3BP's proposal for Green Public Transportation? The Zipcord!

With yesterday's announcement that Ohio will be spending $400 million to create a commuter rail system that no one will ride, you just knew it wouldn't be too long before we heard this:

Transportation officials say they'll look for various ways to pay for a new passenger train system without increasing the tax burden for Ohioans.

Ah, so you didn't think of how to pay for it before applying for the grant? Awesome. That's the kind of foresight I expect to see from government. I guess the only question left is this, how high will taxes go up?

[sigh]

But I have an alternative.

Let's dump this $400 million into something far more efficient, environmentally friendly, and most importantly, far more fun.

The 3-C City-Wide Zipcord Network!

Think of it.

Rather than unloading tons of taxpayer cash into something no one will ever use on a consistent basis, let's make public transportation in our cities much more FUN!

If you have three levels of towers, you can then have large backbone towers that go to smaller distriution towers, that then go to edge towers. Towers could serve multiple purposes of course; centers for public gathering, food courts, shops, and think of the revenue for advertising space.

Travelers, or "Zippers", could be hoisted using energy gathered from wind turbines and solar panels. As for landing, we could create even more jobs by hiring people to engage the Zippers and bring them in for a safe landing - we could call them "Zipper Gropers".

A friend of mine, BCS, put together quite the graphic representation:


There ya have it.

Let's make Ohio the Zipper Groper capital of the world!