CFB51 College Football Fan Community
The Power Five => Big Ten => Topic started by: Cincydawg on March 12, 2021, 12:04:21 PM
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It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future ....
I've mentioned before autonomous vehicles and EVs. I don't know if Level 4 is inside a decade or not, it might be more like 2035. If trucks get auto, a lot of jobs will go missing.
Longer term, automation will increasingly replace jobs for less well trained workers and that will be an issue.
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A CFB forum with no CFB threads is one that I never would have expected, just a few short years ago. :d030:
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Well we can always go back to the "When I was a Kid" Thread
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I wonder how business will transition in having people on site or not.
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A CFB forum with no CFB threads is one that I never would have expected, just a few short years ago. :d030:
clearly you've never been to the bigxii board.
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clearly you've never been to the bigxii board.
Hey!
A thread about a football game is #2 on the list down there.
How far do you have to go on this here B1G board to find a thread about football?
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Hey!
A thread about a football game is #2 on the list down there.
How far do you have to go on this here B1G board to find a thread about football?
I predict that by this time next year it will be business as usual as far as restaurants, bars, movie theaters and small businesses
There might be more working from home but overall I dont think this virus will cause any permanent changes
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When I posted a comment about CFB last week, I had to go back about five to ten pages in order to find a thread to post it in.
Strange times.
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When I posted a comment about CFB last week, I had to go back about five to ten pages in order to find a thread to post it in.
Strange times.
well BB what can I say
folks are just more interested in the pandemic and most anything else to take our minds off it
football will rear its head soon enough and hopefully will be once again the most important thing in our posting lives
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I am ashamed to have contributed to nonfootball talk, seriously.
I had a crab cake for lunch though.
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well BB what can I say
folks are just more interested in the pandemic and most anything else to take our minds off it
football will rear its head soon enough and hopefully will be once again the most important thing in our posting lives
But there are actual CFB games this spring. Not just spring exhibition games either, actual CFB games that count in the books.
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Longer term, automation will increasingly replace jobs for less well trained workers and that will be an issue.
I work in heavy industry - big trucks, cranes, noisy machinery, welding, mining, structures, ship-fitting, etc - and one thing that's very apparent, if not worrisome, is how hands-on mechanical aptitude will be thoroughly erroded once the 50s/60s are no longer on the job.
Take the construction and maintenance of a long-haul, pressured piping system for instance. Operations of all mechanical equipment is primarily operated by automation: charging pumps, valves, strainers, purifiers, heaters/chillers. The 20s/30s can naturally interpret the entire system through automation screens. If a pump goes offline it's not hard for them to make up for it by finding other pumps to bring online and orient flow by automation screens.
What worries me is when specific equipment requires onsite, hands-on repair. You're hard pressed to find anybody under 40 with natural instincts for taking apart, diagnosing for repair, and reassembling pumps, valves, etc. When it comes to my work I'm very thankful for my coworkers in their 50s/60s (many are Navy vets) who can be left to the greasier, hands-on side of the job.
Goes to show you how a generation (Millenial & Z) of playing video games and bitching about Star Wars (while out in the garage Dad and Grandpa (X & Boomer) fixed the lawnmower motor themselves) is quite the foreshadowing to what can be expected of differing technical aptitudes going forward.
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The great part about spring football is how they're basically hiding it so no one can watch it. Thanks, ESPN!
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It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future ....
I've mentioned before autonomous vehicles and EVs. I don't know if Level 4 is inside a decade or not, it might be more like 2035. If trucks get auto, a lot of jobs will go missing.
Longer term, automation will increasingly replace jobs for less well trained workers and that will be an issue.
This is 100% inevitable, on a large scale. That's why the idea of UBI is a thing. It's not about just giving away free money, it's addressing the certainty of this happening in the coming years.
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Yeah, I suspect we'll need UBI is we don't discover a bunch of jobs for semi-skilled workers.
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This list marks 20 years since we began compiling an annual selection of the year’s most important technologies. Some, such as mRNA vaccines, are already changing our lives, while others are still a few years off. Below, you’ll find a brief description along with a link to a feature article that probes each technology in detail. We hope you’ll enjoy and explore—taken together, we believe this list represents a glimpse into our collective future.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/02/24/1014369/10-breakthrough-technologies-2021/ (https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/02/24/1014369/10-breakthrough-technologies-2021/)
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I work in heavy industry - big trucks, cranes, noisy machinery, welding, mining, structures, ship-fitting, etc - and one thing that's very apparent, if not worrisome, is how hands-on mechanical aptitude will be thoroughly erroded once the 50s/60s are no longer on the job.
Take the construction and maintenance of a long-haul, pressured piping system for instance. Operations of all mechanical equipment is primarily operated by automation: charging pumps, valves, strainers, purifiers, heaters/chillers. The 20s/30s can naturally interpret the entire system through automation screens. If a pump goes offline it's not hard for them to make up for it by finding other pumps to bring online and orient flow by automation screens.
What worries me is when specific equipment requires onsite, hands-on repair. You're hard pressed to find anybody under 40 with natural instincts for taking apart, diagnosing for repair, and reassembling pumps, valves, etc. When it comes to my work I'm very thankful for my coworkers in their 50s/60s (many are Navy vets) who can be left to the greasier, hands-on side of the job.
Goes to show you how a generation (Millenial & Z) of playing video games and bitching about Star Wars (while out in the garage Dad and Grandpa (X & Boomer) fixed the lawnmower motor themselves) is quite the foreshadowing to what can be expected of differing technical aptitudes going forward.
