This particular flaw in the law was pointed out to the government when it was introduced.
Encrypted messages containing the details of real crimes were snail mailed to the Home Secretary, then the police were notified, also via snail mail that the Home Secretary had details of the said crimes.
30 mins to get to station Are you saying that the time waiting for the train at the station doesn't count? 2 hours on the train And the time getting from train station to door?
How about the cost to get to the station. Taxi? The cost to get from the station to the door? The duty on petrol is 70% of the cost of petrol, 30 billion a year, it is being spent on the NHS, not the roads or policing or cleaning.
You're looking at rail through rose tinted specs... Come back when you're willing to use real "Actual real world examples".
5 minute walk to bus stop 8 minute wait for bus 10 minute journey to nearest bus stop to the station 2 minute walk to train station 9 minute wait for train 10 minute train journey 10 minute walk to work
54 minutes to travel 6 miles. Average speed, 7mph.
Compare with: 5 minute walk to PRT station 8 minute PRT journey. 5 minute walk to work
18 mins to travel 6 miles. Average speed 20mph.
When you talk about the performance of public transport you've got to remember to add on the time it takes to get to the station. The wait times for the schedules. The time it takes to make the journey.
18mins vs 54mins.
Current public transport isn't efficient. Group transport can never be efficient, it isn't physically possible. Get rid of all the waiting, get rid of the intermediate stops. Get rid of the changes of mode. You end up with individual, personal transport... PRT.
And if it only took 15mins each way, giving you back an hour and a half each day? PRT systems average speed is 95% of peak speed, they don't stop or even slow down till they reach their destination. And you don't have to spend the time on the vehicle reading the bumper sticker of the car in front.
Nah, it's simpler. It's performance. All of the alternatives (including car sharing) are poorer performance than the car. Slower A->B, more expensive, less convenient.
PRT if implemented as envisioned by the system designers would be higher performance than the car. By that I mean that journeys would be far quicker A->B, lower cost and more convenient day to day.
"the urine that the bum who is living in it is going to be cleaned."
How did he get the money to get into the vehicle and live there? What did he do when one of the users pressed the reject button and sent him and the vehicle to the depot for servicing?
"a three person shuttle is simply not going to cut it"
Really? You haven't done the maths have you? Average ridership for cars in the US is 1.2 people per vehicle. The Taxi2000 has space for 3. The vehicles run with a 0.5second headway, 7,200 vehicles per hour (a highway lane is about 2000 vehicle per hour).
Taking car ridership that three person shuttle is going to be able to transport 8,500 people/hour. More people per hour than a three lane highway at rush hour.
"It requires everyone to live in tiny high rise condos."
No, it doesn't. It has a similar infrastructure cost to suburban roadways, about 8million dollars per mile. No drivers to be paid, stations every 800metres or so. With those levels of cost and coverage it can support urban and suburban populace.
"Cannot move."
WTF? Hire a van.
"Roads will still be needed for delivery. The claim that this would make roads unnecessary"
Again, WTF? Who said roads would be unnecessary? I said cars would be obsolete, and so they would be.
You'll notice these are all UK sites, we already have an extensive rail network. It's common for people to shop with these.
"cold snowy climate like MN would have problems with a system like this..."
The Taxi2000 system shouldn't be affected much, the running surfaces are enclosed in the track. The UK ATS Ultra system would be affected by heavy snow. Depends on the implementation.
"Would be VERY difficult to evacuate with this system in such small cars."
You say that, but people use automobiles which aren't much bigger. A single Taxi2000 track is designed to take 7,200 vehicles per hour, 21,000 people/hour. It's the equivalent of a 3 lane highway. The performance limiting step with PRT systems is actually the stations, it takes 20-30 seconds to chose a destination and get into the vehicle (180 vehicles/hour/bay).
"All your records you need...family pictures."
You're kidding right. You're the one holding up traffic on the highway with the sofa strapped to the roof of your car?
"Elderly people and their walker/wheelchairs..."
