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New Thoughts in Public Transportation
Matthew Shaylor writes "The BBC has the following article about an ultramodern public transport system to be tested in Cardif. Unlike conventional public transport, this consists of small cars that running on tracks can automatically take themselves to the correct destination. This allows there to be a mesh of tracks and stations thoughout a city, as opposed to traditional transport which tends to run along corridor routes to a city center. An interesting paper is available. Future versions may have dual control to allow people to drive the cars from the nearest station off the track to their homes. A true replacement for the car!"
this isn't a new "concept", but I find it interesting that something that always seemed (to me) to be one of those sci-fi concepts that was, while not impossible, very very improbable due the the immense infrastructure required - to see this now actually being discussed as a possibility. it's actually quite interesting.
You see, without that little doohicky, the universe stops.
http://propheteer.org
If I ride a Sewgay, can I fit it onto one of these cars to that I don't run the battery down if I'm going across town?
I'm v.pleased to see from the photo that they will allow bikes to be taken aboard.
The combination of bike and public transport is perfect for me and many others.
Hogsback
Larger cities have no way of building such infrastructure and already have subways which can carry far more people than this system. It is a good replacement for light rails suitable for the sprawling suburbs, but since taking one means you won't have access to your car it probably will never take off.
The best solution is really robotic cars. We should enact legislation so that all new roads built have some sort of simple radio emitters in them to help guide the robotic cars. Then we can all read slashdot on our wireless neighboor LANs while we ride to work every day.
GollyGee Blocks -- 3D creativity software for kids.
So... you swipe a card, punch in a destination, and suddenly they have a very neat record of where you've gone using public transportation. Nice.
Aside from that, it's an interesting idea; you don't necessarily have the hassle of figuring out bus schedules. And you don't have to deal with a cab driver who barely speaks English and is quite willing to drive you around New York for two hours because you don't know that your destination is really only a fifteen-minute drive from the airport. So in that sense, it's nice.
I especially appreciated the photo that shows a bike will easily fit into these vehicles... good call! Heck, that means fitting a Segway in there would be pretty easy...
People are never as simple as their stereotypes. This applies equally to Christians, Muslims, and Emacs-lovers.
.. is that the people constructing these tracks don't have a large enough supply of "curved" sections of track, and always have plenty of "straight" sections of track. Thus, they keep having to go back to Toys R Us to buy more "curvy" tracks...
on a side note, doesn't the picture of the ULTra on the elevated track remind you of the Monorail epsiode of the simpsons?
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true." - Homer Simpson
This is really the self driving cars question, taken from the oppisite approach.
I still think that the best way to tackle this would be a solution that relies as little as possible on things built into the ground. It's 2002, and we have fast computers and fairly accurate GPS guidance. I don't see any reason why the earth part of the system should be more than stipes of whatever color reflective paint on the ground. It's easy and cheap, and it won't ever need upgrading. Then car computer guides itself with the paint lines, but uses GPS to ditermine it's location and to make decisions about turning and stuff. Maybe some kind of WAP based thing where cars close to each other share location and velocity information. Of course, this all comes in a box under the hood with a couple cables sticking out. The WAP could accept software upgrades, and if new hardware is neccessary than you just have to take all the cars to the shop rather than dig in half your roads.
beats circut switched traffic any day. now i see why this is on /.
"i was saying gnu-rd"
Back in my freshman year in college, I proposed and worked on a very similar transportation system, called HSTS (High Speed Transit System). Other engineering students collaborated with it as well. We even had a student code a Java applet that simulated the whole thing. The biggest problem we found was what would happen if the cars were going really fast, and the power suddenly went off... We used the term "Mass Death". :^)
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
Didn't we used to call "tracks" small cars would take directly to their intended destination something else? I could swear they were called "roads"...
Sounds kind of like the Tomorrowland Transit Authority (formerly the WEDWay) at Disney World...
Instead of installing some corrider-constrained, incredibly expensive Mag-Lev system of dubious value which does nothing to address the nightmare of getting from neighborhood to neighborhood in this tangle of hills, gullies and twisty streets they call a City, they could use existing arterials (supplimented perhaps with a couple of new ones) to *greatly* expand the reach of public transportion and make it practical to ditch the now-mandatory two-car-per-family lifestyle.
Phew, feels good to get that off my chest...
I hate to say it, but I for one, would not want this. I live in Atlanta, a very large city with huge traffic problems. Well, my thoughts are this: I deal with the traffic here everyday (worst in America 5 years running btw) and there is a simple reason I do it. MARTA (Metro Atlanta Rail Transit Authority--I think) is not safe. Sure, these cars seem nice, but I don't think it will ever catch on here in the US. I wish it would, we throw enough smog and pollution in the air as it, but for my money, and safety, I will stick to my car. I have never been to Cardif, so I cannot speak for there, but I will speak of what I know.
:)
I am not trolling, but you will probably mod me as such since my opinion doesn't jive with the new tech is good slant of the article.
Yehaa, let the flames begin
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RUF combines the best of cars with the best of trains
The RUF system is a system where all vehicles can drive in 2 ways (Dual-Mode). They can either use the normal roads or they can "ride" on top of a triangular monorail.
The RUF vehicles can both be cars (ruf) and busses (maxi-ruf). The rail (guideway) is a very slender triangular monorail made from 20 m long modules and carried by masts.
When the vehicles "rides" on top of the monorail, the center of gravity is placed below the top of the rail, so the stability is very high. Derailment is impossible. It is possible to squeeze the top of the rail in order to make an emergency braking. This way it is possible under all circumstances to brake in a very short time. Short safety distances means large capacity.
Energy consumption is very low due to the close coupling of vehicles to form a train. This principle also increases safety, since collisions within the train are eliminated when the vehicles already touch each other.
The rufs are electric vehicles with small batteries. The batteries are partly recharged while the ruf uses the rail.
This allows there to be a mesh of tracks and stations thoughout a city, as opposed to traditional transport which tends to run along corridor routes to a city center
I've always though the city could use a few more tracks. Seriously though, why do these things have to go to every nook and crany of a city, why cant they just drop you off and let you walk a couple blocks to your destination?
OK, I know we're becoming lazier every day so I have four words for you: George Jetson People Mover. You'll never have to take another step again.
I Heart Sorting Networks
Working from memory, one problem they hit was the decision of whether to go for the ultimate taxi-like model, as here, or with some intermediate-sized light rail cars. The problems I recall with the taxi-like model included the problem that they couldn't get them connected to enough points for people to actually use them enough to pay for the service; and nightmare scenarios about someone's grandmother being trapped in an unmanned small car with a deranged killer.
I'm hoping someone else can come up with the title of the book on the French experiment I'm thinking about. It focussed much more on the social problems with making this kind of project happen than on any particular technical difficulties.
Think of the possibilities. All those songs...
;-)
"The Iris Rover"
"I want to be a part of it, Ne Yor Ne Yor"
I could keep these going all day, but I think it's best I stop now.
Grab.
This is also featured in zzz online's latest edition. It's the last story on the page.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
There was an article in Scientific American about three years ago regarding the advances in public transportation made in Curitibo, Brazil. Their basic idea was to redesign all their roads from the standpoiont of getting people around. They placed seperate bus lanes on each road (seperate physically from the other lanes), and people paid to enter the bus stop instead of the bus. This meant people quickly entered the bus at each stop, without anyone digging around for change when entering the bus, etc. And the seperate lanes meant the buses went from place to place without much hinderance from car traffic. Also, their roads were all laid out with a great deal of thought, resembling a darts target with circular and radiating routes. The system worked remarkably well, and most people used public transit to get around.
Its amazing what can be accomplished when someone actually puts real thought into the system they're developing.
Some men spend their entire lives trying to kill themselves for having been born. --Ross MacDonald
Another good web site on the topic is Taxi2000.
Make sure you check out their FAQ.
The important topic that's always brought up is infrastructure. The beauty of the PRT design is that the infrastructure costs aren't all that appalling, since all the system needs to run is a narrow elevated track which can be built above existing roadways (so no right of way issues, etc). Yeah, it's more expensive than bus stations, but it's *way* cheaper than tunnels or elevated train track.
Places like North America that already have a huge transportation infrastructure would find it expensive to implement one of these, good to see that some European countries are testing them out now.
I dont know about some of you, but I hate driving. I'd much rather have an automated transport that could take me where I need to go without having to deal with Metro transit and all the crazies on the bus.
Ah, the classic American attitude. "They'll pry my car keys from my cold, dead fingers."
Here's a thought: These cars would be centrally controlled, meaning they could be electric or hybrid vehicles which steer themselves, instead of monster SUVs or badly tuned '72 Datsuns driven by psychopaths and invalids.
Or in other words,
"Why are most AMERICANS so hung up on their cars?"
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
One problem, there's no conductor. I mean like a guy who is gonna sit there and say "no, don't destroy the inners of the vehicle.
What happens if before I get to my stop, I disable my car somehow and cause congestion? What about the congestion of people just getting in and out of a car serially vs in parallel like a subway does?
Sounds cool, but somehow doesn't. Unless the stations are as big as parking lots and these cars can pass one another, I'm not too into this idea.
-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
IF the cars are all public then you'd have to deal with it... but if people could own their own unit and just use the public rail system you'd be able to look after your own stuff.
Of course you'd have to be able to self-drive the thing or you'd never be able to park it at the mall =)
except instead of using one of these cars, you drive your own car onto a pallet that will take you and your own car to the destination of your choice... and this one idea will not work because people dont want to give up their own cars (or add another one to the drive)
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
> Nothing beats the freedom of hopping into my car, when I want to and not waiting for public transportation, on their schedule
... yadda yadda. Yes, I'm pragmatic, but it bothers me when people are quick to shoot down new ideas because they're too damn lazy/comfortable with what they already have.
... and as it stands, once you get out on the road, it's You vs Them. But Them are your friends and neighbours once you get outta the car ..
Nothing beats having what I want, when I want, for how much I want it! Seriously, thats the kind of selfish approach that inhibits the adoption of technologies that would make the world better for people less fortunate than you; nevermind the evironment, noise pollution
With western technology and population desities being what they are, people have the ability to isolate themselves via technology. Cars are an excellent example. Think of how many people, in your city, go from one 4 block arena to the exact same 4 block area somewhere else. Think of how efficient it would be to co-ordinate and co-operate with them! But alas, you're already spoiled
"Old man yells at systemd"
Despite what anyone says, nothing can beat Springfield's Monorail...
Lyle Lanley:
Well, sir, there's nothing on earth
Like a genuine,
Bona fide,
Electrified,
Six-car
Monorail!
