by Rustin Wright.
The Daviesville Transit Commission now knows, at least, that they don’t know.
So step one is to start to learn.
Every high school is asked to devote three classes to designing mass transit. One a day of a physics class. Another a day of a social studies class. A third a day of an art class. Four competitions will be held for high school kids. Each is given funding for ten years to come. The four competitions are these: best essay on a past transit system somewhere in the world. Another essay contest on the most forgotten/least appreciated transit system. Another on their personal memories and experiences, which can be about anything from actual riding in a system to a dream to something that they saw in a movie or book wich made an impression on them. And lastly, on in which they, granted magical powers, made the transit system of their dreams.
Colleges are given a similar mandate. Each college is also given a budget to build and maintain a G-scale railroad. G scale being the ones with tracks seven inches apart and cars just about big enough to hold a large St. Barnard. An additional G scale system is to run on tracks through each campus, elevated if needed, to serve as a means of moving packages or, well, whatever use they can find for it. Goofy is good. Experimention is not only encouraged, it is mandated. If they can find a way to build rolling stock out of cafeteria trays and cover them with little toy dinosaurs, then this means that they’re doing it right.
But essential to this is understanding that not all innovation comes from the very young.
Small towns at the outskirts of Davieville are offered aid, not just of money but of things like help with getting permissions from the state legislature, to build their own local trolley systems.
The terms? They must build their own vehicles from scratch and all rights of way, stations, and so forth are to be done by local contractors. The smaller the better. The resulting transit systems must also run at least twenty hours a week and twenty weeks a year, must have at least twenty seats, must have a top speed of at least twenty miles an hour, and must be able to run at least twenty meters without line power. (In other words, must be able to keep running acros a gap in the power if it is too expensive to, say, run wires across one busy intersection.)
Daviesville leases small apartment buildings next to current relevant systems. One in New Orleans, where they have been building and maintaining their own cars for over a hundred years. One in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where they run 1930’s vintage PCC streetcars through Wisconsin freeze thaw-cycles AND Scott Walker/Koch brothers constant harrassment. One in Maine right by the Seashore Trolley Museum. And two apartments in Queens, NY right by the MTA’s maintenance yards. And to these apartments, from the population of Daviesville and of surrounding towns they send a constant procession of machinists, advocates for the disabled, graphic designers, and plain old gearheads. Each sent to volunteer for one of those systems for two months to learn how and why they do what they do.
Locals of every stripe in the Daviesville area are encouraged to build every kind of rail and bus system that they possibly can. Model trains running inside all night diners. Electric buses to transport people across the mall parking lot. Miniature monorail amusement rides of the sort that department stores used to run at Christmas (like the one right inside Portland’s own Meier & Frank.)
For three years this is the focus. To know that nobody knows. So let’s find out. And let’s experiment.