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The New York Times has a story about what may be a more likely future of public transportation.
A small electric bus chugged along at a slow but steady seven miles per hour when a white van, entering the street from the side, cut in front of it. The bus slowed, as if its driver had hit the brakes, and got back up to speed after the van moved out of the way.
But this bus has no brake or accelerator pedal. It has no steering wheel, either. In fact, it doesn't have a driver — it operates using sensors and software, although for now, a person is stationed on board ready to hit a red "stop" button in an emergency.
At a time when self-driving cars are beginning to make progress — most notably with a trial program that the ride service Uber began in Pittsburgh this fall — the bus represents a different approach to technologically advanced transportation.
I say a more likely future because of the following:
A driverless car, after all, is still a car, carrying at best a few people. By transporting many passengers on what could be very flexible routes, driverless buses could help reduce the number of cars clogging city streets.
Few advantages accrue from driverless cars if the streets and highways are clogged with them. The passenger(s) can curse the vehicle up ahead instead of its idiot driver. My take: The idea has some promise, especially in places where people do not have long distances to travel.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Monday November 07 2016, @05:53PM
Or just take the bus or train. I'd like to see more light rail.
(Score: 2) by BK on Monday November 07 2016, @06:06PM
Seriously, where? Can I put it in your yard? Not the station -- I'll make sure that the bits that you could use are at least 3 miles away -- I mean the bits that make noise when you want to sleep and that obstruct your path to the nearest market so you have to travel 3+ miles because the tracks are between you and the market 100m away (yes, I just used miles and meters in the same run-on sentence.).
I want to see light rail with a station 100 yds (not meters dammit) from my front door that does non-stop to the place where I work 15 miles away. Door to door. I also want a direct line to the place(s) where I shop. Through your back yard. And at your expense of course. Is this reasonable?
...but you HAVE heard of me.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday November 07 2016, @06:16PM
have... have you ever lived next to a busy street?
I've lived in an apartment complex where one side of the building was light rail, and the other was a main artery road for the city.
Living there, I had to listen carefully to hear the noisiest thing the light rail did(ringing their bell approaching intersections), but would often be disrupted by that asshole who thinks a unmuffled motorcycle engine is their right, or cranked their damned bass up in their ugly pickup, or some stupid asshole driving a semi truck be impatient at a red light and use their giant air horn. (regular horns were not bad, comparable to the light rail).
The complaints you're making are entitled whining, and the GP would be entitled to fair compensation for the use of their land in your "evil" scenario because that's how imminent domain works outside of libertarian fantasy land.
(Score: 2) by BK on Monday November 07 2016, @06:36PM
yup. And with tracks fairly close. Actually it was an intersection/crossing. Train driver liked to blow the horn when approaching the crossing. I used to think think train horns were loud when I heard them from 2+ miles away... 300yds was a real treat. I guess that's heavy rail though?
And yup with fags [youtube.com] too on the roads.
The difference between tracks and the road is that I can generally make use of the road. The road system connects(ed) directly to my apartment. The roads go to just about anyplace I could want to go in a given day. While not non-stop, I generally don't have to change vehicles or wait outside my vehicle for 10-30 minutes part way to my destination when using roads. And that's a good thing too because nobody in my apartment building worked in the same place as I did.
...but you HAVE heard of me.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday November 07 2016, @07:06PM
Yeah, they're not adding new freight lines in cities though. It's an unfair comparison. Light rail is... well... light. Much less noise. I could hear the "heavy" trains about as well as the light rail, and those were, rather than right next door, 4 blocks away.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday November 07 2016, @10:18PM
Actually it was an intersection/crossing. Train driver liked to blow the horn when approaching the crossing.
That's likely because trains are mandated by federal law to blow horns at all public crossings, 24 hours per day.
Exceptions can generally only occur if a local municipality establishes a "quiet zone," which requires installation of a lot of extra safety measures. In that case, the train should only be sounding a horn in an emergency.
If trains regularly sounded their horns at that crossing, chances are that you were not living in a place recognized as a "quiet zone," either because your community didn't apply for one or because they refused to install the safety measures necessary for one (which can be costly).
