#MetaLoop
Or How We Can connect “Everyone, Everywhere, All at Once,” Stop Worrying about our Cities, #MoveFastAndFixThings, help Regenerate Gaia (potentially funded by UN, World Bank-guaranteed Green Bonds along with levies on Fossil Fuel corporate revenues), and Love the Three Most Precious Things We Have:
Our Time, our Health & the Planet (while helping Melbourne — inspired by our own favourite Cities — Hong Kong & London; regain its “World’s Most Livable City” crown and Sydney stay in the race!)
What is MetaLoop?
An Ecomimetic, Express A to B that complements the car and suburbs, improves on the Boring Company urban congestion-busting model, beats Tesla’s RoboTaxi Uberisation, with a more economically productive, Growth & Jobs-synergising public-private partnership, distributed personal, mass rapid transit (fusing the Private Car with the Public Tram-Bus-Train, so revolutionising transit just as the Railways & Jet Engine did), being far cheaper, faster and less disruptive to build and maintain; while generating 5+ revenue streams for PPP-surplus spending on key Mission-based, Doughnut Economy productivity, sustainable growth, employment, environmental and social priorities.
Shalaby points to the growing movement surrounding mobility-as-a-service, proposing a single digital platform that would combine public transit, ride-hailing, bike-share and taxis into one user-friendly service.
Shalaby envisions a symphonic blend of city mobility that is seamless and integrated.
“We’re facing a generational opportunity as Gen Z and Alpha grow up in a world of micro-mobility and ride-share programs, so it’s the right time for this”, he says. “They’re already open to it.”
How is #AITheNewSteamEngine? Ask the Nobel Economics Prize Committee
It lets us merge the Car with the Train (& the Renewables Green Power Grid), synergising Private Mobility with the Public Good — into a multi-modal, 21st Century CleanTech Infrastructure & Productivity Revolution that generates PPP Revenue surpluses for key government spending priorities, thereby relieving the broader tax burden on individuals and businesses, and seeding a more efficient and healthy economy; so also yielding a more cohesive, eudaemonic society .
“The Station Comes to You…along a new renewables-dedicated, optimally distributed, fractal geometry, integrated people, food, goods, data and green electrons-moving single-platform Songline-emulating network…
How the Railways Transformed Victorian Britain — MetaLoop can be the AI-AV Carolean equivalent, while literally, putting Green Electrons on Wheels, these mobile batteries saving on Renewables pylons & wires, creating Virtual Power Plants.
…via a biomimetic, multi-modal urban flow-distribution, rapid transit-green electricity transmission & storage mobility metro-machine to de-carbonise, de-congest, de-pollute, de-heat, de-idle, de-hazard & re-justice our Cities by igniting a productivity, property utility-value and personal wellbeing revolution, ASAP.”
Nigel Reading ARB-UK LEED RIBA
“Good Design is the Complex rendered Simply, via #SynPlexity”
Nigel Reading — TED Conferences
https://www.scoop.it/topic/asynsis-principle-constructal-law
“Life is Always Right…”
Le Corbusier (via Simon Alford, RIBA President 2022)
“The best solution to an architectural problem may not necessarily be a building”
…said the great thinker and architect Cedric Price
The successful implementation of mission-oriented industrial strategy requires letting go of old assumptions about the role of the state in the economy, and instead recognising and investing in its transformational capacity.
Mariana Mazzucato, Sarah Doyle and Luca Kuehn von Burgsdorf
Mission Oriented Industrial Strategy — UCL July 2024
In this multi-modal potentially Crown Estate-powered ecosystem, The Station Comes To You with the fastest, most seamless Express A to B, Point to Point, Renewables-powered AV-EV & Active Personal Rapid Transit network, where 80-90% of the journey is elevated (often above existing rail & road lines, so utilising the now wasted air-rights above them), so minimised traffic congestion ensues; while the ecosystem serves as a synergised Virtual Power Plant off-taker/demand centre for utility scale Renewables & AI to help meet Crown Estate’s £60b renewables-cost challenge.
So Team MetaLoop seeks to help us de-carbonise & de-congest our Cities towards Net-Zero, most easily and quickly with seamless, safe transit (primarily as a #FormFollowsFlow express, robotaxi and light active transit & logistics network, for rush hour commuting, the nighttime-entertainment economy & light-medium deliveries), while sparking a Civil Transit-Energy Infrastructure, TOD, Housing, Productivity, AgTech, Logistics, Personal Rapid Transit AV-EV, Battery, AI-synergised, Big Data, CleanTech-Autonomy-Robotics Manufacturing Industrial Base (so delivering extra Economic Growth, revived GDP, bolstered Government Revenue and Quality Jobs) boom due to our synergised, biomimetic UCL Mission-led, Doughnut Economy Public Private Partnership Operating Model.
