Up, Up and Away: A radical proposal for transportation in the City

Take, for instance, the constantly resurging controversy of the RING-ROAD, as good a topic as any to state where you stand. The ring-road has by now been sufficiently bandied about to range in meaning from a precise concrete circle burnt into the otherwise disorderly behaviour of its precedent planning, through elliptical brick-paved tree-lined tunnels, to a meandering round footpath punctuated with small oases of granite benches and water bubblers. Opinions range from the criminal to the magnificent. But so long as it gets down in the end to how little of the land is ours to play with, it remains a game. Traditionally a road, like so many other institutions, was bound by what are now becoming questionable criteria. Beyond being simply trafficable, it was (and still is in all precedent cities) essential to the centralized supply of electricity, gas, water and telephone, and the disposal of sewerage and food and material waste. So that were we as a collective, for instance, to agree that the eventual city wouldn’t be dominated by the infernal combustion engine, then we could begin to look at the idea of a ring road from a more adventurous standpoint. Presuming also the extension of present trends towards autonomous energy systems – solar cellular electricity, individual water supplies, bio-gas (or bottle) supplies, and radio transmitter telephone, with septic and composting waste disposal – then most of the conventional pressures that have created the type of road that grew to ruin the peace of great cities don’t, in our case, fortunately, apply.

So what do we need by way of a ring-road? The reason for its resurgence is the increasing motor traffic on our disreputable tangle of road and dirt track. So we definitely do need interconnections for at least human traffic and some consideration for material supply routes. But there’s no need for these two to mix. In fact, it would seem propitious that they didn’t, for reasons of safety, if for no other.

The only really effective modes of mass urban transport in most large cities are either underground or overhead. Underground we’ve found makes ideal scorpion and serpent refuge. Overhead, on the other hand, could be appropriate to our predicament, because you don’t necessarily have to own the land. You would simply buy the rights to put your pylons across fields. There could be an overhead cable carrying independent pedal or solar powered units, something between a ski-lift and a cable car, riding with your feet dangling about 2 metres above the ground, with landing platforms at all significant outlets. From these you would either walk, cycle or take a horse-cart. There could be a motorcycle bank at Abri (for instance) from which you could take a machine to go to Pondy. From a sort of peaceful premise that what has happened in Auroville so far is what has been meant to happen (its history is therefore relevant) and a high priority determination to try to make development decisions with the least divisive or polarising waves, such a highly improbable solution might even be realistic.