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bobdreamz Nov 29, 2013 2:55 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by M II A II R II K (Post 6355852)
^ It looks like Jacksonville, Florida's Skyway people mover system below!

http://www.downtownjacksonville.org/...0bec38ecee.jpg

http://www.downtownjacksonville.org/...0bec38ecee.jpg

vid Nov 30, 2013 4:13 PM
Haha, it's so wee!!

M II A II R II K Nov 30, 2013 6:46 PM
Germany spends millions on animal-only bridges

Read More: http://www.thelocal.de/20130918/51975

Quote:
Germany is living up to its environmentally-friendly image by spending millions of euros on building bridges just for animals. Humans caught crossing them face a €35 fine. More than a hundred wildlife bridges are to be built in the next decade.

.....



http://www.thelocal.de/userdata/imag...e/de/51975.jpg

Busy Bee Nov 30, 2013 8:04 PM
Awesome! But wouldn't it be cheaper to run large diameter culverts under the roadway? Or would most animals naturally refuse to enter a tunnel?

zilfondel Nov 30, 2013 8:30 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by M II A II R II K (Post 6358358)
You can find these all over Wyoming.

http://images.nationalgeographic.com...88_600x450.jpg
pic from national geographic

vid Nov 30, 2013 11:42 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Busy Bee (Post 6358413)
Awesome! But wouldn't it be cheaper to run large diameter culverts under the roadway? Or would most animals naturally refuse to enter a tunnel?
It's easier to just put a concrete half-tube over a road and cover it with dirt. If you put the opening under the road, it will require structural support for the road and will fill with water when it rains.

amor de cosmos Dec 3, 2013 6:56 PM
• Video Link

http://s3files.core77.com/blog/image...-viaAnimal.jpg
http://www.core77.com/blog/graphic_d..._map_26009.asp

vid Dec 4, 2013 1:56 AM
I like how they turned Staten Island into Bowser's Hideout. :)

mousquet Dec 4, 2013 1:16 PM
Briefly, the EU's defined their main transit "corridors", that should prefigure the prospective continental HSR network.
Quote:
Originally Posted by europa.eu
2013/11/19 (NB: that US date format is smarter than the European)

Infrastructure - TEN-T

European Parliament backs new EU infrastructure policy

In the most radical overhaul of EU infrastructure policy since its inception in the 1980s, the European Parliament has today given final approval to new maps showing the nine major corridors which will act as a backbone for transportation in Europe's single market and revolutionise East–West connections. To match this level of ambition, Parliament also voted to triple EU financing for transport infrastructure for the period 2014–2020 to €26.3 billion.

Taken as a whole, the new EU infrastructure policy will transform the existing patchwork of European roads, railways, airports and canals into a unified trans-European transport network (TEN-T).

[...]

The new core network – the figures

The core network will connect:
  • 94 main European ports with rail and road links
  • 38 key airports with rail connections into major cities
  • 15,000 km of railway line upgraded to high speed
  • 35 cross-border projects to reduce bottlenecks

[...]

http://img15.hostingpics.net/pics/36...Europe2013.png
http://ec.europa.eu/transport/themes...-policy_en.htm

brickell Dec 5, 2013 3:45 PM
Miami gets back one of it's metromover stations. Officially reopened now.
Quote:
The station, formerly known as Bicentennial Park Station, is near the northwest corner of Bicentennial Park and is one of the stations on Metromover's Omni Loop.
For more than a decade, city officials said the station remained closed, but with the renaissance of the Bicentennial Park area and the addition of the newly built Pérez Art Museum, as well as the upcoming Patricia and Phillip Frost Museum of Science, Miami-Dade Transit invested approximately $2.4 million to renovate the station.
http://www.local10.com/news/refurbis...z/-/index.html

amor de cosmos Dec 7, 2013 6:33 PM
• Video Link

Wizened Variations Dec 8, 2013 6:09 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by amor de cosmos (Post 6366910)
A few thoughts:

1. US metropolitan areas almost always have many governments that run component cities. Getting anything done on a large scale involves excruciating political maneuvering, often with power brokers content to leave "things" as they are. This makes large scale transportation change very difficult, and, when possible, tends to be compromised into mediocrity.

2. US cities with urban cores (or aspirations to have them) tend to concentrate too much on making small footprint downtowns vibrant show places of alternate transportation, and, even nearby surroundings are subordinated financially. Extending bus/bicycle/pedestrian only corridors several kilometers out from downtowns, IMO, would have a far greater impact on reducing vehicle use than bicycle, bus, and pedestrian trophy developments downtown.

3. When rail or BRT or monorail lines are extended radially from city center, each station area should be considered a mini-downtown with it's own radial network of extending a couple of kilometers from the station.