So, I wonder if there's something more beyond the video game/lawnmower dynamic. Maybe we have fewer tinkerers, but I wonder if we're shifting them around differently. A few random guesses.
-More tinkerers are being directed toward engineering schools, which leads to a white collar-ization of the talent pool
-Many things became more complicated, so fixing say a car without messing something else up because a trickier (my dad could rebuild an engine as a teen. He cannon build the onboard computer system in my old 2003 Toyota). Thus, you have a higher barrier of entry early on.
-Mechanical goods grew cheaper, so a lawnmower is less often fixed because you NEED to do it, so only a really dedicated tinkerer makes the effort
-The emphasis on college in the education system and general disinterest in funding the endeavor led to a stigmatization of vocational education, which helps train those instincts and direct kids to interest in them
-You mentioned Navy vets, and I think as the military has become more automated and college became more a bridge from 18 to 22, you narrow a key path to those skills. The military has tons of machines. They have lots of people they need to find something to do with (a person I met basically said her time in the army taught her that the military is just gonna keep trying to put you to some use). More people used to go into service (esp from less privileged backgrounds). That meant more people in position to be shoved into those roles.
-I also wonder about market forces. Are there more of those repair roles, or less. If it's less, is the older generation holding onto roles for longer? I used to work at a business with a big piece of machinery that was going off line. A huge part of the operators' job was diagnosing and swapping out pieces on the fly. But we phased that machinery out, and those guys are in a real tight spot job-wise.
It's an interesting spot. I have family that was kinda in that cadre and just retired.
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The great part about spring football is how they're basically hiding it so no one can watch it. Thanks, ESPN!
They are hiding it on free livestreams that anyone can watch. Diabolical.
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I don't think fully autonomous vehicles will occur in the next decade.
By "fully autonomous" I mean fully autonomous, i.e. Level 5 autonomy with no human interaction. I could see that by 2040.
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I don't think fully autonomous vehicles will occur in the next decade.
By "fully autonomous" I mean fully autonomous, i.e. Level 5 autonomy with no human interaction. I could see that by 2040.
All fun and games until a computer glitch accelerates you into oncoming traffic.
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Exactly that's what I always thought,if the 3 credit bureaus can be hacked I'd imagine so can a car's computer
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So, I wonder if there's something more beyond the video game/lawnmower dynamic. Maybe we have fewer tinkerers, but I wonder if we're shifting them around differently. A few random guesses.
-More tinkerers are being directed toward engineering schools, which leads to a white collar-ization of the talent pool
-Many things became more complicated, so fixing say a car without messing something else up because a trickier (my dad could rebuild an engine as a teen. He cannon build the onboard computer system in my old 2003 Toyota). Thus, you have a higher barrier of entry early on.
-Mechanical goods grew cheaper, so a lawnmower is less often fixed because you NEED to do it, so only a really dedicated tinkerer makes the effort
-The emphasis on college in the education system and general disinterest in funding the endeavor led to a stigmatization of vocational education, which helps train those instincts and direct kids to interest in them
-You mentioned Navy vets, and I think as the military has become more automated and college became more a bridge from 18 to 22, you narrow a key path to those skills. The military has tons of machines. They have lots of people they need to find something to do with (a person I met basically said her time in the army taught her that the military is just gonna keep trying to put you to some use). More people used to go into service (esp from less privileged backgrounds). That meant more people in position to be shoved into those roles.
-I also wonder about market forces. Are there more of those repair roles, or less. If it's less, is the older generation holding onto roles for longer? I used to work at a business with a big piece of machinery that was going off line. A huge part of the operators' job was diagnosing and swapping out pieces on the fly. But we phased that machinery out, and those guys are in a real tight spot job-wise.
It's an interesting spot. I have family that was kinda in that cadre and just retired.
Another thing vis-a-vis auto repair:
When I was a kid and owned early 80's cars, if something was wrong you had to tinker with it and assess the symptoms to figure out what the problem was, then figure out what you needed to do to fix it.
Actually, backing up a bit, you had to first notice that something was wrong.
Ok, now moving to today:
I have a OBDII scanner that connects to my phone. I don't need to notice when something is wrong because a check engine light comes on to let me know. Then I plug in my scanner and my phone tells me which part to replace, it even links up to Amazon so I can order it and if I don't know how to do that repair, I go to YouTube and find a quick tutorial.
In this whole process I never really need any serious mechanical knowledge. Step-by-step directions are provided, all I have to do is follow them.
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All fun and games until a computer glitch accelerates you into oncoming traffic.
I wonder how often a computer glitch would cause an accident as opposed to human error though.
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I don't think fully autonomous vehicles will occur in the next decade.
By "fully autonomous" I mean fully autonomous, i.e. Level 5 autonomy with no human interaction. I could see that by 2040.
L5 by 2040 sounds about right to me.
I was wondering about fully autonomous construction. Can you see building a building entirely with "3D printers" and robots?
2050?
Whatever happens will surprise us.
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I wonder how often a computer glitch would cause an accident as opposed to human error though.
Less frequently, but much worse accidents.
A human will usually try to brake as he is approaching a collision. A computer might hit the gas.
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We have pretty complex code running lots of things today. I don't see evidence to frequent massive errors.
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In San Diego a computer glitch set off their entire 4th of July fireworks show all at once.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkWbW_8aA9g
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What will football look like in 2050??
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I wonder how often a computer glitch would cause an accident as opposed to human error though.
There was an interesting podcast I listed to which started with the question of if automated cars will have steering wheels.
It kind of tied together two incidents. With one, a pilot was letting the computer control a plane. Some instrument iced over. It would've been fine, but he freaked out, took control, crashed. The other talked about elevators. When the modern ones came around, people didn't trust them. No operator. Even though people got hurt by operator error somewhat often and it's not like elevators regularly launch folks up and down buildings.
