In the Future, Commuters May Be Pushed Around by the Wind : Transit: Newport Beach transit designer is point man for development of air-powered people-mover systems.

Magnetic induction power and esoteric fuels are fine ideas, but Ron Powers thinks that mass transit in this country could benefit from one of the oldest forms of propulsion known to man.

The transportation designer frequently finds himself acting as West Coast point man for a pneumatic, or air-powered, people-mover system first used--unsuccessfully--in Britain in the late 1800s and currently in very successful use in a public park in Indonesia.

Intermass Inc., a small private company in West Palm Beach, Fla., owns the U.S. rights to the pneumatic train technology. Powers, who has spent $2 million since 1990 independently designing and building a modern transit vehicle, recently cut a deal with Intermass owner Marsha Feliciano that gives his Powers Design International in Newport Beach exclusive rights to supply all transit cars used in any Intermass system in the United States.

Powers likens it to a sort of “sail train” that manufactures its own wind for reliability.

That sounds a bit weird, but supporters say the system works great, and the per-passenger cost of running the two systems in existence is just pennies a day--equivalent to the cost of lighting a 60-watt bulb for 24 hours.

Feliciano said she bought the U.S. rights to the so-called Aeromovel, or wind-moved, system from Brazilian inventor Oskar Coester, who built a pilot project in the mid-1980s in his home town of Porto Alegre, about 250 miles south of Sao Paulo.

In a telephone interview from Brazil, Feliciano said Coester’s one-mile prototype system can carry 2,000 passengers an hour at an operating cost of less than $500,000 per year--about a third of the normal people-mover system costs.

The only other air-powered people mover in the world is a Coester-designed system in a public park in Jakarta, Indonesia.

That two-mile system has been running for three years and in a British television special that aired in England last year, Indonesian officials said the cost of running the system was well under $1 per passenger per day. Construction costs, in U.S. dollars, were $9 million and the entire system was built with locally produced materials and local labor.

Construction costs vary by locale, but a preliminary report for the city of Long Beach suggests that an Aeromovel system could be built in Southern California for half of what a conventionally powered monorail or elevated train would cost.

An Aeromovel transit system works on the same principal of a pneumatic mail system, except that the payload--the passenger car--doesn’t run inside the pneumatic tube.

The tube is a hollow, meter-size square, built of steel or reinforced concrete and manufactured in sections that are linked together at the construction site. Mounted on the flat, top surface of the tube are a pair of parallel steel tracks that the metal-wheeled passenger vehicle glides on.

The top of the tube is slit down the center, between the rails, so that the “mast” descending from the bottom of the car can penetrate into the hollow interior, where it is affixed to a thin metal sail that pulls the car along. A length of rubber gasket seals the slit so air doesn’t spill out.

The wind pushing on the sail is created by large electric fans spaced every mile or so--the distance depends on the number of cars, the steepness of any grade being climbed and the distance between stations.

The fans create a low-pressure flow of air behind the sail. Two pounds per square inch, equivalent to a strong Santa Ana wind, is enough to propel the train at speeds of more than 60 m.p.h. The sail fits the interior of the tube much like a coin inside a paper coin wrapper--just loose enough to slide smoothly along the entire length.

Feliciano said Intermass is one of two bidders being considered for installation of a private mass-transit system to connect a large industrial park outside of Atlanta with the city’s downtown and is one of 14 bidders talking to Georgia Tech officials about an on-campus system that would be installed in time for the 1996 Summer Olympics.

She said construction costs for the Georgia Tech project are “less than $20 million for a one-mile system with two stations and one vehicle. That would carry up to about 1,000 people an hour.”

Powers has been pounding the pavement on the West Coast for the past year promoting his company and, when appropriate, Intermass, to various government agencies as being the team to talk with when mass transit is on the table.

He said he likes the Aeromovel technology because of its pollution-free propulsion system and relative low cost, but he doesn’t hold it out as the only answer to society’s need for mass transportation.

In his drive to involve his company in transit planning, Powers has held talks with transit officials in Irvine, Long Beach and Anaheim and with the Central Orange County Fixed Guideway Agency, which is studying a mass-transit system for the crowded central county area that runs from Fullerton and Buena Park through Anaheim, Santa Ana, Orange, Costa Mesa and into Irvine.

While the Aeromovel technology has intrigued transit officials in those jurisdictions, its novelty has raised concerns in Anaheim--where the wind-powered system was rated unacceptable because of its untested status--and with the central Orange County group.

Powers has served the Central Orange Fixed Guideway Agency as a “very knowledgeable (volunteer) consultant” on various people-mover systems, said Dave Schuter, executive director of the multi-city agency.

Schuter’s agency was formed in June, 1991, by nine cities and the county to study development of a 50-mile transit system that could be built 15 to 25 years from now.

The early cost estimate for the system, with conventionally powered transit cars, is $50 million to $70 million per mile--which compares favorably with the $136-million-per-mile cost of a proposed 16-mile elevated rail line along the Ventura Freeway in Los Angeles County or the actual cost of $102 million per mile that the city of Buffalo, N.Y., spent in 1979 to build its system.

Schuter said that while the Aeromovel pneumatic power system is intriguing, particularly because of Feliciano’s claims that it could be built for much less than $50 million a mile, it seems more applicable to small, closed-loop systems than the lengthy commuter system being proposed for Orange County.

“Although any and all technologies are being studied at this stage of things,” he added. In Long Beach, where a small people-mover system is being discussed, at least one City Council member thinks the Aeromovel technology looks promising.

“It is the most cost-effective option that has been waved in front of our noses,” enthused Douglas Drummond, who represents Long Beach’s 3rd District, which covers the section of the city around Belmont Shore.

Drummond, who also sits as a member of the mass-transit committee of the Southern California Assn. of Governments, said Long Beach officials are considering a three- to four-mile system to link the convention center, Queen Mary tourist area and downtown hotels with an outlying parking structure.

“Time will tell how well it would really work,” he said of the air-powered system, “but in the initial proposals we have seen, the cost of building it is half of what any other system would cost.”

A Train With Wind In Its Sails

An environmentally sound, non-polluting, air-powered train is not some futuristic design in the mind of an engineer--there is system already running in Indonesia. *Wind Train Facts Speed: Up to 150 m.p.h. on open stretches. Car capacity: 40 to 60 passengers. Control: Monitor in a central center. Energy cost: About same, per passenger, as a 60-watt bulb. Load/price factor: 2,000 passengers per hour at less than $500,000 yearly--about one-third of the normal cost of a people-mover system. *How It Works 1. Electric motor turns the fan. 2. Fan blows air into a hollow guideway. 3. Air is forced against a sail. 4. Sail is joined to a mast connected to the wheels. 5. As air is forced into the sail, train is propelled forward on a steel rail. *Labels Electric motor Fan/Blower Directional air valve *Steel rail Steel wheels Sail Mast *Hollow elevated concrete guideway Concrete support columns *Source: Powers Design International Researched by DALLAS M. JACKSON/Los Angeles Times