This, as pointed out in point 1, is extremely hard to do in 2013 (but it is slowly changing) as profit generating plans developed since WWII have almost always had car access as front and center. Too many stations are being placed next to huge parking lots and have little or no bus or bicycle planning outside the property station footprint.

M II A II R II K Dec 12, 2013 4:44 PM
Purify The Air As You Ride, With This Photosynthesis Bike

Read More: http://www.fastcoexist.com/3023176/p...synthesis-bike

Quote:
.....

What if a bike of the future could perform more than one function, earning even more efficiency brownie points? Answering that question, a group of Thai designers and engineers has developed a plan to turn the bicycle into a machine that actually cleans polluted air while cruising down the street.

- The air-purifier bike currently exists only in concept, developed by Bangkok’s Lightfog Creative & Design Company. In theory, its aluminum frame would run on a “photosynthesis system” that generates oxygen through a reaction between water and electric power from a lithium-ion battery.

- “We want to design products which can reduce the air pollution in the city. So we decided to design a bike because we thought that bicycles are environmentally friendly vehicles for transportation,” explains creative director Silawat Virakul in an email to Co.Exist. “Riding a bicycle can reduce traffic jam[s] in a city. Moreover, we wanted to add more value to a bicycle by adding its ability to reduce the pollution.”

- While the air purifier bike might exist comfortably as an idea, reality could challenge the ease of operating such a fleet. There would be the question of where to charge the batteries, for one, and where byproducts, (like sugar, perhaps), might go. Virakul acknowledges this much. Still, it’s a neat idea and less frightening than the contraption developed by Beijing inhabitant Matt Hope, who rigged an air purification helmet to his bike. We could also just wait until all city parks install electrostatic smog vacuums beneath the grass, too.

.....



http://e.fastcompany.net/multisite_f...-s-bike-02.png




http://f.fastcompany.net/multisite_f...-s-bike-03.png




http://d.fastcompany.net/multisite_f...-s-bike-01.png

M II A II R II K Dec 14, 2013 6:31 PM
How America Gets to Work—in 1 Very Long Graph

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/...-graph/282349/

http://i.imgur.com/eTnRJAt.png?1

amor de cosmos Dec 14, 2013 6:42 PM
Quote:
Friday, December 13, 2013
A Conservative Utah Republican’s Path to Transit Enlightenment
by Tanya Snyder

Greg Hughes is the majority whip of the Utah State Legislature and the chair of its conservative caucus. He got a 100 percent score last year by the conservative Sutherland Institute, a Utah think tank. He also chairs the board of the Utah Transit Authority.

The man loves transit.

Hughes grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He said he always understood that public transportation has a place in a city of that size. In fact, he used it himself, as he didn’t have access to a car while he lived there. (Hughes attended college in Utah, so may not have been of driving age for much of his Pittsburgh residency.) But even at the time he joined the board of the UTA, he still thought transit didn’t make sense for Utah.

“As a conservative Republican, my opinion of mass transit was that it seemed reasonable — or a necessity — in Pittsburgh, but certainly in a state like Utah may be an over-subsidized social service,” he told members of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Highways and Transit Subcommittee this week. “So I warned the mayors that if I was going to serve on this board they might not like what I had to say.”

He said he was able to bring a state official’s emphasis on fiscal conservatism to the board, but he also gained some valuable perspective:
[I] was able to understand a little bit better, in a state like Utah, where you see how quickly we’re growing, the absolute need we have to be multi-modal. When I sat every year and looked at how many roads we needed to keep in good repair, and how much expansion we needed for the population that was growing, I became agnostic in terms of mode.
It was fiscal conservatism itself that sold him on transit. Hughes just watched his state spend a billion dollars to expand a freeway, only to see that one of the $30 million interchanges is projected to be completely congested in six years. “How do we begin to pay for that, as a state?” he mused. “We have to have multi-modal.”

He’s started to preach the good news to his fellow conservatives, telling them, “If you like getting to work on time, you’ll love that 80 percent of the light rail commuters along our new line own automobiles and would have been in your way.”
http://dc.streetsblog.org/2013/12/13...enlightenment/

• Video Link

M II A II R II K Dec 16, 2013 4:16 PM
Public Transit Is Underfunded Because the Wealthy Don’t Rely on It

Read More: http://www.wired.com/autopia/2013/12/brt-middle-class/

Quote:
Another report has come out in support of Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), an innovative way to provide public transit at a low cost with dedicated bus lanes, stops, and schedules.

The study (PDF), from pro-transit group Embarq, found that BRT drastically reduced commute times, improved air quality, and cut road fatalities in congested cities like Bogota, Istanbul, Johannesburg, and Mexico City. And we already know that BRT is one of the most cost-effective public transit investments a municipality can make. The catch? In most cities examined in the report, those benefits only extend to low- and middle-class residents. (In Johannesburg, the poorest residents did not use BRT).