Granted, cars are dealing with much more complex spacial problems. The other issue is the stop and start nature of things. We don't step into traffic because we often know the person won't stop. If we have super safe cars, we won't have that. So you might end up with the equivalent of a kid putting his foot out to hold an elevator door open, but for traffic.
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I wonder how often a computer glitch would cause an accident as opposed to human error though.
The issue is that it's going to have be 100x+ better than humans before we trust it.
Because remember, 90% of people [think they] are above-average drivers.
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The issue is that it's going to have be 100x+ better than humans before we trust it.
Because remember, 90% of people [think they] are above-average drivers.
I'm a proud 10 percenter, and I truly hope that I'm right and not above average.
I'm guessing it'll be gradual. Like more people will have the high end lane assist and cruise and get used to that. Then they'll experiment with the automation features, and at some point just give themselves over to it. Granted, the tech has some ground to make up.
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So this is what our league landed:
- #1: Michigan, Illinois
- #2: Iowa, Ohio State
- #4: Purdue
- #9: Wisconsin
- #10: Maryland, Rutgers
- #11: Michigan State (play-in)
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I'm a proud 10 percenter, and I truly hope that I'm right and not above average.
I'm guessing it'll be gradual. Like more people will have the high end lane assist and cruise and get used to that. Then they'll experiment with the automation features, and at some point just give themselves over to it. Granted, the tech has some ground to make up.
Eh. Once you get too many lawsuits from those who "give themselves over" and get hurt, you'll have issues.
This is one of those all or nothing things...
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Really looking forward to this Michigan State’s tournament game Vs UCLA this Thursday.
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We could do 100% automated cars right now, and they're VASTLY safer than human drivers. Today. Right now.
But since there's no one to blame when the inevitable injury/death occurs, people don't want it.
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It's truly bizarre.
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We could do 100% automated cars right now, and they're VASTLY safer than human drivers. Today. Right now.
But since there's no one to blame when the inevitable injury/death occurs, people don't want it.
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It's truly bizarre.
Technologically, we really can't. The sensor tech and the processing power exists, but it's still in it's infancy and not ready to scale.
Waymo is probably the best of the best for full autonomy right now, and the tech and price point is astronomical, and they've still to my knowledge only shown success in a "walled garden" scenario where everything is meticulously mapped.
Tesla is the best of the semi-autonomous group, but it's not ready for every situation. I hear it's great on the freeway. I'm not sure if they've even turned it on for surface streets yet? It's still in the ADAS stage, not full autonomy.
The tech isn't ready... Or affordable... It's going to take a while.
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We could put current tech out tomorrow and there would be tens of thousands of fewer auto deaths in the coming year.
btw, I meant this, not the actual formality of a rollout and transfer over, etc. The idea could happen now.
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Until we get over the lack of a culprit in accidents, it won't be widespread anytime soon.
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We could put current tech out tomorrow and there would be tens of thousands of fewer auto deaths in the coming year.
btw, I meant this, not the actual formality of a rollout and transfer over, etc. The idea could happen now.
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Until we get over the lack of a culprit in accidents, it won't be widespread anytime soon.
Current tech?
Yeah, current tech on the highways is pretty good. I hear Tesla Autopilot and GM Super Cruise are both quite solid, and I think they're safer than current drivers.
Current tech does *NOT* allow us to remove the steering wheel from a car, it requires driver monitoring. Super Cruise is actually really smart about that in that it will monitor the driver's eyes to make sure they're paying attention--otherwise it will disable the vehicle. Tesla is not so much--you can fall asleep in a Tesla and it'll just keep driving.
Current tech on actual surface streets is not capable in its reasonable-cost versions (Tesla/GM), and is ridiculously expensive in its actual safe and capable versions (Waymo and others).
And BTW even current tech is currently only available at luxury vehicle pricing... The cost adder to a car is not insignificant.
So you say "we" "could" do something... Completely ignore technology limitations and cost, and sure, we can do anything.
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Jesus.
Nevermind.
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I've driven a CT6 with Super Cruise, it's impressive, you still have to keep your eyes on the road, and it's only useful for highways.
The topic here is Level 5 autonomous, we're not anywhere near that today tech wise. Maybe in 10-15 years.
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I've driven a CT6 with Super Cruise, it's impressive, you still have to keep your eyes on the road, and it's only useful for highways.
The topic here is Level 5 autonomous, we're not anywhere near that today tech wise. Maybe in 10-15 years.
so is the reason we take the fun in driving away from humans based on safety
and if so why not planes and trains
why not doctors in the operating room
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I mean look at the GPS navigation systems? If that isn't meticulously updated, it tries to send you down exit ramps that no longer exist, through construction closures, sometimes it thinks that there is a road where one isn't, and on and on and on.
Are people still paying attention? Will they be held accountable if they strike a pedestrian? Or a construction worker? Or a traffic cop?
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I mean look at the GPS navigation systems? If that isn't meticulously updated, it tries to send you down exit ramps that no longer exist, through construction closures, sometimes it thinks that there is a road where one isn't, and on and on and on.
Are people still paying attention? Will they be held accountable if they strike a pedestrian? Or a construction worker? Or a traffic cop?
I think we should go back to riding horses
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Why are we allergic to high-speed rail?
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It's very expensive to build, expensive to operate, and not very useful over longer distances. The French TGV operates only with massive subsidies, and government paid to build it. We also in the US lack in intracity infrastructure to make it more attractive in most cases. Uber is changing that.