The taxi2000 system is designed to accomodate wheelchairs.
"How would one of these function as an ambulance with all the equipment they need? Firetrucks? Police?"
It wouldn't but I'd expect police stations and hospitals to have stations built in.
"and if you have all these roads and vehicles still...what do you need the new 'transit' system for"
Any bigger though and the vehicle starts to get heavier to cope. Heavier vehicle means heavier infrastructure... more cost. It can become unviable quite easily as the cost/mile goes up.
It should work in lower density living areas, the infrastructure costs (around $8million/mile) are similar to suburban road costs (about $5million/mile).
Light rail can cost $50million/mile. Heavy rail, $120million/mile and underground systems hundreds of millions per mile. With those costs they need high density population.
The cost per mile means much larger areas can be covered, far more passengers, lower density areas are viable.
It should be, it doesn't require the large amount of land use traditional corridor systems do. Largely because the vehicles weigh 400kg rather than 40,000kg. The infrastructure can be correspondingly small and light.
The UK Ultra system has built and costed actual test infrastructure at around $5 million/km ($8million/mile), which means you can cover 10 times as much area with 10 times as many potential passengers or just do an equivalent system for a fraction of the cost.
The US Taxi2000 people reckon they can improve further on the costs with their system.
"Thus the political will to build and fund a $XX billion dollar PRT system isn't likely to exist."
You're mostly right. There isn't a lot of political will around. However, rail (heavy and light), buses and all other conventional forms of group based public transit have demonstrated that they can't have a significant effect on road use and generally require huge subsidies to operate at all.
People are starting to look around for something that could take significant amounts of ridership. PRT can potentially turn a profit where group transit systems can't. It could therefore be run privately and profit is a great alternative to political will.
Depends on the particular implementation that's a possible scenario, they would be queued up.
One thing thing to mention is that the systems are generally designed to constantly try to fill any empty bays in the stand. As each car is rejected or used a new one is ordered from the next nearest upstream station.
According to the simulations the average wait for a vehicle would be around 120 seconds during rush hour if there wasn't already a taxi waiting. The stations are designed to be small and cheap, more like bus stops a few hundred metres apart and holding a few vehicles than train stations which are miles apart and holding tens of vehicles.
BTW, you can design a network and run simulations on your PC. Requires Python.
You basically have to subsidise it to around about 50% in order to persuade people to use it. The UK subsidises the rail system to the tune of around £4 billion a year (approx $7 billion). This is largely because all current public transit systems are designed to carry groups of people from A->B.
Groups of people means stopping at every station to pick up and let off passengers, which means very low average speed.
Groups of people mean schedules in order to pick them up. Schedules mean more waiting.
Groups of people means the route can only go in the general direction they want to travel, which also means that they then have to make additional journeys some other way after getting off.
Groups of people means large vehicles capable of carrying large numbers. Which means large infrastructure to cope with the vehicles, which means expensive vehicles and expensive infrastructure.
All of the above mean that current public transport is a dreadfully slow and expensive method of travel. Is it any wonder at all that people don't like current public transport and would rather sit in a congested traffic jam?
Personal Rapid Transit should manage to be cheap enough to run at a profit and still attract passengers because it's way faster than the rest, including cars, there's no drivers to pay, the infrastructure is cheaper to build than a road.
15 miles/day, 5 days/week. But it's really too slow for most people, the practical limit is about 10 miles. Then there's weather, traffic, sweat, clothing etc. Not exactly non stop either, certainly in UK you are expected to obey road traffic laws, that means traffic lights.
Um. You're aware that you will have to pay for the use of the system?
Taxi's that go to the depot for cleaning would only be unavailable until the service personnel at the depot had checked it. In the meantime there would be hundreds or thousands of other vehicles available to everyone else on the rest of the network. The only person who'd be inconvenienced is the guy who'd paid to stand and press the reject buttons on the taxis as they arrive.
"And how will these wonderful trolley cars get me around to these various destinations with my cargo."