“Since the dominant benefit is travel time savings,” the study’s authors wrote, “the majority of benefits tend to accrue to the strata most represented by BRT users — typically lower- and middle-income.” --- While it’s great to have a system that improves transportation access for the majority of a city’s population, BRT’s mass appeal could — ironically — be a political concern that prevents its adoption, at least in the U.S. As Alex Pareene wrote in Salon, public transit often suffers because politicians and donors rarely rely on it. The results show in the states, whose existing BRT systems lag behind those in cities around the world.

Even in densely populated and traditionally liberal cities like New York and Minneapolis, politicians neglect transit. And “because they don’t know or interact with or receive checks from people who rely on it every day, there’s almost no hope for cheap, efficient mass transit options anywhere,” Pareene wrote.

Indeed, the Embarq report echoes the public transit wealth gap, and cites that most BRT systems are often paid for by tax revenue collected from those who may never ride it. Bogota’s famed TransMilenio was financed by increased gasoline taxes, and all the systems required both substantial investment and support from municipalities. But the Embarq report also showed that BRTs benefited cities with environmental and productivity gains more than they strained financial resources.

.....



http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/au...io-660x495.jpg

M II A II R II K Dec 18, 2013 4:28 PM
The Most Walkable Cities and How Some Are Making Strides

Read More: http://www.governing.com/topics/urba...le-cities.html

Walkable Cities Map: http://www.governing.com/gov-data/tr...ities-map.html

Quote:
.....

Many localities across the country are continuing to push policies and planning initiatives aimed at making communities more walkable. Recent census figures depict a wide variation in commuting habits among the nation’s urban centers, showing some have done much more than others.

.....



http://i.imgur.com/Zr8Yz5A.png

electricron Dec 19, 2013 1:12 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by M II A II R II K (Post 6378314)
The Most Walkable Cities and How Some Are Making Strides

Read More: http://www.governing.com/topics/urba...le-cities.html

Walkable Cities Map: http://www.governing.com/gov-data/tr...ities-map.html






http://i.imgur.com/Zr8Yz5A.png
Not surprisingly, university towns top the list.

M II A II R II K Dec 29, 2013 10:31 PM
Is green U.S. mass transit a big myth?

Read More: http://www.templetons.com/brad/transit-myth.html

Quote:
As part of my research for an article on robotic cars and how they change so much of the world, I've been looking into the energy use of various forms of transportation.

What I learned about public transit in the USA shocked me. I've been a fan of public transit, taking it where it's practical for me, and feeling green about it. That transit is a significantly greener way to get around than private car travel almost goes without saying in our thoughts and discussions.

Disturbingly, this simply isn't true. I started by pulling out various numbers on the energy used per passenger mile of various forms of transportation. These numbers can be found in places like the U.S. government bureau of transportation statistics figures and the Dept. of Energy Transportation Energy Data Book (Especially table 2-12). I've also found tables broken down per city.

These studies express transit energy efficiency in terms of BTUs per passenger-mile. The BTU is the English system unit of energy, and it's equal to 1055 joules. With perfect conversion, there are 3413 BTUs in a kw/h. To turn BTUs/mile into miles per gallon, you divide into 125,000, the number of BTUs you get from burning a gallon of gas. Here's a useful table.

A "passenger mile" is taking one passenger a mile. If it takes 10,000 BTUs to take a vehicle with 10 passengers for one mile, that's 10 passenger miles, and 1,000 BTUs/passenger-mile. For solo vehicles, passenger miles are just miles. The figures below are for the DoE's average passenger loads over the entire USA, unless noted as solo or for a specific district.

-----

True "well to wheels" analysis includes more factors:

• Energy to make and recycle cars and transit vehicles. For typical cars that's 120 million BTUs, or about 15% extra over a 150,000 mile life-cycle. I don't yet have figures for transit vehicles, however I expect them to do better than 15%. Even if it were zero, the results can't get worsened by more than 15%.

• Energy to build and maintain roads (for cars and buses) and tracks (for trains) or both for street cars. This is significant though in many cases it is already expended.

• Energy to extract, refine and ship fuel, both to cars and diesel transit, and to power plants making electricity for electric transit. For gasoline, this is about a 22% surcharge. I don't yet have figures for the energy cost of mining and shipping coal, or extracting and piping natural gas for electricity. Again, this worsens the results at most 22% for the cars, trucks and diesl buses, but the real penalty is going to be less.

• Variations in the average passenger load of all the vehicles, including the cars, which make some systems highly efficient and others terrible. Likewise, some cities have higher passenger/car figures and others lower. These are, except where noted, national averages.

• The fact that sometimes transit trips require more miles (changing lines) and sometimes fewer miles (private right-of-way).

• Data released this year which slows a slight improving trend for the buses, bringing them slightly ahead of the cars. (This varies from year to year.)