We therefore also initially propose exploring a joint Arup-Asynsis-Crown Estate-Lend Lease Australian Feasibility Study-Reference Design with the likes of UTS Professor Roy Green (who often works collaboratively with Senator Tim Ayres, Science & Technology minister) & UNSW Scientia Professor of High Performance Architecture Mat Santamouris in this regard, commissioned and part-funded by the Commonwealth government with commercial partners in a PPP; under the auspices of the Future Made in Australia Act-National Reconstruction Fund.
Matt Kean, Climate Change Authority Chair, is also a mentor in this endeavour (he proposed Aerotropolis-Western Sydney Airport for the ML video shared in this article).
There’s also much potential for later licensing this IP-protected clean mobility tech for regional, (eg: South East Asian-Singapore, Bangkok, Korea, even Japan & China); then global export, bolstering Australia’s Green Superpower contribution to decarbonising the world economy, with substantial reputational, industrial base-capacity-(re)building, and revenue reward.
This Australian Feasibility Study-Reference Design can then feed into the UK Energy-Transit nexus via Great British Energy, The National Wealth Fund and the UK Department of Transport-Network Rail-Transport for London (our previous Arup London OverGround GingerLine ELL-Reference Design client), perhaps under the auspicies of the Australian British Infrastructure Catalyst, now entering it’s 10th anniversary and entering a newly galvanised activation phase.
In the UK iteration, MetaLoop builds on and fully extends HS2 Rail infrastructure to become a synergised, comprehensive & close to universal Green Energy + Transit distribution network ecosystem, also connecting On and Off-shore Wind, Solar Utility & Rooftop PV with every major British Town and City, spurring with its 5+ Revenue Surpluses; new Affordable Housing and CleanTech Industry in a 21st Century Industrial Base renaissance for Great Britain, cradle of the world’s first Industrial Revolution, driven then by Steam; and now by AI in a 4th Industrial Revolution, where AI allows existing cutting edge tech to be synergised in new, integrated ways like the multi-modal MetaLoop ecosystem model, which has the added benefit of optimally facilitating the NetZero/Real Zero transition.
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0
The Aerotropolis Wicked Problem Question?
How to create an EcoLivable City ecosystem that best connects to the new Sydney Metro Hub at Aerotropolis: a new CleanTech, Science-Educational, Light Industrial and Logistics-led Greater Western Sydney precinct, with on demand and active mobility, green and urban cooling placemaking, with key worker-accessible affordable housing?
With Form Follows Flow, SynPlexity Telos, Aristotle’s ultimate, optimal “Purpose”.
Your commuter MetaPod can be purchased by you (potentially using dedicated funds from the Monetary Commons), along with extra ones and a fleet of MetaDrones for delivery services. Each serve as batteries on wheels within a city-wide Virtual Power Plant.
Each vehicle when you’re not using it, is either recharging at designated charge points (distributed in the cityscape, your home or work place - or integrated into the MetaLoop bridges and pylons); or at the service of the network, as PPP-Uber robotaxis or grocery and parcel drones (with the MetaDrones also soon featuring integrated delivery droids).
So when you’re not using your Pods-Drones, they are still generating income for the PPP operator, the Monetary Commons Fund and for you, the prosumer.
The MetaLoop income streams (with example-only sites), may include:
- Robotaxi fares, grocery & parcel delivery fees
- Renewable Energy generation, storage, distribution fees, Renewable Energy tariffs (Utility & Rooftop Solar PV-Off & OnShore Wind-Advanced Geothermal-Pumped Hydro-Data Centre Heat Recovery), Virtual Power Plant Trading fees
- GIS data collection fees (like Google Street View), AI Big Data Centre & ML network WiFi-processing fees
- MetaLoop Bridge Transit Micro-Tolling (Active & AV)
- MetaBiome Urban & Vertical Farming Bio & Hydroponic Food Provision Bills
- Urban Precinct Heat Island Cooling & Water Harvesting-Misting rates along ML Urban Arbors and Stand-alone MetaPergolas to supplement tree cover
- Urban Parklet — Precinct Plaza-Parklet Kiosk Rents, Location shooting fees for TV, Music, Gaming & Movies
- Physical Offline and Digital Online Advertising.