I think autonomous EVs is going to make HSR obsolete, we may be glad we didn't build it.
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California isn't
got some money, just never built it
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so is the reason we take the fun in driving away from humans based on safety
and if so why not planes and trains
why not doctors in the operating room
With planes, we're doing so, more and more. I believe we're at the point where autopilot can handle pretty much takeoff-to-landing operations. Right now the main job of the pilot is to make sure the autopilot is ok lol...
Why are we allergic to high-speed rail?
Economics.
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California wasn't a great guinea pig for it, due to their building requirements concerning earthquakes. Maybe it's a case study in what's the most expensive possible outcome could be.
Regional loops with connections between each would be nice.
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Even our little Cessna 172 had a nice autopilot. You could set course using a VOR signal, a radio signal from a source, and altitude, and let'er rip.
One guy did this a while back and fell asleep and woke up out over the Gulf of Mexico without enough fuel to make land (not in our plane).
One company is working on electric taxiing, they use a small generator to provide the electricity and only fire up the jet engines when nearly ready to take off.
Jet engines are not very efficient at low speed.
Close to 90% of the thrust comes from uncombusted air in the engines. The combustion is used to drive the "propellers", the turbine, that sucks outside air in and squirts it out the back. Turbofan engines versus earlier turbojet engines, high bypass ratios.
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California wasn't a great guinea pig for it, due to their building requirements concerning earthquakes. Maybe it's a case study in what's the most expensive possible outcome could be.
Regional loops with connections between each would be nice.
The only place it can work is the ACELA corridor in the NE US. This is known. The lines are terribly expensive even without earthquakes, see France.
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An East Coast line could be cool. One from Boston down to DC, or whatever.
Of course there are multiple AmTrak lines already running similar routes.
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I think we should go back to riding horses
Horses genetically uplifted to be autonomous, with speeds topping out at 88 miles per hour?
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ACELA runs now at speeds up to 110 mph, and it's popular and makes money. Making it into a HSR line would be cost prohibitive, but they are looking at making some incremental improvements. High speed is not that needed because distances are fairly short.
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I mean look at the GPS navigation systems? If that isn't meticulously updated, it tries to send you down exit ramps that no longer exist, through construction closures, sometimes it thinks that there is a road where one isn't, and on and on and on.
Are people still paying attention? Will they be held accountable if they strike a pedestrian? Or a construction worker? Or a traffic cop?
Ehhh, those GPS systems are really old tech at this point. My phone does a better job navigating around a most of that.
At some point, mapping and equipment in the car will be able to tell a lot about the surroundings. I’ve driven in cars that, when on cruise control, will slow because of a car several hundred feet away. They can read lane line for miles and miles. I assume at some point that will be able to spot and person and will drive safer than most people.
(It’s not gonna hit a tipping point until the tech is so good that the risk is low enough that the number of lawsuits is something they can withstand. Or they’ll leave just enough user control that blame can be put on the driver)
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Eh. Once you get too many lawsuits from those who "give themselves over" and get hurt, you'll have issues.
This is one of those all or nothing things...
Yeah, you’ll have to hit the point where the system is good enough you’re actually driving down fatalities. And once that number is small enough, they’ll just take it.
until then, leave enough driver control that liability can be shifted, throw in some warnings, let the process move slowly,
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Why are we allergic to high-speed rail?
So, I looked into this for our upcoming trip to Europe. Amsterdam to Munich by rail costs $110. Amsterdam to Munich by air costs $120.
Rail takes 10 hours. Air takes 1.5.
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With planes, we're doing so, more and more. I believe we're at the point where autopilot can handle pretty much takeoff-to-landing operations. Right now the main job of the pilot is to make sure the autopilot is ok lol...
Economics.
man I cant hardly wait to take a plane flight with no pilots
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California wasn't a great guinea pig for it, due to their building requirements concerning earthquakes. Maybe it's a case study in what's the most expensive possible outcome could be.
Regional loops with connections between each would be nice.
No, California wasn't a great guinea pig for it because it's not needed and won't satisfy the primary travelers on that corridor.
It *should* be a perfect guinea pig. The LA metro (not counting San Diego) is >13M, and the Bay Area is just shy of 8M. There are strong economic and cultural ties between the two regions.
Not counting San Diego, there are 5 major airports in the LA/OC metro and 3 major airports in the Bay Area metro. Most residents are therefore within a 30-40 minute commute to the airport. It's a 1 hr flight between the two, and the flight schedules between the two are frequent.
HSR was projected to be expensive to ride. At least on par with air travel, if not more expensive. HSR was projected to take 3 hours to go from SF to LA, so it takes three times as long as air travel.
That time differential is a killer to business travelers. If "time is money", getting to your destination 2 hours earlier means more time for productive meetings/work. And it shortens the round-trip... I have personally been on flights from SNA (Orange County) to SJC (San Jose) first thing in the morning to get to meetings, coming home that very evening, and several times sat next to the same person on my return flight that was on my outgoing. Can't do that with HSR.
For pleasure travelers, the choice usually comes down to speed vs cost. If my wife and I were to go up to norcal for a long weekend of vacation, we'd probably fly rather than drive because the cost for two people is worth the time savings--possibly even including a rental car if we needed it up there. If we were to go up there with the kids? Definitely driving. Because taking 5 people in a car is efficient, whereas 5 people in either a plane or with HSR is very expensive.
So for pleasure travelers, there's no advantage in a slower trip than an airplane if it costs just as much, and the cost basically makes it prohibitive compared to driving if you need to save money.
Even if it ever gets built, California HSR will be a failure because it is simultaneously worse than either air or car travel. Ridership numbers will be terrible.