.....



http://www.templetons.com/brad/roboc...ans-energy.png




MPG

http://www.templetons.com/brad/robocars/lightrail.gif




Heavy Rail Energy Efficiency

http://www.templetons.com/brad/robocars/heavyrail.gif




Light (Capacity) Rail Energy Efficiency

http://www.templetons.com/brad/robocars/lightrail.gif

feepa Dec 29, 2013 11:18 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by zilfondel (Post 6358437)
You can find these all over Wyoming.

http://images.nationalgeographic.com...88_600x450.jpg
pic from national geographic
and they've had these for 20+ years in Alberta (Banff National Park)

jg6544 Dec 30, 2013 1:30 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by mousquet (Post 6362427)
Briefly, the EU's defined their main transit "corridors", that should prefigure the prospective continental HSR network.

http://ec.europa.eu/transport/themes...-policy_en.htm
Meanwhile, in the U. S., we're still stuck with a decaying, overcrowded highway system and a bunch of ratty airports.

zilfondel Dec 30, 2013 7:53 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by M II A II R II K (Post 6388044)
You missed the guys conclusion:

http://www.templetons.com/brad/robocars/transit-mpg.png

amor de cosmos Dec 30, 2013 10:12 PM
• Video Link

amor de cosmos Jan 1, 2014 11:54 PM
Video Link

amor de cosmos Jan 2, 2014 9:05 PM
Quote:
Why it will take 6,000 dead goats to build the HS2 Railway
January 1, 2014
Posted in: Random
By Ian Mansfield

If, or when the High Speed 2 railway is constructed, it will require roughly 6,000 dead goats.

This curious statement comes from an old technicality as Acts of Parliament, when passed into law are still printed on vellum, which is typically made from goat skins.

Two copies are printed, one for storage in the Victoria Tower, and another is sent to the National Archives in Kew. Now, it has proven surprisingly difficult to work out the average number of pages of A4 that can be extracted from a single hide of skin, but I finally found a page that uses sheepskins as an example.

That shows that the average sheep produces a single sheet that can be folded 8 times to produce 16 sides of vellum of roughly A4 size.

All parliamentary bills need to be printed onto vellum, but the reason I am commenting on HS2 though, is because at 49,814 pages in length, the bill is the largest one ever presented to Parliament.

Oh, and it’s a railway and I write about railways a lot.

Two copies of the Act means nearly 100,000 pages of nearly A4, which is roughly 6,000 animal skins.



There have been attempts in the past to scrap the use of animal skin for printing Parliamentary Bills on, but they stick to vellum as it is known to last longer than the longest presumed life of archive paper, which at a mere 500 years (in theory) is really not good enough for an archive that needs to last thousands of years.

Fortunately, the goat skin is a by-product of the animal industry, so it’s not quite as if there will be a massive sacrifice just outside Euston as thousands of goats are slaughtered to the great railway gods.
http://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2014...e-hs2-railway/

Ron22 Jan 6, 2014 11:01 AM
The Barcelona concept represents to day the most advanced integrated concept in urban public transport available on the European scenery.
Designed by Johan Neerman it summarizes the optimum in the tramway technology and human factors
Created like a light box in allows the traveler to communicate with this urban device and informations has never been more readable for the pedestrian.
The spatial equation in between the vehicle and the station reaches high levels of ergonomic integration.
J.Neerman has a patent on that concept and illustrates the full potential of applied system thinking.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...Neerman669.JPG

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...eerman7859.JPG

Aylmer Jan 6, 2014 7:21 PM
One would think that it would be awfully hot in a glass tramway in Barcelona...

mousquet Jan 6, 2014 7:31 PM
^ We sometimes happen to make use of air-conditioning... Every single rail vehicle is air-conditioned nowadays.

M II A II R II K Jan 7, 2014 12:30 AM
Shanghai’s Metro Becomes the World’s Longest

http://nextcity.org/theworks/entry/n...-japans-maglev

Quote:
.....

- China’s largest city, Shanghai, is now home to the world’s longest metro system. The Shanghai Metro opened parts of Lines 12 and 16 on December 29 — the rest will follow in 2014 — and now measures 567 kilometers, or 352 miles, in length, edging out Seoul for the world’s top spot. Shanghai’s subway network is probably the fastest growing on earth, with a few new lines and extensions opening each year and many more in planning.

- Shanghai does not, however, have the most comprehensive urban rapid transit network. That honor belongs to Tokyo, whose railway network makes every other city’s look puny by comparison. While Shanghai has concentrated all of its investment in subways, Tokyo’s network evolved largely through the upgrading of existing railways. Formally, Tokyo has barely more than 300 kilometers of metro lines between its two subway companies. But it also has a sprawling network of private suburban railways that provide service indistinguishable from that of a subway and which carry many times the number of commuters. In many cases, suburban trains become subways as they run straight onto either Tokyo Metro or Toei Subway tracks to reach the city center, further blurring the line between what’s a subway and what’s a commuter railway.

