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UK Town To Get Driverless 'Pods' Mixing With Pedestrians
Bruce66423 writes "Milton Keynes is the most successful new town in the U.K., being built on a green field site from the '60s onward. Initially famous for concrete cows, it is the home of the Open University, which offers college-level courses at home. Now, the U.K. Business Secretary has announced plans to have small driverless cars shuttle people around parts of the town starting in 2015. There will be about 20 of the pod-like vehicles to start, each capable of holding two people. They will have their own pathways and move at about 12mph. The plan is to continue developing and testing the vehicles, and by 2017, 100 of them will share walkways with pedestrians."
Mobile sex pods, just what I've been waiting for!
With the chronic obesity issues modern societies face, you may as well just put large scoops on the front of these to make it easier to pick up and drop off their human cargo.
For the benefit of non-UK residents:
Milton Keynes is the butt of every joke going.
You could put free money in it, and people would still drive around it to avoid it.
It's that unsupervised, these things and things like it will be vandalized, stolen, and used as public toilets.
To me it sounds a lot like an implementation of 'Personal Rapid Transit', and it's hardly 'mixing with pedestrians' if they're getting their own dedicated pathways.
I don't read AC A human right
Milton Keynes is an awful, car-dominated dystopia
It's like what someone living in the 1970s thought a nice new town would be like
"Note for Americans and other aliens: Milton Keynes is a new city approximately halfway between London and Birmingham. It was built to be modern, efficient, healthy, and, all in all, a pleasant place to live. Many Britons find this amusing." -- T. Pratchett and N. Gaiman, Good Omens
We used to go bowling there when I was little as it was the only place within an hour's drive with a bowling alley... I mostly remember parts being very empty and then almost never-ending lines of roundabouts (although at least they were in straight lines unlike Swindon)...
I live in an area where there are a lot of road-crossing deer. I can't wait for the day when there are driverless cars so we can retire the idea of using a huge piece of glass to protect us from road hazards. Looks like they're on the right track with this gizmo. (However, if they deploy it on a UK campus, it'll only take about a day before someone covers the bottom with black half-sphere and slaps on an eye-stalk.)
The Netherlands has built a dedicated infrastructure for vehicles moving at around 12 mph on average, for one or two people. They are bike lanes, and it totally rules. The Netherlands has by far the highest percentage of cyclists, and a very low number of accidents.
So, I applaud the initiative to build some pathways where cars are banned, but I hope that these people do themselves a favor and allow cyclists to use these paths too. At least with a bike you don't have to wait for some pod to pass by, because it is already parked in front of the door. And in case of a hurry, you can just bike a bit faster.
Special pathways without cars: good idea.
Slow small expensive pods: probably a useless idea.
Initially the driverless cars will ferry passengers from the town's rail station to its shopping centre just over a mile away – currently a 20-minute uphill walk.
Both ways?
You could get safer road with (I)Pod-less drivers (And iPadless and iPhoneless too of course)
Milton Keynes ? Wasn't he an economist?
and maybe a poet...
and what hill ? It's a slight incline in places if it's anything, the use of the word hill is stretching it a bit.
For those of you who don't know, the concrete cows of milton keynes. How could the summary not include this link?
A similar system was demonstrated in Switzerland 10 years ago, but was considered as not viable and never implemented since.
http://www.google.com/translate?hl=en&ie=UTF8&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.serpentine.ch%2Fp_realisations%2FPilote_Ouchy.html (sorry original site only in french)
... but never lived there. It is a terrible place to live. For you Yanks, think 1960's NY City + Chicago combined with a touch of muslims (no offence).
I wonder how long it will take for the locals to devise ways of griefing these pods - forcing them to stop dead if they detect a plastic bottle in their way, slapping a burger wrapper over the sensors or something similar. I could see the entire system failing right there. It's a problem that self driving cars would face assuming they ever moved beyond a pipe dream.
...that should up the number of posts!
Pod systems like this should always carry three passengers. If you are traveling with a group, 2 passenger pods can force part of your group to ride alone. Carrying 3 lets people ride with the group for groups any size.
In the snow. And it's dark.
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
It's not well known but Milton Keynes was designed by M. C Escher.
Let's put motorized carriages on the walk ways to harass, annoy and run over those on foot.
Don't like it? Get in a pod or get in a car or take the bus.
Even here in America we aren't as hostile to pedestrians.
They shall soon acquire the scent of urine and vomit.
Just as long as the pods are not giant white balls
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
Seriously? ... 7 MOD 3 = 1
Woosh
Woosh indeed.
7 MOD 3 assumes you are going to pack each pod to capacity and then shove the remainder in the extra car.
What GP is suggesting is that since 7 / 3 requires 3 cars anyway, people will arrange into a 3/2/2 configuration instead of 3/3/1.
Whatever happend to the conspiracy group which claimed there was an underground bunker in MK, and that building it caused the incline?
This would be great for skateboarders. I've often thought about building a town on a hill for skateboarders, with a ferry/ski-left style 1-way transport. I suppose you could do the same for skiers. But... who wants to lug around ski gear? And what to do in summer?
Exactly.
Morgantown Personal Rapid Transit entered operation in 1975. The PRT system includes 73 vehicles resembling miniature buses. It has five off-line stations that enable non-stop, individually programmed trips.
Morgantown, WV, People Mover, since 1970:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgantown_Personal_Rapid_Transit
The taxpayers are being taken for a ride by this boondoggle.
Aramis was the high tech automated subway developed in Paris in the 1980s. After its sudden demise an investigation was requested into the reasons of this failure. Bruno Latour. While writing about Aramis's demise Latour describes ANT (Actor-Network Theory). In this book he argues that Aramis failed not because any particular Actor killed it but because it was not sustained through negotiation and adaptation to a changing social situation.
See http://www.bruno-latour.fr/node/106
I guess I'll be able to write the same about this project in a few years time.... and HS2... etc.......
This is the solution to public transportation woes.
Most successful new town in England? If so, that's pretty depressing. Over a few visits I was struck by the sheer number of empty office buildings and shuttered storefronts both in the city center and on the outskirts.
Kriston
Kick that thing over on its side.
"Most successful new town in the UK"? Says you? Did you run it through your successometer and get a really high reading? I guess you're a Milton Keynes PR man, wrapping up a hard days work of synergizing high-return growth opportunities.
This article should have been rejected straight away just for the first sentence.