Crazy ideas... discuss or add your own

[original PM]

Perhaps we need to acknowledge that having 30 million people travel for 2 hours a day to get to and from work isn't a terribly efficient way to organise things and aim for a complete paradigm shift rather than a band aid.

Indeed - but then what would middle management drones do all day if they could not shout at people for being 3 minutes late and then fill in lots of paperwork about the time transgression.

[mudskipper]

Its feasible in Sweden

District heating - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

PS and

Iceland do it, but the water is naturally hot.

[bless 'em all]

1) Heat water centrally and pipe hot water through insulated pipes to houses eliminating the need for individual boilers/storage tanks etc.

This was the method of heating in the house I grew up in. One huge boiler room serving the whole estate.

The main issues were (1) Poor reliability of the boiler (2) Lack of capacity, meaning those at the 'end' of the curcuit often had no heat (3) Piss-poor insulation of the large pipes running throughout the estate.

Point (3) above did go someway to satisfy MS' other unfeasible idea though.

[OwlHoot]

BBC News - Readers' big infrastructure projects

I like the 4000mph UK/USA tunnel one best.

It's bonkers - For a start the Atlantic is still opening, at about 1cm per year, and very hot at the constructive plate margin along the seabed in the middle. Also imagine the pressure of 25,000 feet of water and half a mile of rock. The tunnel would have to be made of titanium at least a couple of feet thick, and it would need loads of ventilation shafts and a cooling system all working away non-stop like the clappers.

Slightly more practical would be a tunnel floating near the surface. But even that would need numerous vast tethers to prevent it drifting away with the winds and currents, and it would be very vulnerable to sabotage and destruction in wartime.

It would be much cheaper to develop a large ultraefficient supercavitating underwater train that could travel across the Atlantic underwater at 1200 MPH or more.

Coming down to Earth, how about a floating airport in the Thames Estuary, or roofing over motorways for a huge amount of extra growing area (which the UK may need soon).

[DimPrawn]

My pet projects (completely unfeasable) are:

1) Heat water centrally and pipe hot water through insulated pipes to houses eliminating the need for individual boilers/storage tanks etc.
2) Under road heating for snowy/icy conditions

New York City steam system - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Under Road Heating | Heated Roads | Solar Road Systems | Heated Cycle Tracks | Black tarmac roads absorb heat | Under tarmac heating | A38 Haldon Hill | Blacktop temperatures | underfloor heating

[d000hg]

Totally out there idea that no one will have thought about before and will never happen.

How about update the motorway network to be sustainable over the next 50 years and address congestion areas that cost us all so much time and frustration.

Roads are fine, we just need to reduce the number of cars or make them self-driving in road-trains.

Also, if we made lorries only travel between 8pm-6am...

[original PM]

back in the day (industrial revolution type day) many of the major cities had centralised steam factories which would generate and pipe steam to various factories etc for the purpose of driving machinery.

Surely it cannot be a large leap to have that as a way of heating some housing/offices?

[original PM]

[QUOTE=d000hg;1805778]Roads are fine, we just need to reduce the number of cars or make them self-driving in road-trains.

Also, if we made lorries only travel between 8pm-6am...[/QUOTE]

... what...

motorway service hookers would have to change their hours?

[OwlHoot]

Also, if we made lorries only travel between 8pm-6am...

Failing that, a "no overtaking lorries between 7am - 9am and 4pm - 6pm unless the overtakee was going below 40 MPH" rule on the motorways would vastly reduce congestion at a stroke.

[DimPrawn]

Build a modern mass transit system similar to the levitating bullet monorail in Swindon that links every part of the town with town centre, alleviating the need of road transport.