.....



http://nextcity.org/images/daily/_re...ro-line-16.jpg

Busy Bee Jan 8, 2014 1:09 AM
http://www.wmctv.com/story/23870069/...idtown-memphis

MEMPHIS, TN -
(WMC-TV) - A trolley, with nine passengers and a conductor in tow, caught fire on a busy Memphis street Monday.

Rest of story

M II A II R II K Jan 10, 2014 5:58 PM
Washington, New York looking to a future without farecards

Read More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...out-farecards/

Quote:
Transit riders in Washington and New York are inching closer to a world that doesn’t require a paper or plastic farecard to hop on a train or ride a bus.

- In Washington, Metro announced Wednesday that it will begin a pilot program later this year testing a new electronic fare payment system at rail stations, on buses and at its parking garages. The transit agency said it had awarded a $184 million contract to Accenture, a management consulting and technology company, to replace the current fare system. --- “The new technology will provide more flexibility for accounts, better reliability for riders, and real choices for customers to use bank-issued payment cards, credit cards, ID cards, or mobile phones to pay their Metro fares,” Metro General Manager and CEO Richard Sarles said in a news release announcing the contract. --- Riders will be able to continue using SmarTrip cards, but the goal is to also add other payment options including some credit cards, federal government identification cards and mobile phones. The new system will not accept paper farecards.

- The benefits of ditching magnetic-stripe subway cards are clear enough: The move would save the MTA money by allowing it to ditch all those card-vending machines. It would get people onto buses and trains faster, because they wouldn’t have to waste time dipping their cards into a machine or repeatedly swiping them at a turnstile. Few New Yorkers would miss the experience of standing behind a beleaguered flock of tourists as they struggle to master the precise swiping motion necessary to get a finicky card reader to let them through.

.....



http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...1-1024x701.jpg

M II A II R II K Jan 12, 2014 5:43 PM
The Japanese Think They Can Build a Maglev for $8 Billion

Read More: http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/...hably_low.html

Quote:
The story, reported in Japan's Asahi, that the Japanese government would be willing to float a $4 billion loan to cover half the cost of a D.C.-Baltimore "super-maglev" that would cut travel time between the two cities to 15 minutes is very cool. The only problem is there's no way you could build a D.C.-Baltimore maglev for that kind of money.

- New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority is building a tunnel that would let Long Island Railroad trains go to Grand Central Station and that costs $8.76 billion. Amtrak wants $7 billion to renovate Union Station. The Silver Line of D.C. Metro going from suburban Virginia to Dulles Airport is costing $6.8 billion. --- Now let's be clear—these civil engineering costs in the United States are totally insane and way out of line with what other developed countries manage to achieve. Reform of the issues at the root of these sky-high costs ought to be a high priority.

- Given the actual structure of American civil engineering costs, many fewer projects pass a cost-benefit test than would be true if we had French, Spanish, or Japanese construction costs. --- The people behind The Northeast Maglev project point out that they've always offered a $10 billion estimate of the cost of the Baltimore-DC leg. That's perhaps more realistic.

.....



http://www.slate.com/content/dam/sla...ediumlarge.jpg

electricron Jan 12, 2014 7:00 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by M II A II R II K (Post 6403693)
The Japanese Think They Can Build a Maglev for $8 Billion

Read More: http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/...hably_low.html
The Japanese are talking about an express service with just the two terminating stations, that takes just 15 minutes to run from end to end. That's a twice and hour round trip, meaning headways every 30 minutes over just one track/guideway. That single track automatically means half the construction costs over double track. So, an $8 Billion cost seems reasonable vs a $16 Billion cost for an alternative double track HSR train in an entirely new corridor.
Baltimore to D.C. is approximately 39 miles. If the train took 15 minutes to travel that far, it's averaging 156 mph. I thought a meg-lev train should be able to go twice as fast. So 15 minutes should be easy to maintain.
Additionally, $8 Billion/39 miles= $205 Million/mile. I think that might even be high for construction costs, I would think a single track elevated guideway could be achieved cheaper assuming the route chosen was over an existing freeway, highway, tollway, or railway which didn't require significant land purchases.
What would be interesting is whether there is or will be sufficient traffic between these two cities to warrant express services.

M II A II R II K Jan 14, 2014 6:38 PM
How London Plans to Eliminate the Search for a Parking Spot

Read More: http://www.theatlanticcities.com/com...ing-spot/8088/

Quote:
This week, the City of Westminster, one of London’s local councils, will start embedding the first of 3,000 sensors into the streets. They will be in the ground by the end of March, making London the world's first major city to adopt the long-heralded "smart parking" revolution.