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My GTI is sort of autonomous, it can hold a lane on its own and hold speed and adjust if a car slows in front of you. But, if it doesn't detect driver input at the wheel, it warns you and then shuts down. It works for 10 seconds or so. This is freeway only of course, or anywhere I engage cruise control.
I've mentioned before the notion of a string of autocars going cross country at say 120 mph nose to tail drafting. A lead car would send telemetry to the ones following.
When you near your exit, your car slows the line and you change lanes to exit. This would conform with our desire to have our own vehicle and yet be efficient and fairly high speed. I'm not sure about inductive charging ($$).
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIIcki3fsVs
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Even if it ever gets built, California HSR will be a failure because it is simultaneously worse than either air or car travel. Ridership numbers will be terrible.
Other than the central segment to "nowhere" it can't get built, it was absurd prima facia. Enormous waste of money, avoidable waste.
In 20 years they will have to pay money to take it down, unless freight can use portions of it.
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man I cant hardly wait to take a plane flight with no pilots
737 Max.
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Why are we allergic to high-speed rail?
A better question is why so many people love the idea of HSR so much--or light rail--or rail in general?
What exactly is the draw? Why should we do it?
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Instead of a HSR, why not try a human catapult?
(https://media1.giphy.com/media/3orifcZkz2DmNo5zpK/giphy.gif)
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A better question is why so many people love the idea of HSR so much--or light rail--or rail in general?
What exactly is the draw? Why should we do it?
It's good in Italy, but the distance between cities makes it better than air. I'd take the train from Florence to Rome any time over air travel. It's 100 miles.
Of course, we don't rent cars in Europe. Never will.
Now, Florence to Palermo by rail? F no. Not a chance. $150 and 15 hours travel.
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A better question is why so many people love the idea of HSR so much--or light rail--or rail in general?
What exactly is the draw? Why should we do it?
Some Americans would like us to be more like Europe in nearly every respect, at least as they understand Europe to be.
My wife, born in Europe, thinks the opposite.
I've driven rental cars extensively in Europe. They tend to be better drivers, the test to get your DL is extensive. The tolls on their intercity freeways are HIGH.
There are a couple traffic circles in Paris I advise avoiding if possible.
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Trains are just quaint. You don't have to drive, you can just sit back and relax with a glass of wine, and you get a nice view. If you take a lady, she'll probably swoon.
Efficient, they are not. They cost more than flying, and take longer than driving.
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I've taken the TGV several times, it's not what I'd call "quaint". It's nice. It works for France. It's expensive of course for the country.
Highly subsidized. So, folks like me ride cheaply so it's competitive with planes by getting money from the taxpayer.
One advantage is that it dumps you out into the middle of your destination city, not 20 miles out where the airport would be.
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It's good in Italy, but the distance between cities makes it better than air. I'd take the train from Florence to Rome any time over air travel. It's 100 miles.
Of course, we don't rent cars in Europe. Never will.
Now, Florence to Palermo by rail? F no. Not a chance. $150 and 15 hours travel.
Financially, does rail in Italy make more sense than buses? I honestly believe that one of the big problems with ALL rail systems for passenger travel (whether light rail, heavy rail, or HSR) is that it's a fixed routing. Air travel or road travel is much more reconfigurable as travel patterns change (whether due to seasonality, economic changes, etc).
When we were in Italy we took rail from Rome to the Cinque Terre, and then from there to Florence. I don't even remember what it cost, and didn't care much because it was vacation.
But the trains weren't very full, so I don't know how it pens out economically compared to busing.
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Efficient, they are not. They cost more than flying, and take longer than driving.
That is my experience in the US.
I looked at Amtrack for a trip from Cleveland to Glacier Park and it was literally what you said: More expensive than flying and slower than driving.
We ended up driving for a multitude of reasons but part of it is that flights to Glacier are complicated and we needed lots of gear so just tossing our stuff in the car and driving was our best option.
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One advantage is that it dumps you out into the middle of your destination city, not 20 miles out where the airport would be.
That is an advantage. I'll grant that one.
That's especially good for tourists / vacationers.
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I also hate CDG airport, it's the worst one I've even been through. I'm sort of used to it now. Sort of.
It's awful.
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Efficient, they are not. They cost more than flying, and take longer than driving.
I looked at Amtrack for a trip from Cleveland to Glacier Park and it was literally what you said: More expensive than flying and slower than driving.
FYI part of this is that the US rail system is optimized for freight traffic, NOT for passenger travel.
Now, if you ask me that makes a great deal of sense. Freight doesn't care [much] how long the trip is, and a boxcar full of freight packed floor to ceiling seems to be a more economically-efficient use of transportation resources than a big car full of air with a couple whiny and annoying passengers in it.
But you can't make the point that rail travel is slower than driving without necessarily including the fact that the rail systems aren't really optimized for passenger travel...
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just tossing our stuff in the car and driving was our best option.
you ALWAYS think this
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FYI part of this is that the US rail system is optimized for freight traffic, NOT for passenger travel.
Now, if you ask me that makes a great deal of sense. Freight doesn't care [much] how long the trip is, and a boxcar full of freight packed floor to ceiling seems to be a more economically-efficient use of transportation resources than a big car full of air with a couple whiny and annoying passengers in it.
But you can't make the point that rail travel is slower than driving without necessarily including the fact that the rail systems aren't really optimized for passenger travel...
I get that and it matters on a system wide basis but for me as an individual consumer, it is what it is.
The other downside to rail for that trip was that the westbound train left Cleveland at some ridiculous hour so you had to stay up all night to catch it, then you went to Chicago where you switched trains but there was a basically all day stay in Chicago before the Westbound train left there.
