(Repost to remove in-depth tag rules)

Hello Reddit, here is what I think the best possible future transportation system should look like:
Small, lightweight pedal vehicles with electric motors, they will be enclosed so they are usable in all weather. Solar roofs will trickle charge a pair of suitcase sized, removable batteries (which you can charge wherever or swap). The vehicles are light enough where this solar will get them several miles of free range daily without plugging in (see Aptera). They have pedals mainly to get people more active, sedentary lifestyles are deadly. See the RAHT racer or hypercycle, but built with less speed and more space in mind, or see some of the microvehicles coming out of China (or Kei cars in Japan). There could be a passenger focused one and a mini-pickup. The less vehicle weight / passenger weight ratio the better.

When you need to carry more stuff you attach a trailer, larger trailers or flatbed quads with their own electric assist are possible (more on those below) to alleviate power issues.

Electric roadways have been developed already with contact rails that vehicles drop a lead onto, that only turn on current to the rail segment in touch with the vehicle (there are also wireless ones but they are less efficient and more costly to install since the whole road gets torn up). Start by installing these on sections of major highways and you can use grid power to move vehicles, which lets you both keep the batteries smaller and removes the need to charge on long distance trips. This can be tied in as a smart grid where excess renewable generation can be dumped into EV batteries even as they are moving. The vehicles can also park on contact pads where available instead of fooling with plugs. This system can be retrofit onto existing roadways, but we can do better…

Set a standard for these vehicles for a very narrow gauge rail (which allows for cheaper associated infrastructure). The vehicles will have a set of small metal rail wheels (this already exists in golfcart sized tunnel vehicles) that they can either lower or have adjustable suspension that can lower the vehicle enough to make contact with them (whichever is easier to engineer). Once these things are rolling on rails they become even more energy efficient, and you can electrify some or all of these routes. When you feed energy in these things can go flat-out max power without worrying about battery capacity and you can get them up to incredible speeds on long sections, similar to high speed rail. When you put them on rails they can be automated with much less complexity than automated road cars, and routed using network-wide intelligence. Since they can run on tires they can be allowed to leave the tracks easily at points closer to their destination; no station infrastructure and no last mile problem. You can have them do switching without moving the rails (cheap and passive infrastructure) by using their tires, they can brake using the tires (less squealing metal), and they can climb steeper grades than rail as well (more direct routes).

With this automation in place, it becomes far easier to automate freight shipping along them; those self-powered trailers/flatbed quads could pull small trains of unpowered ones along the rails, even mixed in with passenger traffic. Better yet, since they're automated, do it at night without requiring night time drivers. They would not need rail depots to transfer cargo from rail to truck, they could simply drive off into paved lots and be attached to manned vehicles (or unmanned if we solve self-driving on roads) or even go straight from industrial/agricultural areas to stores depending on how much rail we build up. Depending on how they're designed you might even be able to stack them, and if you park them on charging pads they become part of the smart grid while waiting for assignments.

These vehicles can be made far less materials than cars and will be far cheaper to operate, so less affluent countries can implement them faster. They can operate on normal roads and charge batteries in apartments without installing any new infrastructure. With the automated rail network in place they can start to replace trains, trucks, and planes without all the end-point infrastructure to worry about.
Have at it, reddit, what do you think? And what would you name this? I want to call them Zigs 🙂