The idea is simple. According to the council, motorists spend an average of 15 minutes searching for a space in Westminster—which with Parliament, the main shopping district, and dozens of tourist sites, has a legitimate claim to be the heart of London. If drivers know where the empty spaces are, they won’t have to cruise the streets looking for one.

Other cities, most famously San Francisco, have experimented with "smart parking" and companies from France to America are developing the technology. But San Francisco turned off its sensors on December 30, 2013, and is now evaluating the results of its pilot program. Westminster is going full steam ahead, bashing in 50 sensors a day with a team of three men. Boroughs in Manchester and Birmingham are also trying out the system.

Each sensor in the ground detects when a car is parked on the street above it. The council releases the data to the public through a smartphone app. Results from a pilot program in 2012 were encouraging: The proportion of occupied parking spots that weren’t paid for dropped from 12 percent to under 10 percent, a sign that more people were paying for parking, says Kieran Fitsall, the parking services development manager for the council. (Some proportion of spots will always be unpaid for, because some vehicles are loading or unloading, dropping people off, or have exemptions.)

.....



http://cdn.theatlanticcities.com/img...-7/largest.jpg




http://qzprod.files.wordpress.com/20...?w=1024&h=1024

Busy Bee Jan 14, 2014 9:50 PM
You would think with the amount of CC cameras in central London, they could wipp up some fancy triangulation software that optically spots the open and occupied spaces and feeds the same information that the very tangible embedded sensors would.

amor de cosmos Jan 18, 2014 12:00 AM
Video Link


http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2014/0...into-stations/

M II A II R II K Jan 18, 2014 7:25 PM
What Will Happen to Public Transit in a World Full of Autonomous Cars?

Read More: http://www.theatlanticcities.com/com...ous-cars/8131/

Quote:
.....

If the autonomous cars of the future will come to look an awful lot like transit, then what will become of the transit we know now?

- We make billion-dollar investments in new transit infrastructure because we expect to use it for decades. Metropolitan planning organizations are in the very business of planning 30 and 40 years into the future. The Washington Area Metropolitan Transit Authority recently released its dream map of subway service in the city for the year 2040. By then, autonomous cars – in some form – will surely be commonplace.

- If autonomous cars can one day better perform some of the functions of transit, shouldn't we let them? Shouldn't we take the opportunity to focus instead on whatever traditional transit does best in an autonomous-car world? --- "If you can’t get more than 10 people on a bus, or five people on a bus, then why bother running it?" Lutin asked me after his session. "You’re wasting diesel fuel."

- The implication in this raises (at least) two more questions: Exactly where (and when) will it make sense for people to use buses or rail instead of autonomous cars? And if autonomous cars come to supplement these services, should transit agencies get into the business of operating them? In my initial daydream – where shared self-driving cars are whisking us all about – it's unclear exactly who owns and manages them.

- Lutin sounds skeptical that transit agencies will be able to move into this space. "They don't adapt well to change," he says. They're also governed by rigid mandates that limit what they can do. A mass transit agency can't overnight start operating something that looks like a taxi service. Public agencies also must contend with labor unions, and labor unions likely won't like the idea of replacing bus routes with autonomous cars.

- There's also another consideration. --- "There's an opportunity for autonomous taxi services to make money," Lutin says. "And nobody wants the government to compete with private industry and make money. We barely tolerate toll road authorities. If it looks like we can trade in our buses for a fleet of autonomous vehicles, and we can drop fares and at the same time we can make money, somebody in the private sector is going to want that."

- And if public transit agencies exist in part to subsidize a service the private sector won't provide, what if that service no longer needs a subsidy? "It no longer needs to be a governmental function."

- Lutin is certain that we'll still need transit, particularly in dense cities. An autonomous car, after all, takes up as much physical space as a car with a human at the wheel. We'll be able to fit more autonomous cars on a given roadway, because they'll be smart enough to drive practically bumper-to-bumper without colliding into each other. But there's still a finite capacity on the road. And in densely populated areas, buses and subway cars will still be able to carry more people. --- "Theoretically, a highway [lane] can carry 2,200 vehicles per hour," Lutin says. "Even if you go to 4,400 or 6,600 vehicles per hour, there’s still that limit."

- So we'll still need transit to get people into the Loop in Chicago, or across the Bay Bridge into San Francisco, or onto the island of Manhattan. These are the things that transit already does best, and that it will still do best in the age of the autonomous car. What's more, the same technology that will bring us autonomous cars will make traditional transit better, too. When buses have the same autonomous, communicating power that cars will have, they'll be able to drive safely within inches of each other, too. Picture a dedicated Bus Rapid Transit lane with moving buses queued up end-to-end. --- In this world, cars may start to function like transit, but buses could come to work like trains. And they're a lot cheaper to deploy.

