The roads would go to shit without all the gas tax revenue and political support.
You still need them for construction, emergency, and cargo transport.
In the places where PRT would have 'full' penetration, you're looking at densities such that road maintenance is a rounding error in the property taxes; gasoline taxes are completely unnecessary.
The only way I know of today to get over about 1/4 watt today isn't with a cell phone, but a dedicated repeater(for cellular traffic). Dad's work just bought one for a truck. That can transmit at maximum power, but that's to an outside antenna.
You can also get higher powers with other bands.
My favorite is the woman using a portable phone handset because she didn't trust cellular radiation...
25mph - 45mph? Geez, that's SLOOOOW. I do that much backing out of my driveway....
Average speed vs max speed. Cars have to deal with intersections, stop signs, red lights, and accidents. It's not unusual in a city for the average speed to be less than half that of the max speed.
Also, most people live in cities at this point, even in the USA. Getting them off of gasoline leaves more for those of us not living in the cities.
PRT is a 1960s invention, and it has never worked despite large research and development budgets.
Electric cars are an even older invention, but they're experiencing a renaissance today. So calling it an old invention isn't a disqualifier. I'd also say that it hasn't had 'large' R&D development, not really. The last time it received large funding the computer technology wasn't quite up to it - Morgantown had a lot of promise, but it was very much a learning experience.
Besides, I wouldn't really support ULTra, it's too slow and not efficient enough.
Replacement for taxes - 'kill the taxis there' Taxi company corruption - 'why it'd never go in there'
As far as paying for the subway goes, I doubt it, I'd have the PRT lines pay for themselves, property and sales taxes pay for the subways.
At least until we're out of the PRT expansion phase.
One trick is that I want 'the best' to win - because once a couple cities have it, you can run a line between the two, putting rest stations in every so often. Run it up to 100 mph+ and it'll easily be competitive with rail and planes below ~300 miles. The hindrance of plane check-in and taxiing balanced on the higher speeds. The slightly lower speeds up against 'most' high speed rails against 1 vehicle from pickup to drop off with no waiting for scheduling.
True, it's just that I noticed that they didn't show it in the video. I remember one financial assessment where they said 'no handicapped access', without checking, then proceeded to double the size of the pods, include an emergency walkway(wheelchair accessible!), and numerous other things until the PRT line was more expensive than light rail, then write the project off as unfeasible - without giving the company any opportunity to rebut.
My preference it for quick over fast for driving in traffic. There is nothing quite as fun as out-driving someone with money but no skills.
Consider, if we actually got most people onto mass transit, you could have a real 'car wars'* type scenario where the only people on the roads are the enthusiasts.
*Ancient RPG game with some short stories about it. Most people took rail. The drivers took armed and armored cars on the highways.
For me, it would be HIGHLY inconvenient. Having to wait on their schedule, and not being able to come and go on my time table is a deal killer.
Have you ever read about Personal Rapid Transit(PRT)?
Faster, no waiting, you'll probably trade the short walk to your vehicle for a shorter walk in at work. IE it'll balance out. See a car that's unacceptably dirty hit the appropriate button and it goes off to the cleaners and you get the next one, which is probably already in the station. Since it's non-stop and individually routed, even if it's limited to 25mph, the fact that it doesn't stop makes it competitive with cars, and it blows them out of the water if it can go 45+.
The point that I was making is that public transit has to compete on more than just price, as you mentioned. That you will 'NEVER' take it as a primary means of movement is also mistaken, if they can make it 'good enough'.
Thing is, once it's good enough and you get even higher densities in the cities, things get better still. And you can avoid a lot of the cleanliness problems by adequately caring for the homeless population(IE rendering them not homeless).
Indeed. More frequent buses would make a bigger difference in most cases. I just checked how long it'd take me to get to work - about 4-6 times as long. That's significant. But a fair bit of that would be waiting at a transfer point. Double the number of buses* and you could cut the waiting time in half. Much more acceptable.
*Preferably electric, self driving, and/or small to reduce expense.
This seems to be a uniquely American problem. Why do homeless people ride buses all day, and why do people put up with it? (Have the homeless people paid the fare?
It's because we're idiots when it comes to housing. It's often 'cheaper' to pay the fair for a public bus to get climate control than it is to rent so much as a motel room for a day, and shelter space is both limited and restrictive because we feel the need to make the homeless prove that they're 'worthy' of shelter.
I say this in such a cynical way because each homeless person costs the government, on average, $250k/year between medical, law enforcement, and everything else. It's proven cheaper to simply provide basic shelter even if they're drunk or drugged. Then, once they realize that their food & housing is secure, it's a whole lot easier to start addressing the drug problems.
