Patent ID: 7788000

Claim:
A public highway system, comprising: a narrow-gauge pair of rails and a wide-gauge pair of rails, the rails forming a guideway that begins on a roadway; means for grading without utilizing track bed sections of the wide-gauge pair of rails and sections of the narrow-gauge pair of rails above the roadway; an ascending grade on-ramp portion of the guideway formed solely from the wide-gauge rail pair; an elevated throughway transition portion of the guideway having the wide-gauge rail pair in parallel with the narrow-gauge rail pair; an elevated throughway portion of the guideway having solely the narrow-gauge rail pair, the elevated throughway portion extending from the elevated throughway transition portion; an off-ramp portion of the guideway having a descending grade of the narrow-gauge rail pair of the throughway transition portion, the wide-gauge rail pair continuing at least at an initial height of the throughway transition portion; means for determining speed, acceleration, location and separation distance of vehicles utilizing said public highway system; and a computer in operable communication with the means for determining speed, acceleration, location and separation distance of vehicles utilizing the public highway system, the computer adjusting speed of the vehicles and separation distance of the vehicles on the highway system responsive to the information from the means for determining speed, acceleration, location and separation distance of vehicles; wherein a vehicle adapted for manually controlled travel on the roadway and automatically controlled travel on the guideway can transition from the roadway to automatically controlled travel on the guideway and can transition from the guideway to manually controlled travel on the roadway.