.....


http://cdn.theatlanticcities.com/img...LK/largest.jpg

Wizened Variations Jan 18, 2014 7:58 PM
M II A II R II K, I am inclined to believe that the gross energy/resource equation will not permit a massive proletariat owning autonomous cars. I am certain the upper and upper middle classes will own such vehicles.

I am inclined to believe, as have numerous science fiction writers that the autonomous vehicle society can only work if the vehicles are owned by some combination of the state and corporate enterprise. This would a lower number of vehicles to move the same number of people.

I am sure, too, that the cost/time algorithms involved in scheduling and routes will radically change how people move with these cars. In addition, cost structures will reflect energy consumption, route traffic load, etc.

(the new snobbery: "I don't HAVE to use a naughty auty... I drive when and where I choose.)

M II A II R II K Jan 19, 2014 12:54 AM
At this point it's largely theory and speculation. Instead of buying and SUV for all uses, it will end up being what car do I need today, and have the advantage of not having to actually buy a car and maintain it.

Car capacity can be increased with a 3 dimensional system of multi-level single lane routes that can have a low footprint with lighter and stronger materials, and you can leave your car, and it can go park itself elsewhere.

At the end of the century everyone may have their own individual pods that are small and can be linked together with others to make PRT mass transit feasible in that fashion, and if you're travelling with others have some way to merge with other peoples pods internally. Everyone would have personal mobility where there would be no need for public transit at all, except of course for travelling overseas.

Wizened Variations Jan 19, 2014 2:07 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by M II A II R II K (Post 6412681)
At this point it's largely theory and speculation. Instead of buying and SUV for all uses, it will end up being what car do I need today, and have the advantage of not having to actually buy a car and maintain it.

Car capacity can be increased with a 3 dimensional system of multi-level single lane routes that can have a low footprint with lighter and stronger materials, and you can leave your car, and it can go park itself elsewhere.

At the end of the century everyone may have their own individual pods that are small and can be linked together with others to make PRT mass transit feasible in that fashion, and if you're travelling with others have some way to merge with other peoples pods internally. Everyone would have personal mobility where there would be no need for public transit at all, except of course for travelling overseas.
I can see the Japanese doing this. Multicultural, multiethnic, and, multiracial societies will have a far hard time sharing intimate space. Of course, if all people are autonomously observed and the "state" enforces special infractions, this might work in nations like the US and Brazil.

Allan83 Jan 19, 2014 8:12 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by M II A II R II K (Post 6403693)
That's a picture of the German maglev, the Transrapid, not the Japanese one. Somebody goofed. The German one can be built a lot cheaper than the Japanese one, however, iirc.

M II A II R II K Jan 19, 2014 5:50 PM
• Video Link

M II A II R II K Jan 23, 2014 5:46 PM
http://dc.streetsblog.org/2014/01/21...ee-households/

http://dc.streetsblog.org/wp-content...households.jpg

Wizened Variations Jan 23, 2014 6:07 PM
The data set brackets much of the Great Recession.

As a result, the table needs to be further broken down into cities where the ability to afford a card is more of an issue, and, those cities where this ability might be less of an issue.


Cities where the Ability to afford a car is more of an issue

Detroit
Baltimore
Chicago
Indianapolis
Milwaukee
Jacksonville

Cities where the Ability to afford a car is less of an issue*

New York
Washington DC
San Francisco
Seattle

These four cities are among the top 10 that have recovered the quickest from the depths of the Great Recession. Consequently, I suspect that more of the reduction of car ownership reflects the freedom to choose to own a car or not.

amor de cosmos Jan 23, 2014 7:19 PM
Quote:
Wednesday, January 22, 2014 14 Comments
Ford CEO: More Cars in Cities “Not Going to Work”
by Angie Schmitt

It’s the last thing you would expect to hear at the Detroit Auto Show from the CEO of Ford Motor Company. But last week, Ford’s Alan Mulally showed some ambivalence about the role of cars in major cities.

“I think the most important thing is to look at the way the world is and where the world is going and to develop a plan,” Mulally said, according to the Financial Times. “We’re going to see more and more larger cities. Personal mobility is going to be of really ever-increasing importance to livable lifestyles in big cities.”

Mulally said Ford has been trying to adapt to changing consumer preferences since the Great Recession. Americans have been trading giant SUVs for smaller cars. Young people have been purchasing fewer cars altogether, a phenomenon Mulally said might be reversed by cheaper cars.

But he also said he wasn’t sure what role Ford would play in the future of transportation in big cities. According to the Financial Times, Mulally said that adding more cars in urban environments is “not going to work” and that he was interested in developments in “personal mobility” and “quality of life.” Then he seemed to indicate Ford is interested in getting into transit, car sharing, or other models that don’t align with private car ownership.