To those opposed - consider this: A lot of homeless, besides being addicted to drugs, use drugs because it makes being homeless more tolerable. Is it really smart to require them to 'dry out' before going into a shelter? To suffer from withdrawal and the suck of no shelter at the same time? The reverse works much better.
What I wonder is whether he realizes that if those of us who are driving because it's the fastest way between A and B get off the road because there's a decent competitive option he'd effectively have that lane for a lot less cost.
I wouldn't demand Skytran specifically, but a PRT system would indeed be ideal. If I was ever in office I'd push hard to get a 'demonstration city'.
As you mention, while Skytran wouldn't have the capacity to deal with Manhattan, it could handle pretty much anything less. It'd kill the taxis there, which would be why it'd never go in there.
Still, at least for the densest 'downtowns', put a station on every other building or so, and have elevated skyways, perhaps with airport style sliding sidewalks to increase effective walking range. Nobody* would want to drive again.
As for overcrowding - remember that you can parallelize the tracks to increase density even more. If the building is big enough, it gets it's own station.
At which point, charge for the PRT, make the subway free.
And all of this takes time. People have to adjust to the new reality of bus transportation being easier and cheaper than owning and driving a car.
They also need to work, in many areas, on comfort, cleanliness, and speed. We shouldn't be trading down to public transportation.
Install something like PRT so that the public option is just plain *faster* than cars and people will love them.
Heck, one idea I had was to put in more elevated walkways to avoid weather complaints and increase pedestrian capacity, then put slideways in the elevated walkways such that you double the distance a pedestrian can cover in a set amount of time. Which allows for fewer stops by mass transit as the acceptable walking distance between stations has doubled.
As I'm a university student, my school ID counts as a free bus pass. Despite this, I still drive into work(at the University) because the public transport options are sufficiently bad that I don't feel like turning a 9 hour day into a 12.5 hour one for a 25 minute drive.
In about 500 years it will be less radioactive than the ore from with it was originally mined. If you don't think that is "good enough", then please explain why.
To get technical with it, in order for the waste to be less radioactive than the ore it was mined from, you'd need to be reprocessing and/or using breeder reactors to take out and burn all the long-life isotopes. This leaves you with *intensely* radioactive waste, but the thing with very radioactive materials is that it means that the material has a short half-life and thus doesn't last as long.
Felony endangerment doesn't garner a 10 year sentence in any American State that I'm familiar with, much less in Canada.
I know this is the original thread topic, but there's a reason I didn't mention a 10 year sentence, that's why I agree with you that attempted murder charges would be unlikely. I then specified what I think they could get for it, though a lawyer would obviously be able to come up with more.
The guy deserves harsh punishment, for sure. If the law put just 10% of the effort into catching these idiots that they do toward pursuing "copyright infringers" the world would be a far better place.
I'm assuming when you say 'the law' you mean law enforcement, in which case I'm sorry, but I have to inform you that the difference between 10% and 100% of efforts redirected from copyright enforcement to going after swatters and such would make almost zero difference.
'The law' is virtually blind to copyright violations - those are civil matters, you're not arrested, you're sued by the copyright holder.
It also doesn't work, or there'd be a lot less convicts on Death Row.
Pretty much. I remember reading as study that deterrence effects are insignificant beyond 7 years of prison. IE there are a few crimes that somebody might willingly eat a 3 year sentence for that they wouldn't for 7 years. But any sentence beyond that will not deter one more person, so to hold somebody beyond that time it needs to be justified in that that one person is still too dangerous to be released.
For the AC: Standard statistical methods have been unable to find any deterrence effect to the death penalty over life in prison, or even much reduced sentences. Turns out that all but a statistically insignificant number of potential murderers are deterred by the death penalty but not the prospect of life in prison. Indeed, most don't consider that they're likely to be caught at all.
Body armor is legal but expensive for regular citizens with a couple exemptions. Some jurisdictions ban felons from owning body armor, which is interesting for some rap artists with records and active threats against them. I believe that in those cases they can appeal that rule.
The point is that you can't get them for 'attempted'. If somebody is actually killed it would be somewhere between negligent homicide and murder. I can guarantee that inside the USA, if an officer is shot and killed(probably by another officer) during the event that he'd be charged with murder 1 of the officer when they find him. Probably as an adult and eligible for the death penalty. It would become a jurisdictional mess and probably go federal if his call crossed state lines.
If nobody is killed - you don't have enough for attempted homicide, but you do have enough for Felony endangerment, among other charges like making a false report.
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Certainly. It'd make the jobs of the government agents much easier, or have you forgotten about the NSA's shenanigans?
The roads would go to shit without all the gas tax revenue and political support.
You still need them for construction, emergency, and cargo transport.
