Tag Archives: Eric Masaba

Why the UK needs the Rotodyne and not HS2

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The massive investment required by HS2 is wasteful and will provide a very limited set of benefits. This article argues that a better use of funds would be the creation of a compound gyroplane fleet and rooftop landing sites in certain areas of some cities.

The first point to understand is the physics of high-speed transport. An object moving at twice the speed requires four times the energy. An object moving at four times the speed needs sixteen times the energy.

Thus, a train at 300 km/h is sixteen times more energy greedy than one at 75 km/h, which also should explain to the non-engineers and non-scientist minded why freight trains travel so slowly. High-speed rail is the very opposite of energy efficient. Electric high-speed trains travelling at 300 km/h+ are some of the worst energy guzzling machines we have.

The merit function for high-speed rail puts journey times and city centre to city centre connectivity as high priorities, far above energy efficiency, landscape preservation and flexibility.

For any pairing of cities that does not include London, this project is a bust. Yet the entire country is forced to pay for it.

What worked in Japan was a curious mix of ultra-high population density linked with a small number of population centres on flat plains.

In the UK, with its rolling countryside and older tracks, the 200 km/h tilting Advanced Passenger Train (APT) (although a victim of politics) was the only sensible choice. It exists today as the Pendolino, built under licence from Italian firms within the UK, but mostly abroad.

To create high-speed connectivity for the subset of passengers who require that option every day, the compound gyroplane is a very good choice. This can serve any two points within the UK in a maximum of two hours – not dissimilar to a stratosphere cruising jet, but without the need for expensive airport infrastructure. If the take-off areas are secure, then such a vehicle can even land on rooftops in the City of London.

The compound gyroplane would work for any and every type of person, in every area of the UK, while being a massive export earner and long-term job creation scheme.

The Fairey Rotodyne was an aircraft developed from 1956 to 1962 by the UK aeronautics company Fairey, later merged with Westland. It was a compound gyroplane with propellers and a large main rotor which was operated by “tipjets” – small combustion engines at the extremities of the rotor which provided a jet thrust to move the rotor for take off and landing. The main rotor itself was otherwise unpowered and it would freewheel in flight, providing lift.

This article examines the potential benefits of the craft in terms of providing an addition to the transport options in the United Kingdom. In order to assess these, it is important to engage in some analysis of existing transport modes and their benefits.

The physical geography of the United Kingdom is similar to Japan and New Zealand – a long, thin archipelago. However, the population distribution on the main island, Great Britain, does not lend itself to the construction of high-speed rail in anything but three operational axes which are economically viable. 

The high quality and high speed of the East Coast and West Coast mainlines mean that a good enough quality of travel can be obtained there. Going any faster than 140 mph (225 km/h) is not optimal, due to the energy use and increased cost.

A faster service could be obtained for the comparatively small number of customers who really need to go from London to Newcastle in under 1 hour by using helicopters or small aircraft. At a similar price point to the business class ticket on the high-speed rail system, there is a niche that can be met by use of a hybrid helicopter/aeroplane, which could thus also link the island of Ireland, Isle of Man, Isle of Wight, Scilly Isles, Inner and Outer Hebrides and Faroes. Charter services could perform multi-city stops and hops.

Travel options matrix

The variables we wish to examine are: speed, cost, capacity, energy efficiency and distance.

High-speed rail occupies a specific niche of the transport equation – high speed, high cost, low energy efficiency and medium capacity. The sweet spot for this mode is long distances between 150 and 600 km with large (100+) numbers of passengers.

Low-speed rail is low speed, relatively low cost, highly energy efficient and is almost always high capacity. The distance of this mode of travel is anywhere from 50km to 1000km. From 50+ passengers.

Minibus/coach travel is the lowest cost, highest capacity, low to medium speed, medium energy efficiency and very flexible. The distance of this mode of travel is anywhere from 50km to 1000km. 20+ people. Linking islands is only possible with the use of ferries.

Car travel is medium cost, medium speed, low capacity, low energy efficiency and the most flexible of all the ground transport options. The distance of this mode of travel is anywhere from 3km to 1000km. Linking islands is only possible with the use of ferries

Aeroplanes are the highest speed, high cost, inflexible and need long distances for the cost-benefit analysis to make sense. They are only efficient (in both terms of cost and energy) with very large numbers of people and somewhat medium to very long distances. Apart from flights from the South of England to Scotland, Ireland or the North of England, this is not a viable option for intra-UK travel.

