Three dimensional highways but flying cars

I wonder how many scifi works feature such a concept and do so without including flying cars.

The image for Futuristic Superhighway shows a panel from Nemesis The Warlock as an example of a highway that has the shape of a tube and traffic goes along the interior of that tube.

I wonder what other highways are there that use a different type of creative scifi mechanism or topology.

EDIT: D'oh I meant "but no flying cars"

edited 26th May '15 10:13:16 PM by Worlder

I think the issue is gravity. While it is theoretically possible for a car or similar form of transport to use a combination of speed and aerodynamics to travel along the roof of a tunnel like structure it's not really practical.

And if you're using artificial gravity to make it so 'down' is evenly to the outside of the structure... it still doesn't seem practical and flying cars would be a more efficient use of the tech (for one it's only defying gravity for the individual vehicle and not the entire length of the road which may not be being used for its entire length.

Okay that's something you don't hear every day, a transport option where the more efficient alternative is flying cars.

I was going to say that flying cars with a 3D imaging system to display the highway from the interior would be a interesting highway.

But as for a superhighway, magnet lock all cars to the walls.

Makes me think of the tube tracks in FZero, which you'd drive around the outside of most of the time.

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As I recall, the movie version of Minority Report included a fairly understated form of "3D driving", (presumably) using magnetic attraction to allow such things as vertical roads.

edited 27th May '15 7:37:27 AM by ArsThaumaturgis

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That might work but to effectively pull it off you'd need to design the cars to have some sort of rotatable passenger compartment so people aren't hanging upside down by their seatbelts or falling sideways out of their seats while driving on the top and sides of the structures.

Maybe the cars have free-hanging harnesses akin to rock-climbing, but attached to a stable frame wrapped around the inside. The driver's stuff is what rotates to keep aligned.

edited 29th May '15 12:42:46 PM by Sharysa

I wonder where would the shoulder go in a tube shaped highway?

It probably has to be near the bottom so that people can safely step out of their vehicles.

There would probably be multiple "shoulders" each with slightly different orientations, seeing as you could get stuck near the top.

Also Total Recall (2012) had some nifty 3d roads and a beautiful 3d elevator system.

Tubes might be hard to engineer perhaps corridors of squares or hex shapes?

edited 17th Aug '15 5:03:14 PM by GiantSpaceChinchilla