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L.A. Artist Contemplates Future Traffic Flow, With Hot Wheels
John3 writes "American artist Chris Burden is finishing up his latest work titled Metropolis II for display this fall in Los Angeles. There's a fascinating five minute documentary on YouTube about his miniature city and the traffic that flows through it. He comments 'The idea that a car runs free, those days are about to close.' Whether you agree or disagree, he certainly has built one of the coolest Hot Wheels layouts I've ever seen."
'The idea that a car runs free, those days are about to close.'
"About to close"? Laugh at mental picture of hordes of people trapped in long rush hours jams on a at least twice a day basis for years feeling like their cars has been running free all that time.
The video mostly consists of annoying closeups of tiny parts of the contraption.
For a few seconds of a full view on the quite impressive thing, jump to about 4:30.
Ted Kazinski, is that you? I didn't think you had internet access! What you say makes complete and utter sense. I wish I could say it so clearly. Big fan of your writing!
It's hard to see the scale of the project since the video is presented as 'artsy'. The best view of it is at 4:32-4:52 where you see an overlook of the whole thing.
Better the internet than the postal system.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
If we built a closed-circuit freeway-style system we wouldn't be using cars now would we, we'd be using personal rapid transit because it'd be considerably cheaper to implement rather than retrofitting an entire country of cars.
It has the environmentalists' dream for years now for high-density living with mostly public transportation. What they call sprawl and fight tooth and nail against is what most of us call personal space, a yard for children, and a nice house. They would rather cram everybody in the smallest area possible and hope we all convert to riding buses because the traffic congestion is so bad. Urban planning classes pump out more and more people with this same view every year, so I can only imagine it getting worse.
Seriously. However cool it may be, humans weren't meant to live this way... All packed on top of each other, so tightly that moving around one another is no longer possible to do with just a human brain... It's just badness, all the way down. In nature, overpopulation is naturally corrected for. Humans, ever so smart, are always finding ways to stick yet another finger in the proverbial dam. It's a beautiful piece of art in that it is totally, and utterly terrifying.
Since it doesn't serve the ultra-rich, the right wing won't support it, no matter how much it might possibly help everyone.
As for the left? They've long since given up doing anything big and useful....
Ryan Fenton
I know you're trolling, but after what happened this week would you really want to give the government control of our cars? I like the idea of being able to jump in my car and drive around regardless of whether or not Congress balances the next budget, don't you? Why would anyone want to give more control to the gov't after seeing how bad they just screwed up? Reminds me of a quote:
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to fulfill it" -- George Santayana
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
I don't think you can prove the idea bad because of bad (terrible) implementation.
Allowing density to increase without allowing space for increased transit is a recipe for disaster - and it's what's happened here in Seattle. Once all available space is already built on, the acquisition costs to expand highways or light rail, or anything - skyrocket to the point of a political inability to get anything funded.
You have to put the big rocks in first.
The problem is a lack of rapid transit. Cars alone cannot deal with the traffic of a large, dense city.
But of course, American's would never do something as sensible as vote to build rapid, socialist, transit, when highly subsidised roads, gas, etc.. are so free market.
Anarchists never rule
Why not? Back in the day, a government of the people managed to do a very good job creating the highway system, the internet, NASA, and overseeing the creation of modern science. Smart people CAN be used in the creation of such things - as long as "equal time" isn't always given to people with a direct interesting in sabotaging them at every step.
Government CAN work, and can do things otherwise impossible - if so many in power weren't so busy trying to hack it all apart at every opportunity.
Ryan Fenton
Unless you rather enjoy off-roading, and/or do an atypically large amount of driving within the confines of giant private holdings, the government does effectively control your car on every timescale but the very near term.
Blacktop crumbles pretty quickly without upkeep, and pretty much only exists in most places because somebody eminent-domained their way through with state power and then paved with public money.
Assorted mark-of-the-beast fantasies of having vehicles directly controlled by the Master Computer in washington are obvious nonsense; but that doesn't change the fact that the 'freedom of the open road' is overwhelmingly a state construct, albeit one polite enough not to mention the fact very often(unlike that commie 'public transit' stuff)...
