gdstark

Try to imagine the transportation system that would be the safest and most conducive to bicycles. No hitting car doors. DOUBLE the bike lane real estate and no chance of cars straying into it. No breathing exhaust fumes. And riding on the freeway would not only be allowed, but owned as much by bicycles as automobiles. Can you imagine such a system? I think it would look like this...


It might seem fantastical, but so did the automobile to our great grandfathers. Feedback?

gary

zandoval 

I have always wondered if I could control my self from all out suicide if I were on one of those big city fly ways on my bike with no traffic...

turbo1889

Rail is most certainly in the long run better then surface roads.

However, as to bike friendly ---- Ever tried to cross a wet parallel rail on a bike in traffic? Cover the roads with rails? Sooner or later you have to cross them and sooner or later they are going to be wet and slick and there is no way its going to all be perpendicular crossings only.

Like the idea, just pointing out the main flaw I see as far as "bike friendly".

no1mad 

Watched the vid, now here's my comments.

- Fully autonomous system that knows where every other vehicle is at. Sounds good, except that a) your efficiency will be marred by pedestrians and other unpredictable lifeforms, and b) even if you allow for it, it will cause the system to bog down a bit.

- I take it you don't ride a bicycle on the streets where you have to cross rail road tracks? RR are dangerous- and I do NOT want every block on every street crossing them. Your system would have to be slightly elevated by design (as it just floats on top of the existing road surface), which in turn also presents a tripping hazard for people with bad eyes (like me) or those with mobility issues that prefer to walk.

- How tight a turning radius does your contraption have? Not sure you'd have the space to change direction in some of the narrower, 2 lane streets...

- Your suggestion that people could use their personal auto for recreational trips... how are they supposed to get from their homes to beyond your "network" without causing disruption?

B. Carfree

I think we will move towards what is described in the video, but not via a top-down command. Look at the car-share programs in all their variety that are starting to have enough impact that several cities are attempting to rein them in. The move away from ownership towards sharing is definitely afoot without anyone forcing it upon anyone else.

I was disappointed that he made an unfair comparison to dis the ICE. Electric engine efficiency was not considered from the same starting point as ICE's were. He neglected to mention the inefficiencies of the production and storage of the electrical power, which knocks down their efficiency advantage a good deal.

I also don't think our future pod-cars will run on rails, even if they are battery-free. It would be easier and cheaper to run them off an overhead line. I also suspect they will have some battery storage so that the lines needn't run to every point.

Now we just need to have all the old car addicts die off so the young non-driving people can get on with it. (I'm kidding, of course, but I do think it is going to take a long while to free our society of cars.)

SBinNYC

This is a totally impractical proposal that ignores the fundamental congestion problem.

A seated person takes up 4 sq ft of space. A car takes up 120 sq ft. This makes its spatial efficiency 3.3%. The pods might bring this up to 7%. That's not much of an incremental improvement. By contrast most public transit vehicles allot 8 sq ft per person or less with standing. That's a spatial efficiency of at least 50%.

The point is that any proposal that is based on personal transportation will be subject to the same congestion problems that today exist for cars. They are non-starters. There simply is not enough space for everyone to travel in his own personal limousine, regardless of how it's powered or controlled.

gdstark

If you cross at an angle, rails are a problem. So don't do that. Cross at intersections at 90 degrees to rail, with appropriate ramping to rail to smooth out the bump.

gdstark

So are you saying that an automated system would hit more bikes? Or less?

On crossing rails, yes, there would be more crossings. But you'd design them to be at 90 degrees and you'd ramp up to the rail accordingly.

As tight as required to make a 90 degree turn down a street.

Any personal vehicles would be left in a parking garage with access beyond the system. This is less convenient than the car being in your garage but the idea is that you would rarely use it, certainly not for day to day travel in town.

gdstark

I don't understand your point about electric engine efficiencies. Can you clarify?

As for running vehicles overhead, this is just not cost effective. Also people don't want cars running above for aesthetic reasons. That idea has been around for decades and had went nowhere. The difference here is that we now have the AI abilities being developed with the DARPA challenges and the google cars, which means grade separation is no longer necessary.

Talking people into giving up their cars is definitely a challenge. Look at it this way. Suppose not doing so means the extinction (as a hypothetical example) of the Monarch butterfly. Sure, you can probably get through the day without Monarch butterflies, but is that really the choice you want to make? What value do we as a society put on an individual species? On the environment? My point is that the environment does matter and what we're doing now is NOT addressing the problem. This proposal is designed to get you from point A to point B using the LEAST amount of energy. And that translates to the least impact on climate change and the environment.

gdstark

To the contrary, it COMPLETELY addresses the issue of congestion. It's pretty much all of the other proposals that do not address congestion. You discuss spatial efficiency, but that misses the real inefficiency, that of human drivers. If transportation was automated, you wouldn't be stopping at intersections. And you wouldn't need to pass anyone. And you wouldn't have rubbernecking at accidents. In fact you wouldn't have accidents (compared to human drivers). If humans were perfect drivers, we wouldn't have congestion today. That's what automation is all about...creating the perfect driver and mass producing it.

gcottay

Since the rails would be laid on top of existing pavement crossing them on a bike would be a major problem.

gdstark

Only true if you don't install a ramp.

spivonious

We need to lock cars out of downtown areas and upgrade public transit to be a viable option. Having traveled in Europe, where one can get pretty much anywhere using trains and buses, the situation here is horrible.