Since Chicago is less than six hours from me I briefly considered driving to Chicago then taking the train but that made no sense because the car would already be loaded so might as well keep going and get there quicker and cheaper.
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Why not construct a massive expressway across the Chicago area, with no exits?
Keep the through traffic out of the city, and keep the city traffic out of the through traffic's way.
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Why not construct a massive expressway across the Chicago area, with no exits?
Keep the through traffic out of the city, and keep the city traffic out of the through traffic's way.
Good thinking.
Crosstown Expressway (Chicago) - Wikipedia
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crosstown_Expressway_(Chicago))
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That is my experience in the US.
I looked at Amtrack for a trip from Cleveland to Glacier Park and it was literally what you said: More expensive than flying and slower than driving.
Isn't this the reason for HSR?
I was watching a HSR video for FL. It would go Jax > Orlando > Miami (and would make sense to go to Tampa).
There would be 2 lines - one that stops at the bigger cities in-between and one that only hits the 3 big hubs.
If I was living in Jax and could get down to Miami in 2 hours, I'd do it all the time. That drive sucks and it's stupid to fly. I imagine it would be similar for LA > San Diego or other close urban areas.....stops for all the 200,000 people ciites and stops for only the big hubs.
Our existing passenger train system is embarrassing. But hey, HSR may just be a case of keeping up with the Joneses.
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It would make some sense on the coasts, where traffic is a nightmare.
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I've literally never ridden in a real train, for the aforementioned reasons - it's slower AND expensive. Dumbest combination ever.
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But if you had a high-volume HSR, it would make all the sense in the world.
Don't you guys find it odd that our 2 real options of travel are a car going 70 mph you drive and maintain OR a giant cylinder 5 miles high going 500 mph that you have nothing else to do with?
The gap between those 2 is VAST.
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The Greyhound is quite a bit cheaper than flying, and approximately the same speed as driving.
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The Greyhound is quite a bit cheaper than flying, and approximately the same speed as driving.
Maybe the way you drive :88:
That's still a gas-powered land vehicle on roads with the same speed limits. It's quite a jump to airliners, no?
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Well I do take dirt roads everywhere I go, Dukes of Hazzard style.
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Isn't this the reason for HSR?
I was watching a HSR video for FL. It would go Jax > Orlando > Miami (and would make sense to go to Tampa).
There would be 2 lines - one that stops at the bigger cities in-between and one that only hits the 3 big hubs.
If I was living in Jax and could get down to Miami in 2 hours, I'd do it all the time. That drive sucks and it's stupid to fly. I imagine it would be similar for LA > San Diego or other close urban areas.....stops for all the 200,000 people ciites and stops for only the big hubs.
Our existing passenger train system is embarrassing. But hey, HSR may just be a case of keeping up with the Joneses.
Remember that it's not always that easy.
To make it HSR, you really HAVE to eliminate the stops. Which means that you're optimizing for LA--perhaps Union Station--to the San Diego city center.
That's great, if you either live really close to Union Station or San Diego city center and your ideal stop is exactly the other city center.
Of course, that's not very common. The LA/OC/SD megalopolis is one giant experiment in sprawl.
So... Let's say you want to go from LA to SD. First thing you need to do is figure out how to get to Union Station. Driving there might be possible, but then you need to figure out parking [and pay for it] for the duration of your trip. Uber/Lyft might be possible, but depending on how far you might be from Union Station, might not be particularly affordable. If you're in the general vicinity of a Metrolink station, you can take that to Union Station, but you might be backtracking or going out of your way just to get to "high speed" rail.
Then once you get to San Diego city center, you ask yourself--where am I *actually* going? If your destination is downtown SD, that's great. But because SD county itself is a gigantic sprawl, it might not be.
There's a better way...
Amtrak already has the Pacific Surfliner line. LA->San Diego is about 3 hours, which quite frankly is a little longer than the traffic-free route, but it's rarely traffic-free, so really not that far. But it has 10 stops along the way, which makes it MUCH more convenient for the people getting off and getting on. You pay a price in time, but for ridership, the added convenience of additional stops is a big thing.
It shares tracks with Metrolink (which covers LA/OC and goes as far as Oceanside) which has more stops, so it's a lot more convenient if you live REALLY close to one Metrolink stop to ride that down to Oceanside and then hop on the Surfliner, or from wherever you live to Union Station and then hop on the Surfliner. Likewise SD County has their own rail system--which I'm not very familiar with, but which shares several stops with the Surfliner.
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You see this is the problem with HSR. If it's truly high speed, it only makes sense point-to-point, which makes it very impractical for anyone who doesn't have the same origin and destination. If you force it to have stops, it's a lot more useful, but no longer high speed...
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and a boxcar full of freight packed floor to ceiling seems to be a more economically-efficient use of transportation resources than a big car full of air with a couple whiny and annoying passengers in it.
You must have been Cornelius Vanderbilt in another life
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I've literally never ridden in a real train, for the aforementioned reasons - it's slower AND expensive. Dumbest combination ever.
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But if you had a high-volume HSR, it would make all the sense in the world.
Don't you guys find it odd that our 2 real options of travel are a car going 70 mph you drive and maintain OR a giant cylinder 5 miles high going 500 mph that you have nothing else to do with?
The gap between those 2 is VAST.
Seriously?
I rode the train a ton to commute to Chicago, where I once had an office. Between time, gas and parking, the train was a no brainer.
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You must have been Cornelius Vanderbilt in another life
One of The Men Who Built America.