It is a network transit system, the track is laid out more like a grid than a corridor. It'd get you directly to your destinations because there would be stations nearby.
"let us know when you find the political will to fund it and build it"
There's a US system, software and hardware built and looking for a test track. There's an independant UK system with hardware and software built and tested looking for a pilot.
" I'd hate to get into one of those cars after some bozo has barfed"
You don't need to. The Taxi2000 system has a reject button. Reject the car and a replacement arrives a few seconds later, the soiled one heads off to the depot for cleaning.
"I guess someone should tell automakers that they should reinvent a mode of transportation from scratch."
Perhaps transport engineers rather than automakers. The automakers have a huge investment in the status quo. You don't need 4 wheels an engine, brakes, throttle or even a driver.
Transport engineers have already designed and built transport systems which don't have any of the above. Starting from scratch in the 1950s they devised a transport system which optimises the mathematics of getting from A -> B. Yes there is mathematics which describe the performance of transport.
It turns out that this is about as close to optimal as you're going to get with current technologies. Computer controlled, linear induction motors, a few rollers rather than wheels and only 16 moving parts. Non stop from A->B, no congestion, no traffic lights, no changing routes, no waiting on schedules.
Fuel cells *do* run on hydrogen and *only* on hydrogen. Do you believe that fuel cells are a type of magic? No, they are an electrochemical cell, they work by moving electrons. That means that if you use something other than hydrogen you reduce the power density of the cell, never mind the problems with the reaction chemistry itself.
Oh, and 100 - 60 is 40, not 66.
In the real world, rather than the planet you're living on, fuel cells are a dead end.
How do you convert ethanol (any non hydrogen fuel) into hydrogen in order to power the fuel cell?
I'll tell you. You use a stage called the reformer stage which produces hydrogen for the fuel cell itself, plus CO2. This reformation stage however destroys the overall efficiency of the cell, generally bringing it screaming back down to similar levels to an internal combustion engine, marginally better, about 25%.
Pure hydrogen fuel cells are efficient. Other types of fuel cell are not particularly efficient because the process of turning the fuel (LPG/ethanol/methanol/whatever) into hydrogen is not particularly efficient and generates large amounts of heat.
Non hydrogen fuel cell systems are barely any better than internal combustion engines and are actually poorer than gas turbine based generators.
The best bet is still to send the fuel to an efficient power station like a small localised combined cycle gas turbine (~ 55%->60% efficient) power plant, then take the "waste" heat from that system and use it to produce a distributed heating and distributed cooling system. The overall efficiency of the generation system then reaches around 85%. Use the electricity to charge a battery electric vehicle which have very high efficiencies (90%+).
Oh, and you aren't limited to just corn or sugarcane. There are other species which can provide good feedstocks for ethanol production:
I would be inclined to send the biomass directly to a power plant which can use it to generate electricity and basically not bother to try to produce ethanol at all.
Bands earn more on tours than from album sales, but an album is relatively easy, sit back, do a video or two and let the cash roll in from the rest of the world.
Slashdot Mirror
This particular flaw in the law was pointed out to the government when it was introduced.
Encrypted messages containing the details of real crimes were snail mailed to the Home Secretary, then the police were notified, also via snail mail that the Home Secretary had details of the said crimes.
30 mins to get to station
Are you saying that the time waiting for the train at the station doesn't count?
2 hours on the train
And the time getting from train station to door?
How about the cost to get to the station. Taxi? The cost to get from the station to the door? The duty on petrol is 70% of the cost of petrol, 30 billion a year, it is being spent on the NHS, not the roads or policing or cleaning.
You're looking at rail through rose tinted specs... Come back when you're willing to use real "Actual real world examples".
5 minute walk to bus stop
8 minute wait for bus
10 minute journey to nearest bus stop to the station
2 minute walk to train station
9 minute wait for train
10 minute train journey
10 minute walk to work
54 minutes to travel 6 miles. Average speed, 7mph.
Compare with:
5 minute walk to PRT station
8 minute PRT journey.