As published in Fifth Estate, and shared at #SmartEnergy2021 in Sydney, and now also discussed with numerous fellow attendees including lawmakers, at Parliament House Canberra, Australia at the Australia Institute’s Revenue Summit 2022, and Climate Integrity Summit 2023, we present a Songline-emulating, post-CoVid19 socially-distanced, Green New Deal, Single-Platform, Multi-Modal, Renewables-powered, Urban Light-Active-AV Transit & Farming, Biomimetic, City-optimising personal rapid transit Network & Virtual Power Plant prosumer concept, as a proposed specialist consultant-led Feasibility Study for Premium Serially Shared Autonomous Electric Vehicles (SAEVs); as an optimal Desire Line for the Fourth Industrial Revolution that ignites a Productivity and Revenue renaissance as sumarised in this Executive Summary, that exemplifies the vital, balanced environmental-social priorities of the Mission-led and Doughnut Economy — #MetaLoop.
So how do we learn for Norway’s Future Fund and tap the Super Profits of the Fossil Fuel industry for the collective good?
Rather than fritter the windfalls of the Oil, Coal & Gas boom (as Thatcher did in the UK for North Sea Gas), with the failed hoax of trickle-down economics tax cuts (particularly) for the wealthy; why not emulate the Norwegians and invest in free childcare, universities, health care, sinecure-universal basic incomes and the like, and in our EV fleets — for social justice and cohesion, health, well-being and happiness?
And how do we absorb the massive over-supply of Solar PV panels that is vastly exceeding current projected demand for new generation capacity?
Clearly, new demand generation is needed, and so an AI-powered MetaLoop that also generates, stores and distributes Green Electrons is now a compelling way forward.
Such an Australian Future Fund sourcing meaningful Minerals Resources taxes and Carbon pricing, coupled with Green Bonds, can help fund new infrastructure like MetaLoop, which can naturally fill the Renewables Curtailment niche.
Recently in 2022, The Australia Institute’s Canberra Revenue Summit consensus was that the capital investment into infrastructure that boosted productivity has multiplier effects, that cascade into the economy, further enhancing the economic and societal benefits.
The Captured Value of new Mobility technology (first aired in the Henry Report on Australia’s Future Tax System) is now a reality, meaning a MetaLoop network generates revenues-value on multiple, synergised, compounding unique value proposition fronts:
- Micro-levies on the fares of paying commuters, who accept a premium for “station comes to you” seamless, express A-B, private, safe urban mobility
- General road-usage tolls (to replace the fuel-excise tax), that allows CBDs to recover fully from the average 30% declines in office occupancy and consequent market values since Covid
- Productivity and well-being, physical and mental health gains for individuals, stakeholders and for the economy as prosumer-commuters optimise their work-life balances by minimising commuting time, while maximising work time thanks to being able to remotely work and communicate in safety, while in rapid-express transit, so also saving more time for leisure, family and friends thanks to shorter, smoother and safer trip times
- These SynPlexity benefits represent billions of dollars of additional value to the Australian economy by making our existing infrastructure (with 4th Industrial Revolution enhancements), work harder and better for us with Productivity gains, and by generating new export & IP licensing revenues from a National Reconstruction Fund/Net Zero Authority/Future Made in Australia-enabled new CleanTech manufacturing base along the lines of the now defunct Car industry initiated by the post-WWII Chiefly Labor government
- This CAPEX vrs OPREV dynamic means the ROI of MetaLoop is highly favourable, especially considering the above revenues and values are all integrated into the first one of five actual revenue streams (Micro-Fares-Tolls for People-Goods transport-delivery, Energy generation-transmission-storage-VPPs, AgriTech Food growth-delivery + Light Freight, Big Data sales, Advertising).
MetaLoop Personal Rapid Transit on-demand AV Pods are inherently safer than public transit or manned taxis & ubers, an increasing priority as society suffers from increasing numbers of people with mental health issues and general racial-political schisms.
So MetaLoop is not only safer transit, it also addresses several other wicked-problems, while being also potentially green & climate bond-financed (with timely ROI, in swiftly paying for itself with 5+ revenue-streams and IP-licensing of the ML network infrastructure poles, bridges and pods manufacturing to lower unit labour cost markets); and enables many other societally-useful things in mitigating the UN-declared Climate Emergency to de-carbonise, de-congest, de-heat, de-idle, de-hazard & de-pollute our cities, most easily and rapidly via optimal, biomimetic, dedicated fractal flow distribution geometries.
This is because not only does it move people, goods and food most easily, it also moves green electrons as a new, stand-alone renewables-dedicated grid that will help mitigate current grid imbalances of curtailment, spillage and distributed storage by acting as an Actual meets Virtual Power Plant with blockchain energy trading to address the infamous “duck-curve” conundrum that is retarding the speedy uptake of renewable/non-fossil energy to exclusively power our cities, in meeting the COP26 NetZero 2050 challenge.
Moving goods includes mail and courier services, such as Britain’s Royal Mail integrating street-level drone delivery with dedicated, branded AV-EV MetaPods.
These would ensure, faster more direct deliveries nation-wide, freeing rail for High Speed passenger and other freight, while avoiding further truck congestion by being elevated.
