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It's a plane! It's a train! It's a RailPlane car! A illustration shows a monorail carrying individual cars joined to form trains moving at high speeds. [illustration courtesy of david ward] Sunday May 7, 2017 at 2:09 PM May 7, 2017 at 2:09 PM By John Darling For the Tidings David Ward is a dreamer. Ward is a self-taught inventor whose vision is to get everyone out of their cars and into his electric and solar RailPlane monorail, zipping around cites in small, streamlined “cars” that can hook up like a long train, but also exit the monorail, become a car and drive where they wish. Let’s face it, says Ashlander Ward, the era of the personal car is coming to an end, because of pollution, carbon and global warming – and we’ll need something affordable and environmentally friendly to replace it. Ward was the inventor in 2004 of StrawJet, an alternative building material that melds straw, grass and wheat fiber into a tough cable that replaces wood cut from forests. In 2006 the system beat 4,000 other applicants to become the Time Magazine/Modern Marvels “Invention of the Year.” This material will be used to build RailPlane track, which is then covered with steel reinforced concrete. It is generated by a 3D printer and mounted on elevated steel frame at the rate of a mile per week, he notes. It goes up to 140 mph and is affordable, about $5 million per mile in urban centers. The average cost would be $1.8 million per mile, or about the same as a two-lane highway. This, he says, is much cheaper than freeways, subways or light rail, which he calls “19th century technology.” He says it would last for centuries and is virtually maintenance-free. A true believer in his vision, Ward has sold his house and shop and “blown an inheritance” to finance the project with over half a million dollars and is now “running on empty.” As ever, he is busily seeking investors (he’s writing Elon Musk this week) who could at least finance a quarter-scale version, with two passengers in each car instead of the full-scale, which holds four. “I’m very passionate about it,” says Ward. “The United States is the creator and exporter of the personal automobile and I feel partly responsible for that. But the car is very polluting and a social disaster. It has created gridlock in cities and is an inefficient way to move a lot of people around.” With our advanced pollution controls and very expensive highways, America has kept air pollution low, but places like Mexico, India and China are “dying in their pollution,” he says. “Controlling pollution is not that hard. What’s hard is to get people to shift (out of the personal car mindset) and believe in a system like this. People don’t believe a rail system is feasible.” When he tries to sell the idea to governments, corporations or investors, he notes, their response is that it hasn’t been built and proven, needs long research and development, would take millions to do that — and Ward doesn’t have an engineering degree. But he jokes and smiles optimistically, comparing it to the struggles of the Wright Brothers to sell their idea of the airplane in early years, when all they had was a glorified glider with a crude motor. But, because of climate change, population and expense, he believes it has to happen. Ward and his business partner Pat Fitzsimmons have connections in Costa Rica and have meetings in a few weeks there, with hopes to build their first one as a tour ride above the forest canopy in Veragua Rainforest Research and Adventure Park, where they are part-owners of some land, says Ward. With that, they would have a working system to point at. The system will emphasize that mass transportation can be developed in ways that don’t “fragment forests” and destroy ecosystems, he says. To date, Ward has created a scale model of his RailPlane, with cars about the size of watermelons, so you get a tangible idea of what he’s talking about. He displayed it at the Rogue Valley Earth Day celebration at ScienceWorks Hands-On Museum in Ashland. He shows how the RailCar cars have little wings which, like a car spoiler, force the car nose down against the rail and can navigate by computer against crosswinds. Electric power is built into the rail frame and taken into the sides of cars. It could be from standard sources or solar. “Part of my enthusiasm is that I figured this out — and how to make is cheaply. I’m proud of this design.” — John Darling is an Ashland freelance writer. Reach him at [email protected].