Why couldn't the interstate system of highways be replaced by a conveyor belt to conserve energy?

Question

also safer

Answer 1

A conveyor belt? Could you imagine trying to do a DUI test on one of them? It would be like falling on a 100 mile treadmill. lol

Cool thought though

Answer 2

Even if possible, the cost would be totally over whelming.  Nice thought though.

Answer 3

...and what would power said conveyor belt?

Answer 4

dude, you could like sit on it and just sit there going like 100 mph

holy frick

thats awesome.

Answer 5

wouldnt coveyor belts use electricity?  which is a form of energy??? so...that would be using energy, correct???

Answer 6

Not enough rubber.

Answer 7

Because that would cost many many billions if not trillions and it would be unconventional

Answer 8

As everyone has been saying, the amount of energy for a GIANT conveyor belt with enough strength to move cars, trucks, buses and people would be astronomical. Aside from the obvious logistics such as infrastructure repair and cost, the amount of pollution it would produce to make such a thing possible would be devastating to the environment and therefore counter productive.  

In practice however, you could say that we already have such things. Public transportation such as trains, monorails and trams server pretty much the same function.

It would be a sight to see however... lol

Answer 9

hahahahaha love it, that is a GREAT plan, i will vote yes

Answer 10

Instead of a conveyor belt, let's all travel in tubes!

"Get the scientists working on the tube technology."

Answer 11

safer?

nahh.  i don't want to be going 20 MPH

Answer 12

Are you 8? How would it be possible? How would it conserve energy?

Answer 13

That would expend MORE energy cuz it would continue to run at like 4 in the morning when nobody is on there...

BUT it would be mroe interesting

Answer 14

THAT WOULD USE 9000 TIMES AS MUCH ENERGY FOO

Answer 15

We have Railroads.

Answer 16

That would be so many billions of dollars you just dont know.

Answer 17

It takes energy to run the conveyor belt.  Where exactly does the energy conservation come into the picture here?

Answer 18

I've actually thought this for YEARS!  Like in the movie Minority Report.  (Tho I'm not saying I've been wanting it.  Just fun to think of.)

I can see the riduculous government spending happening for it now.  They fund a ton of c**p.  Well, actually I'm sure we'd have to pay for it through taxes.  Oh c**p.

And actually come to think of it, wouldn't the conveyor system take tons of energy to run?  Sure, maybe cut down on pollution, but it'd have to take electric energy or something.

And wouldn't it suck when it malfunctions and we'd all be late for work?!  Oh the calamity!

Answer 19

What would power it, and how much would be saved? Until we do the math we don't know.

Water is the best 'ton-mile' transport, measured by how much fuel is demanded to transport one ton one mile. Canals could make a great comeback. Cargoes come off the water and go onto trains, the next best fuel-efficient mode. Trucks are 3rd, which is why you see them on the trains. Some train lines are rebuilding their tunnels to handle double stacking of cargo containers. Those containers, by the way, are building up in the U. S. after they are emptied and not demanded for re-export. Some folks are welding them together to build housing units. Talk about playing with the box the real toy came in.

A practical adaptive response for gasoline-highway transport might be a pneumatic tube, like the one at the bank drive-thru. Someone said they read of a company that claims the technology is practical and could whisk you from New York to L. A. in an hour. That's almost as fast as my sister drives. (Just kidding Sis. I still need a ride home.) Imagine putting your car in a capsule, secured, and sitting back to enjoy the ride. Shorter trips, Portsmouth, Ohio, for example, about dead center at the bottom of the state, to Cleveland, could be a matter of minutes, allowing for comfortable acceleration/deceleration.

I think Japan has driver-less trucks that ride on a track from some ports, transporting products inland to unloading or transfer points.

Could vehicles have gaps filled with helium, to make them that much lighter? Is it flammable? Could you get enough in there to make a difference?

At www.water4gas.com is a device and testimonials of people saying it can convert water to HHO, hydrogen gas, which you simply feed into the air intake of an internal combustion engine and get 40 miles to the gallon of gasoline.

I've seen a rough prototype work with a simple 9-volt battery, little bubbles forming on a stainless steel screen in the water. A car battery/alternator would generate more. The guy said he had ignited the gas and it did burn. The hydrogen gas (HHO) simply burns along with the gasoline, perhaps making a more efficient combustion of the petroleum too.

Honda may have just announced they're making a hydrogen fuel cell car. A fuel cell makes electric energy directly, I think, from hydrogen, not burning anything. Zero emissions.

The company and the country that adapts first and best to this threatening change in energy supply and demand will take the market.

How about combining pedals with hybrid cars so you can get your exercise while putting electricity into the battery system. How much could a human generate? It would be nice to have an option if your battery and gas are depleted, that could get you recharged and on your way again.

The U.S. state of Ohio is changing the definition of 'motorcycle' to include 3-wheeled vehicles with enclosed cabs, I think. Governor Ted Strickland says they don't have the safety features required to be called cars, but they can qualify as motorcycles. The vehicles are popular in Japan and India, I think I read.

Could road surfaces be designed to collapse a bit as vehicles roll over them, to generate electricity like ocean waves? Generators are anchored to the sea floor and as the waves rise and fall they lift and drop plungers or something to generate electricity.  Could incoming and outflowing tides generate electric? How much water flow is demanded to turn a generator to produce enough power to run a home?

You know, home energy generation doesn't have to be super-efficient. Small wind turbines or water turbines might generate the electric demanded for a small family home. Factories demand bigger, more efficient sources, but homes might be able to get by with simpler systems.  

Geo-thermal seems to be the red-headed stepchild of clean energy, ignored by most proponents of alternative energy, but it is available everywhere, heat naturally occurring just a few feet down in the ground.

In Germany, a friend told of traveling down the Rhone River (or was it Rhine?) and seeing generating stations at the river's edge serving about 5 or 6 houses each.

Could water be picked up at higher elevations, without damming the stream, and piped along, generating electricity at periodic 'falls' in the piping? Or all along the piping?

Mother Earth is a radical old girl. (Please don't tell her I said that.) She's subject to whims of wind that tear down everything humans can build in fifty years in just 15 minutes. To survive the threatening changes of Mother Nature demands humans adaptively respond by going underground, earth-sheltered homes and buildings, where the winds blow over, with nothing to get under and tear away. A few feet of dirt can keep out the heat or the cold, something else the Old Girl seems to be testing these days, with 10's below zero and triple digits above in places where that hasn't been the norm in human experience.

The infrastructure of transport and power transmission could survive much better underground. The pneumatic tube concept would build corridors suitable for supplying such subterranean passage of utilities, cargoes, and people.

Answer 20

They lose my luggage enough at the airport on those things. I'll be damned if they are going to lose me too.

Answer 21

A conveyor belt powered by what?

Obviously, you have no concept of the energy it would take to run a belt that size over the distances involved.

Nice try though.