..because they shot it with DSLR, I'm guessing, and didn't use a small enough aperture or even bother to carefully set the focus.
Please help metamoderate.
well main roads can be auto drive but rural and maybe parking lot's can be manual.
The start of any kind of auto drive system will be auto drive road ways and it will take time to get rid of the old cars. Also trucks may need there own system as well.
An example of this would be "smart roads," as people were calling them about 15 years ago, where you lay wires into the roads, which are basically virtual rails they can follow. This eases automation to an incredible degree vs. the high-end computer vision approach. For the foreseeable future of course it would only be built into expensive, high-volume roads that get resurfaced fairly frequently.
...That hides a shining car!
A brilliant red Barchetta,
From a better vanished time.
I fire up the willing engine!
Responding with a roar!
Tires spitting gravel,
I commit my weekly crime!
Sing it with me now!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAvQSkK8Z8U
This dude loves Rush. I love Rush.
It's all coming together.
Years later, a doctor will tell me that I have an I.Q. of 48, and am what some people call "mentally retarded".
Given that traffic congestion is a type of shortage (a shortage of available space on a road at a given time of day), and that a shortage happens when when the price of an item is set below the going rate determined by supply and demand, the solution is made obvious: raise the price of freeway access just high enough to eliminate the traffic congestion, but no higher. Then lower the toll when demand is low, to give people the ability to economize. Variable tolls permanently eliminates any need to expand the freeway just to eliminate congestion. There are other ways to justify expanding a freeway, but congestion is no longer one of them.
Efficiently pricing freeway access saves a lot of money that would be spent expanding the freeway. For example, the USA's Congressional Budget Office found that southern California's SR-91 express lanes generate net social benefits of at least $12 million per year, compared with a scenario in which the lanes had been built but drivers did not pay to use them.
Because many if not all states currently fund freeways with general sales tax revenue, As a group low-income residents, on average, pay more out-of-pocket with sales taxes" for freeways than with tolls. Therefore, tolls are less regressive than the alternative.
The free market works remarkably well, when it's allowed to work.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Typical Slashdot readers are probably not aware of what Burden is actually notorious for in fine arts circles. As a relatively early performance artist back in the 70s, he had his hands nailed to a VW Beetle crucifixion-style. Apocryphal variants regarding this performance piece when I was in art school had him being fully nailed and driven around LA that way, which would certainly have upped the fun level had it only been true. (Just in case you might be wondering if his current interest in cars is in any way... obsessive.)
Depends on where you dig and how deep. They're actually planning on digging a deep-bore tunnel underneath downtown Seattle, and have already begun digging tunnels in other parts of the city. The deep bore one downtown may be cancelled, but only due to stupid city leaders and stupid citizens. The 'underground' city in Seattle isn't that deep, but it is a pretty cool tour (especially the very humorous (and true!) history lecture at the start of the tour).
Since it doesn't serve the ultra-rich, the right wing won't support it, no matter how much it might possibly help everyone.
Would it require massive public spending?
Would it increase private spending on cars?
If answer is yes to just one of these questions, who do you think will reap the profits?
this guy is one sick person.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
Yup -- we have the technology -- just not the budget it seems.
If you go back and read the history of Johnson when he was creating his Great Society, some of it is positively inspiring. His basic ideology was:
* We should help the poor lift themselves out of poverty.
* We should find the best experts in the world to figure out how to do it. Be scientific about it.
It gives you a different idea of how things can be. It's not based on envy or even hurting the rich, it's about helping people. It's not surprising that people elected him, because most people will try to help each other out if we can.
Nowadays someone's idea of change is to tax corporate jets so we can keep paying entrenched interests. And yet if someone really did have a plan that seemed workable to do something great I think he/she would get a large following. But where is that person?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The problem is a lack of rapid transit. Cars alone cannot deal with the traffic of a large, dense city.