My wife and I went into Philly on New Year's Day for the Mummer's Parade. Being younger and open to alternative transportation, we said "hey, why drive when we can take the train?". So we first looked at Amtrak. The Lancaster station is about 2 miles from our house and it would take us directly into center city. It was a bit expensive at $60 roundtrip, but the convenience would be worth it. Unfortunately, after checking the schedule, we could get home on the 6:45 train or the 9:45 train. The Mummer's show that evening ended at 8, so we'd be stuck with nothing to do on a cold night for almost 2 hours, or missing half the show in order to catch the earlier train.

Okay, so Amtrak was out. What about driving to a commuter train? Okay, let's see...we can drive an hour and then pay $20 round trip to take an hour SEPTA ride into the city. Trains leave every hour, so we won't be hanging around too long waiting to come home.

That's what we ended up doing, and I'm really not sure it was better than just driving in. It cost about the same, it took a bit over two hours instead of 90 minutes, and still ended up forcing us to leave the show early to catch the train.

Until public transit becomes a better option than driving, cars will rule the roads.

gdstark

Exactly. And we'll continue to have this...



And this...



All avoidable with a proper application of technology.

SBinNYC

Let's look at automation's "perfect driver" in an imperfect world.

Any automatic system is designed to be failsafe in case of a catastrophic failure. Suppose my automation controlled pod suffers a catastrophic failure without warning, there must be a guarantee that the following car will not crash into me. The only way to prevent the follower from hitting me is if he maintains a safe distance (within his braking range) from me.

Let's assume cruising speed of 20 mph (30 ft/sec). The braking rate for rail transportation is typically 3 mph/sec. So, a follower travelling at 30 mph will stop in 10 sec and 150 ft after applying the brakes. Moreover, the pod is assumed to have a 15 ft length, which brings the front-to-front distance to 165 ft. Your automation system is communications based, it has to be failsafe in case there's a communications failure. Let's assume a 1 second time out to detect a communications failure. This communications failure can occur on both the my pod and the follower, so 2 seconds worth of cruising distance must be added between pods. This brings the failsafe distance between pods to 225 ft. A 30% allowance is usually made for poor braking performance due to such factors as bad brakes or leaves on the rails, etc. This brings the distance between pods up to 293 ft.

Let's assume a 200' distance to figure out how many pods per hour an automated system will provide. The pods are travelling at 20 mph for 1 hour. This means they will cover a distance of 20 x 5280 feet in 1 hour. The distance between pods is 200 ft. This means there will be 528 pods in that distance. Alternatively, at any given point 528 pods will pass in an hour's time.

That 528/hr figure will not eliminate congestion, it will cause it. The failsafe paradigm is true for all vehicles. The way to counter it is to put more people in each vehicle. Consider heavy rail public transit. It's got 600 seated passengers in a 600 ft. long train. It's subject to the same braking rate. The distance between heavy rail trains would be 1100 ft with that 30% braking margin. That comes to 96 trains/hr. Each train holds 600 seated passengers for a total of 57,600 people/hr.

That's more than a 100 fold difference between individual pods and public transit. Spatial efficiency does matter, when automation's real world constraints are considered.

turbo1889

Yes, when crossed perpendicularly at a 90-degree angle to the rail its not an issue and a perfectly acceptable situation.

HOWEVER, if you start covering the existing roads in rails and especially creating pull out spots for parking/loading/un-loading your going to create a huge number of diagonal rail crossings some of which are at such an acute angle that they cannot be crossed perpendicularly by bikes with all but the most drastic of maneuvers. IN YOUR VIDEO I SAW MULTIPLE EXAMPLES OF MANY DIAGONAL CROSSINGS CREATED BY YOUR PROPOSITION IN YOUR OWN VIDEO !!!

Just like many bike side-path proponents you are ignoring the crossing danger situations and only focusing on improvements in parallel travel safety which is not where the majority of collisions occur but rather at intersection/crossing points.

Since pictures are reportably worth thousands of words each I did some google searches for images showing sharply angled crossing situations:






IN ORDER OF WORST ONES WITH THE MOST ACUTE DIAGONAL CROSSING ANGLES ON TOP:









Yes, I totally and completely understand that the correct way to handle this kind of situation is to do an "S-swerve" crossing maneuver like this:



And a select few rare as hens-teeth bike lane and path crossings actually are bubbled out to the side to accommodate this kind of maneuver providing other cyclists around you realize what your doing and don't try to cut you off when you pull to the side to attack the rail crossing at the correct perpendicular 90-degree crossing angle (a 50/50 even money flip a coin proposition in my experience, even a good chance one of them will try to pass you when you slow and turn to the side to prep for the maneuver and even fall into you when the rail gets them). Situations like this one:



Cyclist in the yellow jersey jacket is prepping for the correct crossing maneuver using the provided bubble out to the side, good thing she is the last one otherwise another cyclist would probably try to pass her and cut her off and maybe even fall into her when they hit the rails diagonally. Looks like the cyclist in the blue jersey just completed the correct crossing maneuver. Red jersey recumbent delta trike cyclist is taking the rails at an angle and being a recumbent delta trike is probably fine to do so but there is still a chance of the single front wheel catching and skidding him to the right side. He may even have just cut off the cyclist in the yellow jersey just passing her when she pulled to the side to prep for a proper crossing maneuver right before the shutter clicked on the camera taking the shot as a recumbent on the flat and especially going straight through and not slowing and prepping for a proper crossing maneuver he is probably moving significantly faster.

