Have you ever come up with an idea that you don’t quite know if it’s genius or just a bad idea? Something daring and new but that makes sense, like a little Eureka moment that the more you think about it, the clearer it becomes.
Beyond the Transport emerges from documenting those small ideas and projects from a new perspective. A different way of thinking about the topics I am passionate about, and the problems I face every day as a traffic engineer. Hence the two worlds I want to talk about:
- The first one about transportation in our daily life and what we can do to improve it. However, the focus is on modeling (you’ll find out why).
- The second one about a transportation system on the lunar surface. This idea comes out of a personal passion and challenge, and you will see that it gives a lot to talk about.
Here on Earth
Every time you get on the metro, every time you’re stuck in a traffic jam, every time you look up on Maps how to get to that bar… Traffic and transport may not seem the most exciting thing, but it’s there structuring the whole of society’s day-to-day life. How about a little insight into this world? If only to talk about how we can make it better.
I’m the first to get bored by dense, theoretical discussions. That’s why this blog is not only to give data, but to explain curious ideas with an informative and technical touch enough to make you think. Where we explore tangents without losing sight of the main objective. You will see that this is the best way to discover curiosities that probably do not lead you to anything, but sometimes lead you to unexpected approaches. Here are some examples:
Perhaps these facts don’t mean much to you, and the blog will simply teach you something new. Or maybe you find them intriguing, and the blog helps you discover new perspectives beyond mere learning. In either case, I challenge you to dive into the blog and see where this data comes from and why it is interesting… Which brings me to one of the most important points: this blog aims to be collaborative. Every idea or argument on the blog touches on many different sectors, so maybe you’ll spot an error or come up with something better to complement what’s been said. Whatever it is, any comments are more than welcome!
There on the Moon
What if I told you that the train is the only viable transport system in a space environment? I’m sure you’d have a lot of doubts… but first let me prove it to you in detail. And I don’t mean vaguely; I mean by explaining the risks, the construction process, the costs involved, the materials needed, the structures… the whole project.
About the author
We all have a passion that we like to talk about, in my case there are two: innovation and space exploration, and I promise I will talk about that in this blog. But to be honest, I’m not one of those people who are always up to date and then post about the latest trends in a certain field, or those who put forward opinions that end up going viral. I’d love to… but I don’t have that discipline or that persuasion. What I do have is imagination, curiosity and a bit of stubbornness for wanting to do things differently the first time the “old way” doesn’t work. So I won’t tell you how artificial intelligence affects the transport sector, instead I will tell you how to make a genetic algorithm in a traffic model that will save you tears and weeks of work. Nor will I go into detail about the latest news from NASA’s Artemis programme, instead I’d rather tell you how to build a train on the moon.
Welcome. My name is Alexei García, a civil engineer, and I hope you find all this as entertaining as I do.