Helicopters are the highest cost, most flexible form of transport in the UK, though of very low capacity and abysmal energy efficiency. More versatile in terms of places that can be reached and at speeds comparable with high-speed rail, they are nevertheless almost prohibitively expensive for anything but occasional use. They are not a commuting option.

Within this matrix, there exists an unmet niche: that of high speed, medium to high capacity, low to medium cost, with flexibility comparable to helicopters.

Enter the Rotodyne compound gyroplane.

Eric Matthew W. Masaba

Image: Rotodyne 2 by L. Chatfield, Flickr (CC by 2.0), cropped.

How do we keep the UK moving in an era of permanently higher energy prices?

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Where we are today 

There is no substitute for the private car in terms of flexibility, cost and radius of travel – except, that is, when oil prices are likely to breach $200 per barrel, translating into £2 per litre for petrol, when car parking in the central areas of most major cities is £5-£10 per hour or higher, and travelling a total distance of 600 miles in a day is just not feasible – which just about sums up the soon to be normal experience of motorists in the UK. 

The largest problem is that outside most major cities (indeed, outside London in fact) there are few options but to have a private car. The infrequent or non-existent bus services, the expensive buses that are available, and the lack of any well-developed metro or subway service dramatically limit transport options. 

Case study: Northwest England 

Liverpool – one of the largest cities in the UK and the 2nd largest in the North of England – is close enough to Manchester, the largest city in the region and the 3rd largest in England, that the conurbations overlap and include a population the size of a medium-sized European country (5.6 million).  

Just across the Pennines, there is yet another gigantic urban sprawl that is not particularly well connected to this megalopolis by road or rail. The East-West rail lines in the North of England are not electrified and are served infrequently by antiquated rolling stock. Taxis cost £3 per mile and thus the reality for nearly everyone is that they must have a car. 

What may work best is a model where buses are replaced by multi-capacity, on-demand hybrid bus-taxis which can take separate fares at separate prices. This model is not just a nice add on – it is a necessity.  

The average car is used only one hour per day and spends most of its time parked. When it is used, it carries just one person (the driver) for 90% of its trips. While providing gainful employment and profits to automakers, this is no good for the average person, especially since the cost of simply operating the car is around £300-£600 a month. 

Imagine, then, if a customer could, for £400 per month, buy a subscription, a carnet of passes for all their monthly trips, upgrading with options packages any extra services to their “base buy”. Effectively, this would replace the need for a car during the week for any work commutes, or indeed any supermarket trips. The effective cost per trip, especially for longer-term subscriptions would be considerably less than a taxi trip today and in many cases cheaper than a single bus ticket. A point-to-point travel paradigm is possible, without fixed routes, for considerably less cost to the consumer than a government-operated bus service. 

It would be much like a season ticket for a bus, except that this covers usage in a shared-ride vehicle of appropriate capacity and capability for a specific trip. 

For the weekends, where the average use is likely to be significantly greater than one hour per day, a multi-day car hire is easily managed. Furthermore, putting car-hire businesses in the heart of communities, rather than located on industrial estates far from where people live is another way to make better use of land. A car-rental (carshare) business (where one car is used by many different people although not at the same time) can be located in purpose built multi-storey car parks. It will become apparent to many people that investing in a mobility subscription will be far more cost effective than owning a car, especially when a car can be hired for those small number of occasions when one is needed for multiple consecutive days. 

A key driver of this system could be a comprehensive congestion charging scheme, run as a public utility, on all roads. Such a system would have to be restricted to the hypothecation of revenues garnered – so that there is no incentive or temptation for the city government to use motorists as a funding source for general taxation. 

Conclusion 

Regardless of the power source of vehicles, the overarching requirement must be to make mobility affordable, delivered through a mix of shared rides, car share, and integrated public transport. 

There really is no way to maintain the current system of road usage and vehicle ownership when the costs of energy are rising so dramatically. The total costs of domestic energy (electricity and natural gas), petrol and food (itself a derivative of wholesale energy prices) make car ownership extremely costly. While the government still earns significant tax revenues from petrol taxes, this form of taxation has to evolve and change. 

In order to mitigate the wasteful (in terms of both time and fuel) congestion we see every day on our busiest routes, we need a better way of managing roadspacetime. 

Eric Matthew W. Masaba

Image: Wikimedia Commons