That angle crossing isn't that bad either, nothing like the top picture worst most acute angle crossing picture I posted, that one is a killer and you would have to practically swerve sideways in the middle of the road to cross that one properly perpendicularly at a 90-degree angle.

Here is a google road view link to one crossing miles to the north of me that I sometimes have to deal with personally:

https://goo.gl/maps/UEJRK

Crossing that one isn't that bad one direction since you can cross it slowly and correctly on the shoulder edge out of the main flow of traffic an all is well, unfortunately the shoulder edge is torn up with no ramping of the rails on the other side going the other direction so you have to cross it doing the S-swerve in the middle of the main right traffic lane and get people honking at you and hollering at you and almost hitting you.

JUST SAYING YOUR GOING TO DO THE CROSSING CORRECTLY IS NOT SUFFICIENT, ESPECIALLY WHEN YOUR OWN PROMOTIONAL VIDEO CLEARLY SHOWS MULTIPLE EXAMPLES OF DIAGONAL CROSSING SITUATIONS BEING CREATED !!!

johnnymoses

the efficiency of electric motors is mostly likely offset by the potential required source of fossil fuels.

gdstark

The flaw in the logic is assuming that individualized vehicles (car-sized) have the same braking rate as heavy rail. There's no engineering reason preventing individualized vehicles from stopping just as fast as we want them to, most likely similar to an automobile's braking rate. The difference is that, unlike human drivers, an automated system knows exactly how much braking force to apply. And unlike automobiles, vehicles would not spin out of control. And each vehicle would have awareness of every other vehicle in the system. If one vehicle sees a child on the street, every vehicle sees the child. And nobody would speed or drive drunk. And the list of advantages goes on and on.

genec

Remove the tracks and go to autonomous self driving cars... this IS the prediction of the future... and we are moving toward that prediction with self parking cars, smart cruise control and collision avoidance systems in cars... in maybe 20 years or so, we won't need the tracks and will have a system that is just as predictable.

johnnymoses

Good points and what about dead end streets where people live and require that "door to door" service? Will these rail cars have a 'reverse' capability?

genec

Really? There are so many ways to generate electricity... from solar to wind to nuclear that don't involve dead dinos.

turbo1889

Oh, yah, I realize that your proposition is intended to replace cars. However, even you admit to the intermediate stage where both would exist.

Doing this as the proper way to make such a crossing:



On the open road with cars is also known as a "suicide swerve" if a car behind you rams on the gas and tries to pass you when you pull to the right to line yourself up to cross perpendicularly to the rails gliding across the lane to its middle to left side while doing so. Experienced cyclists are smart enough to realized this danger and position themselves to prevent it but its a death trap for what in my personal opinion are the majority of cyclists who don't think that far ahead and realize that when they pull to the right to line up for the crossing a car behind them (or even another cyclist) will try to pass them suddenly and unexpectedly right when they are gliding across the lane at the angle necessary to make the crossing ---- CRUNCH !!! Cyclist down !!!

turbo1889

Let's leave the nuclear (unless someone cracks the fusion secret) out of it as much as possible, dead burned dino crud in the air or radioactive poisoning that lasts for millions of years and causes permanent global genetic degradation in all species? If I must choose between the two I'll take the dead dino crud which eventually nature cleans up which is a much shorter eventuality then the millions of years of radioactivity.

I understand that there are some applications where nuclear power is the only thing capable of doing the job, deep space probes being one of them (once you get far enough out beyond the outer planets that solar cells don't work any more) but short of those super critical situations conventional dirty fission nuclear power is way worse then burning dead dino crud.

johnnymoses

Please clarify on how and why you would not be stopping at an intersection, would rail cars traveling in different directions (say for example directly perpendicular to one another while approaching an intersection) be at different height elevations so that they can both pass freely through the intersection or will there be some sort of master computer conductor that monitors and manages all travel so that no rail cars are in the same intersection at the same time?

gdstark

Trains tend to travel different routes than automobiles because they are completely separate systems, as clearly seen in your photos. The vehicles in this proposal would instead travel along the SAME roads as bicycles, so you would not tend to have the diagonal crossings. You would instead be riding your bike in parallel with the vehicles. That's the difference. As for my promotional video showing diagonal crossings, what time spot in the video? Keep in mind that much of the video's graphics are placeholders. I'm hoping to replace soon with rendered graphics that better represent the system.