Might Persons Be Moved

The Ann Arbor News, Sunday, March 11, 1973

The Science Beat

Might Persons Be Moved

By Larry Bush

(News Science Editor)

A revolutionary, fast, safe, non-polluting and, in the long run, less expensive public transportation system for Ann Arbor in which passenger capsules are moved by air pressure in underground tubes, the way mail is moved in New York City, has been proposed by a local engineer.

Dr. Franklin L. Everett, president of the Ann Arbor Instrument Works Inc., who helped bring the first gas pipeline into Michigan and headed design of the first supersonic ram jets for the military, says his studies prove such a system is “feasible.”

He says he is not talking about an expensive subway train system, but an eight-foot in diameter tube, no larger than many storm sewers, in which passenger cars are moved by fans or Mowers “not unlike blowers for heating and air conditioning."

In some ways it would operate like the pneumatic tube systems in department stores which carry money and receipts from sales counters to offices or the message-carrying system at the University Hospital according to the recentlv retired University of Michigan engineering professor. 

"As with the pea in a peashooter, it doesn't take much air pressure to push an object confined in a tube. It is the differential as with breathing that makes it flow,” Everett says.

“It is not technically difficult, would eliminate the dangers’ and maintenance costs inherent in surface transportation, and would reduce traffic congestion in the central city which is increasing each year and heading toward a crisis stage,” he adds.

There would be no tracks, wheels, or vehicle motors to maintain, and there wouldn't necessarily need to be a paid attendant in the cars. Passenger capsules from eight to 16' feet long, would “float" in the tubes. “By letting the car do as it wants, passengers wouldn’t be thrown off balance as it goes around corners."

Capsule doors would be at the ends so if a car became immobilized for any reason — an unlikely occurrence — passengers could get out and walk to the nearest exit in either direction.

‘‘It should please the ecologists because it would reduce air pollution. If the city so desired large public parking lots could be constructed around the system’s entrances on the city outskirts' to eliminate passenger car traffic and parking problems in the business district,” he says.

The electrically driven air power system could be situated near the edge of the city. The tube in which the passenger capsules travel would not have to be air-tight and the space between the car and the tube would only be an inch or so, making use of all the space, unlike in the typical subway.

There would be flaps in the space between the car floor and its bottom which would open to allow pressure on the car ahead when a capsule stopped at an entrance en route. Electricity for lighting the car and moving the flaps could be provided by brushes on the side of the capsule in contact with an electrical system embedded in the tube wall, he says.

“I don’t minimize possible opposition to such a system. The automobile industry may want to block it. On the other hand auto firms may want to go into the business of making capsules for such a system,” Everett says.

However, the Ann Arbor Instrument Works president sees such a system as the best solution to increasing traffic congestion and parking problems in the central city.

Calling it a “natural evolution in transportation,” Everett says, “We are putting electric power and telephone lines underground where weather doesn’t affect them and maintenance costs are minimized — why not public transportation?”

“Something will have to be done eventually, and this would be a safer, cleaner, and less expensive system to maintain than traditional public transportation systems or modifications of them under consideration,” Everett says.

Original design plans for such a system were worked out by Everett several years ago as a connecting link between the U-M’s North and Central campuses and presented to former U-M Prof. John C. Kohl, a transportation expert. Kohl encouraged Everett to further develop the plans but they were dropped when the transportation expert left in 1964 to head the U.S. Office of Transportation.

Everett recently worked out mathematical calculations for the air pressure transportation system on paper again and says that from the engineering point of view there is no reason why it wouldn’t work. Work on pipelines and submarines have laid the groundwork, he says.

He says the community could even provide “free” passage on the proposed system “similar to the pick-up and delivery arrangements for garbage" — that is the cost could be spread on the tax rolls.

“After all, the movement of people in a lift known as an elevator inside buildings has generally been ‘free’ to the public,” he adds.

Everett joined the U-M College of Engineering faculty in 1931, and is now on retirement furlough. He was graduated from the U-M in 1925 with a degree in mechanical engineering, and received his master’s degree in 1929, and his doctorate in metallurgy and engineering mechanics in 1931, also on the Ann Arbor campus.

“People lack imagination and cling to the old way of doing things. At transportation meetings I have been to they just talk about the same old systems or modifications of them. To solve the transportation problem we’ve got to get over the hurdle of doing things in the same old ways,” he says.