Questions

1. I estimate a typical 9-month cycle from survey to certification
2. GeoTech to survey routes.
   1. There is a footing about every 30 meters. 
   2. Footing can vary based on ground conditions
      1. Pads
      2. Pilings
      3. Other
   3. Adaption to existing infrastructure (utilities, sewers, etc….)
3. Put in the footings and let them settle.
4. Stage the deployment. Our software documents every location by coordinates and serial numbers of components. 
5. Assembly.
   1. This should be fairly fast, about the rate the Transcontinental railroads were built in the 1860s of 2 to 15 km per day per crew.
   2. Generally, you can think of this construction very much like pipeline construction. Same tools same skills.
6. Turn on the electronics and robotics.
7. Test
8. Certify
9. Operate

1. Normally we think of the cost as about $10 million per km. 
2. The first 20-50 km may cost 2 to 3 times that as manufacturing capabilities are scaled to meet demand.
3. Operating costs are about $.04 per mile:
   1. Link to the Physics of JPods.
   2. Cost per vehicle mile for cars is $.69. AAA data.
   3. $.76 per passenger-mile for light rail.  MassDOT data
   4. $1.45 per passenger-mile for buses.  MassDOT data
4. Maintenance costs on roads increase by the 4th power of axel weight. JPods axel mass is 300kg. Trivial. We will add replacing the network every 18 years into the balance sheet.

• History of the digitizing of communications.

• Red Bull TV documentary on the future of transportation, Self-driving cars, JPods, and Hyperloops.

• Has 1.88 billion self-driving miles on roads.

• Established a 9 times better safety record by violating every law that gets in their way.

• It is radically less complicated for JPods to operate self-driving cars on grade-separated guideways.

• How are your projects funded?

Everything is privately funded. See attached Letter of Interest from Goldman Sachs. Each project must be funded based on its own merits: 

• How much do these systems cost to the City or entity that would own/operate? operations/maintenance costs? You mentioned Jpods would pay the City to run the system?

The City pays nothing to build or operate the communications networks. You are allowed to receive revenues for use of Public Ways (5%). 

JPods networks are the Physical Internet® moving people and cargo like Uber or any other carrier. For our use of Public Ways, we pay the same rates as is established in communications precedence. Private capital can be raised to build solar-powered mobility networks if we leverage precedence established for communications networks. 

Consider how communications digitized from nearly a century of rotary telephones under Federal monopoly to the Internet:

• 1926 Nickola Tesla noted in Colliers magazine, “When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, …. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance…. A man will be able to carry one in his vest pocket.”
• 1941 Hedy Lamarr patented the tech used by WiFi and Bluetooth. 
• 1968 nearly every aspect of modern computing and the Internet was demonstrated in the Mother of All Demos.
• 1982 courts declared the Federal monopoly unconstitutional and put in place a multi-year plan to transition to free markets.
• 1983 AOL received its first investments.
• 1991, the High Performance Computing Act shifted all regulations from government planning to commercial standards. 
• With Standards-Based decision processes, the Internet hit a tipping point with millions of job created delivering better services at lower costs.

JPods is asking the Coronado to adopt Standards-Based decision process:

• Solar-powered networks 5 times more efficient than roads pay 5% of gross transportation revenues for non-exclusive use of Public Ways. This is the same fees to access the Public Ways is normally charged to other networks that benefit the public (communications and energy).
  • 5X5 Standard in a general ordinance
  • 5X5 Standard as a Franchise Ordinance for a specific network.

• Standards for Self-driving cars:
  • Operating a “Pirates and Patriots”, purposefully violating every laws that gets in their way (Smart Summon example of operating a car with no licensed driver at all), Tesla has:
    • Delivered 1.88 million self-driving miles on roads.
    • Produced a 9 times better safety record than DOT regulations.
  • Morgantown’s PRT delivered 150 million passenger-miles with two minor injuries in 2016.
    • The Morgantown network was opened by Tricia Nixon in 1972 as a model of how self-driving vehicles might solve urban traffic problems.
    • Congressional Office of Technology Assessment (COTA) Study PB-244854, “Automated Guideway Transit” was commissioned in 1974 to identify solutions to the hardships of the 1973 Oil Embargo. Two key finding:
      • Automated guideways are the solution to both foreign oil risks and urban traffic problems.
      • Federal regulations hindered such innovations for “four to six decades”. The study was published 45 years ago.
  • Coronado adopting the 5X5 Standard implements a well known regulatory framework with a 10,000 times better safety record.

• How safe and secure are these systems?

JPods comply with the same ASTM International F24 Standards used by Disney. This provides:

• A long-established safety record 10,000 times better than roads.
  • 0.9 injuries per million on thrill rides
  • 11,200 injuries per million on roads.
• Known cost of regulation and processes for compliance.
• Known cost of insurance
• Certified US manufacturing base
• Existing common law.

• Who owns, operates, and maintains the system?  

JPods licenses our patented solar-powered mobility technologies to a Master Mobility Company (MMC) that will build the networks in Southern California. 

Local Mobility Companies (LMC) will be set up to own and operate the networks (ISPs of the Physical Internet®)
JPods, the MMC, and LMC are all responsible for safety, compliance with standards, and operating the networks without government subsidies. 

• How do transit agencies generally feel about these systems? Residents/property owners?

JPods networks will be feeders to existing modes of transportation in the beginning. Gradually, the digitizing of mobility will be as significant as the digitizing of communications. The future will unfold. 

 

Transit agencies have traditionally been opposed to any innovation. They generally lose 80 cents of every operating dollar, so innovation is viewed, not as a benefit to their customers, but as a threat to keep their customers dependent on their monopoly.

 

Two studies underscore the contagion risks of existing Mass Transit:

Dr Goscé explained:

 

“Higher rates [of influenza-like cases] can be observed in boroughs served by a small number of underground lines: passengers starting their journey in these boroughs usually have to change lines once or more in crowded junctions such as King’s Cross in order to reach their final destination.”

 

“On the other hand, lower influenza-like rates are found in boroughs where either the population do not use public transport as the main form of transport to commute to work; or boroughs served by more underground lines, which guarantee faster trips with less stops and contacts with fewer people.”

Impact on riders:

The first is that the rate of disease transmission is related to the number of trips and average number of stations per trip along the entire subway line, and not just to the number of entries at any one subway station. Second, passengers entering the subway line even at a remote, less populous station are slowing down the system, thus increasing the transit time that the S’s stay in contact with the I’s. Third, those uninfected S- passengers who cram shoulder-to-shoulder into a particular subway are increasing train-car density and thus raising the average number of other S-passengers infected by an I-passenger who happens to be standing in the middle of the train. Fourth, local trains – like the Flushing local – are more likely to seed epidemic infections than express lines. Finally, an entire subway line, rather than the individual stations or subway cars, is the appropriate unit of analysis.

Impact on subway workers:

By April 16, the MTA had reported 68 deaths among more than 2,400 subway and bus employees who had tested positive. “Another 4,400 are on home quarantine and thousands more are calling out sick.”

“Data from TWU Local 100 (subway workers) indicate… more than three times the rate… the most affected hotspot.”

• Have you implemented this in other resort/coastal towns similar to Coronado?

No. Traffic problems of the past 70 years continue to grow. No government as allowed innovation to solve the fundamental problem of burning oil to move two tons to move a person.  As noted in the 1974 COTA study “Automated Guideway Transit” the regulatory barriers to transportation innovation are very hard to correct:

• Eight US Presidents issued unanswered calls to action to power US mobility within domestic resources. “To hold our future in our hands alone”.
• I created JPods solar-powered mobility networks to answer these calls to action.
• As a West Point graduate and Infantry veteran, I am personally aware that perpetual oil-wars have been required since 1991 because we have failed to innovate.
• You can check your own traffic problems to measure that more of what is failing will fail.

• How can the infrastructure/pods better integrate with the surrounding architecture and small-town setting?

• The 5X5 Standard allows a community to reject, in writing, any innovation for any reason. Aesthetics is a viable reason for rejection.
• I think people will find our networks as beautiful as they are useful.
• Next time you get in an elevator and push the button, you are riding in a vertical JPods. JPods are a network of horizontal (and vertical) robotic elevators. 
• Bike paths under JPods networks can be well lit, security provided 24×7, and provide last-mile solutions. Two bikes fit inside a JPods vehicle.
• Not for public release yet, but if you would like to see a copy, I will show you a recent Letter of Intent from the Governor of Baja California for building JPods networks in Tijuana. 
• Here is a link to the contract we signed to deliver JPods into China. Delivery has been delayed pending getting a US government to allow innovation so we can build a US manufacturing base.

 

 

 

 

 

• Have you permitted these systems through other public agencies in California such as Caltrans, the military, port districts, airports, and/or the Coastal Commission?

• Yes, see COTA study “Automated Guideway Transit” page 41 for how these agencies have blocked innovation for “four to six decades”. 
• Consider these agency are working under the rules established by The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1916. As a metric of their barriers to innovation and favoring of moving two tons to move a person:
  • Since 1916 46% of 400+ ton-mpg freight railroads have been replaced by 25 mpg roads.
  • Since Morgantown’s PRT opened in 1972 it delivered 150 million passenger-miles with two minor injuries. In that same period of time 1.8 million Americans died on DOT roads.
• What warning have these agencies issued relative to the 25-50% reduction in access to oil? This is a crisis 3-6 times more severe than the 1973 Oil Embargo. Solar-powered mobility networks will soon be essential as gasoline becomes unaffordable to many. This is not a new problem. It is the problem warned of by eight Presidents.
• The Boston Tea Party was a demonstration against a government transportation monopoly that triggered a war.
  • To prevent rebuilding that path to war the “post Roads” restriction in the Constitution specifically forbids Federal taxing and funding of the transport monopolies that developed since The Federal Aid to Highways Act of 1916. 
  • Perpetual oil-wars and Climate Change are consequences of rebuilding that path to war.
  • I documented the Constitution’s clauses, ratification, 21 supporting Presidential veto messages, so we can repeat in transportation the success of courts declaring the Federal communications monopoly unconstitutional in 1982.