5 minute walk to work
18 mins to travel 6 miles. Average speed 20mph.
When you talk about the performance of public transport you've got to remember to add on the time it takes to get to the station. The wait times for the schedules. The time it takes to make the journey.
18mins vs 54mins.
Current public transport isn't efficient. Group transport can never be efficient, it isn't physically possible. Get rid of all the waiting, get rid of the intermediate stops. Get rid of the changes of mode. You end up with individual, personal transport... PRT.
"I can spend the hour each way"
And if it only took 15mins each way, giving you back an hour and a half each day? PRT systems average speed is 95% of peak speed, they don't stop or even slow down till they reach their destination. And you don't have to spend the time on the vehicle reading the bumper sticker of the car in front.
Nah, it's simpler. It's performance. All of the alternatives (including car sharing) are poorer performance than the car. Slower A->B, more expensive, less convenient.
PRT if implemented as envisioned by the system designers would be higher performance than the car. By that I mean that journeys would be far quicker A->B, lower cost and more convenient day to day.
"the urine that the bum who is living in it is going to be cleaned."
How did he get the money to get into the vehicle and live there? What did he do when one of the users pressed the reject button and sent him and the vehicle to the depot for servicing?
"a three person shuttle is simply not going to cut it"
Really? You haven't done the maths have you? Average ridership for cars in the US is 1.2 people per vehicle. The Taxi2000 has space for 3. The vehicles run with a 0.5second headway, 7,200 vehicles per hour (a highway lane is about 2000 vehicle per hour).
Taking car ridership that three person shuttle is going to be able to transport 8,500 people/hour. More people per hour than a three lane highway at rush hour.
"It requires everyone to live in tiny high rise condos."
No, it doesn't. It has a similar infrastructure cost to suburban roadways, about 8million dollars per mile. No drivers to be paid, stations every 800metres or so. With those levels of cost and coverage it can support urban and suburban populace.
"Cannot move."
WTF? Hire a van.
"Roads will still be needed for delivery. The claim that this would make roads unnecessary"
Again, WTF? Who said roads would be unnecessary? I said cars would be obsolete, and so they would be.
They'll have to pay to do it. How many bums do you know who are willing to do that?
"I buy groceries once a week...I fill up the front seat and floorboard of my car easily..."
t em=6783518401 S earch?storeId=10001&referredURL=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.a rgos.co.uk%2Fwebapp%2Fwcs%2Fstores%2Fservlet%2FSea rch%3FstoreId%3D10001&referrer=FG13P&searchTerms=2 852706¶ms=P6813 p x?sid=FMNJA95VFXLQBRN080FB0RF3561EW9J8&brand=KaysL S&prod_id=211251
m ages/congestion.jpg w ay2large.jpg 9 3002corridor.jpg
Groceries:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&i
http://www.argos.co.uk/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/
http://www.kayslifestyle.co.uk/psnlnet/product.as
You'll notice these are all UK sites, we already have an extensive rail network. It's common for people to shop with these.
"cold snowy climate like MN would have problems with a system like this..."
The Taxi2000 system shouldn't be affected much, the running surfaces are enclosed in the track. The UK ATS Ultra system would be affected by heavy snow. Depends on the implementation.
"Would be VERY difficult to evacuate with this system in such small cars."
You say that, but people use automobiles which aren't much bigger. A single Taxi2000 track is designed to take 7,200 vehicles per hour, 21,000 people/hour. It's the equivalent of a 3 lane highway. The performance limiting step with PRT systems is actually the stations, it takes 20-30 seconds to chose a destination and get into the vehicle (180 vehicles/hour/bay).
"All your records you need...family pictures."
You're kidding right. You're the one holding up traffic on the highway with the sofa strapped to the roof of your car?
"Elderly people and their walker/wheelchairs..."
The taxi2000 system is designed to accomodate wheelchairs.
"How would one of these function as an ambulance with all the equipment they need? Firetrucks? Police?"
It wouldn't but I'd expect police stations and hospitals to have stations built in.
