Interesting transportation things

[M II A II R II K]

I think it’s more likely that the flying will be limited to just getting on and off the automated highways and for short trips and parking.

[M II A II R II K]

https://www.quickquid.co.uk/quid-cor...metro-systems/

[SpongeG]

Apparently, Mumbai has a monorail

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[pudgym29]

Originally Posted by M II A II R II K

https://www.quickquid.co.uk/quid-cor...metro-systems/

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The Tokyo map itself is quite good, although it cuts off Ikebukuro, which is a secondary city centre, leading to the northwest.
Another problem is the legend at its foot only identifies the nine Tokyo Metro lines while the map also displays the four Toei lines (Asakusa, Mita, Oedo, Shinjuku).

[SpongeG]

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[jaxg8r1]

Originally Posted by pudgym29

The Tokyo map itself is quite good, although it cuts off Ikebukuro, which is a secondary city centre, leading to the northwest.
Another problem is the legend at its foot only identifies the nine Tokyo Metro lines while the map also displays the four Toei lines (Asakusa, Mita, Oedo, Shinjuku).

Pardon my ignorance but are the JR lines listed as well? From what I remember the actual Tokyo subway was 1 part of the heavy rail system (and I think a smaller part?)

[SpongeG]

the painting part is cool

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[M II A II R II K]

From A to B: How Our Brains Navigate The Subway

https://brainworldmagazine.com/from-...ate-the-subway

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- Neuroscientists working at DeepMind a London-based Google-owned lab that studies artificial intelligence joined forces with a team of Oxford University researchers and folks from the University College London to investigate precisely how the human brain can adapt itself to navigate an elaborate network of underground trains. Unsurprisingly, the team decided to take on the London Underground, one of the largest subway networks in the world, with its 270 different stations and 250 miles of track. The study, published by the journal Neuron, gathered a group of 22 different test subjects, with varying degrees of familiarity with the Underground, and had them plan their journey through a virtual subway system.

- The study’s participants were given a starting point and a destination and asked to plan a successful route as the researchers scanned their brains in an MRI machine. The scans revealed activity in the brain regions we use for making plans and deciding between choices. The team quickly began to realize that a task like finding the most-forward route to Baker Street is actually broken down by the brain into a number of tasks all handled by numerous regions of the brain. When a traveler had to change lines at different stops, portions of the medial prefrontal cortex became active (used in retrieving long-term memories) as did the more-diverse premotor cortex (key in executing tasks, real and imaginary).

- The experiment functioned like a video game, with each subway stop as another step. Each of the stops were connected together by alternately running lines that functioned as hierarchies. Reviewing the data, researchers found that, on average, the speed of neurons and of brain activity increased whenever participants had to change lines to get to their destination. A greater number of stops on a straight line, by comparison, made less of a difference. This means that finding the right train — one that would have you moving along the right line was recognized by the brain immediately as more crucial than determining the stop itself, as it prioritized these assignments as individual tasks.

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[M II A II R II K]

As China Builds Transit Cars for U.S. Cities, Congress Seeks to Ban Them

https://www.governing.com/topics/tra...ding-bill.html

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- State and local government agencies have become increasingly vulnerable to cyberattacks particularly when it comes to public transportation. In 2016, hackers hit the San Francisco transit system with a ransomware attack demanding $70,000. The following year, Sacramento Regional Transit faced a similar strike. In 2018, the Colorado Department of Transportation shut down 2,000 computers after falling victim to two ransomware attacks in two weeks. --- Faced with these kinds of new cyberthreats, a number of security officials and experts have focused attention on one potential source: China. Chinese hackers have not been accused of the transit ransomware attacks, but they have been blamed for hacking other U.S. government agencies and businesses in an effort to gain intelligence and trade secrets. The growing political tensions between the U.S. and China have culminated in a series of tariffs on Chinese goods. Meanwhile, a state-owned Chinese company is building rail cars for some of America's biggest cities, prompting cybersecurity concerns.

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[Nexis4Jersey]

Stadler to supply up to 354 metro cars to Atlanta

USA: Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority has selected Stadler to supply 254 metro cars, with options for up to 100 additional cars. According to Stadler, this is the company’s largest ever rolling stock order by volume.

https://www.metro-report.com/news/ne...hi2cekf_P7wJho

[Busy Bee]

Wow! This is actually awesome news, especially considering at least on paper choosing Stadler over a Siemens or Alstom or CRRC is riskier. This is really cool, now if they could just double or triple the Marta system with a huge regional bond float or tax referendum .