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A better question is why so many people love the idea of HSR so much--or light rail--or rail in general?
What exactly is the draw? Why should we do it?
I assume you mean in terms of long-distance travel, not short distance travel, correct?
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Seriously?
I rode the train a ton to commute to Chicago, where I once had an office. Between time, gas and parking, the train was a no brainer.
In the modern era, also efficent because you can actually do something with your hands/attention. Read a book, catch up on emails.
The few times I've had public transit commutes (a summer or two), man I was better read.
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I assume you mean in terms of long-distance travel, not short distance travel, correct?
Either.
HSR seems to be almost a fetish in that people think we need it so terribly badly, and that it's a stain on America's reputation that we "lag" other nations in HSR.
What's so alluring about it?
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Either.
HSR seems to be almost a fetish in that people think we need it so terribly badly, and that it's a stain on America's reputation that we "lag" other nations in HSR.
What's so alluring about it?
I don't know if "need" is the right word. But back before COVID I did the whole rush hour commute to work and home. It was 40 minutes each way. Traffic sucks, the efficiency is absolutely terrible. By any conceivable metric public transportation is more efficient than each individual person rising in their own car. Parking lots and freeways are a blight in every city. The need for roads and parking everywhere make every single city less livable and enjoyable. So while we don't "need" HSR, I can see the attraction.
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Either.
HSR seems to be almost a fetish in that people think we need it so terribly badly, and that it's a stain on America's reputation that we "lag" other nations in HSR.
What's so alluring about it?
I mean, they allow for much, much more efficent transit space-wise in high-usage routes? (I was thinking more of light/commuter rail, which it seemed like you also took issue with)
If you're going to a place that's dense, car storage and mobility are a nightmare. I have family that worked in SF. To go to work cost $25 a day before factoring in gas and wear and tear. And I lived about 7.4 miles from the close end of the bridge. Some folks come from farther than that. Light rail is a tremendous advantage there. In some spots it's just a park-and-ride arrangement that skips traffic and fosters growth.
I don't totally know the full ins and outs of HSR, so I can't speak on it directly. It seems like there are certain spots it would make sense if the geography allowed. Something like Madison to Milwaukee (that might be too hilly). The kind of thing where 75 miles or so to expand commuting range. SF to San Jose is I think not geographically feasible (too much in the way maybe?).
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I don't know if "need" is the right word. But back before COVID I did the whole rush hour commute to work and home. It was 40 minutes each way. Traffic sucks, the efficiency is absolutely terrible. By any conceivable metric public transportation is more efficient than each individual person rising in their own car. Parking lots and freeways are a blight in every city. The need for roads and parking everywhere make every single city less livable and enjoyable. So while we don't "need" HSR, I can see the attraction.
I think some of it comes down to design and what's baked in. A place like Indianapolis is exquisite in its traffic flow. A place like Nashville is growing into a nightmare of poor planning. NY paradoxically has the most useful public transit, but was also designed without enough public transit by a somewhat crazy person with a misbegotten understanding of the motor vehicle.
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You see this is the problem with HSR. If it's truly high speed, it only makes sense point-to-point, which makes it very impractical for anyone who doesn't have the same origin and destination. If you force it to have stops, it's a lot more useful, but no longer high speed...
That's why you have lines of each - one with no stops and the other to service many stops.
For the Florida idea - if you live in St. Augustine, you get on the line that stops a few times before you get to Orlando, then get on the non-stop line all the way down to Miami.
If there was some national network, you'd take the fast line that only stops at major hubs, and you'd only take the many-stops line from the hub nearest your destination.
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Idk, I'm not a HSR lover, I just think we can do better than what we have.
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if it was a really good idea, the private sector would have done it or will do it.
no sense throwing tax dollars at something that won't support itself
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For Browns games we used to park in a distant suburb, and take the train to the stadium. We were able to dodge all the game traffic that way, which cut at least an hour off of the drive each way. The most hectic part of the drive too. There was one transfer that took like five minutes, and other than that it was a straight shot. It cost like a dollar or two to park at the train station, which was a fairly secure place to leave your car.
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if it was a really good idea, the private sector would have done it or will do it.
no sense throwing tax dollars at something that won't support itself
My friend, I don't want to be rude, but this logic has two issues.
1. By this logic, the interstate highway system is not a "really good idea." The roads outside my house are not a "really good idea." This is silly. There are some things that exist as public goods.
2. Beyond the question of profitability, the key issue is it's just an enormously high barrier to entry proposition. Like even if it was profitable, almost no modern business is going to get into it. I'm sure there are some modern markets that function like that, but not many.
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One of The Men Who Built America.
That was a great program,Rockerfeller was a Cleveland Guy but what a Bastage.After about 30 yrs in business when oil looked to be on it's way out Henry Ford starts mass producing Horseless Carrieges with internal combustion engines."Hey John I think we found something to do with that oil by product gasoline" how freakin' lucky can one guy get - and he lived into his 90s I believe
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if it was a really good idea, the private sector would have done it or will do it.
I don't believe this when it's simply cheaper to keep the status quo. Oil, trains, automakers, and other massive industries are stagnating our advancements because they can still make more the old way than the new way.
You say they will do it, but not a moment before it earns them a penny more than the old way does. And that doesn't help any of us.
Our society COULD have amazing things sooner and cheaper, but we don't, because the entities that have "won" the financial game have no incentive to change things.
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Profit is always an incentive to change things.
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The barriers to rail seem to usually revolve around the very high expense to create and also the neverending headache when it comes to building things in this country.
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Environmentalists have stopped a whole lot of progress in this country.
