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FLL Project presentation By The Whatchamacallits: Peter, Aidan, Micah, and Jacob. California Bay Area Palo Alto. Our Community. Palo Alto. Cars Planes Trains Skateboards Ambulances Feet Bikes Boats Helicopters Motorcycles. How People move around. Caltrains BART Trains Amtrak
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FLL Project presentation By The Whatchamacallits: Peter, Aidan, Micah, and Jacob
California • Bay Area • Palo Alto Our Community Palo Alto
Cars • Planes • Trains • Skateboards • Ambulances • Feet • Bikes • Boats • Helicopters • Motorcycles How People move around
Caltrains • BART Trains • Amtrak • Light Rail Trains in the bay area:
Local Travel works well, has a few problems: • Safety • Pollution • Long distance travel: • Too many stops=too slow • Old tracks=slow • Only one trip each day from Northern CA to Southern CA • Not enough passengers, because of this! Problems with trains today
Example Trip: Palo Alto to Anaheim California High Speed Rail
It is very fast • It goes from San Francisco to Los Angeles In 2 ½ Hours. • Eco Friendly • Does not use gasoline • Electric • Very efficient • SAFE! • No grade crossings • Comfortable • Convenience • No Security checkpoints? • Stations Downtown • More Stations Advantages of High Speed Rail
Loud • Ugly tracks • Ugly Wires • Divides neighborhoods • Expensive • Location of stations High-Speed Rail Problems
One Solution: • One solution to the problems with noise and looks is to create an underground tunnel • This will not divide neighborhoods, and won’t be ugly. We went to the high-speed rail workshop and found out that the cost of creating a tunnel was around $200-300 million per mile. This is too expensive, so we had to think of a new idea. Us with Joseph Bellomo, an architect who also had the raised- track idea.
An elevated track with pillars to hold it up. • Allows foot traffic and cars to travel underneath it. • Can be designed attractively • Other communities have done this sort of project. Our solution to that problem
Here is an example. A light rail from the Seattle Tacoma airport.
We created a model of our raised-rail idea in Google Sketchup.
The Second Part of the Problem • The next part of the problem is, what will they do for the power source. • There is... • Catenary wires, the wires that are above the train, which are ugly. • A third rail, which is very dangerous. • Gasoline, which is bad for the environment. • Electricity which is very cheap but hard to get to the train. • A fuel cell, which is extremely efficient but is very expensive. • Out of all of these the fuel cell is the best choice... except for the cost.
Our solution to that problem • Make the High speed train powered by Fuel cell, it only emits nitrogen and water. • No more Wires • Eco-Friendly • it is not ugly in any way. • Although, it costs just a bit more.
We Put it on our team website: • www.whatchamacallits.org • On November 8, we had a meeting with Palo Alto City Council Member • Mrs. YorikoKishimoto • She is a Board Member of Valley Transportation Authority How we shared our solution
THANK YOU! …any questions? The Whatchamacallits
Biblography • www.carbonify.com • http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/ • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail • http://www.energy.iastate.edu/Renewable/ammonia/ammonia/2006/VehicleProjects.pdf • http://www.trainnet.org/Libraries/Lib019/EUROSTAR.JPG