In the places where PRT would have 'full' penetration, you're looking at densities such that road maintenance is a rounding error in the property taxes; gasoline taxes are completely unnecessary.
The only way I know of today to get over about 1/4 watt today isn't with a cell phone, but a dedicated repeater(for cellular traffic). Dad's work just bought one for a truck. That can transmit at maximum power, but that's to an outside antenna.
You can also get higher powers with other bands.
My favorite is the woman using a portable phone handset because she didn't trust cellular radiation...
25mph - 45mph? Geez, that's SLOOOOW. I do that much backing out of my driveway....
Average speed vs max speed. Cars have to deal with intersections, stop signs, red lights, and accidents. It's not unusual in a city for the average speed to be less than half that of the max speed.
Also, most people live in cities at this point, even in the USA. Getting them off of gasoline leaves more for those of us not living in the cities.
PRT is a 1960s invention, and it has never worked despite large research and development budgets.
Electric cars are an even older invention, but they're experiencing a renaissance today. So calling it an old invention isn't a disqualifier. I'd also say that it hasn't had 'large' R&D development, not really. The last time it received large funding the computer technology wasn't quite up to it - Morgantown had a lot of promise, but it was very much a learning experience.
Besides, I wouldn't really support ULTra, it's too slow and not efficient enough.
You're repeating me ;)
Replacement for taxes - 'kill the taxis there'
Taxi company corruption - 'why it'd never go in there'
As far as paying for the subway goes, I doubt it, I'd have the PRT lines pay for themselves, property and sales taxes pay for the subways.
At least until we're out of the PRT expansion phase.
One trick is that I want 'the best' to win - because once a couple cities have it, you can run a line between the two, putting rest stations in every so often. Run it up to 100 mph+ and it'll easily be competitive with rail and planes below ~300 miles. The hindrance of plane check-in and taxiing balanced on the higher speeds. The slightly lower speeds up against 'most' high speed rails against 1 vehicle from pickup to drop off with no waiting for scheduling.
True, it's just that I noticed that they didn't show it in the video. I remember one financial assessment where they said 'no handicapped access', without checking, then proceeded to double the size of the pods, include an emergency walkway(wheelchair accessible!), and numerous other things until the PRT line was more expensive than light rail, then write the project off as unfeasible - without giving the company any opportunity to rebut.
My preference it for quick over fast for driving in traffic. There is nothing quite as fun as out-driving someone with money but no skills.
Consider, if we actually got most people onto mass transit, you could have a real 'car wars'* type scenario where the only people on the roads are the enthusiasts.
*Ancient RPG game with some short stories about it. Most people took rail. The drivers took armed and armored cars on the highways.
Obviously, you'd use a station for that.
From the demonstrator it just appears that they've forgotten about handicapped access, which is an issue.
For me, it would be HIGHLY inconvenient. Having to wait on their schedule, and not being able to come and go on my time table is a deal killer.
Have you ever read about Personal Rapid Transit(PRT)?
Faster, no waiting, you'll probably trade the short walk to your vehicle for a shorter walk in at work. IE it'll balance out. See a car that's unacceptably dirty hit the appropriate button and it goes off to the cleaners and you get the next one, which is probably already in the station. Since it's non-stop and individually routed, even if it's limited to 25mph, the fact that it doesn't stop makes it competitive with cars, and it blows them out of the water if it can go 45+.
The point that I was making is that public transit has to compete on more than just price, as you mentioned. That you will 'NEVER' take it as a primary means of movement is also mistaken, if they can make it 'good enough'.
Thing is, once it's good enough and you get even higher densities in the cities, things get better still. And you can avoid a lot of the cleanliness problems by adequately caring for the homeless population(IE rendering them not homeless).
If your area is like mine, don't forget the student discounts you'd also be eligible for.
Indeed. More frequent buses would make a bigger difference in most cases. I just checked how long it'd take me to get to work - about 4-6 times as long. That's significant. But a fair bit of that would be waiting at a transfer point. Double the number of buses* and you could cut the waiting time in half. Much more acceptable.
*Preferably electric, self driving, and/or small to reduce expense.
This seems to be a uniquely American problem. Why do homeless people ride buses all day, and why do people put up with it? (Have the homeless people paid the fare?
It's because we're idiots when it comes to housing. It's often 'cheaper' to pay the fair for a public bus to get climate control than it is to rent so much as a motel room for a day, and shelter space is both limited and restrictive because we feel the need to make the homeless prove that they're 'worthy' of shelter.
I say this in such a cynical way because each homeless person costs the government, on average, $250k/year between medical, law enforcement, and everything else. It's proven cheaper to simply provide basic shelter even if they're drunk or drugged. Then, once they realize that their food & housing is secure, it's a whole lot easier to start addressing the drug problems.
