What is the localnet?

Background

We start by discussing why we must do something significant about how we move stuff and people around. This leads us to formulate some key objectives for a better way of doing this. We then look at the nature of incremental versus step changes and finish with a brief review of existing technologies, systems and processes that look like promising ingredients for our radical rethink of local transport.

Benefits

It is difficult to become passionate about a long term plan unless you can clearly visualise how you personally could benefit from it. In this chapter, you are asked to put aside doubts about whether and how localnet could be achieved and imagine yourself using it. To help you do this, we have described how it would be used by a range of different individuals - from a milkman to a retired widower. The first and most detailed of these is actually from the perspective of the author and his family. Everyone should read this first. Then find the individual that most closely matches your own profile and see how it could affect you.

Services Provided

At least once a week I think of another service that localnet could provide. These go way beyond the delivery and collections that already take place at your doorstep. They will change the way we live, the way we use our living space, how we shop, where we work, how many cars we need and so on. This chapter classifies services as “Delivery” (goods to your home), “Collection” (goods from your home), “Distribution” (goods between homes and/or businesses within the local area), “Storage” (goods collected and returned later), “Transport” (moving people to or from home) and “Contact” (interacting with the occupant). Each service is discussed in detail; compared with today's equivalent (if any) and its take-up and subsequent impact considered.

How does the localnet work?

Implementation

Imagination is all very well but if we want to make the localnet real, it does have to be implemented. This section describes how the system actually works - taking a top down approach. It uses engineering level assumptions rather than precise figures and, no doubt, many of the details discussed will be superseded by better approaches before they are ever deployed.

Components

The localnet will use a number of existing devices but also requires some new components to be designed and constructed. These range from the reusable boxes in which goods are delivered to the complex machinery needed to automatically fill, empty, clean and move them around. New types of modular vehicles are proposed that can carry both people and goods. These are termed  OmniVans.

Infrastructure

This chapter describes the impact on buildings and structures. It includes changes that are needed to existing homes and how new dwellings would be designed and built to exploit localnet to the full. It also describes the LocalHub - a conglomeration of the village shop, post office, bakery, cafe, taxi service and more. In between these two, many bus-stops may be converted to staging posts where containers are transferred between an OmniVan and larger lorries.

Impact

So far, we've considered the effect of localnet predominantly from the perspective of those living within the area served by it. However, the impact will be much wider than that. Many existing businesses will be affected and must evolve or die if it is widely adopted. Here we contemplate the social, business and moral issues likely to accompany such a project.

Challenges

Given that, on the basis of the preceding chapters, we still believe that the localnet is a desirable goal, what would stop it from happening? Unfortunately the list is quite long. Most of the potential problems are not actually technical - or even economic - but, rather, are social and political. They are therefore significant and very troublesome.

Making it Happen

Reading the previous chapter, one could be forgiven for packing up and consigning localnet to the realms of science fiction. Short of waiting for the first Martian city planning meeting, our best option is to demand that our politicians make this happen. The UK's Eco-town project is crying out for a “big idea”. This is it.