"and if you have all these roads and vehicles still...what do you need the new 'transit' system for"
http://www.dot.wisconsin.gov/projects/d1/verona/i
http://www.portcult.com/DRIVING-emfhell26.jpg
http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/whoweare/img/traffic.jpg
http://www.dorsetcc.gov.uk/media/images/8/j/Ridge
http://www.metrokc.gov/kcdot/news/photos/2002-2/0
Google has lots more.
The equivalent UK system carries 4, has space for a wheelchair/bicycle/stroller.
http://www.atsltd.co.uk/
Any bigger though and the vehicle starts to get heavier to cope. Heavier vehicle means heavier infrastructure... more cost. It can become unviable quite easily as the cost/mile goes up.
It should work in lower density living areas, the infrastructure costs (around $8million/mile) are similar to suburban road costs (about $5million/mile).
Light rail can cost $50million/mile. Heavy rail, $120million/mile and underground systems hundreds of millions per mile. With those costs they need high density population.
The cost per mile means much larger areas can be covered, far more passengers, lower density areas are viable.
"Presumably PRT will be no cheaper."
o n.doc
It should be, it doesn't require the large amount of land use traditional corridor systems do. Largely because the vehicles weigh 400kg rather than 40,000kg. The infrastructure can be correspondingly small and light.
The UK Ultra system has built and costed actual test infrastructure at around $5 million/km ($8million/mile), which means you can cover 10 times as much area with 10 times as many potential passengers or just do an equivalent system for a fraction of the cost.
http://www.atsltd.co.uk/ultra_pdfs/sae_paper_lows
The US Taxi2000 people reckon they can improve further on the costs with their system.
"Thus the political will to build and fund a $XX billion dollar PRT system isn't likely to exist."
You're mostly right. There isn't a lot of political will around. However, rail (heavy and light), buses and all other conventional forms of group based public transit have demonstrated that they can't have a significant effect on road use and generally require huge subsidies to operate at all.
People are starting to look around for something that could take significant amounts of ridership. PRT can potentially turn a profit where group transit systems can't. It could therefore be run privately and profit is a great alternative to political will.
Depends on the particular implementation that's a possible scenario, they would be queued up.
i zer/mait/projects/
One thing thing to mention is that the systems are generally designed to constantly try to fill any empty bays in the stand. As each car is rejected or used a new one is ordered from the next nearest upstream station.
According to the simulations the average wait for a vehicle would be around 120 seconds during rush hour if there wasn't already a taxi waiting. The stations are designed to be small and cheap, more like bus stops a few hundred metres apart and holding a few vehicles than train stations which are miles apart and holding tens of vehicles.
BTW, you can design a network and run simulations on your PC. Requires Python.
http://www.trasporti.ing.unibo.it/personale/schwe
You basically have to subsidise it to around about 50% in order to persuade people to use it. The UK subsidises the rail system to the tune of around £4 billion a year (approx $7 billion). This is largely because all current public transit systems are designed to carry groups of people from A->B.
All of the above mean that current public transport is a dreadfully slow and expensive method of travel. Is it any wonder at all that people don't like current public transport and would rather sit in a congested traffic jam?
Personal Rapid Transit should manage to be cheap enough to run at a profit and still attract passengers because it's way faster than the rest, including cars, there's no drivers to pay, the infrastructure is cheaper to build than a road.
"Ever tried a bicycle?"
15 miles/day, 5 days/week. But it's really too slow for most people, the practical limit is about 10 miles. Then there's weather, traffic, sweat, clothing etc. Not exactly non stop either, certainly in UK you are expected to obey road traffic laws, that means traffic lights.
Um. You're aware that you will have to pay for the use of the system?
Taxi's that go to the depot for cleaning would only be unavailable until the service personnel at the depot had checked it. In the meantime there would be hundreds or thousands of other vehicles available to everyone else on the rest of the network. The only person who'd be inconvenienced is the guy who'd paid to stand and press the reject buttons on the taxis as they arrive.