It also strives to incorporate Circular, Regenerative Economy principles in recycling and upcycling the waste of our cities back into them via the physical embodiment of materials used in the MetaLoop superstructure.
It’s as circular as possible, so for example, we envisage using recycled ocean plastic for the bridge walkways and cycleway surfaces, within the MetaPod PRT vehicles used, in various fixtures and fittings like railings and light diffusers, et al; and recycled steel & aluminum, plus engineered timber - for the biomimetic, Frei Otto-informed superstructure bridges and poles that carry the transiting people, goods, data and green energy that MetaLoop optimally transports.
This Asynsis MetaLoop green urban transit vision which we’ve been advocating and publishing since at least 2017, most recently proposed for Aerotropolis, Sydney in February 2023; is being simultaneously developed in parallel (or at least similar versions — with potential imitation being the best form of flattery indeed), by other designers like BIG, for the more recent, Telosa project, and so is demonstrably getting closer to fruition by the day.
A key point of distinction being that MetaLoop’s lead ideator, the author, Nigel Reading, delivers the only such vision backed by the practical ARUP experience of delivering the London Overground GingerLine mass transit reference design (now built and fully operational), an urban transit concept which also exemplifies a TED-spread, first geometric principles, physics-informed, design theory of everything.
Flying Taxis as shown above and below will also have a role in optimising personal rapid transit, but will be niche-limited (as Elon Musk has said), by their insurance and noise-disruption, air-space/ground space safety disadvantages.
The above MetaPod concept design example is taken with acknowledgment from Aptera, while we suggest future operating models could be manufactured by various legacy Car manufacturers (to help them diversify and preserve market share), or by new mobility startups like Aptera or Zoox, according to the technical engineering specifications required to operate on the network.
This would encourage competition and provide a variety of models for the mobility commuter to choose from, with commensurate pricing bands.
As shared with & by Mckinsey Mobility’s lead Mobility Consultant and Australia’s leading Renewable energy power purchasing agreement project manager, Jonathan Prendergast as an urban transit solution that best addresses several wicked problems at once.
Design Consultant partners: Asynsis Architecture + Design, Caldis Cook Group, Morrison Design Partnership, Erbas, Environmental Partnership, ihD, TILT, Buro Happold, aligning with Hexagon on simulating the full MetaLoop ecosystem with Digital Twins:
Research partners: University of New South Wales Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Built Environment faculties, Business Renewables Centre’s Monica Richter and the DesignThinkersGroup’s Mark Watson.
Leading global Mobility Manufacturer, Group of 8 University Mobility-AV-EV-AI Robotics Lab, Cleantech Incubator-Accelerator, Chris Ebbert — Mobility Designer & L’Ecole de Design Nantes Atlantique-Shanghai university Space Design Dean, who we designed our Asynsis Apsara Flying Car with, Blockchain Energy Trading-VPP and Capital Investment partners involvement subject to active public-private-partnership negotiation with various government commissioning authorities.
With MIT-trained Professor Adrian Bejan of Duke University, discoverer of the Constructal law of design in nature and culture, Franklin Institute Laureate 2018, we further propose MetaLoop in the United State to the new Biden-Harris administration, since it makes perfect sense in terms of a long-term, sustained infrastructure roll-out, to continue and perpetuate the building retrofits, wind and solar required for America attaining Net Zero Carbon by 2050, as proposed in the Princeton NetZero America plan, as shared further into this post.
Just as Rewiring America (& now Rewiring Australia too), rightly seeks to Electrify our Homes & Businesses, MetaLoop aims for the same urban-scale transformation for our entire Cities & Towns, including in Commuter Transit, Food Production and Energy & Data Generation-Transmission-Storage.
This will ensure a truly comprehensive and integrated transformation of our economies to a fully Net Zero, higher-Productivity regime, while creating a new re-shored, CleanTech Manufacturing Base — with all the implications for ensuring a secure pipeline of good quality, well-paying Jobs & Economic growth for our economies.
In Australia, we suggest a MetaLoop roll-out can best be integrated as a key platform for the National Reconstruction Fund (designed to rebuild our manufacturing infrastructure base, particularly in Clean Tech & Green Energy, with Transport & Housing also being key), and be coordinated with the nascent National Net Zero Authority, responsible for sustainably managing the energy transition with minimal disruption to both labour & capital.
The Future Made in Australia Act will be another means for Australia to play to its strengths as an innovation powerhouse, but this time retaining at least IP-Licensing agency (even if some overseas manufacturing is necessarily for labour cost and economies of scale reasons), unlike what occured with our invention of PV Solar by Professor Martin Green of UNSW, for all the opportunities to be diligently seized by the likes of China.