What'd I say?
Ned Flanders: Monorail!
Lyle Lanley: What's it called?
Patty+Selma: Monorail!
Lyle Lanley: That's right! Monorail!
[crowd chants `Monorail' softly and rhythmically]
Miss Hoover: I hear those things are awfully loud...
Lyle Lanley: It glides as softly as a cloud.
Apu: Is there a chance the track could bend?
Lyle Lanley: Not on your life, my Hindu friend.
Barney: What about us brain-dead slobs?
Lyle Lanley: You'll be given cushy jobs.
Abe: Were you sent here by the devil?
Lyle Lanley: No, good sir, I'm on the level.
Wiggum: The ring came off my pudding can.
Lyle Lanley: Take my pen knife, my good man.
I swear it's Springfield's only choice...
Throw up your hands and raise your voice!
All: Monorail!
Lyle Lanley: What's it called?
All: Monorail!
Lyle Lanley: Once again...
All: Monorail!
Marge: But Main Street's still all cracked and broken...
Bart: Sorry, Mom, the mob has spoken!
All: Monorail!
Monorail!
Monorail!
[big finish]
Monorail!
Homer: Mono... D'oh!
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
What kind of volume will it handle? From the looks of the things you'll need almost as many of those little driverless cabs as you do cars in a given urban area. That's going to cost! So what do we do to pay for the system, give up our cars and contribute the money that we spend on them to this system? Then what are we supposed to do if we want/need to travel outside the area serviced by this or other public transit systems? Ride our bikes? What if it's 300 miles away? Pouring rain? I don't think so Vern! I'm sorry but while it's a good attempt at replacing the automobile, it has a ways to go before it replaces the automobile's freedomof movement that our society's become accustomed to to the point of being dependant on it.
You're using her as bait, Master!
Americans tend to take a very negative view of public transportation. Part of this is due to the fact that it's public, and the public includes people who are drunk, abusive, and smell bad. People you would never ride with by choice. Even though they make up a small minority of the bus- and subway-riding public, they're enough to spoil the experience and make one not want to ride public transportation.
These transport pods look like they'd eliminate most of that problem, as they're small enough one could travel alone or with a small group of one's own choosing.
The dedicated track part could still be a problem. Americans like to go where they want, when they want (doesn't everyone) and with the ready availability of (polluting, road-clogging) cars, I don't see them opting for any track-based transport system in the near future. Americans also take a kind of pride in their vehicles (witness the huge number of heavy, expensive, rollover-prone "off-road" vehicles that have never been off a road). Maybe this kind of thing will work in Cardiff, but to really make an impact on the environment, petroleum industry etc., one needs a system that will work in the U.S. Where the cars are.
Traffic congestion is still a problem at intersections, as parking them. I'd also like to see how it handles routing through the city.
You have the relatively cheap option of doing it in 3D. No intersection, no problem. Not sure about parking, but I guess that you just have sidings big enough for one car every twenty metres (in busy areas). You get out, it leaves to pick someone else up. Routing will be a very interesting programming problem.
Also, now we're talking about tracks. What happens when one jumps the tracks? It just sit there hold up everything else behind it?
Presumably. That'd be the same as trains and cars...
How are we going to accomodate for all these tracks in existing cities? It's grossly expensive and takes up space.
Hmm. Tear up some of the roads and stop subsidising drivers would be my knee-jerk response. Alternatively, since you won't need to accommodate any forty tonne trucks, just build them all as flyovers to existing roads. It is expensive, true, but so is purchasing new land for more roads, maintaining roads, and dealing with the adverse affects of motor vehicle over-use.
James
This is a concept commonly refered to as Personal Rapid Transit (PRT), a subset of Automated People Movers (APM) found at many airports. PRT has been around for a while and has somewhat fringe supporters (like me). Edward Anderson at the University of Minnesota has generated some of the most credible system designs and incorporated under Taxi2000. In fact, Raytheon developed a full test track of Anderson's concept outside of Boston; Bostonians can visit thier Marlborough, MA facility and see the future,!
The reason that PRT remains a fringe concept is related to economic challenges, not engineering ones. Although there are claims to the contrary, the general problem is that - like all public transit - PRT require a very high inital capital outlay. In dense urban areas, right-of-way costs are prohibitive. However, just as with information networks, public transit networks generate positive externalities: the larger the system, the more useful it is to everyone.
Furthermore there is little incentive to invest in expensive public works projects have prevented the testing of a fairly unproven technology. Public agencies would much rather invest in light rail systems that they have seen before than fancy driverless systems. Also, there is no conclusive proof that these decentralized systems can sustain the high corrider passenger/hour throughputs that make public transit so desirable for really dense urban areas.
Hopefully, projects like Cardiff will succeed and PRT will get recognition and legitimacy, but this is a technology that has been kicking around for a while and - as you can probably tell - is not insanely complex. As usual, economics and public policy get in the way of interesting engineering!
I've heard about something like this before, it is a mass-transit train system that runs on "streets" rather than tracks. Interesting, to say the least.
Here's a good link about Tokyo Teleport Town Transit System (whew!)
What is a Teleport you ask?
crazy dynamite monkey
I find it interesting that we keep proposing (and implementing) systems that are really quite "space age" whatever that means, but the actual face of the world doesn't seem to change that much. This is such a fascinating idea, and one that I think has quite a bit of merrit. The only problem that I see is that of mixing this and regular traffic. I don't want to be trapped inside one of these little boxes toodling allong at a leisurly 25mph and have some jackass with his suv and cellphone run over me doing 50. I know the solution described in the article runs on a special track, but for a mass transit solution to work and gain wide use in anything but the largest cities, it has to share the infrastructure with regualr vehicles, otherwise it is often prohibitively expensive.
I know that mass transit works, but it works best in very dense population centers, because it is limited to specific routes. What if only one of your destination endpoints is near a mass transit station. Then you either have to walk or drive to the terminal. That works durring summer, or if you live in a warm dry climate, but right now I have to think twice about walking across the parkinglot to get my car it is so cold outside. I guess my point is that mass transportation needs to be nearly door to door or it will not gain wide acceptance.
When I want your opinion I will beat it out of you.
I'm having total 70's flashbacks... sitting on the living room floor playing with my Legos and watching Logan's Run... again.
Err Cardiff has been there quite a bit longer than either NewYork or LA. Of course it can be done if the city wants it to be done.
The Underground in London probably got a similar response when they first built it. Then they built one in Paris and the rest is history.
Cardiff isn't a new town, which is why it has problems, it was started a long long time before cars and hence it needs new solutions as its not been built for cars ala NewYork and LA.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Urban Light Transport has more information on their web site, including some much higher-res images, FAQs and other info.
The most interesting (and not really mentioned) factor is that the automatic taxis don't travel on predetermined routes, they navigate their small network of paths to get to your destination.
The real problem is going to be pissed people on the way back from the pub throwing up in it.
If yer in a taxi they can hit you lots until you clear it up any pay for cleaning.
On a bus, well sort of the same.
Can you imagine getting aboard one of this and smelling a 2 hour old pool of vomit?
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
You've not been to Britain lately. While we invented bloody railways, we're the worst at actually running them, having broken up the system and put it into the hands to fat cats who ran it down - sacking engineers, slashing maintenance, and leading to the deaths of several people in a train crash that would have been avoided had the line been properly maintained as it had been prior to Privatisation.
If Tony Blair wasn't such a toadying arsehole he might actually hear the people telling him that public transport should be run as a public service!
"Information wants to be paid"
The problem in most countries is that cities weren't designed for cars, or for the number of ppl. So you've got a large number of ppl trying to drive on very small roads. And the roads can't easily be expanded, bcos there's bloody big tower blocks, offices, churches and other good stuff on each side. Added to this, much of the inner city in a European city is _old_ and is basically irreplaceable - any bozo could rebuild the Empire State and all other US landmarks bcos they're all simple concrete-and-glass skyscrapers with little historic value (none over 80 years old), but you couldn't do the same with the Tower of London!
So think in terms of computer files. If you can't improve your network connection, you compress your files to make the most of the bandwidth. That's the idea the rest of the world uses, getting more ppl onto buses, trams and trains to transport as many ppl as possible per unit of road space.
But even the US has this problem - think Manhattan in the rush hour. In spite of the number of roads, there's still terrible traffic problems. Trouble is, the US places a stigma on public transport - using a bus is an admission that you can't afford a car, and that's some kind of venal sin in the States. Cars for Americans aren't penis substitutes, they're more a way of demonstrating your wages and status. You might as well paint a big sign on that SUV saying "I earn more than $60,000 - suck my dick you cheapass losers". Until this attitude changes, the US will (1) continue to get worse traffic problems, (2) get worse pollution, (3) continue to use more energy per person than any four other countries, and (4) have to bend over and take it up the ass any time the Arabs decide the Yankee Infidels are getting too big for their boots.
Grab.
With the demise of netvan and the undesirability of purchasing a car solely to go to the grocery store I, for one, would find a mass transit system that would drop me off at my front curb very useful. Add to that the fact that getting a cab at my local food store is next to impossible (while finding one 6 blocks away is easy, go figure), and the physical challenges (read:impossibility) of carrying 15 bags of groceries on foot, and even the most casual, non-knee-jerk-cynical observer can see the usefulness of such a system.
... making traffic a little worse in the short run might be just the kind of incentive that would help speed adoption of such a system.
As for it being "out of the question" that such could track systems could be laid down in a major city, don't be absurd (not you, but another poster in this thread). Major cities are exactly where this kind of thing would be most useful. Like Europe, they could be integrated into the existing streetplans a la streetcars. If the traffic implications are too significant (possible during the installation and early use, likely the opposite once such a system were adopted widely) they could be built on an elevated track. Personally, I'd just take lanes away from old-style cars
Of course, entrenched interests such as automobile manufacturers and taxi drivers are likely to raise a stink and do everything they can to slow adoption of such a system, but that sort of thing should be resisted and fought, not pandered to. Alas, in an age where the government spends more time and money trying to preserve the business models of buggie whip manufacturers (c.f RIAA, MPAA, DMCA, SSSCA, Copyright extentions, etc.) rather than promoting the adoption of new technologies and the new capabilities they promise (c.f. universally accessible, virtually cost-free libraries, free sharing of information, etc.) the future we face, at least in the short term, is not an optomistic one at all.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Outward display of wealth - magnetic "I am really rich (but don't carry more than $20 after dark)" stickers you could slap on the outside of the vechicle you're riding.