"And how will these wonderful trolley cars get me around to these various destinations with my cargo."
It is a network transit system, the track is laid out more like a grid than a corridor. It'd get you directly to your destinations because there would be stations nearby.
e.g.
http://www.swedetrack.com/city7.gif
"let us know when you find the political will to fund it and build it"
There's a US system, software and hardware built and looking for a test track. There's an independant UK system with hardware and software built and tested looking for a pilot.
http://www.atsltd.co.uk/
"I'm sure I'll still be driving a car then."
Statistically, you're far more likely to be sitting stationary in traffic when it happens.
" I'd hate to get into one of those cars after some bozo has barfed"
You don't need to. The Taxi2000 system has a reject button. Reject the car and a replacement arrives a few seconds later, the soiled one heads off to the depot for cleaning.
"I guess someone should tell automakers that they should reinvent a mode of transportation from scratch."
Perhaps transport engineers rather than automakers. The automakers have a huge investment in the status quo. You don't need 4 wheels an engine, brakes, throttle or even a driver.
Transport engineers have already designed and built transport systems which don't have any of the above. Starting from scratch in the 1950s they devised a transport system which optimises the mathematics of getting from A -> B. Yes there is mathematics which describe the performance of transport.
It turns out that this is about as close to optimal as you're going to get with current technologies. Computer controlled, linear induction motors, a few rollers rather than wheels and only 16 moving parts. Non stop from A->B, no congestion, no traffic lights, no changing routes, no waiting on schedules.
It's been independantly re-invented a few times over the last few decades but we've now got the computer technology to actually do it.
Fuel cells *do* run on hydrogen and *only* on hydrogen. Do you believe that fuel cells are a type of magic? No, they are an electrochemical cell, they work by moving electrons. That means that if you use something other than hydrogen you reduce the power density of the cell, never mind the problems with the reaction chemistry itself.
Oh, and 100 - 60 is 40, not 66.
In the real world, rather than the planet you're living on, fuel cells are a dead end.
"Fuel cels are a good idea for any kind of fuel."
Eh?
How do you convert ethanol (any non hydrogen fuel) into hydrogen in order to power the fuel cell?
I'll tell you. You use a stage called the reformer stage which produces hydrogen for the fuel cell itself, plus CO2. This reformation stage however destroys the overall efficiency of the cell, generally bringing it screaming back down to similar levels to an internal combustion engine, marginally better, about 25%.
http://science.howstuffworks.com/fuel-cell4.htm
Meanwhile... The restrictive Carnot cycle allows CCGTs to reach 60% efficiency.
Pure hydrogen fuel cells are efficient. Other types of fuel cell are not particularly efficient because the process of turning the fuel (LPG/ethanol/methanol/whatever) into hydrogen is not particularly efficient and generates large amounts of heat.
Non hydrogen fuel cell systems are barely any better than internal combustion engines and are actually poorer than gas turbine based generators.
The best bet is still to send the fuel to an efficient power station like a small localised combined cycle gas turbine (~ 55%->60% efficient) power plant, then take the "waste" heat from that system and use it to produce a distributed heating and distributed cooling system. The overall efficiency of the generation system then reaches around 85%. Use the electricity to charge a battery electric vehicle which have very high efficiencies (90%+).
Oh, and you aren't limited to just corn or sugarcane. There are other species which can provide good feedstocks for ethanol production:
http://www.hawaii.gov/dbedt/ert/ethanol/
I would be inclined to send the biomass directly to a power plant which can use it to generate electricity and basically not bother to try to produce ethanol at all.
In order to get some dosh.
Bands earn more on tours than from album sales, but an album is relatively easy, sit back, do a video or two and let the cash roll in from the rest of the world.
The *entire* economy. Think about it. If people weren't lazy and stupid, they could just do stuff themselves. What would they need you for?
All hail the fat, lazy, stupid people!!!
"she's a mananizing woman"
Believe me, urban myth. No such thing... Sorry for destroying your hopes.