MetaLoop is an Energy-Transit synergising Machine that by Enhancing Productivity, Jobs & Sustainable Growth, yielding Social Cohesion via Abundance; keeps Political Extremism, both Left & Right, at Bay
As of September 2025, here’s the alarming political situation in the UK due to the cost of living crisis, compounded by Brexit (a Russian-Farage influence operation), the lack of both public and private investment, services, jobs, growth and opportunities.
It’s also crucial in our view, to provide dignified well-paying jobs to the American working class — we’ve just seen the consequences of worsening inequality when a convicted criminal sociopath, demagogue attempts to cynically leverage these divisions in US society to usurp the Constitution to gain attempted dictatorial powers.
Despite these hopefully transient civilisational setbacks, the US & Britain will persist long after Trump & Farage have gone. So there are also synergies with Defense in Australia, where AUKUS, the new pact between the US, UK & Australia, can therefore benefit from MetaLoop, Kati Thanda & Tuvalu Tenure schemes as a new Clean Tech AUKUS Pillar Three, to help pump-prime/front-end the enhanced industrial base capabilities & skilled manufacturing and services workforces required for also scaled building and making of advanced national defense technologies.
So yes, hierarchy is natural and Constructal, but it must also be a mediated hierarchy to preserve social cohesion, (as we attempt to do in Australia, Canada, the EU-UK and Scandinavia — with a government-mediated market, to better effect than hitherto, in the US; which is still a neo-liberal, oligarchic, now quasi/neo-fascist, authoritarian, hyper-capitalist economy with minimal socio-economic protections).
“Hannah Arendt described fascism as the temporary alliance of the elite and the mob, and the only thing that ever defeated that was the temporary alliance of the centre and the left — and that’s what we need.”
Paul Mason
Due to automation, financialisation and globalisation-outsourcing, without adequate safety-nets and proactive redistributive policies, the US has inadvertently created all the pre-conditions for a far-right, nativist, racist insurrection and effective neo-fascist coup attempt in the very nation that spent so much blood and treasure as the arsenal of democracy, defeating global fascism in WWII; a coup which alarmingly, so very nearly succeeded, but which has now again reared its very unsavoury head as a TechLord oligarchy, the 1890’s “Robber Barons” of our day align with more established elites from the Fosssil Fuel, Property and other legacy industries, to scapegoat immigrants, minorities and the poor for ever increasing inequality, rather than addressing it properly with Keynesian-FDR response to this stealth depression.
So once (and if) MAGA are electorally defeated, MetaLoop can help re-balance the US economy, and temper its febrile politics; by becoming a fundamental nation-(re)building network of infrastructure, as an integral part of a sustained, long-term, continuous Keynsian, FDR — New Deal & Eisenhower National Interstate Highways Act Green New Deal emulation, as a regenerative rollout that helps Electrifies America, sooner, most affordably and sustainably.
This then becomes a sustained long-term national infrastructure rollout and continuous regeneration process as the transit & affordable housing and food biome networks are expanded; maintained and upgraded (with city & population growth seeded by “baby-bonus” programs and selective immigration as practiced by Australia), thereby ensuring continuous, long term economic growth, productivity gains, international competitiveness, well-paying union-secured jobs and the consequent benefits of the multi-cultural, political-economic stability, dignity for the white & brown working class, social cohesion, abundance and the relative wellness of exemplary developed nations like Australia, Canada, most of the EU, and in Scandinavia.
MetaLoop polymodal-revenue networks also crucially then generate 5+ Revenue Surpluses, so serve to reduce income & other taxes, while funding vital stakeholder services like health, housing and education, so once again, enhancing societal eudaemonia, collective human flourishing — and individual wellbeing.
Other prospects for paradigm-shifting new energy-transit infrastructure that will help America Build Back Better, Easier and for Longer (all Constructal principles); are innovations such as Focus Fusion, Enhanced Geothermal and Commonwealth-Helion Fusion in the new clean, baseload-firming distributed-energy space.
Also, a massive national rollout of intercity HyperLoops at the scale of the FDR-Eisenhower public infrastructure works and national highways-freeways of the 30s and 50s (with war powers, Arsenal of Democracy — Rewring America, emergency compulsory land purchase-order effectiveness to compete effectively with China, which routinely wields such state-powers to decisively and effectively build its freeways and bullet-train networks and deal with the twin Covid & Climate crises), all powered by renewables, is required.
When both the HyperLoop-MetaLoop networks are also renewables-powered, the former will do for inter-city travel, what MetaLoop can also do for intra-city commuting, food and goods delivery, while simultaneously solving several other urban design wicked-problems.
Wind and solar renewables are great but are almost “fix and forget”, so low employment-maintaining once operational (unlike coal mines and oil & gas wells or conventional factory floor vehicle manufacturing).