Chauffeurs - Modified Real Doll technology becomes Real Chauffeur. You simply carry one with you, and place it in the "front" to simulate a driver. It also serves to show how important you are to all around you outside the vehicle as YOU are carrying your own Chauffeur!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
robotic cars would go a long way to reducing congestion synonymous with rush hour. congestion is basically brought on by a) consistently bad high-latency decision making and b) aggressive me-only thinking. reducing congestion would reduce travel times (thus emissions) and high emissions produced during constant braking/acceleration cycles.
Cardiff is in Britain. Britain is a county that still suffers at times from the class system mentality. Can you really imagine rich people using a form of transportation clearly meant for the great unwashed masses, the common plebs?
because I hit submit a little too quickly...
robotic cars, at a minimum, would produce better fuel efficiencies the same way that cruise control does.
try it some time on a long trip. cruise control is better at maintaining constant speeds and gives better gas mileage. humans have a tendency to speed up or slow down without noticing (we're highly distractable) then brake suddenly or accelerate to compensate. we make crappy pilots for mundane/repeatable/non-creative tasks which is where machines excel.
other "environmental" benefits would be reduced loss of life. maybe not environmental in the classical definition... that benefit alone is worth the price of admission. no more drunk driving deaths.
- Innovative Transportation Technologies - Descriptions of over 40 electric, automated transport technologies, ranging from conceptual to operational. Includes people movers (supported and suspended systems: monorails) and automated freight systems.
- Monomobile: Electric Rail Car - Lightweight electric car that attaches to suspended monorail for long trips and can run independently of the rail for local trips.
- RUF: Rapid Urban Flexible - Hybrid car/monorail: you drive it on and off roads and monorail tracks as needed.
The last one is one I remember in the newsin the past year. of course, being Danish, it might not get promotion in the British press."It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Not sure about the rest of America, but I live in the Detroit area and probably the biggest reason we are so hung up on our cars, is because that's the way the metro area has been designed for the last hundred years.
Mass transit near Detroit doesn't make much sense, because instead of trying to cram the most people in the smallest amount of area, we're spread out over a very large area of land.
Granted alot of this is because of the auto industry, but the idea of mass transit is just foreign to us. Granted we do have some Taxis, busses, and a very limited monorail system in Downtown (which almost no one uses). It's a pain to use any of them. You have to go way out of your way, and it takes alot more time to call a Taxi to pick you up (good luck finding one in the street), or go to a bus stop (not many of those at all anyways) or you can just drive from your house to where you need to get.
Plus, because our main source of income is the automobile industry, we're more supportive of everyone having an individual car, because that means our family members are gainfully employed and is good for our economy.
Trolleys used to run on city streets and provide alot of the features that this system does.
Trolley tracks used to run on existing streets and provided rail links in congested areas of cities & even intra-city travel.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
road pizza?
Seriously, this morning it was about 20 F ( -2 C ) with slippery, new fallen snow on the ground. No one was going past 55 on the expressway (normal speed of 65). Living in upstate New York, bicycles are impractical many times a year.
As a kid I rode in winter, but it was dangerous enough that I took old tires and stuffed them with newspapers and embedded nails in them to get a grip. It didn't work.
My favorite link for this sort of thing is this PRT page. (And on a side note, I think hanging the cars makes more sense than riding on top of the rails). It's a good idea but it will take some getting used to, and will require mass-production to become truly cheap.
A finite resource will always be completely consumed so long as there are no limitations on the consumption of that resource. A resource in short supply becomes expensive, while a resource in good supply becomes cheap, and a resource in oversupply is still snapped up by anyone who thinks they can use it.
This is true of transportation as well. No matter how much road you build, someone will always find a way to use it. The only limiting factor is that people don't like to travel for more than an hour. When highways are built suburbia springs up around them. When the Long Island Railroad was built, the areas around the stations w/in an hour's travel quickly became heavily developed. Building roads does not make travel easier - it just enables more of it. Thus the most important factor in a transportation system is not how much it can carry, but how well it performs at peak capacity. Railroads, and presumably PRT, may become crowded the traffic continues to flow. But auto roads perform miserably above a certain traffic level - some sort of breakdown always occurs and brings huge chunks of the system to a standstill.
The first key to making PRT a reality is to make it effective enough and cheap enough to allow near door-to-door travel as fast or faster than cars. If people have to take a car to get to the PRT station, they will figure that they might as well drive all the way to their destination. The second key is to make the system strong and flexible enough to allow changes in how it is used (like cargo transport, and automatic delivery).
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Aaaahhh...how quick you are to denounce my opinion. I have a right to it, and you have yours.
:)
.. what you prefer is moot when that preference leads to the types of problems that require the kind of solution referenced in the parent article.
Hehee, I know you have a right to your opinion. I was stating my opinion about your opinion.
And from my experience, I prefer the car.
You missed the whole point. I prefer the car too. In fact, I prefer to have sex with whomever I want, but I recognize that it is for the Greater Good of my society not to attempt to cater to that preference. That's all I was pointing out
"Old man yells at systemd"
Unfortunately, this is a fact of life in North America. (Canada is a bit better than the US, but not enough so) Public transport is awkward, unwieldy, and slow, so not many people take it--and of course then it doesn't get funding to improve.
Where I'm living now (Calgary, AB) transit is quite good. If you work downtown, you'll most likely take the train in, with 65% of the core working population. That's some effective use of public transport! Unfortunately, not many cities are this good.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
CPRT is an organization dedicated to promoting these kinds of transportation systems, and Taxi2000 is one commercial system being developed. The washington.edu evaluate many different systems.
Note that it is essential for these kinds of systems that cabs are small--if they hold many people, they either need to stop a lot (=longer travel times), or they waste a lot of space and resources.
Sorry I am late for work, the traffic router was flapping and I ended up in Cleveland.
SD
âoeWho knew something as harmless as willful ignorance could end up having real consequences?â
In a word, yes.
;-)
Britain is much less class-oriented than Americans think. Certainly I've noticed more class-consciousness in the States than I've ever seen in Britain - the difference is that the States thinks it's class-free. In one sense of that phrase, it's mostly right...
Grab.
People will destroy and/or urinate in anything that is remotely "public" if they are not being watched (and sometimes even then). For you see, most of us are complete assholes, especially when drunk.
Won't the maintainance cost be huge on these things?
Opinions stated are mine and do not reflect those of the Illuminati
That's just too much wasted time with various possibilities of making my day not run smoothly. If I could just take the commuter train all the way to my work site, I'd be happy, I could just sleep the entire way. That's why I joined a vanpool. It cut an hour each way from my commute, I go pretty much directly from home to work, and I save money.
I will never ever regularly drive myself in my own car to work, though. I believe in mass/para transit systems, especially when there is more than one option... as long as they're kept clean too (some of those cars on BART are just nasty!).
. A true replacement for the car!"
A true replacement for the car?? It is still a car.. you just have less choice of where you want to go because once you leave your house, you can only ride on the tracks and only go where the tracks lead.. this doesn't seem like a good thing imho..
The United Kingdom has a population of around 60 million people, with 241,590 sq km of land.
That's a population density of 241 people per square Kilometer.
source
The Continious 48 states have an area of 7.7 million square Kilometers, and a population of around 285 Million. That's 37 people per square kilometer, on average.
About 1/6 the density of the UK.
So that means in any given area in the United Kingdom, there are 6 times as many people there to use public transportation, making investing in public transportation far more economical, and also making it economical to run efficient, timely connections to just about any place one would want to go.
In the United States, because we are so spread out, for most of the US, there are not enough close points of interest to make it feasible to build usable public transportation. Where the population density is high in the United States, such as New York, Boston, Los angeles, or a number of other Cities, you have an advanced system of public transportation that would rival anything in Europe.
But outside of that, there just aren't enough people in the right places to make a good system.
That is why we are so hung up on our cars. Because we, for the most part, can not build a public transportation system that will get us where we want to be, when we want to be there. The economics just aren't there. I'm sure in most of the UK, you can get anywhere you want by PT within 15- 20 minutes of when you want to be there. Here, except in cities, if there is public transportation, it will get us to our destination within 40 to 120 minutes of when we want to be there.
Would you find that acceptable?
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
- Raytheon in Marlborough Mass. is a closed facility.
- The prototype was considered a failure.
- It was disassembled several years ago.
- The architecture Raytheon was using had long ago been proven inefficient in professionial transportation engineering circles.
- This was to be one of those swords-to-plowshares "Peace Dividend" stories. Instead it was remarkably similar to when Boeing Vertol stopped making helicopters and attempted to build LRVs (ask Boston's MBTA what they're like and about the court settlement.)
Unfortunately this poster is absolutely classic of so many of the alternative transportation folks: Short on details, wrong on facts, and prone to handwaving aside problems - the exact same problems that hamper existing systems. With supporters like this no wonder the field hasn't progressed markedly in 30 years.I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
The most comprehensive info on PRT is available at Jerry Schneider's Innovative Transportation Technologies site in the section on Personal Rapid Transit (PRT). The site has a much broader scope and compares PRT with several other systems as well.
I wonder, however, whether in urban areas (where most transit trips occur) this makes sense. Where's the cost savings over more traditional services like light rail and buses? If subject to large volumes of people, this would quickly be overwhelmed, while light rail vehicles that can hold 150-200 people wouldn't have that problem.
sulli
RTFJ.
The technology used automobile-sized cars that could follow each-other at a less-than braking distance whenever they had to run on the same track.
Needless to say, the complexity of implementing the required movable block technology proved too much for the researchers, and the whole idea was scrapped.
And that is exactly why it works well in urban areas, and in fact promotes urban growth and reduces sprawl. In the city people routinely choose to live near the bus or subway because it's much more convenient than driving a car. Even out in the burbs, the recent growth of "transit villages" where you can buy a condo walking distance from the subway is a sign of people's preference to avoid traffic.
On your other point, mixed flow of transit vehicles (of any kind) and autos is bad because it's much SLOWER than a dedicated right-of-way. The idea of taking the cars off the track into normal traffic seems pretty inefficient to me, for that reason. Of course, if you're way out in the sticks, no traffic, but then also no critical mass to support the transit system.
sulli
RTFJ.
Vandal-proof my ass. At least in the US the punks will have those windows etched in no time.
sulli
RTFJ.
...is SkyTran. Brought to you by Doug Malewicki, inventor of Robosaurus(tm) (the 4 story tall car-eating, fire-breating monster) and the "California Commuter" (a two person vehicle capable of getting over 150MPG on regular petrol).
Personally, I hope this stuff takes off. I'm getting tired of putting up with traffic.
Apparently you have no clue what roads cost to UPKEEP. The initial investment on rail is high, true, but the upkeep is a fraction of that.
The Free desktop that Just Works
My morning commute is about 15 miles.
I'd consider biking it. Instead it's about 15.
All of these have a disadvantage, but it is a system that exists now in most European cities. Even some UK cities are reintroducing the tram now.
However what really makes it work in Europe is the integrated transport policy which links the different types of public transport together.
What is discussed here is a blue sky project for te distant future. It may be created in some new purpose-built 'city' like Milton Keynes, but otherwise creating that network of lines would be a nightmare.
Just using a mixture of conventional public transport technologies can reduce road loading by an incredible degree. Having a policy of integration means that I can use different types as a simple way of getting from A to B.
Here in Germany, I can hit the web site of the transport system (it is also in English so have a look) and it can give me the right mixture of trains/trams/metro/buses to get between A and B throughout the region.
This isn't rocket science, but perhaps if we could drag the UK's tansport system to the level of other major European countries, then we can start to look at more radical technologies.
See my journal, I write things there
If a system is automatic, who become liable on an accident? this is what will hamper, if not prevent, any automatic transport device for civillian use.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Ah, PRT, the future of transportation. West Virginia University has had it's own PRT (Personal Rapid Transit, also known by the students as Pretty Retarded Train) system since the early 1970's. The PRT serves as the primary mode of transportation between the two main campuses for thousands of students every day.
In fact, this morning I was riding the PRT to my CS lab, when I experienced first hand one of the minor glitches in the computer system that controls the PRT.
The computer system is still the original one from the 70's, housed in a warehouse-like building, mainframes with magnetic tape reels and all, running programs written in Fortran by the engineering students that built the thing, with all the processing power of the average digital watch.
Anyways, the PRT car I was in was right in the middle of the long straight stretch, having reached it's top running speed of about 40 miles per hour, when the power went out. The little electric cars are designed so that when the power goes out, the wheels lock up.
So, our PRT car goes from 40 mph to a dead stop in under 1 second. I was immediately reminded of physics class; objects in motion tend to stay in motion unless acted upon by an outside force. I was standing up at the time. Fortunately, the outside force acting upon me was the soft and squishy back of the person in front of me. The people sitting in the front had the less pleasant experience of having their faces acted upon at 40 mph by the front plexiglass window.
So, yeah, PRT all the way!
All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
Future versions may have dual control to allow people to drive the cars from the nearest station off the track to their homes.
Now that's something I could buy into. Public transport is great and all, but the problem has always been (at least in the US) that once you get to your stop, there's still quite a ways to go. Also, Americans in general just plain and simple don't want to give up the mobility of having a car.
Personally, I live near Atlanta, GA. We have the MARTA trains to move you through the city. The only problem is, the city is huge, and MARTA has maybe a couple of dozen stops thorughout the city, and it doesn't even span out to where I live. The result is if I were to take the MARTA anywhere, I'd still end up travelling 2-5 miles, sometimes more, to my final destination. That's just plain useless.
Being able to drive your car onto a public transportation grid that would take control and send you whisking off to whatever exit you chose would be great. I don't know how it would handle tremendous volumes, but if they can get the process down pat I would be one of it's biggest supporters.
~ now you know
"I'm sure in most of the UK, you can get anywhere you want by PT within 15- 20 minutes of when you want to be there. Here, except in cities, if there is public transportation, it will get us to our destination within 40 to 120 minutes of when we want to be there. "
6 times the population density, 6 times the traffic density. Public transport is a joke in the UK.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
The dual control aspect is the part I find most interesting.
One of the big wastes of the car industry is the amount of time all the capital (i.e. the cars) is being under-utilised. What percentage of time does a car sit on your driveway?
This system has the potential to turn into the ultimate shared car pool.... you can use them as public transport, but if you needed a car you could just switch it to manual and drive wherever you wanted, paying for use by the minute or whatever. When you'd finished, you'd just have to drop the car back onto any point in the network and it would wander off for someone else to use.
Would present some interesting technical challenges - the system would have to adapt to cars being dropped at any point in the network, and also dynamically move cars around so that there were enough units in the areas where demand is high. You might have to give it special warning in the case of major sports events or public gatherings, for example.
Actually, the paper at http://atg.fen.bris.ac.uk/picet.htm makes it clear that the costs will be one quarter, and the safety ten times as great. Read before posting. Idiot.
Insightfull? not.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
Why to you is it?
{begin rant} Simple (at least for me) -- SUVs excessively threaten me as the driver of a normal vehicle.
How?:
1. excessive weight and energy -- my car is 3000 lbs gross, while a suburban is 8600 lbs (http://www.chevrolet.com/suburban/engine_sub/8100 .htm). So, the suburban is carrying more than double the energy in a collision.
2. high bumpers, which conveniently miss most of the crumple zone of my vehicle, magnifying the hazard of the excess weight of the SUV.
3. poor handling relative to a normal vehicle, which increases the chance of a collision.
4. SUV drivers with no clue as to how to handle these limitations.
5. the fat, tall, and opaque behind of an SUV blocks my view of potential trouble ahead.
6. I observe that SUV drivers are more prone to poor driving -- Left Lane Banditry (failing to keep right except to pass), and wandering all over the road whilst Driving While Yakking/shaving/reading/disciplining their rug rats.
I would mitigate these hazards as follows:
1. SUV speed limit is 80% of the posted limit (limit 70 mph -> SUV limit of 56), which reduces the crash energy by 36% (one half m v squared.) Ban SUVs from the passing and HOV lanes.
2. tax SUV owners on a per mile driven and per pound basis, to compensate for the increased wear on the road. Heck, tax all drivers this way.
3. SUV owners pay $2000/year/SUV into a SUV victims fund.
4. remove the business tax preferences to SUVs.
{end rant}
Ok, so I'm dreaming. Sue me.
It's Linux, damnit! Pay no attention to renaming attempts by self-aggrandizing blowhards.
The whole idea of tracked personal transit is a futuristic idea that's obsolete. We're far enough along in computing that automatic driving in a controlled environment is quite feasible.
I once thought that the place to start was with automatic driving of empty rental cars. The idea was that you drive to the terminal, get out, leave the rental car, and it slowly drives itself back to the rental car lot using a dedicated lane. This would save travellers about half an hour per trip. The next step would be to extend the system to arrivals, so there's a car waiting for you at baggage claim. Then get major hotels, convention centers, and parking garages on the system, for automated valet parking.
But if you crunch the numbers, it would be cheaper to hire minimum-wage people to do that job.
It also solves the problem of the stations not being nearby - just drive your car to the on ramp, sit back and enjoy the ride. Until the exit comes and you have to wake up, of course.
Was that out loud?
And do you want to take an hour driving to work in the morning at 5 mph? Thought not. Learn to understand that you are not alone on this planet, that you gain from cooperation, that that you are not stuck in the trafic jam, you are part of the trafic jam. Then we might begin to solve these problems, and you might get something better than what you have now.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
I want less infrastructure (less taxes) not more. I want fuel-efficient vehicles (hello Honda!) not electricity-driven public transportation systems (burn petroleum in central station, then carry the electricity 20+km to train), I want freedom to go to Vegas at 4:22 AM, when I FEEL like it, not because it's convenient on the bureaucracy-mandated "she-dule" (skedual for US speakers).
I want convenience, and low cost... In UK, gasoline is out of this work, but in US, it's not, so no public transportation for me.
What? our freeways are congested? So what. telecommute, move minutes from your job. there are many more, better alternatives. But the fact is, you have the choice. With Public transportation and high taxes, you lose the choice, becuase you're GOING to get taxed, so you might as well use it, even if it's less convenient.
"Piter, too, is dead."
That is an incorrect assumption! The benefits of a well designed and implemented mass transit system are much more far reaching than solely to the individuals actually using the system.
And just where might this system be?
The only and best known cases of mass transit that work are the ones where there is absolutely no other choice that can be made. For example, access to downtown New York City is impractical in most motor vehicles. The transportation models for motor vehicles don't scale to that density. Everyone uses public transportation not because they want to but because nothing else works. But I live on a farm, not New York City. Their solutions don't scale to me either.
And also, before you continue on your anti-SUV line of rant, consider what vehicle options a family of five should use: No, I don't have enough room in an econo-box for my wife, an aging mother in law, and two small children in child safety seats. Our alternatives are 1) two cars, 2) a minivan, 3) a large sedan or station wagon, or 4) an SUV.
Options 2, and 3 have similar efficiencies. Option 4 is only slightly worse, Option 1 is simply impractical. Just so you know, my wife and I chose option 3.
Believe me, I'd drive a smaller vehicle in an instant if I thought it were feasible. But it ain't gonna happen for many years. Neither is it likely that I'll see any form of public transportation out where I live.
You talk about squandering natural resources. Ever study what it takes to run a city? Ever really wonder whether there truly is an economy of scale there? Well, I suspect you won't like the answer.
Before you go green with stupidity, think. Think about how mass transit works when you're carting around three or more dependents. Think about what a mass transit system is supposed to do during off-peak hours. Yes, cities may have economies of scale, but they also have the overhead of distribution systems. And if that's not enough, think about failure modes.
Clearly the guys who wrote the article believe in autopilots. That's nice. Do you trust your neighbor to maintain this autopilot so that it won't fail catastrophically? How about the instrumentation that feeds it? Clearly when even one such control system goes wrong the consequences are far greater than if just one idiot runs a red light.
Don't think you can coerce your neighbors to use what you use. Successful systems work because they appeal to everyone. SUVs appeal to many families because there really isn't anything with the safety and capacity that these things have. Yes, I'd like economy too. But which features do you think are more popular?
Enjoy your nice haven in the city. Just remember what supports it, and remember that yours isn't the one and only way of life.
Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!
Yes, you said it with irony, but you're right! > Seriously, thats the kind of selfish approach that inhibits the adoption of technologies that would make the world better for people less fortunate than you; nevermind the evironment, noise pollution ... yadda yadda.
When I'm given the choice between two modes of transport to get from A to B, I'll take the one that makes the world better for me, not everyone else at my expense. Sorry if that disappoints you.
> Yes, I'm pragmatic, but it bothers me when people are quick to shoot down new ideas because they're too damn lazy/comfortable with what they already have.
You must have a definition of pragmatism with which I was previously unaware :)
If my 4-wheeled, gas-guzzling mode of transport is more comfortable than your mode of transport, well... yeah, I'll shoot your mode down until you can come up with something better.
Problem is, I, as end user, am the one who gets to define "better". Your mode might be more efficient. Might be a more "equitable" distribution of resources (in your eyes), but unless it gives me the same protection from the elements as my car, the same door-to-door service as my car, and ability to avoid close personal contact with strangers ("privacy", "not hanging around smelly people", call it what you like :), as my car, the same on-demand accessibility as my car, I still won't think it's "better", and I still probably won't use it.
> With western technology and population desities being what they are, people have the ability to isolate themselves via technology. [ ... ] once you get out on the road, it's You vs Them. But Them are your friends and
neighbours once you get outta the car ..
Now you're getting somewhere -- but the underlying sociological problem is that we've already isolated ourselves by technology to the point that "They" are not friends and neighbors once we get out of the car.
If I get out of the car at work, the few "Them" in my office are friends and co-workers. The rest of the guys in my parking lot are competitors or complete strangers.
If I get out of the car at home, the guys on my street are total strangers. The bigger the city (ironically, as it's in large cities with high population densitites that public transit would offer the greatest efficiency gains), the more likely it is that I don't even know my neighbors' names, let alone anything about them.
I do own a car in the city...
But like most people in the city, i take public transportation.. it's just not practical most
of the time to drive into the city. specially to go to work.
Step in to a nyc subway, and you will find ALL parts of the economic spectrum.. From homeless,
to CEO's
So, it is possible to have a widely accepted mass transit system. You just HAVE to make it NEEDED, USEFUL , and RELIABLE.
( although after the damn 2 train became local, I don't know if I'll stick to the damn reliable part
Okay, here's the deal... the reason Americans can't live without their cars is that their cities are built around the idea of the car and can't operate efficient public transport systems because of their 'shape'.
There's an interesting intersection of transport, urban theory and economics going on here. I did my graduate architectural thesis on the design of transport systems and got heavily into the topic.
The structure of most major European cities was built before and during the 19th century, a period when the options were to walk to work, take slow (relative to today) horse-drawn public transport or, toward the end of the century, cycle. This had a major effect on the shape of European cities - it lead to high density urban settlement, since most people will try to minimise the time it takes them to get to work, particularly if you're working a 12 hour day plus a half day on Saturday, which wasn't uncommon 150 years ago.
From the end of the 19th through to the first half of the 20th century, as the technology of transportation improved, we got electric trams and various forms of railway and buses with internal combustion engines. These modes of transport changed city shapes somewhat, with ribbons of suburban settlement spreading out in spokes from the early and mid-century core. Commuterland was born.
What's important to note here is that commuter flows in this setup work like river systems draining to the city centre, with walking feeding to buses and trams, then to railways - each level an increasingly heavy capital cost, but since the volumes of traffic rise, they're still economic to put into service and maintain. Everyone's moving along the same routes from one easily defined location to another to planning mass transport is relatively simple.
Let's contrast this with the younger cities of the US, which have mostly flourished since the 1920s and in a period when low-cost personal transport has become available in the form of the automobile.
With a car, you aren't limited to moving along the routes defined by public transport systems. You can go from anywhere, to anywhere, at any time you choose. That's why the automobile has been so spectacularly successful in the 20th century. Using a car, you can live in one suburb and work in another making a daily journey which would be very awkward with a European-model public transport system. You'd have to go into the city centre and back out again.
Automobiles induce people's journeys patterns to flatten and begin to lose their geographical structure. Over time, this has an effect in the very structure of a city - shops and places of work can be almost randomly located miles away from homes and all three can intermingle and recombine in many permutations. The American romance with the block/grid system of urban planning embodies the neutral network of the car perfectly in contrast with European organic urban planning based on patterns of historic use, travel and topographical incident.
When a city is structured so that any given node practically has the same importance as any other, providing a public transport service to meet what is now nearly a random walk becomes impossible from an economic point of view. You'd have to run lots of very small buses criss-crossing the city at close intervals - the bus turns into a taxi service. Traffic congestion makes bus timetables a point of humour anyway.Railways are redundant since not enough people are making journeys along their high maintenance-cost fixed routes.
So, with the rise of American cities coinciding with the rise of the internal combustion engine, public transport had much less opportunity to help build the American city and make itself useful to citizens. The car has shoe-horned out any competition by shaping the city to its own patterns.
Of course, the car brings its own issues: it's a fiendishly inefficient use of finite energy resources (still mostly derived from carbon-rich fossil fuels or nuclear fission, even if the car is powered by electricity). Big retail parks (owned by national and international chains) have persuaded you that you should be spending your own money distributing goods you have purchased instead of having them delivered to a local shop, which has gone out of business. If you live in a modern suburb it's possible that a shop that's in walking distance never existed. People without access to personal mechanised transport find it increasingly difficult to perform their daily tasks. You have to devote a chunk of your income going to the gym regularly to make up for the exercise you're missing by not walking or cycling...
Anyhow, that's how I see "Why are most AMERICANS so hung up on their cars?"
11.6 miles.
$675 million. Half comes from the Federal Transit Administration, another $50 million from a federal CMAQ grant. Rest from various state/local sources. The biggest chunk pays for the extraordinary tunnel project under the airport.
It's not meant to benefit anyone in particular. It's meant to provide people with options. Yes, not a lot of people at the moment. The hope is for the line to become part of a regional transit system (including the Dan Patch corridor, Riverview, North Star, Hwy 61 corridor, etc.).
You're judging it with a time horizon of only a few years. It's an expensive project, but viewing it with a 30 or 40 year perspective and assuming the development of a network, it will be quite different. That's all rather optimistic at the moment, however.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a huge fan of it. But that's the thinking, at any rate.
"A true replacement for the car!"
A true replacement for the car will have to be capable of brakestands, wheelies, donuts, and sub 10-second 1/4 miles.
Simple (at least for me)
Bingo. And that's the point I was making. That's how you'd do things in the land of mr_death. There are tonnes of things on this planet that personally annoy the hell out of me / I find downright retarded. The list is looooooong and varied, and I could also come up with a justification for how the elimination of each and every one of them would improve society.
Unfortunatly there are those folks that have the very same attitude about things that I like doing. They can also come up with some justifications for why I shouldn't be able to do the things I enjoy doing, and I think they're full of shit. Its a free country folks (or it should be free as humanly possible) and with that freedom comes the realization that some people just aren't going to do the things / make the choices / like the same things we like...
Now, for the things you'd do....
1. SUV speed limit is 80% of the posted limit (limit 70 mph -> SUV limit of 56), which reduces the crash energy by 36% (one half m v squared.) Ban SUVs from the passing and HOV lanes.
Lets lower the crash energy of every vehicle while we're at it. Lets lower the speed limit to 5 MPH, and lets have a law that states all autos must be proceeded by a guy waving a red flag to warn others he coming (this was an actual law at one point). I guarentee accidents would plummet.
2. tax SUV owners on a per mile driven and per pound basis, to compensate for the increased wear on the road. Heck, tax all drivers this way.
So, you're willing to give up your privacy to allow the gov't to track everywhere you've traveled? Remember, if we're compensating for the wear and tear on a road they're going to need more than simply milage. They're going to have to know where you've gone so they know who to compensate. Of course, we could just make each and every road a toll road. That would solve the problem as well. Hope everyone has a lot of quarters lying around. Then again, we could all use speed pass... but then the gov't is tracking us again.....
3. SUV owners pay $2000/year/SUV into a SUV victims fund.
And lets make every male driver between the ages of 16-25 pay into a fund as well, considering they cause the most accidents in this country... oh, wait a minute, they already do... it's called insurance. The wonderful thing about those money grubing bastards in the insurance industry, they don't like paying out more money than they take in. The second they find statistical evidence that SUVs (and SUVs alone, they control for the usual supsects: age, gender, marital status, past history, etc...) are causing them to lose more money (due to claims) than any other vehicle you can bet your bottom dollar that rates on SUVs are going to rise (if they haven't already).
4. remove the business tax preferences to SUVs.
That's (AFAIK) because they're classified as trucks, not cars. A bit of a dodge I agree.
Wow.
You have some serious issues, and I would recommend you not driving anymore if you have this weird mind set that SUVs really are all that evil.
Please actually back up your claims as to SUVs being so much more dangerous and causing more accidents. I see many more smaller passenger car accidents than SUVs. I'd look up statistics because I'm confident you are wrong, but I'll leave the burden of proof to you since you are the one making wild accusations.
As for point 1, there are a few places who have 'Truck' laws in which SUVs do qualify where you cannot drive in the far left lane and have a seperate posted speed limit. This is mostly due to commercial vehicles (semi-trucks) which are much much much more "dangerous" than any SUV you've seen.
Onto point 2, Do you even have a drivers license dipshit? Did you ever look at the little forms that DMV has all over the place explaining where the DMV fees go? Have you ever wondered why licensing fees go up for trucks, and other luxory vehicles?
And, the most innane point, #3. SUV victims fund? Are you joking? Nobody made you get a car. Nobody made you drive it. The only victims in your twisted scenario are the people reading it. I have been hit by 3 cars, neither of which were SUVs. I have been in about 5 car accidents (all rear-ended while I was at a stop.. go figure, bad luck) neither of which were SUVs. Worst was a truck used for business purposes, and that was only bad because he was going 55mph when he hit. I don't care what type of car you drive, if you hit a stationary object at 55 it's gonna screw the other person. The only benefit in the whole situation is his car was mostly ok from it. I say more power to him.
I've already wasted too much time, but every argument you posted except #4 was just absolutely stupid. Do yourself a favor though, and take mass-transit, because it obviously stresses you out way to much to have all those SUVs stalking you and just waiting to make their killing move.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
You're ringing my bullshit detector. :)
So, a reference please for the claim that per-capita energy use in the US is higher than other countries.
I researched this a few months ago and determined that, counting only first-world industrial countries, at least in terms of electrical usage, Americans are about in the middle. Some Europeans use more electricity per person, others use less.
I also saw that electricity usage per GNP was somewhat lower in the US compared to several european countries.
Numbers for GNP, electricity usage, and population were taken from the CIA world factbook, 2000 edition, then divided with a calculator.
Please cite a source for your claim.
I'm not sure about American laws, but Sweden makes it mandatory to inspect your car yearly. If not, it is illegal to drive that vehicle. During these checks in special shops, you could easily check the difference between the current driven mile count and the previous one.
Simple and effective.
War is one of the most horrible things a human can be exposed to. And one of the worlds largest industries.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
yep, if an suv crashes into a wall its toast because of the design
Your SUV proly just ain't big enough - Try the Avalanche instead!
Its Huge-riffic!
Starsucks
This is called Personal Rapid Transit, and the first PRT system in use was a "demonstration project" in Morgantown, West Virginia, funded by the U.S. Dept of Transportation. (Morgantown is the home of West Virginia University, and the system linked the WVU campus and downtown Morgantown.) It was built in the early 1970s, but I believe it is no longer operating. Subsequent to the development of the Morgantown project a similar system was developed at the Dallas-Ft. Worth airport. All of the "ultramodern" features described for the system in Cardiff were used there: variable destinations, multiple route paths, standby cars to "flex" demand, etc.
The submitter of this article makes a slight mistake in his summary: PRT, including the Cardiff system, does not envision users being able to take vehicles off the tracks. There have been rail- and rubber tire-based PRT systems proposed, but even the rubber tire-based systems are designed for a dedicated, exclusive right of way. (Several mass transit systems, notably Toronto's, use rubber tires instead of rail.)
PRT suffers from a relatively simple problem: massive capital costs. I believe what finally killed the Morgantown project was a moment of clarity at the Urban Mass Transit Administration (UMTA, the U.S. D.O.T. agency that oversaw the project). A consultant pointed out that while the PRT system had been fun, it would have been substantially cheaper to simply buy every student and staff member of WVU a new car every two years. (My stepfather was the smart-aleck consultant.)
The Cardiff project? Three words: Big Government Boondoggle. The fundamental problem of PRT is the fundamental problem of Light Rail and Monorails too: they are dedicated right-of-way solutions that run along an extremely expensive path. (Even if the cost of construction is trivial, the cost of land acquisition is enormous. If the cost of land acquisition is NOT enormous then there isn't sufficient population density to support a fixed right-of-way system.) It is dramatically cheaper to buy buses. It is dramatically more efficient to run buses. Buses can change routes instantly--so buses that "prowl" the city center Monday through Friday can run on suburban loop routes among shopping malls on Saturday and Sunday. And a bus-based transit system only requires a marginal additional cost for right-of-way (bus stop marking, signs, shelters, etc.).
But buses don't have the sex appeal of big transit projects, so people still throw money at thirty-year-old concepts and call them "ultramodern technology."
How 'bout if we haul out the big networking technology of the time, and proclaim ARCNET as "ultramodern" networking?
You know, SOMEHOW, we managed to get our families around without SUVs for years. The idea that you have to have one for you and your 2.5 children is ridiculous.
But like I said, if you're paying for wear and tear you would have to go above and beyond since roads here are a state by state thing (actually, some are county by county as well). You'd have to track *where* you've been as well, to compensate the correct maintairner of the road.
Also, gasoline is taxed by the state, so you are taxed by how far you drive and how heavy your car is (since weight correlates with fuel economy), but of course people like mr_death conviently forget such things.
#2, he also forgets about the tax on gas; the more you drive and the heavier your auto, the more gas you buy (thus the more tax you pay)....
Here in Phoenix, there was an initiative passed called Transit 2000. That link is now dead, but here is one that gives the information about it in more detail. Notice the cost. Notice where it is being put. I live here in Phoenix, and I honestly don't know where they plan on getting space along the roads and freeways they plan this thing to follow - it isn't there. That last site says construction is supposed to begin in 2003. I tend to doubt it. Likely the money will be pocketed by our "illustrious" government.
That is system picked. Want to see what we could have had, for far less money, had our government had more vision, and taken a chance on a proven inventor?
The SkyTran System
This is a system invented by Douglas J. Malewicki, an independent inventor.
Read about SkyTran. I am sure there are a few drawbacks, but I would say the majority of them have been seen to by Mr. Malewicki. His reasoning is sound, and fully documented.
Unfortunately I won't get to see my tax dollars go toward this system...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
#4 and 6 = SUV's seem to attract bad drivers.
Long before the term "SUV" existed, I noticed the same about the drivers of Cadillacs and Lincolns. In those days, these were gigantic luxury sedans, and the average driver of them was either about 90 years old, had never bothered to learn how to manuever that land-barge, or just plain didn't give a damn about anyone else. I rather suspect most of them fell into the last category (a*holes), whether or not they were also senile and ignorant...
So what happened? The EPA and mileage standards forced Cadillac and Lincoln to shrink their cars. Sedans are now too small to contain the a*holes' egos, so they buy SUV's, and drive them just as badly as they drove the big sedans. Maybe worse, because these things really are _trucks_ and ought to be driven somewhat differently than a car.
Not that all SUV drivers are like that, by any means. I often drive a 4x4 pickup, which is about the same size as an SUV, but cheaper and a bit more useful for hauling anything but people. (And I do use the 4wd -- I live on a dirt road which was a foot deep in snow this morning, and turns to deep mud in the spring.) I would have bought an SUV instead if I'd realized how soon I was going to have 5 grandchildren -- the Ford Escort "station wagon" really isn't big enough, and neither is the Dodge Dakota king cab. I think I'm a pretty safe driver in my truck, because I don't forget it _is_ a truck, take it easier on the turns, etc., and I'd be equally safe in an SUV.
The a*holes are not a good reason to have the government hammer all SUV owners. The a*holes would still take over the roads in some other sort of oversized ego-haulers. What's needed in the first place is traffic law enforcement. In the second place, drop the CAFE standards, and let the car companies bring back the big sedans for those who want them.
One more suggestion: how about making traffic tickets proportional to the weight of the vehicle? This won't affect good drivers of any size vehicle, but it will get a little expensive for bad drivers in 8500 pound vehicles. And bad drivers are certainly more dangerous to others when they're in bigger vehicles.
Don't have to tell me about the price of tax on petrol in the UK... its a friggin rip off.
SOMEHOW, we managed to get our families around without SUVs for years. Cars used to be bigger, especially on the inside. The CAFE mileage limits shrunk the outside. The safety standards require thicker sides, and thicker padding on everything. All the pollution stuff in the engine compartment plus the crush zones require more length in the hood. Result: much less room for the passengers. The backseat of a new Buick gives hardly more room than the backseat of a 1968 VW Beatle, and the bug was a sub-compact!
The other thing, of course, is that the baby boomers are getting older. That means wider waists, back problems, bigger rears, arthritic knees, and more fat everywhere. (This of course doesn't apply to me. 8-) I might be 48 and 55 pounds heavier than I was at 20, but I'm just well-padded, and that knee has been bad since high school. It just hurts more when I try to fold my legs into a little car, lately. Cars must be getting smaller...)
I can think of several reasons:
* weather,
* safety - it can be quite dangerous to ride a bike in cycle-unfriendly traffic, particularly in the busy part of town, and most cities don't have much in the way of cycle paths.
* disability (and I don't mean lack of fitness - cycling is a great way to build fitness).
I don't use a bicycle much for the second reason (amoung other reasons, I have to cycle through a dangerous intersection to get anywhere), but cycling is an excellent mode of transport where possible.
I consider myself lucky that I live within easy walking distance of work - my second favorite form of transport.
Please actually back up your claims as to SUVs being so much more dangerous and causing more accidents. I see many more smaller passenger car accidents than SUVs.
SUVs account for 100% of all accidents that have occurred to my toyota. given that 1 isn't a great sample size the fact that my car was parked at the time and the person was on the phone eating a burger didn't make me happy either
--- As to make my comment seem, by comparison, more intelegent... doodie doodie doodie poop poop poop!
'Round here folks mostly live in the suburbs and spend much time in their cars. To get from your home to work involves equal parts side streets, highway, and city streets. People are too spread out for trams and buses (You may have noticed rail doesn't work here either).
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Subway -> Supertram
Tokenring -> Ethernet
I wonder if they have the same collision algorithm.
(Score:5, Whoring)
If you've still got a pasenger train system, you're doing better than the USA. We've got a gov't corporation (Amtrak) running the ghost of the train system, and a number of disconnected local mass transit systems, which are mostly tax-subsidized havens for homeless and criminals. There are exceptions, e.g. when we lived in Virginia, I'd take the family to the Smithsonian on weekends by driving about halfway (approximately to the Beltway), then parking and taking the subway. These subways were clean, felt safe, and were a pretty nice ride on weekends, but the _only_ place it went we were interested in was the Smithsonian-capitol area, and one big underground shopping mall. And the rails didn't go far enough out into the countryside -- if you wanted to catch a subway on workdays at 8am say, the last 10 miles by road would take 2 hours, then all the parking would be gone at the station... The subway took a little pressure off the roads inside the beltway, but really seemed more like a way for the politicians to show off "were doing _something_" than practical transportation to work.
Even the freight railways seem to be in pretty poor shape in the US. Many of the old railroad companies over here are doing pretty well, though -- for 50 years they took the profits from freight rail service, minimizing maintenance of railbed and rolling stock, and bought other businesses not related to the rails at all. I'm not sure if this was just the short-sighted greed that commonly afflicts corporations ("we can look great this quarter if we destroy our main business forever"), or a perception that railroads were going the way of buggy-whip manufacturing so they'd better find another business while it was still possible to milk the rails for money. Anyway, they're milked dry now...
Under the circumstances, it was an easy choice.
hawk
LOL. It doesn't disappoint me. It just ensures that when/if you end up in a situation where you dont have a car, you'll either be:
/admitted/ they could have ended up in, I'd be Bill Gates, without the Evil Empire. Thats all, man. Keep the car, but don't /not/ use the alternatives once in awhile! You never know when it just might pay off ... :)
a) fucked (cause you didn't support the adoption of a possible solution)
b) very very very unhappy that you have to sit beside the smelly people
Man, I understand your point of view, but it's as selfish as the guy who claims he should be able to do heroin, because he wants to. Who cares if he wants to, he's hurting the people around him! Obviously, you can go too far with this approach, but I don't think the 5 minute walk to the station (especially when we have a cottage industry to deal with the "go-go-go" mentality and stress related to life in cities) and sitting beside a smelly guy (who's only smelly cause you're only used to smelling yourself and your friends) constitutes the kind of sacrifice that will make you an unhappy person. I ain't a treehugger, or even green, I just want a little aknowledgement that our values are skewered over here (western culture), even if it is business as usual. If I got a penny for everytime I heard someone whine about being screwed when they ended up in a situation they didn't predict, let alone
"Old man yells at systemd"
>home feeling like the US was the
>3rd world, the way they can get about with >excellent mass transit
YEs, but compare European population density to U.S. Density. The population isn't all that different, *how many* europes can you fit into the 48 states?
hawk
*sigh*
hawk,who's happy when he gets to the counter in a single cart . . .
Yes, I know that for the typical cost of a mass transit system, you could have bought every regular rider at least one new luxury car. But:
1) How was the cost of building the roads factored in? Not fair to compare the cost of a new railbed to just stuffing more traffic into existing roads... I'm not sure about this, but it would seem like a mile of dual-track railbed built only heavy enough for car-like vehicles should cost less than a mile of four-lane road, and (with central control) would handle more traffic.
2) I'd think the cars for one of these systems would actually be a little simpler than an automobile built for independent operation. Electric motor instead of that horribly complex gasoline engine and transmission. Simpler suspension, because you can count on the rails meeting certain standards for smoothness, and no steering. Lots of electronics, but that's cheap nowadays. So if the cars were built in sufficient quantity, they'd cost the same or less as autos.
Of course, the trouble is that autos are built by the millions, but trams are custom-built. Could you design the trams to use an existing car body, just drop an electric motor under the hood, leave out the steering, and change the wheels?
A real-world tax like this would be based on mileage, the proceeds divided among the local road-maintaining agencies according to some precalculated formula. It would not be perfectly accurate. Taxes like these are not.
I know, maybe we should put a tax on gasoline. You know, the heavier the auto and the farther you drive the more taxes you pay. Wow, why didn't anyone think of tha.... oh, never mind.. they have.
A person who dies instantly does so quite cheaply, whereas a crippling injury or a long, lingering death in the hospital is more expensive.
But you still may be liable, therefor have to dish out a lot of cash (or your insurance company does). Back to the arguement though, statistics show that single males under the age of 25 cause more accidents as well. Should we tax them above and beyond the norm? What about folks who live in citys and suburbs where accidents happen at a higher rate than those out in the country? Do we tax them as well? If you want to tax in order to promote safty why go *only* after SUVs?
Additionally, dead people make pretty poor courtroom witnesses - it may be a lot harder to show that an accident is the other driver's fault
Or you could say that juries are going to be moved that someone IS dead. If an accident happens and death is involved you can be damn sure its going to get more attention than your average fender bender. I think the police/court will have more information on hand than simply witness testimony.
Studies have found that in fatal collisions between SUVs and ordinary cars, the people in the car are about 30 times more likely to die than the people in the SUV [suv.org].
Wow.. if I read somewhere that I'd be thirty times more likely to die in a motorcycle accident if I didn't wear a helmet I would think that's a damn good reason to wear one, wouldn't you think... Of course that's not the point your trying to make, but that may be because your arguement is bunk. You haven't shown that SUVs are the cause of more accidents, just that if your in one you're more likely to survive. Now, had you shown that SUVs cause more accidents you *might* have something.
And just in case anyone's wondering I drive a compact car. I think SUVs are a waste of money... but I think a lot of things are as well, I just don't try to change laws to keep other people from (IMO) wasting theirs.
>our cities to make them fit alongside mountains,
>rivers and coastlines.
You just described Dubois, PA (and many others).
straight roads?
*giggle*
roads run along ridges, and to where things branched for a house 150 years ago, and, in general, you can't get there from here . . .
But *of course* we have barbecues. How in the world can you lead a civilized life without *at least* one on hand. I've got the big weber (which I replaced for next fall, the weather caught up with it), the little weber, the smoker, and a stupid little gas one that's still in its box.
Life wihtout BBQ would be like, well, life without good beer . . .
mmm, and while I'm blasting stereotypes, there are more types and varieties of beer brewed in the U.S. than any other country (and that's counting all of bud/coors/miller as a single type!). There's only a couple of styles that aren't made here (The belgian lambic which depends upon local wild yeat that have never been cultured successfully, and it seems to me thatthere's a Viennese style that is only brewed in one country in South America)
hawk, who brews his own, anyway
hawk
The US, unlike all of europe, is and has always been big and spread out. This is why air travel is in chronic overdemand, and rail travel can't make a profit anywhere outside the northeast corridor. The same is true of cities. If people are traveling from urban to urban locations, they don't need cars. But hardly anyone outside of the biggest and oldest of cities is doing that in America. I'd guess 99% of the trips in this country are made to and/or from rural or suburban areas. This is partly the result of the ascendance of the car in America, and partly the cause of it.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Better not to move people at all if not necessary.
I personally think that SUV's are an obvious danger to drivers of ligher vehicles. More to the point, all heavier vehicles are inherently more dangerous to others than lighter vehicles in exactly the same circumstances (baring special cases, e.g., matching bumper heights).
However, the SUV is clearly a facile way to avoid the limitations placed on cars. It is probably illegal, but IANAL. SUVs are clearly used for personal transportation, so they are cars, not trucks. They are used less like a truck than a station wagon is, because it's more difficult. My wife prefers a subcompact station wagon to an SUV because it's easier to haul a harpsichord around in one. Cabinets also. In an SUV one would need to take out the back seat. In a station wagon, you just fold it down. I will grant that the absolute limit on the size of what you can haul is larger for an SUV, but because of convenience, it isn't used as a truck, whereas station wagons frequently are used as trucks. For an SUV to be classed as a truck and a station wagon to not be so classed is an aovious perversion of the law. I suspect it of being actually illegal, but nobody who has standing to sue over the enforcement is likely to bother.
The entire category of vehicle would never have been created if some scoundrel hadn't decided that this was a good enough loophole to pass through. And I suspect that what he noticed was that only the government had standing to object, so that with a friendly legislature in place (expensive, but they'd already been doing it for other reasons) nobody would challenge them.
I don't really care what you claim to drive. It's quite irrelevant. I don't drive at all. So? Physics, Economics, and Politics don't change because of that. Your denials require a lot more evidence that the prior assertions, because what he is asserting is what one would expect from the known characteristics of the situation and basic models of how massive bodies move in space-time. It's the denial of those predictions that requires a lot of examination and explanation. Of which you provided none. Merely challenging the claim of certain effects which are what one would predict from even a crude modeling of the situation. (And I will grant that my model is quite crude. I didn't put any numbers in at all. I basically modeled it with swinging pendulums with differing plumb weights, and towers of blocks.)
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I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
In the mid 1970s I noticed that the worst drivers tended to come in two clumps. For brevity I identified them as the Cadillacs and the Volkswagens. They didn't actually all drive those particular brands, but one mode drove big heavy expensive cars, and tended to project "Get out of my way. I'm not even going to notice you." and the other mode drove small agile cheap cars and tended to project "I can dodge around anything!".
Both were lousy drivers.
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I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Vandalism is already a problem on buses. And there one has a driver available who is expected to prevent it. These things are small enough that a group of 1-4 kids could reasonably expect to be alone in it. Vandalism would not be observed except by a selected group of witnesses. One might expect that in such circumstances that vandalism would quickly become intolerably bad.
The primary deterent to vandalism currently is ownership. But in public transit the ownership is so dispersed that it becomes an ineffective deterrent. Other approaches to deterrence that have been found have inherrent problems. (Video cameras are easily spray painted, e.g., and are relatively ineffective as a deterrent anyway, unless there is someone close at hand monitoring them.)
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I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
SUVs account for 0% of the accidents that have happened to my poor cars. (5 accidents, as stated above).
I think that the major problem isn't that it's SUVs, it's that people do too many things while driving. I'm totally for banning cell phones without handsfree devices (still not that good, but sometimes you actually have a necessity to talk). Stupid people are everywhere, SUVs only in some places. I'd rather ban (or tax) stupidity.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
The "VWs" were kids -- who tend to think they have infinite reaction speed, and their luck will never give out. Yes, they're dangerous, but if they survive they'll learn better. They might be more dangerous now, since they're more likely to be driving small agile 4x4s instead of 2,000 pound foreign cars.
OTOH, the "cadillacs" will never learn...
The article mentioned that the footprint of the track would require very little right-of-way, but it all adds up when you want the track to be more than just a few hundred feet long, especially in major cities where land costs a pretty penny. Who's going to foot the bill? Are surrounding counties/cities (whose residents are contributing to the congestion of a major city) going to all pitch in? Will they all benefit from the system? (looking at the Bay Area BART system as a case study, this is doubtful, at least initially. It takes decades to make the system to work for everybody).
Now, I'm not trying to cut this idea down. In fact, I think it's a great idea, a simple and elegant solution. But it's going to go against a lot of obstacles in our current big cities. It'll be an overly expensive job for these areas. I can see it working in future metropolii and suburbs. The same forethought that went into inventing such a system needs to go into designing the infrastructure and building cities and facilities around it, rather than the other way around.
I'll need to make a correction to my choice of words here. I meant to say future new computer-operated cars. Obviously this would be nearly impossible to manage individually retrofitted cars (retrofit, in this case, was the wrong word). This kind of system will need a great deal of thought into it. Perhaps it can be phased in like carpool lanes first, and eventually major freeways, or parallel "tollways", would be completely converted to it. I would also assume that this would be a Federally-regulated system, like on certain sections of interstate freeways. I don't know anything about this research, so all this is just wild speculation, and of course everyone should take it with a gargantuan grain of salt.I personally think that SUV's are an obvious danger to drivers of ligher vehicles. More to the point, all heavier vehicles are inherently more dangerous to others than lighter vehicles in exactly the same circumstances (baring special cases, e.g., matching bumper heights).
First, "you personally think" which is one of the points I've been saying. What someone personally thinks is fine for the way they conduct their lives, but does not necc. good policy make. As I said before there's tonnes of stuff that I personally think, but that dosesn't mean they should be made law.
As for SUVs being dangerous simply because they're bigger than lighter cars, the same can be said about midsized cars and compact cars, or compact cars vs. cyclists, or cyclists and pedestrians, or tractor-trailers vs anything else on the road that moves... so why the fuss about SUVs only?
The entire category of vehicle would never have been created if some scoundrel hadn't decided that this was a good enough loophole to pass through.
Speculation. You could argue (and I would agree) that they would probably have been more expensive since they would have had to conform to stricter guidelines, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't have sold. Last time I checked SUVs were pretty expensive to beging with. People seem to have no problem dropping a big wad on 'em.
Your denials require a lot more evidence that the prior assertions, because what he is asserting is what one would expect from the known characteristics of the situation and basic models of how massive bodies move in space-time.
Wow.. at what point did I ever argue against gravity/physics... uh yeah, never. I never said that SUVs that have more mass didn't crash with more force. What I did argue was that the that was given was to statistics that show that people in SUVs survive crashes at a higher rate than those in smaller cars. That *is not* the same thing as saying SUVs cause more accidents (which is what the poster was implying.. maybe if you weren't playing with pendulums and plumb weights and actually used some logic you might have noticed that). No statistics were shown that a) controling for external factors SUVs cause more accidents than non SUVs or that b) controling for external factors accidents involving one SUV and non SUVs result in a higher death rate. Do such statistics exist? The previous poster surly didn't provide them (funny how he's not held to the same standard of evidence as I). I have a hunch that there isn't for a) and some for b)... lets assume that b) is true and go back to my previous arguement. I would also then think that a crash involving a Lincon Town Car and a Fiat would result in the person in the Fiat dying more often than two Fiats crashing (or two Town cars crashing). Or an accident with a Fiat and a cyclist. If everyone's so hell bent about size/saftey why the witchhunt after SUVs and not *all* autos?
It's not too late, but it would sure be easier if it didn't insist on rails. (There was an "automated taxi" note about the same city yesterday, so perhaps ...)
If the thing can get smart enough to drive on normal streets, then there are great possibilities. E.g., one could bury a charging plate at every traffic signal, and then whenever you had to stop for cross-traffic, you could be charging your batteries. Or perhaps a fuel cell design could work. Gasoline is a potentially disasterous point of failure, so alternatives are drastically needed. Electricity can be generated in many different ways, so it's less problematical. Fuel cells can run on many things (e.g., methane, etc.) as long as mileage/volume isn't too significant. Perhaps roadside recharging stations for that?
But to really fit in, special roadways must only need point fixes, rather than entire rebuilding. OTOH, with the most optomistic of assumptions this is going to be something that's going to take place as a gradual transformation. (The only thing that could make it happen quickly is a *drastic* rise in the cost of oil. Enough to make solar cell generated hydrogen a reasonable replacement. And that would *NOT* be painless.)
But since it's going to be a gradual transformation anyway, there's probably going to be time during the process for the cars to learn to drive themselves in a free mode. So the teather is energy. There's lots of point fixes for that. E.g., electric charging points with flywheels to store up energy, and dynamic braking. There would need to be continuous charging strips on every uphill stretch for this to work, but that's a lot cheaper than a total rebuild.
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I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
What is your point? I was pointing out that we already have a system of using taxes to support roads, and no information about where we travel is gathered. This is that system. What are you arguing with, exactly?
The earlier post by Mr_Death (that started this whole thread) had advocated a tax on SUVs (or all cars) on weight/use. I assumed (apparently incorrectly) you were advocating the same thing. I was pointing out that such a system already exist.
I was talking about insurance, not taxes, and I thought it was pretty clear.
The orig. post (by mr_death) *was* about taxes, or at least making SUV owners pay money into an SUV fund. My point was that *if* you're going to make SUV owners pay extra into an SUV wreck fund because they cause more accidents then you better do it for guys under 25 because they cause a disporportionat amount of accidents as well.
Then I pointed out that this is *exactly* what insurance companies do anyway.
Insurance is graded by a person's demographic, and young single males are charged more than others for insurance. Are you arguing that this is unfair?
Not at all.. see above.
[about accident data] What information could the police possibly have other than witness testimony?
Um, skid marks, ammount of damage to car, where the accident actually took place / position the cars were in after accident, were tail lights actually working (things you can actually determine after they've been smashed all to hell), was anyone drunk/high... there's LOTS of forensic evidence you can use to recreate an accident. Yes, all eye witnesses *would* be prefered, but you can still paint a pretty damn good picture of what happened without one. And, as I said in the last post, *if* there's death involved then the police are going to put a hell of a lot more effort into determining exactly what went on than if there's a simple fender bender. Possible negligent manslaughter tends to attract more attention. The assumption that just because one of the parties is dead in an accident the police are just going only listen to the surviving driver's statement and fluff of the investigation is laughable.
Contrary to your post, I haven't advocated a tax on SUVs. I was merely pointing out that a tax that required extensive data-gathering of the sort you suggest would be an exception to the way taxes usually work. An extra, mileage-based tax on SUVs is more feasable and less problematic than you suggest.
Which, again, was my point. A system of taxation already existed, but the poster was advocating more taxation (either because he forgot that gas was already taxed or just feels like taxing the crap out of anyone who drives). If taxing gas wasn't enough to cover the wear and tear as he implied my point was what other way do you determine such things?
Actually, I'm showing that if you're driving an SUV, you're more likely to survive an accident
The stats you orig. posted say this...
- because the other vehicle most likely will suffer much more than yours.
but not this... at least not in that post. You said that " the people in the car are about 30 times more likely to die than the people in the SUV"
If the accidents involving SUVs are more deadly, you'll end up with more total deaths even if the number of accidents stays the same. This may actually be happening; traffic deaths have recently started to rise for the first time in decades.
Again, that's exactly was I said in the parent post! To say that SUVs are more dangerous you have to a) show that SUVs are in more accidents (external factors notwithstanding) or b) an accident involving an SUV and a smaller car causes a disproportionately large amount of injuries. The statement 'someone in an SUV is 30 times as likely to survive an accident' proves neither. Now, you do finally point out that one study concluded that 2000 deaths would be attributed to SUVs and SUVs only, which leads me to....
Who's side are you on here, anyway? At least in that post you said something that made some sense:
I was trying to make a point that even if b) is true I still don't think its a reason to villify/tax/ban SUVs. Lets get rid of all SUVs and then look at accident rates. All of the sudden the next largest vehicle is going to be the bad machine on the block with damming statistic about how when they plow into smaller cars a disproportionate amount of deaths happen. So ban them as well, then the next largest becomes the statistical killer... and so on and so on.. and the next thing you know we're all driving Fiat Cinqucentos.
And why isn't there a big push to get sub compact cars off the road? An SUV, a large car, hell even a midsize/economy car is likely to mangle you if you crash in a VW rabbit or a Geo. Isn't it just as irresponsable to drive around in a tin can of a car than it is to drive around in a big ass tank of a car?
I play Nerd-Folk!
One problem with Slashdotters is they don't know a lot about a lot of things... Like the French worked on such a thing from 1969 up to 1987! Bruno Latour, a French sociologist of technology, wrote about it in a book called "Aramis." You can read about it at Amazon. The reviews even say it was like packet switching. Unfortunately the reviewer doesn't understand the book, and says incorrectly that the project was "squashed by the French government." I had to read it for my doctoral exams... This is an idea that doesn't work, but since so few people know about technological failures and the basics seems easy enough, it keeps coming back. It's framed as "no one has done it, it must be cool!" instead of "no one that I know of has succeeded with this, perhaps they've all failed!" It is not the first of its kind at all, the author of the article has no idea what he's talking about.
Take a bunch of those flat escalators they have in long airport terminals, speed them up by 5-or-so times, plop them down all over the city, and suddenly being a pedestrian isn't BORING anymore! It's like an amusement park ride every time you try to go somewhere! Just make sure you have good life insurance. ^_^
[insert witty comment here]
Quoted from article:
A true replacement for the car!No. When the vehicle is mine personally, and I can leave my crap kicking around on the front seat, and most importantly that it goes where I point the steering wheel, then I'll call it a car.
Public transit proponents apparently don't understand the visceral pleasure of punching the gas pedal and peeling the rear wheels. Much like I don't understand the pleasure of hugging a tree.
The first is a Maintenance Nightmare, the second proposes the smart highway/smart vehicle system in which a driver can allow the system to drive the vehicle or drive the vehicle manually. Any design which imposes a mandatory track and vehicle configuration such as that depicted in the article is a hole into which one can through one's money.I should think those would be the least of their worries. If the car isn't my own vehicle and I'm given sovereignty over it, there'd better be a rental company paperwork nightmare every time I get into a vehicle by myself.
Otherwise, I would think that going to work in a car where the seats were still full of the back-from-the-pub puke of the previous patron would be the *least* of Cardiff's worries.
How do *you* treat a car that you don't care about? Spilled ice cream? Overloading it by carrying 20 sheets of drywall? Kicking doors open?How are you going to track down who did the damage to a vehicle which appears to function autonomously?
Quoted from BBC's article:
vandal-proofThat sounds like a challenge. But, to paraphrase an old saying, invent a vandal-proof device, and someone invents a better vandal.
This is just another reason for anyone who can afford to leave a place which imposes high taxes and affords no standard of living to do so: if this is forced on the city, they can expect an exodus of doctors, scientists and engineers.
Most disturbingly, those who would normally espouse public transit at all costs are also usually the most staunch advocates of privacy rights. And yet, there appears to be no great outcry from the fact that your access card would, by necessity, have to track your every movement for fare calculations, and your ID for damage control. Don't want the government to know that you go to a gay bar every Tuesday night? Or that you're a closet white supremacist? Or even what supermarkets you shop at? Tough. They'll know.
This is sheer idiocy. I was born in Cardiff. This and Tom Jones are both good reasons not to go back.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Sure, but not many. In the US you've traditionally built your houses out of wood, so there ain't many houses dating back 50 years, never mind 150. If it's going to last centuries it needs to be brick and stone, and only public buildings and warehouses/factories tended to get that treatment. So there's some old churches, old government offices and old factories, but there's next to no rows of old houses like you'll find in every European city.
Grab.
However, insurance doesn't address the less tangible detractions of cars in general, and SUVs in particular: the fact that, as a benign pedestrian or biker, you have to spend lots of mental energy to keep yourself from getting killed. While you don't endanger anyone else, you are at constant threat by people who are not significantly endangering themselves. It's asymmetric, backwards, and very frustrating.
At least motorcyclists are endangering themselves more than the world around them, which some people consider stupid and destructive, but a more socially-minded person would see as good, because there is little virtue in protecting yourself, but much more virtue in protecting those around you.
Please remind me how Americans can't get treatment in hospitals, whilst universal accesss to medical care is a fundamental right in the UK? Or how it isn't possible for anyone born in poverty in the US to get a university education except if they're lucky enough to score a scholarship, whereas anyone in the UK can go to university provided they meet the grades? Admittedly you have to pay some tuition fees in England, but even that isn't such a big deal since you get government-sponsored rate-of-inflation-interest-only loans for your tuition and living expenses - poor Americans are totally denied a shot at uni since they simply couldn't afford it. Or how American Indians are shut away in areas without jobs and with zero healthcare?
The stories about a girl denied access to Oxford/Cambridge are bollocks, and the girl in question said so. The papers thought it'd make a good story, politicians jumped on it as an Issue, and bugger the truth.
Britain certainly has many ancient laws which have never been repealed, simply bcos they're never used. OTOH, America has some perfectly sensible laws which aren't used bcos of the rank of the ppl concerned - JFK getting away with a woman's death without even an investigation, JFK jnr getting away with rape, the Clintons getting away with Whitewater, the current Bush using his office to advance the interests of oil companies, Microsoft getting away due to large quantities of money - need I continue?
At the top level, Britain acknowledges the Royal family as figureheads, but doesn't grant them any power; but the US isn't prepared to acknowledge that certain families get more rights than others, and that those families have more power than others. American hypocrites.
Grab.