But of course, American's would never do something as sensible as vote to build rapid, socialist, transit, when highly subsidised roads, gas, etc.. are so free market.
I was over in California in April/May this year for a holiday and it amazed me just how fragmented and confusing the public transportation was. San Francisco was okay (even if BART was ear-splittingly loud) but LA was atrocious. Different fare structures for just about everything, seemingly no attempt whatsoever to match bus and "train" services and as often as not, two or three separate operators at the edge of coverage zones.
I still think Melbourne's public transport system isn't that great - it's fairly expensive and anywhere between 10-20% of services run late or get cancelled. But for a city that's about three times the size of Melbourne, Los Angeles' public transportation is a bad joke.
Why would the "right-wing" support the ultra-rich if they're not ultra-rich themselves? It makes no sense.
I'm not American, but surely the right-wing (as you put it) merely wants to work, use the money to provide for themselves and live and let live.
I'm from LA, and I can say that the fragmentation problem is major, but there's also a socio-economic problem in that most middle class people in LA (my family included) are unwilling to use mass transit, viewing it as low-class or not allowing for enough personal freedom. This is the attitude of my parents and unfortunately I have inherited it. The couple of times I have taken the bus have been rather awful--it's easy to get confused as to where you're going, you can't just turn around and get back on track, and truthfully the condition of the buses is not good. What's more, the bus routes simply do not go to the places they need to, and certainly not at the speed they should. All that said, I don't think that my own distaste for mass transit is insurmountable: when I visited Paris I enjoyed using the Métro, and to a lesser extent in New York. LA does have major earthquakes, thus making the prospect of building a full-fledged subway more difficult than it would be on an East-Coast city. That said, it seems to me that building an above-ground mass transit system rather than adding lanes to existing freeways would be the best solution--in fact, why not close down one freeway lane in each direction, elevate it, and put in rail? To some extent this has already been done, but again not in a way that services the whole city. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has been discussing a subway expansion, yet that is only in planning stages and has been for years. It mostly runs into opposition from land-owning no in my backyard types. Anyway this city's either farked or headed to a glorious traffic-free future.
Isn't the USA one of the countries that spend the most money in scientific research?
In any case, the difference in funding between what I've seen in the US and what I've seen in Europe is impressive.
Considering recent theories about how small underpowered cars are really dangerous, this exhibit should be immediately destroyed to stop the public seeing these tiny unpowered little cars whizzing around in perfect harmony. It'll never happen! In the real world, thousands of leprechauns would be killed under the wheels of SUVs, 18-wheelers, Winnebagos and Segways the very second they drove onto the public roads in these things! Ban the tiny cars! BAN THEM!
To me it seems more like that past.
There's nothing that says mass transit needs to be socialized... but non-socialized mass transit has pretty much failed or is failing.
People want privacy and freedom. They don't want to be driven to the same spot as everyone else and dropped off in some cattle call.
The last time I rode on the "L" in Chicago they had hard plastic seats because it's too much of a pain to clean piss and paint off nicer seats. I decided at that point that I'd never ride the train again.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
There's nothing that says mass transit needs to be socialized... but non-socialized mass transit has pretty much failed or is failing.
I think Tokyo has private railway lines and services. I've not been, but I've read that this is inconvenient for some people -- there isn't sufficient integration.
Many towns in England have privately run buses -- the local government sets the routes and service frequency, but the company has some influence on the fares. I don't think anyone except the shareholders of the transport companies think this is a good idea.
Here in London, the government company (TfL) decide on the route, frequency, fares and vehicles, and pay one of the transport companies to run the service. If you're going to privatise transport this is the correct way to do it -- otherwise you are effectively granting a monopoly.
People want privacy and freedom. They don't want to be driven to the same spot as everyone else and dropped off in some cattle call.
Ironic, then, that they choose instead to pay to drive in the same direction to almost the same places on congested roads.
The last time I rode on the "L" in Chicago they had hard plastic seats because it's too much of a pain to clean piss and paint off nicer seats.
Most towns and cities in Europe have cloth (or fake leather) -covered, foam filled seats on their public transport. Perhaps if it wasn't just poor people using Chicago's trains the city might put more effort into maintaining the system.
Who's buying all that shit from China? Oh yeah, the Christians. And everyone else. Guess who's strip-mining by proxy?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Some cities do have fairly effective local mass transit systems. For instance, visiting Boston and Chicago provided a breath of fresh air compared to the mediocre bus system in my hometown. (I've heard good things about the NYC subway system, but I've never been to the Big Apple for any length of time.)
By the way, one characteristic of a local mass transit system would be how well it supports going to/from the suburbs.
However, the local network in some cities is a problem, and the US intercity rail system ... enough said.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
some of it is positively inspiring
Too bad it didn't work.
Thanks for this post. I'm one of those guys who always starts the video at the 50% point to skip the pointless preamble. If you want some great still shots, check here.
Twinstiq, game news
Then how DO we help the poor?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Start by not wasting money on things that don't work.
On a broader scale, there's really not much we can do - immigrants have been arriving in this country, penniless and not speaking the language, for centuries. The vast majority of them have nonetheless been wildly successful. The efforts to inculcate middle-class values in the underclass have been incredibly numerous, but all eventually have to face the reality that there are some people who are just not intelligent enough to put it all together in the modern world. In an older era, they were sent to workhouses, or they died in the streets, or they lived off the alms of the community (in return for which they would be expected to do some public works). Today we cordon off sections of the city and the countryside and give them a bit of money and food, which has the benefit of seeming more humane, but actually does nothing to resolve the underlying issue. I would never say that the poor are stupid - there are many diamonds in the rough, who end up being the ones harmed most by our policy of corralling the poor - but the stupid are almost universally poor, and there are always going to be stupid people.
there's also a socio-economic problem in that most middle class people in LA (my family included) are unwilling to use mass transit, viewing it as low-class or not allowing for enough personal freedom.
Visited LA. Live in a different major city.
If I'm trying to get to work, there IS NOT a valid bus or train line to get me there. And I live 10 miles from my workplace right down one of the main freeways.
If I'm trying to get to something on the other side of the city, likewise. It'd take me 4 hours.
Plus, I have to run the risk of getting mugged. Sure, I can get mugged on the freeway too, but at least then I'm being mugged by some asshole with a badge who wants to meet his ticket quota and doesn't care how many false tickets he writes to do it, which means he's not interested in shooting or stabbing me.
This won't work because people don't make their own schedules - their boss does. Since the ones making the decision isn't the one impacted by the fee they will rarely take it into consideration as part of the decision. Likewise, people flying in for business meeting aren't going to plan their trip around the cost of tolls, if they even know it varies.
The express lanes are an economic plus because it lets impatient people with money subsidize the cost of the road for everyone else. This doesn't extend to your time-variable toll rate as everyone has to pay it. Furthermore, it makes it much harder to pay by cash and have exact change, pushing more people into using "easy-pay" systems with all the privacy concerns that come with them.
Finally, the type of fee charged has nothing to do with the "free market". Markets exist when consumers have choice between multiple competing providers. People have little to no choice about which roads they take. The endpoints dictate the begining and end sections, and there are only a small number of ways to connect them in between. The decision to charge based on miles driven, or gallons of gas used, or flat monthly fees, or periodic toll points are all just business decisions and which one works best will vary on the circumstances.
liabilities and laws are much bigger things to deal with.
To make it sort the 2 big things are
*Who is at fault
*Who will do the time if some dies.
Of course they can - just keep on building more and more new road until there is no land between the roads for people to do unimportant things like living and running businesses on. At that point, you've reached maximum density and there is nothing more to do but to spread laterally.
Anyone who tells you differently is a liar. And no, I don't believe in Tokyo. Or Germany.
Sgd. for and on behalf of the GGGA (Global Gas Guzzler's Alliance), not that that pay cheque influences my opinions at all.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"