While the design and construction of MetaLoop networks connected to the wind and solar is longer term employment-generating and requires constant expansion, maintenance and upgrading of its modular infrastructure — so they are less susceptible to automation/outsourcing as much of the assembly is in situ in very different urban conditions across our cities, and can also be mandated to not be out-sourced overseas by regulation and/or PPP financing structures — as further covered in this blog post.
So it’s exactly the kind of infrastructure that America (and the Developed West in general), so urgently needs right now.
Now what is the MetaLoop proposition?
A Carbon-abating, Physically-distancing, Mobility App-Store that slashes Urban Emissions in the crucial Energy, Transport, Building and Agricultural sectors.
A means to ignite a Productivity & Competitiveness Cleantech 4th Industrial Revolution while also simultaneously de-Congesting and de-Carbonising our Civilisation by being the fastest possible point to point rapid personal transit system that mimics nature’s optimised, living flow systems.
Overall, the inexorable shift from simple digitization (the Third Industrial Revolution) to innovation based on combinations of technologies that respond to both supply and demand (the Fourth Industrial Revolution), is forcing companies to reexamine the way they do business.
Western Sydney Unlivable by 2050
“Just planting a number of trees will not solve the problem,” Professor Santamouris says.
“We need to have much more radical solutions.”
https://sustainabilitymag.com/articles/liebherr-group-the-convertible-parasols-of-medina
Now in the US case, with the advent of the new US Biden-Harris administration, they planned to implement a massive Build Back Better — Green New Deal infrastructure program (now the Congress-passed IRA), which the likes of HyperLoop and MetaLoop networks can (looking at the industry sectors below), make crucial, substantial contributions to.
Here is Princeton Universities framework for achieving this ambitious, FDR-scale Keynsian agenda which the two charts immediately below come from:
The OECD refers to a MetaLoop-capable 5 Dimensional Build Back Better agenda to help the world recover from the twin Covid & Climate-induced economic crises we now face.
Go back to that first underground railway.
London not only permitted eight years of construction through one of the most crowded districts in the city, but it also established a
public–private partnership and invested £200,000.
“Those who devised and carried out this undertaking
would be entitled to the highest praise and gratitude
of the people,” noted one speaker at the ceremony
to commemorate the opening.
“This line was not only an honor to the country,
but a solid advance in civilization.”
True enough then — and, perhaps, it will
be true again in the future.
McKinsey, The Road To Seamless Mobility — Conclusion
An Optimal City-Transforming, DeCongesting & DeCarbonising Solution that Tackles Numerous Wicked Problems in Demonstrating the Asynsis-Constructal #Form follows Flow Design ToE paradigm via a practical Light-Active-AV-EV, Socially-Distanced Transit, Renewables-powered, Urban Farming Multi-Modal transportation network that also gets you from an Urban A-B faster than any other Means.
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0
MetaLoop for London would follow the GingerLine route map as an elevated Personal Rapid Transit Ring over the existing overland lines, with integrated Modular Prefabricated Affordable Housing and Vertical Farms like Grapes on a Vine in the under-used air rights directly above the transit reservation land, as shown in Moleskine sketch form below.
Scenario 3: Seamless mobility
Now for a third possibility: What if cities encourage the use of shared AVs through regulation and incentives? That would make it possible for residents to “mix and match” rail transit and low-cost, point-to-point autonomous travel in robo-taxis, autonomous shuttles, and autonomous buses easily.
Our analysis suggests that pooled AV shuttles could grab 25 percent of the market (twice as much as in the unconstrained-autonomy scenario), and private cars and privately used robo-taxis could provide about 30 percent of passenger-kilometers in 2030, compared with 35 percent for private cars today.
McKinsey predict up to 50% of all transit by 2030 could be by a MetaLoop-enabled system — and it could be even more with our light bridges over existing roads-rail lines, which means no traffic jams, traffic lights, bus and train queues to endure; because ML pods like the at-grade only Zoox, pick commuters up and drop them off door to door with a safe, private AV-EV trip, so the vast majority of most commutes are sailing non-stop, over existing road and rail routes.
The same logic applies to ML pods as drone delivery AVs, such as the at-grade only Nuro prototype.
Existing Metro Rail and Tram routes are largely radial, with diminishing returns as they get further out from City centres.
The key advantage of the more distributed and connected MetaLoop routes is that it’s more natural & fractal, multi-scale flow geometry with the greatest surface area coverage for the least resources-energy, which best mitigates the radial diminishing-returns effect as you travel further out from the central locus of the radial routes.
Let’s take the example of expanding York in England to double its population to help build the required new housing that the UK requires.