To those opposed - consider this: A lot of homeless, besides being addicted to drugs, use drugs because it makes being homeless more tolerable. Is it really smart to require them to 'dry out' before going into a shelter? To suffer from withdrawal and the suck of no shelter at the same time? The reverse works much better.
What I wonder is whether he realizes that if those of us who are driving because it's the fastest way between A and B get off the road because there's a decent competitive option he'd effectively have that lane for a lot less cost.
I wouldn't demand Skytran specifically, but a PRT system would indeed be ideal. If I was ever in office I'd push hard to get a 'demonstration city'.
As you mention, while Skytran wouldn't have the capacity to deal with Manhattan, it could handle pretty much anything less. It'd kill the taxis there, which would be why it'd never go in there.
Still, at least for the densest 'downtowns', put a station on every other building or so, and have elevated skyways, perhaps with airport style sliding sidewalks to increase effective walking range. Nobody* would want to drive again.
As for overcrowding - remember that you can parallelize the tracks to increase density even more. If the building is big enough, it gets it's own station.
At which point, charge for the PRT, make the subway free.
*99% of people, 99.9% for commuting type options.
And all of this takes time. People have to adjust to the new reality of bus transportation being easier and cheaper than owning and driving a car.
They also need to work, in many areas, on comfort, cleanliness, and speed. We shouldn't be trading down to public transportation.
Install something like PRT so that the public option is just plain *faster* than cars and people will love them.
Heck, one idea I had was to put in more elevated walkways to avoid weather complaints and increase pedestrian capacity, then put slideways in the elevated walkways such that you double the distance a pedestrian can cover in a set amount of time. Which allows for fewer stops by mass transit as the acceptable walking distance between stations has doubled.
As I'm a university student, my school ID counts as a free bus pass. Despite this, I still drive into work(at the University) because the public transport options are sufficiently bad that I don't feel like turning a 9 hour day into a 12.5 hour one for a 25 minute drive.
In about 500 years it will be less radioactive than the ore from with it was originally mined. If you don't think that is "good enough", then please explain why.
To get technical with it, in order for the waste to be less radioactive than the ore it was mined from, you'd need to be reprocessing and/or using breeder reactors to take out and burn all the long-life isotopes. This leaves you with *intensely* radioactive waste, but the thing with very radioactive materials is that it means that the material has a short half-life and thus doesn't last as long.
I have one word for that judge's decision:
Zing!
Felony endangerment doesn't garner a 10 year sentence in any American State that I'm familiar with, much less in Canada.
I know this is the original thread topic, but there's a reason I didn't mention a 10 year sentence, that's why I agree with you that attempted murder charges would be unlikely. I then specified what I think they could get for it, though a lawyer would obviously be able to come up with more.
The guy deserves harsh punishment, for sure. If the law put just 10% of the effort into catching these idiots that they do toward pursuing "copyright infringers" the world would be a far better place.
I'm assuming when you say 'the law' you mean law enforcement, in which case I'm sorry, but I have to inform you that the difference between 10% and 100% of efforts redirected from copyright enforcement to going after swatters and such would make almost zero difference.
'The law' is virtually blind to copyright violations - those are civil matters, you're not arrested, you're sued by the copyright holder.
It also doesn't work, or there'd be a lot less convicts on Death Row.
Pretty much. I remember reading as study that deterrence effects are insignificant beyond 7 years of prison. IE there are a few crimes that somebody might willingly eat a 3 year sentence for that they wouldn't for 7 years. But any sentence beyond that will not deter one more person, so to hold somebody beyond that time it needs to be justified in that that one person is still too dangerous to be released.
For the AC: Standard statistical methods have been unable to find any deterrence effect to the death penalty over life in prison, or even much reduced sentences. Turns out that all but a statistically insignificant number of potential murderers are deterred by the death penalty but not the prospect of life in prison. Indeed, most don't consider that they're likely to be caught at all.
You get pithy case rulings in the USA as well, and boring ones in Canada. It's the exceptions that we hear about...
Body armor is legal but expensive for regular citizens with a couple exemptions. Some jurisdictions ban felons from owning body armor, which is interesting for some rap artists with records and active threats against them. I believe that in those cases they can appeal that rule.
The point is that you can't get them for 'attempted'. If somebody is actually killed it would be somewhere between negligent homicide and murder. I can guarantee that inside the USA, if an officer is shot and killed(probably by another officer) during the event that he'd be charged with murder 1 of the officer when they find him. Probably as an adult and eligible for the death penalty. It would become a jurisdictional mess and probably go federal if his call crossed state lines.
If nobody is killed - you don't have enough for attempted homicide, but you do have enough for Felony endangerment, among other charges like making a false report.