Chapter 7: Merging transportation

Chapter 7:

Winter of 1975 (of this storyline starting with a "what-if" in about 1973) found Greater Los Angeles waking up, employees getting to work and grocery store by the towed scooters and roller skates, and had become new manufacturing industries. Department of Transportation had insisted the pull-cable system be harmonious with the existing bus system, so the cable system was confined to residential areas and surface streets, and was shut down twice a day for an hour while delivery trucks accessed residential areas.

The next evolutionary change, that to include home-garaged streamlined minimal-engined vehicles, was required to also be integrated into the existing vestiges of gasoline powered vehicles: car carriers originally carrying nine new cars, now carried thirty of the pull-band cars, along express routes between downtown and the suburbs. The railroad modified train boxcars to carry the pull-band vehicles, and featured a restroom and snack bar for each. By 1980 Detroit had bought into Pull-Band commute technology, Los Angeles being unable to manufacture the new vehicles fast enough for the whole nation, especially since they were exporting them to the Far East while those countries also built up their own manufacturing capability.

Ethanol powered external combustion flash boiler engines began to replace the recycled automobile engines which had been keeping the system running most places up until them. Thin bands had long ago replaced the round cables, and higher-speed bands circulated towoard the center of streets. The Pull-Band had built-in gripper acceleration locators along them, and the entire pull-band coordinated so gaps would allow cross trraffic to pass through without thought.

Executives had Pull-band extensions installed spiraling around taller buildings, delivering their management personnel direct to each one's office, their personal car parked just outside.