How would you optimise that development so travel times remained the same despite trips across the city doubling or tripling in distance?
How could you most-affordably power that city with 100% renewable energy, green electrons that are generated by adjacent renewable energy zones of wind and/or solar farms, firmed by batteries, pumped hydro and enhanced geothermal?
How could the EVs used for transport, be not only optimised for trip times, but also for powering the city with minimal new electrical transmission and distribution “pylons, poles, undergound cables & wires.”?
MetaLoop MetaPods could be an ideal solution, where they serve as batteries on wheels — plugging into the grid to top it up where and when required, serving as an urban utility Virtual Power Plant — literally charging the surpluses generated by solar power and wind, into the local energy system and therefore, also the local economy via a PPP operating model, with an integrated government spending levy to help fund the development, infrastructure and services of new communities.
So MetaLoop confers the advantages of Private Vehicle privacy-personalisation, personal safety, seamless point to point service, and full destinational choice (but without traffic jams and intersections that force stopping & delays); but also has the advantages of Public Transport in being most rapid, yet without the disadvantages of either, in that there are no stops nor stations, with virtually no queues.
It represents a new fusion of the private Car with the public Tram-Bus-Train, enabled by the breakthrough new technology of Renewables Electrical power, AI-Autonomous Electric Vehicles and Big Data-Internet of Things, which will positively transform and enhance the speed and convenience of transport the way the railways did in the 19th century and the aeroplane and jet engine did in the 20th.
An example of a public transit-only solution which is always in monorail mode (without the additional mode of personalised AV pods ramping up & down from rail to ground, delivering at-grade A to B, seamless point to point transit — as MetaLoop does), is the revolutionary, congestion-busting Wuppertal hanging railway, built in 1902, which exists to this day.
As shared on Twitter
Mass transit, over the river along a narrow valley.
What MetaLoop does is use existing roads and rail routes as “urban valleys”, utilising the unused Z-axis — Overground, for personal mass-transit, as an optimal hybrid between the private and public domains.
Where the “Station Comes to You” and your dedicated trip is Express, with no Stops, Stations, Traffic Lights…just seamless Personalised Rapid Transit, allowing you more congestion-busting Time for your work or personal use, more quality time with colleagues, family and friends; yielding substantial, verifiable Well-being and Productivity benefits for both Individuals and Society, with collateral Political-Economic application benefits, thanks to the MetaLoop Public Private Partnership revenue-sharing, surplus-recycling, Doughnut/Circular Economy operating model.
So it’s the best of both, (Private & Public transport ), worlds, while having the optimal fractal structure for a fully integrated City Transit people and goods distribution network with numerous Urban Place-making opportunities such as the work of BAU, including for cafes, kiosks, parks, playgrounds, performance spaces, urban farming and biomes.
MetaLoop greenery can be rain-water autarkic (thanks to its integrated rain water collection canopies above the MetaPod rails) — especially when the vegetated area is smaller than the area available for water collection.
So MetaLoop networks boost urban biodiversity, allow storage of storm-water for drought-periods, afford noise absorption through the plants, provide air purification, confer mental health benefits for urbanites (ever more important!), and provide grey-water utilisation/purification services to adjoining buildings through the greenery planter root systems.
The water collected at source can then be used for domestic, commercial and urban farming purposes.
Apartment buildings along Metaloop routes, such as the exemplary Nightingale apartment campuses in Melbourne, Adelaide & Sydney, could also act as Virtual Power Plants (VPPs), for their neighbourhoods if they became nodes for PPA utility scale renewable energy delivery from the Renewable Energy Zones (REZs), mushrooming up around our city peripheries, as well as integrating suburban homes with rooftop solar, into precinct-wide microgrids right across MetaLoop urban networks.
So MetaPods could also act, like other private EVs, as mobile batteries with bi-directional charging points at every home, serving as virtual power plant transmission-storage agents.
Prefabricated modular social & affordable housing and co-housing units along MetaLoop routes, particularly above currently often-moribund high streets, will help repopulate & revitalise declining neighbourhoods, address a growing housing crisis in many cities, while generating new retail, bioponic vertical-urban farming (imagine all those CBD multi-story carparks converted to urban farms, cafe-bars & restaurants), and F&B activity along newly car traffic-curtailed, semi-pedestrianised streets.
To address the current affordable housing rental crisis, future revenues (eg: via Covered Bonds) from the MetaLoop PPP operating model can be pre-emptively channeled into funding the supply of new housing right now, either built by local councils, incentivised private developers or housing association-NGOs like Nightingale Housing.
Addressing the London Affordability Housing Crisis in late 2025 is becoming a breakthrough vote-winner for progressive leaders like the new Green Party leader, Zack Polanski.
