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Mass Transit Meets The Incredibles
Chuckstar writes "Salon.com has an article about SkyWeb Express, a futuristic-looking mass transit system similar to the monorail in the evil villain's secret lair in The Incredibles. What is unique about this system is that individual 3-passenger cars travel independently between stations, which are located on side-tracks so cars only need to stop at the final destination. Apparently, the system is relatively cheap to install, cost efficient per passenger mile, and much more flexible than traditional mass transit. The New York Post covered the topic last month."
this is old news. how do stories like this get through?
This is what the 'self driving car' should be.
This is far better than both a "mass transit" train or a car.
For a better and simpler solution look to Curbita's bus system in Brazil. They just set aside roads for bus only, give them chrome boxes so they always get a green light, and make the bus stop the pay station so you can load and unload quickly. A system like Curbita requires nothing more than a better bus stop and large doors and moves more people than a subway at a fraction of the cost. Their system cost $.25 a ride and makes a profit.
Web isn't limited to the internet. It probably refers to many branches eminating from a central location.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Several (at least 5) years ago there was talk of a similar system to serve Bristol, a largish city in the UK. The idea was for small "pods" (as they were called) to carry around 5 passengers at a time to various destinations along a tram line. Aside from concerns about vandalism, I believe at the time it was thought impractical, and shoved away in favour of a normal tram (which was then denied funding...).
What is unique about this system is that individual 3-passenger cars travel independently between stations, which are located on side-tracks so cars only need to stop at the final destination.
Seems like it's out of Logans Run. Nice idea, bringing the convenience of personal transportation with the benefits of mass transit.
A Human Right
It looks cool, but what happens if your car breaks down? There doesn't appear to be an emergency exit walkway.
But that may be moot: If your car breaks down or comes to an abrupt halt, do you get smashed by the car behind you?
Make no mistake; I think it's cool as hell. But I'd want to know how their system, "handles exceptions."
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Because they intend to install it in a grid pattern rather than a line. They can manage this because of the relatively low price per mile for the rail.
But they're still talking about the stations being a mile apart. Which means an average of a one-mile hike and a max of a two mile hike if your starting location and destination are exactly between stations.
It's twice as expensive per mile to install as a fleet of busses, which can stop every block and cost more per passenger-mile than passenger cars (even if you DON'T include the extra security costs to put police on them to deal with gang activity).
You still need roads everywhere, anyhow, to deliver heavy goods (like building material and furniture). And a car can go anywhere there's a decent road (and an SUV where the roads are truly rotten and many places where they're just dirt paths or nonexistent), rather than being limited to the pricey rails.
So while it's a very pretty utopian dream, it's not as practical as the current, heavily-debugged, individualized technology.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
First, there is more than one car on the system. If you have more than three, take extra cars.
But why three, and not four, or five? The reason I've read in the past is this:
Three is the smallest number of occupants that guarantees that no members of a group need to ride alone.
If the cars held two, and your group of three arrived, then someone would have to ride by themselves. Not fun, and socially difficult.
It's true that if the cars held four, the same system would work (five people go in three and two). There is, however, significant expense to adding another passenger space. You'd either have to make them wider. This would increase the space between the railings, and the overall construction cost in addition to the car cost. You could add another row of seats, but that would increase the complexity and cost of the car.
Three is the right number.
-Zipwow
I don't know which is more depressing, that 2/3 didn't care enough to vote, or that 1/2 of those that did are crazy.
It would be interesting to see how they design stations which have a large amount of congestion at various times of the day. I'm guess their graphic is a typical station, but the waiting traffic would easily overrun the main track in even the smallest city.
:)
Perhaps they can just get away with making the station rail longer? A by-passible loop or two that are introduced during rush hour? (Or when someone cracks into the control system
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
Small cities (cities up to 150,000 people) -- generally are contained within a three or so mile radius, so it would make sense to connect malls, grocery stores, and civil services with the system. Some people could use it without having to use a car, some would be able to use it just for the daily commute.
Medium cities (cities up to 500,000 people) -- still a good option, but would probably be used differently. More reliance on cars to get to parking lots that would then use these things to shuttle passengers between the most often visited places (mass transit, some shopping centers, airports, city center). Good coverage of downtown areas would reduce traffic issues there.
Large cities (cities over 500,000 people) -- Too expensive to build and too many places to potentially have to get to. Light rail is a better option for transporting this many people. Other mass transit systems may overlap (water taxis, buses). System would probably only end up serving a small fraction of the city for a small fraction of destinations. Commercial centers are far too large (and distributed) to serve effectively.
Comments, questions, flames?
-Rob
Marriage doesn't have to suck!
My first thought about a weakness here is during rush hour. How will the system handle a very popula destination station where there are more vehicles waiting to unload their passengers than the station has spots at the terminal for, and room on the side-track? Seems this would back up the transit track. It just doesn't seem like the system could handle the sheer volume of a metropolitan rush hour (I'm using Wash., D.C. and the METRO system as my point-of-reference).
Erm -- If the stations are a mile apart -- that puts you a maximum of a HALF-Mile away from any given station. That is of course using linear measurement. If it's a 1 mile grid and you're in the exact center, then you've got a 0.707107 mile to any of four stations. So from the exact center of one to the exact center of another would be a 1.414214 mile walk. The theory is that there would always be cars in each station -- so while you would have to walk .7 (max) to your station, you would be able to get in a car and head for your destination immediately. The tracks are set up to be one way -- so you may need to do some looping around (longer trip) but it should be non-stop -- trip time should be much shorter than bus.
Is this workable? Maybe, it probably depends in large part upon location. To me it seems like a possible solution to road expansion in certain areas. Will the road construction lobby work hard to make sure it's stillborn? You bet.
(Check the funding for debt -- derail the bullet train group in florida)
the Denver International Airport baggage handling
system. While they worked the bugs out of that,
baggage got destroyed, dumped into strange places,
put on the wrong flights, and so on.
You too can experience this now, personally.
There are some serious arguments to be made against it. Any city large enough to consider mass transit will have its share of inconsiderate assholes. The private nature of the pods will encourage these individuals, especially when they're drunk, to deposit various bodily excretions (semen, piss, vomit and the occasional turd). Perhaps a camera could be installed to let people know these are not meant to be anybody's private space.
What do you do about homeless people who decide to live in one of these pods? You'd have to arrest them. They'd likely be back on the street within 24 hours, and angry enough to contribute to the excretion problem described above.
What if one breaks down between stations? How easy is it to get a service technician out there? How easy is it to evacuate the pod between stations in case of an emergency?
That's just off the top of my head. I don't work with mass transit, but I do use it every day.
First, Disney. Then, next time there's a major economic boom and everyone is feeling rich, a few small metropolises will try to draw publicity with half-assed implementations. Finally after five or six such failures, someone will get it right in maybe fifty years.
But that's the US! There's tremendous room for such a system in developing nations, european cities, and especially in command economies like China where occasionally over-powered leaders get big ideas and throw loads of taxpayer money at things like this. Problem for this company, though, is that the Chinese tend to use Chinese systems, not western ones.
Read jack phelps dot net
Step 1: Look at the size of the stations shown in the article or the animation.
Step 2: Look at the size of the typical shopping center parking lot, or the size of a typical commuter rail parking garage.
At certain times of the day you are going to need a lot more cars leaving one of these stations than you have arriving. At other times of the day you are going to have a lot more cars arriving at a station. You either need very large stations at some locations, or you need empty cars moving around all the time, or you need one or more large storage/maintenance areas with an efficient dispatch system.
Yeah, I see where you're coming from, but you should read more about it. The reason why it's not at all like the elevator scheme is that you pay for the car, not for the individual ticket. Just like a taxi, you get to decide how many people get in, since you paid for the ride. This doesn't solve pushing and shoving in line waiting for a car, but I haven't seen a public transit system anywhere that solves that problem. The problem with elevator and subway shoving is that nobody pays for a unit of space, merely for the privilege of riding. Sadly, that translates into complete disregard for the other occpants. However, consider the busiest taxi stop that you know. For me at least, pushing and shoving ends when somebody clearly has the car. I've been following this system for 4 years, and although it does have some flaws, it certainly beats the pants off of any current transit system I've ever seen. questions? responses? bring it on! -Dan
I'm not so sure about that--they may just have been really stupid people, a possibility which can never be discounted. However, a quick Google search on "mass transit social agenda" comes up with gems like this:
It isn't hard to find these sorts of problems, as anyone who has ever ridden a bus to work regularly knows.
--Tom
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.