“Maybe [our focus] will be on components; maybe it’ll be on pieces of the equipment,” Mulally said. “I don’t know.”
http://dc.streetsblog.org/2014/01/22...going-to-work/

LMich Jan 24, 2014 9:27 AM
The crazy thing about Detroit is that literally until earlier this week, service for the city's mass transit system had been cut and ridership had plummeted, accordingly along aside this trend of fewer households without a car. It's like, really, how can you mess that kind of trend up? And, yet they've managed to. So, you've basically just stranded every new potential captive rider until the expanded service was proposed for DDOT, last week, and even that's just pittance compard to what was lost.

You have these suburbanites complaining about how no one in the city has a job, but you've had people having no real regular access to suburban service jobs, and when they get them, getting fired because of the region's shoddy, unreliable mass transit network, and when you pose the question about properly funding transit, it always ends up being a stalemate. So, you want people to have jobs to improve the economy, but you won't support even a pittance to fund the crappy transit system as it is, let alone expand it, to get people to jobs they can keep? **head desk**

amor de cosmos Jan 25, 2014 11:05 PM
Quote:
From: Bob Sheth, Electric Forum, More from this Affiliate
Published January 24, 2014 07:35 AM
EV's only in city centers?

Should governments give serious consideration to electric car only city centres?

Over the last 12 months the subject of electric car only city centres has been discussed on numerous occasions although so far no government has been brave enough to push through any formal regulations. The authorities continue to encourage the use of electric vehicles within city centres, assisting with creating a network of recharging stations, but perhaps they could be doing more?

Only a few days ago we wrote about an expert in the field of electric vehicles who is suggesting that financial incentives should be focused towards commercial operations such as taxis and vehicle fleets. The idea is that taxis and vehicle fleets cover the most mileage per annum compared to your traditional motorist and therefore electric vehicles will be more visible under this particular strategy.

While there are pros and cons with regards to electric vehicles, with some experts suggesting additional power requirements have their own impact upon the environment, there is no doubt that diesel/gasoline vehicles do impact air quality. Indeed a number of reports have suggested that the likes of asthma and other similar ailments are encouraged by air pollution caused by vehicle emissions.
http://www.enn.com/sustainability/article/46937

JonathanGRR Jan 27, 2014 1:08 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by amor de cosmos (Post 6419464)
Ford CEO: More Cars in Cities “Not Going to Work”
http://dc.streetsblog.org/2014/01/22...going-to-work/
Well, Henry Ford apparently dabbled in creating interurban cars with internal combustion engines, so the move of Ford into other transportation fields wouldn't be too exotic.

Railway Review

M II A II R II K Jan 27, 2014 6:58 PM
Why trains may switch to natural gas instead of diesel

Read More: http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment...tead-of-diesel

Quote:
The diesel-burning locomotive, the workhorse of American railroads since World War II, will soon begin burning natural gas — a potentially historic shift that could cut fuel costs, reduce pollution and strengthen the advantage railroads hold over trucks in long-haul shipping.

Rail companies want to take advantage of booming natural gas production that has cut the price of the fuel by as much as 50 percent. So they are preparing to experiment with redesigned engines capable of burning both diesel and liquefied natural gas. Natural gas "may revolutionize the industry much like the transition from steam to diesel," said Jessica Taylor, a spokeswoman for General Electric's locomotive division, one of several companies that will test new natural gas equipment later this year.

Any changes are sure to happen slowly. A full-scale shift to natural gas would require expensive new infrastructure across the nation's 140,000-mile freight-rail system, including scores of fueling stations. The change has been made possible by hydraulic fracturing mining techniques, which have allowed U.S. drillers to tap into vast deposits of natural gas. The boom has created such abundance that prices dropped to an average of $3.73 per million British thermal units last year — less than one-third of their 2008 peak.

.....



http://www.csmonitor.com/var/ezflow_...e_full_380.jpg

Wizened Variations Jan 28, 2014 4:59 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by M II A II R II K (Post 6425087)
The big railroads that operate in the US- BNSF, UP, NS, CSX, CP, CN, and KCS, all have had a long experience with alternate fuels. The classic example involved converting from coal fired steam engines, to diesel.

Since WWII, railroads have experimented with oil (and coal?) fired turbine locomotives, and, oil powered steam engines. I am sure, too, that LNG has been discussed at great length, also.

The biggest advantage of diesel powered locomotives is that diesel is easy and safe to store, resists ignition during train accidents, has a higher burn temperature than LNG, and, uses very proven technology from the fuel tank through engine design.

However, IMO, LNG has a role in freight switching engines where LNG could be stored close to where it is used. Another possible use might be for locomotives that would run 24/7 that would provide electricity to jump start diesels. Maybe, too, urban commuter trains would be a good candidate as the pollution benefits and short distance traveled by commuter trains would make centralized LNG stations very practical.


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