And how do we also preserve (Sub)Urban House Prices when Remote Working, AI & Working Population Decline starts eroding property values?
The utility-scale renewable power to run MetaLoop (and service the many commercial and domestic customers en route with cheaper, cleaner energy), as a new stand-alone Green Power grid would be delivered at high voltage from remote REZs to city-ringing mains lines and then via nodal transformers, stepped-down into conduited cables, integrated into the radial MetaLoop lines branching & fanning out above largely existing transport arteries, from the various city CBDs.
So this strategy delivers cheaper & greener energy to our cites faster and more easily with less disruption (with a brand new, stand-alone green-dedicated grid as part of the MetaLoop poles and bridges infrastructure ); than is otherwise possible with the piecemeal-upgrading of our existing poles and wires.
Each nodal MetaGrid could therefore also be revenue-generating for their subscriber-participants, allowing local battery storage and blockchain trading within & between neighbourhood VPP-microgrids, via the likes of PowerLedger to leverage the peaks and troughs of demand/supply and consequent pricing (while also solving the Duck Curve and Curtailment issues currently holding back further renewable energy transmission infrastructure investment and roll-out).
This is the killer app of MetaLoop, saving us City-dwellers those most precious commodities of all — our quality time, health & energy, and at a highly-affordable cost with minimal roll-out times and existing services and traffic disruption due to its modular prefabricated, above-ground nature.
Think of MetaLoop as “the station comes to you”, as the fastest possible A-B trip time, and as the best of both worlds; combining private car convenience and privacy with mass transit speed and efficiency — all while also providing you with green, clean energy for Cities to achieve productivity gains, rebuild our industrial bases and attain Net Zero ASAP.
All this while also harnessing the transformative power of AI for the most common good to boost new CleanTech Industrial Base Growth and new quality Jobs, as an integrated public utility (creating a synergised off-taker Renewables CFD-like demand centre and Virtual Power Plant network (with MetaLoop-integrated Renewables-supply); by curating an E-Personal Rapid Transit/Logistics/AgTech/AV-AI/CleanTech Renewables ecosystem), that via the Mission-led, Doughnut EconomyPPP revenue-share model, also funds social cohesion and government expenditure for critical national priorities like health, education, defence and infrastructure.
It’s not just autonomous vehicles that would make the difference. Intelligent traffic systems, advanced rail signaling, and connectivity-enabled predictive maintenance would all boost network reliability. Seamless mobility could improve performance on all five indicators that characterize a transit system: availability, affordability, efficiency, convenience, and sustainability. It could accommodate up to 30 percent more passenger-kilometers (availability) while reducing average time per trip by 10 percent (efficiency). It could cost 25 to 35 percent less per trip (affordability), increase the number of point-to-point trips by 50 percent (convenience), and, if AVs are electric, lower GHG emissions by up to 85 percent (sustainability).
McKinsey, The Road To Seamless Mobility 2019
Reference Sources (MetaLoop: seamless mobility potential for 50% of Urban Transit by 2030) on McKinsey Seamless Mobility and World Economic Forum Fourth Industrial Revolution defined as the MetaLoop-exemplifying novel combination of existing and new technologies.
The key question then is, what would be more efficient for our cities — exclusively ceding this new transit & revenue stream created by AI-Quantum, 5–6G & AVs only to the likes of Uber, Lyft & Tesla — or optimising city decongestion and decarbonising capability by building Public Private Partnership MetaLoop networks as exemplary Keynsian growth-catalysing projects where a state transit authority builds and runs the MetaLoop poles and bridges.
All while the likes of Tesla, Volkswagen or Hyundai build and (co)operate the MetaPods so commuters will still have say Apple, Alphabet & Meta-personalised branding choices in how they simultaneously and safely; travel, work, learn, interact, share, create and play?
Which will save more commuter time, generate more development value, increase economic productivity, while also supporting social cohesion and decarbonising our cities most quickly (following the Doughnut Economics model), thereby serving as ideal Green New Deal platforms that comprehensively address many of the key urban-design related UN Sustainable Development Goals, which best serve as performance metrics for our public-private stakeholders - as we (following the compelling science evidence and leadership), necessarily decarbonise our civilisation most swiftly and efficiently?
MetaLoop follows Constructal rules for optimal growth (from the Physics Of Life by Adrian Bejan):
Growth — “The snowflake has one kind of architecture… which is predictable provided that we recognize two principles: what flows (heat flows), and the natural tendency of all flows to configure and reconfigure themselves into architectures that provide easier access”.
The TED-Conferences-shared, Peer-reviewed, Published Constructal Physics-based Design Theory of Everything and Asynsis Design Practice (with Hong Kong Spin Example and HK EcoLivable City FB page); the “Talk behind the MetaLoop Walk”:
