities as safe as theme parks.

Examples that will trigger the shift to digital, solar-powered urban mobility networks. We can power our urban transportation needs without Climate Change, oil-wars, or traffic congestion. The First Cities of the Sun™: