GOODBYE FLINTSTONES, HELLO JETSONS!
The Carleton Victoria Community Inclusion Network held a focus group recently to address the issues of rural poverty and transportation in the province.
If you live in rural New Brunswick, you are pretty much trapped if you do not own a car or have access to a ride to get to work or school.
I attended this study group, the first I had experienced with the CVCIN group.
As is usual in these think tank groups, we were broken up into teams so we could brainstorm in smaller groups, and then we’d assess our conclusions together at the end of the meeting.
It was a fascinating and educational process. Everyone in the group agreed that rural transportation is of course a very serious issue for everyone, not just those in lower income groups.
The costs of owning a car are over the top these days…not only do you have to have a car in the first place, there’s maintenance, gas, inspections, insurance…and on and on. Many lower income folks simply cannot swing the budget.
This increases their hardships…how can you get a job if you can’t get to work?
We assessed the assets available for transportation. Friends and family can sometimes provide rides, there are some community vans, there are a few independent cab drivers at work in our counties.
But all in all, these do not solve the problem of rural transportation.
It was fascinating, therefore, when each separate group said that, in a perfect world, they’d love to see a New Brunswick Rail System back in service.
Which brings me to the wonderful concept of MagLev Trains.
These trains are not trains so much as they are wingless aircraft. When they are in operation they do not roll on a bed or a set of rails, magnetic leverage boosts them in the air over
their magnetic beds and they can achieve speeds of hundreds of miles an hour.
Once the systems are built, they suffer little war and tear because the train cars don’t touch anything except when they take off and come in for a landing.
Imagine being able to travel to Fredericton in 20 minutes? The bulk of the travel time would be caused by having to stop to pick up or drop off passengers.
MagLevs are run by electrically charged super conducting magnets. These superconducting magne make Maglev practical for all. Basically, superconducting magnets are extremely powerful and lightweight permanent magnets. Because they have zero electrical resistance, even when they carry currents of hundreds of thousands of amps, their power consumption is zero, except for a very small amount of electric power for the refrigerators which keep the superconductor at cryogenic temperature.
So MagLev trains are non polluting, inexpensive to operate and last for years!
They’ve been around for years, too. This technology was researched back in the 1940’s, with working MagLev systems being built in the 1960’s.
Why aren’t they everywhere? They are too cheap and efficient. The powers that be are much happier seeing us all enslaved to our fossil fuel systems.
Another problem of course is the initial cost of building the system, but there are a number of MagLev trains in operation in Japan right now, and other countries are either looking into the system or have actually started to build them.
This system would bring New Brunswick smack dab into the 21st Century!
It would open up our province in amazing ways. You could live in the country and work in the cities…and city employees that want to enjoy a country life will move to rural New Brunswick.
A Win/ Win for all, wouldn’t you say?
Stephanie Kelley