(Score: 2, Funny) by khallow on Monday November 07 2016, @06:53PM
Can I put it in your yard?
We should do this for everyone who has ever disagreed with me about anything. The rumble of the light rail in your backyard would serve to gently remind you of your blasphemy of arguing with me about boll weevils on June 13, 1998 (you know who you are) and your long, hard trek back to sanctity as you meditate at the sacred altar of the Golden K and lay out burnt pizza offerings so that one day you might again be worthy of posting on the internet.
(Score: 2) by Sarasani on Tuesday November 08 2016, @03:40AM
That argument ("Can I put it in your yard?") could be used for a lot of things:
And so the list goes on.
I get your point, but we do need to look at the bigger picture when we're talking about proper city planning. Personally I don't think a lot of cities have been planned all that well. Some of the bad design decisions may be attributed to the "car is king" concept that societies have entertained for far too long [theguardian.com].
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Monday November 07 2016, @07:04PM
Light rail works, when cities have grown up around it and are relatively dense. If either of those is not true, light rail is a pipe dream.
I say this as someone living in Switzerland: We have "light rail" (we call them trams) in most of our larger cities. It works, it's great. But our cities meet both of the conditions above.
I've also lived in the US, and the cities there are far too sprawling. You would spend a fortune putting in enough tracks and enough stations to make any sense. Or you wind up with light rail only in the innermost city, meaning people have to drive their cars to "park-and-ride" stations, and then change - basically, the worst of both worlds.
On top of that, US cities did not grow up around the light rail lines. Here, the lines have existed for (in some cases) centuries. Guess where all the businesses are, that need to be near a line? In a city without trams, that will not be the case. You'll put the lines "somewhere", and then have to hope that the city adjusts over the course of years or decades. Or, you'll do like Edinburgh, put in too few lines (costing a fortune), in order to give clueless progressives crowing rights: "We have light rail! It's useless! We nearly bankrupted ourselves! Aren't we great!".
N.B. For those who don't know, Edinburgh installed a single line from the airport to Waverly [theguardian.com]. It parallels a long-standing bus line. The bus line still exists, runs more frequently, and is both cheaper and faster. Edinburgh is also about $1 billion poorer. This experience is utterly typical of cities that want to add light rail to their infrastructure. Phoenix, Arizona is another example. [coyoteblog.com]
tl;dr: Unless you are planning a new city, just stop with the light rail stuff. Buses are better: they are more flexible, and they are a hell of a lot cheaper.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Monday November 07 2016, @09:08PM
Except they get stuck in the same traffic that bedevils regular car travel. HOV lanes don't help.
I think a combination of what Chicago did with the 'L' and what Montreal did with its subway would work pretty well. The elevated part Chicago did avoids the very expensive excavation and right-of-way issues with subways and new light rail lines. The subway cars on tires part that Montreal did avoids the noise and wear and tear on rails that railcars incur. Personally, I favor maglevs because I love the smooth, silent ride, but then you get the wags singing out, "Monorail!" from that stupid Simpsons episode, as if that were an authority on that form of transportation...
That's for longer distances. Shorter distances are served pretty well by protected bike lanes. Extremely cheap to implement, and have so many benefits.
Many people assert that such options wouldn't work in American cities, but they worked before. The car companies worked hard to buy up the (then) private transit companies and shut them down so that people would have to buy cars; The Twin Cities are one famous case of that.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 08 2016, @12:12AM
Thanks for the advice, Portland, OR will tear down it's very successful light rail program because the city isn't dense enough for europeans to think it would work.
Granted, the Phoneixes, Dallases, and Tampas of the country would have problems, but that's more due to car culture than anything.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 08 2016, @05:13PM
Light rail works, when cities have grown up around it and are relatively dense. If either of those is not true, light rail is a pipe dream.
It's a good thing that London is such a young city that could grow after the invention of subways. Imagine how bad the mass transit would be there if it had been founded thousands of years ago. And New York. And Tokyo. And...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 08 2016, @08:35PM
subway is underground light rail (and shitty sandwich).