[M II A II R II K]

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[M II A II R II K]

Coventry very light rail vehicle design unveiled

https://www.metro-report.com/news/ne...-unveiled.html

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- The University of Warwick’s Warwick Manufacturing Group has published the design of the very light rail vehicle that it is developing with Transport Design International. TDI is working with automotive company RDM to build a prototype vehicle by mid-2020 for testing at the Very Light Rail National Innovation Centre in Dudley. The lightweight battery-powered vehicle would have capacity for 50 passengers, and in the longer term would be fully automatic.

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[M II A II R II K]

The United States Needs a Universal System to Pay for Public Transit

https://www.citylab.com/perspective/...l-tips/586495/

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- The seamless convenience of private mobility services like ride hail is a wonderful thing when you travel. If you think about it, even taxis have interoperable payments across cities: you can use a single credit card (or cash) to pay any taxi. But if you want to use public transit when you’re on a trip, you’ll need to get a new app or a smart card that becomes as useless as a foreign currency when you return home. Come to think of it, is there any product or service other than public transportation that requires you to manage a new way to pay when traveling to a different American city? --- The failure of transit systems to align their payment systems is more than a nuisance for travelers; it’s an incentive for them to forego transit entirely and instead use an alternative mode like ride hail or taxis that puts additional vehicles on the road (yes, I’m guilty as charged). That means cities get more congested while transit systems lose out on passenger revenue.

- Our cities and transit systems alike would benefit from seamless payments that work equally well when you’re at home as when you’re on a trip. It’s worth stopping to ask why we don’t have something so intuitive as a national system for transit payment. After all, other countries do; you can use a single travel card to ride a train, tram, or bus in Switzerland, and ten different Japanese transit cards are all compatible with one other. But in the United States the best we’ve been able to muster is something like the Bay Area’s Clipper card, which works across 22 local transit agencies. And even the Clipper card won’t get you anywhere if you’re outside Northern California. --- Fare complexity is a headache for commuters, and it also made it harder for transit agencies to manage and sync up their payment systems.

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[M II A II R II K]

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[SpongeG]

Virgin Hired an Apple Alum to Redesign Its Planes—The Result Is the New A350

by MARK ELLWOOD
April 9, 2019

Say hello to roomier seats, but farewell to that signature bar.

On Monday, Virgin Atlantic transformed its global HQ in Crawley, just south of London, into a full-blown replica of its in-flight experience. Cabin crew doled out glasses of champagne to visitors, who were then ushered into a designated departure lounge. From there, they headed onto the ultimate short-haul hop: A 20-minute journey in one of Virgin’s training modules, installed in the space to teach its crew how to handle the interiors of its newest plane, the A350.
The splashy bash was a coming-out—or rather, a taking-off—party for the four-year long project, which was trailed last year by a minor economy cabin refresh—the first such update in 10 years. The U.K.-based carrier has a dozen of the fuel-efficient, more eco-friendly planes on order, with the first four due to enter service later this summer. New Yorkers (and Brits) will be the first to experience the planes first-hand; Virgin expects to deploy them from London to Atlanta and Los Angeles at a later, yet-to-be-announced date.

So what should we expect from the A350? Economy seats are robust and simple, though three dozen of them will have 34 inches of legroom—the best back-of-bus kneespace among its long-haul rivals. Custom-designed seats in Premium retain the leather finish of the current cabin, adding larger TV screens and integrated footrests. The greatest changes are in the Upper Class cabin, where the pod-like Dream Suites now have privacy-enhancing screens, extra-roomy seats, and that same purple-heavy mood-lighting once synonymous with Virgin America.

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A rendering of the A350's Premium seats.
Courtesy Virgin

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https://www.cntraveler.com/story/vir...f4pRpWo3eQME1Y

[llamaorama]

I don't think "very light rail" or even things like robot taxi vans will ever take off.

Unattended publicly shared small vehicles may be vulnerable to vandalism and cleanliness issues. I think some passengers might feel unsafe if they were all alone with an intimidating or dirty looking person in a vehicle like that. Cameras and other tech solutions can only go so far when it comes to these things.

Automated robot cars operating as taxis will probably work best if they are private, and occasionally stop at a cleaning station. Higher capacity transit doesn't have as much of a problem because crowds can paradoxically feel more private than being one-on-one with a stranger.

[SpongeG]

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[SpongeG]

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[M II A II R II K]

China shows off its ‘explosion-proof’ trams

https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/04/ar...on-proof-trams

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- Light rail trams touted as ‘explosion-proof’ and as impregnable as armored vehicles have rolled off assembly lines at China’s state-owned rolling stock manufacturer CRRC. These trams are bound for Israel with officials aiming to open the first line of a light rail system in Tel Aviv in 2021.

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