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I don't believe this when it's simply cheaper to keep the status quo. Oil, trains, automakers, and other massive industries are stagnating our advancements because they can still make more the old way than the new way.
the things in bold weren't built by the government
we might still be waiting
the government isn't big on advancements either
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I quoted you specifying the private sector. That's who I was talking about, not the government. Private corporations who have won the modern "game" have spent (probably) trillions of dollars just to keep the status quo and have disallowed change for the better.
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If there were profit in building HSR, some private company would try. There isn't, it requires billions in subsidies each year. This is known.
Bright line is tryin in Florida with low speed passenger trains with indifferent success.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brightline
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If there were profit in building HSR, some private company would try. There isn't, it requires billions in subsidies each year. This is known.
Bright line is tryin in Florida with low speed passenger trains with indifferent success.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brightline
Chicago — The Boring Company
(https://www.boringcompany.com/chicago/)This could be interesting, but it got crushed.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taJ4MFCxiuo
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Chicago — The Boring Company
(https://www.boringcompany.com/chicago/)This could be interesting, but it got crushed.
Needed a more creative route, for sure.
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NHTSA investigating 'violent' Tesla crash into semi that left 2 critically injured | Fox News (https://www.foxnews.com/auto/nhtsa-investigating-violent-tesla-crash-semi)
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I really do not think major corporations are hindering progress somehow. That assertion makes no sense to me. What happens is they come and go, others replace them over time. Remember KMart? Woolworths? Even GE got chisseled.
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speaking of GE.............
GE Steam Power announced today that it has designed and manufactured the largest-ever (75-inch) last-stage blade for its Arabelle low-pressure rotor. The blade will enable the Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant under construction in Somerset, England to produce 3.2 GWe of CO2 free power, GE said. Once completed, this Arabelle steam turbine will be the most powerful nuclear steam turbine in operation. It was tested at GE's factory in Belfort, France.
https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/GE-Steam-Power-unveils-largest-last-stage-blade-ev (https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/GE-Steam-Power-unveils-largest-last-stage-blade-ev)
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I own some GE stock, I finally am in the green on it. The wife worked for a company half owned by GE. A lot of our neighbors worked for GE as their plant was just down the hill from us. When I moved to Cincy, they had 20,000 employees, and around 4 PM they nearly all bailed and jammed the freeway. I think they have 8,000 now.
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I really do not think major corporations are hindering progress somehow. That assertion makes no sense to me. What happens is they come and go, others replace them over time. Remember KMart? Woolworths? Even GE got chisseled.
Well K-Mart isn't going to have lobbyists restricting new laws to prolong their business, but many do. You're citing stores against a point where I was using major industries as examples.
The corporations can't halt progress forever, but the bigger they are and the more proactive they are in maintaining the situation in which they became ultra-successful, the longer they're able to stagnate things.
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Look at the auto industry. There's a reason we all know who Elon Musk is. He's promoting a paradigm shift. Because aside from safety and entertainment developments, cars haven't changed a lot in 50 years. Why is that? Why did the largest automakers need unholy bailouts? They were fat, bloated whales and existed as such because there was no reason to be anything else. They had no incentive to change.
They only made their cars more eco-friendly when the customer started caring about that in their buying decisions (and the pollution laws that followed). Of course they fought it along the way, often in private.
I'm not saying anything radical here. When you've mastered checkers, you aren't incentivized to go start playing chess. Usain Bolt isn't going to start running the mile now. It makes sense to want to keep things how they are when you're a titan in that environment.
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Without Elon Musk, Ford, Chevy, and the like would still be poo-pooing electric cars. Their growing market share would be stagnant. Our choices would be more limited. Without individuals who want something better, progress doesn't happen.
Reliance on oil - same.
Old, slow train lines - same.
Soft drinks - same.
Tyson chicken - same.
Dozens of companies I've probably never even heard of - same. Basically any industry that gets up-in-arms about a successful upstart is who I'm talking about here. They're not specifically colluding, but they're not doing their best to break off from the pack. These big companies want to be first, in a tightly-packed group of herd-mentality companies, where no one rocks the boat. It's like the mile run at a track meet in the first 2 laps.
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My old employer started out when a candle maker and soap maker got together. Cincinnati was a hog slaughtering place in the 1830s, so there was a lot of cheap hog fat around, both of which are starting materials for candles and soap. They no longer make candles, and the soap is contracted out (maybe they don't sell it at all now).
This is an example of a company that morphed into entirely different lines of work like making paper. Other companies have done the same, and some of course simply failed, like "buggy whip companies" in 1905.
The major oil companies can see the writing on the wall. They just aren't sure how to respond, beyond some PR stuff, and they think they have plenty of time. I'm not sure they have as much as they may think. I expect by 2050, most automobiles will be electric, gasoline use could be one percent of today's. Airplanes MIGHT run on hydrogen, I'm not sure how they evolve. We'll still need oil for chemicals, plastics, etc., but that is less than ten percent today.
We may be at Peak Oil now, not for the reasons feared back when.
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It's just my opinion, but I think OAM has an ultra simplistic view of Big Business, Europe, and a few other things.
It's like getting information from some movie, it's just weird. To me.
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NHTSA investigating 'violent' Tesla crash into semi that left 2 critically injured | Fox News (https://www.foxnews.com/auto/nhtsa-investigating-violent-tesla-crash-semi)
you beat me too it
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It's just my opinion, but I think OAM has an ultra simplistic view of Big Business, Europe, and a few other things.
It's like getting information from some movie, it's just weird. To me.
pretty simple to me
private sector bad only out for their own benefit
public sector good have the well being for all citizens at heart
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pretty simple to me
private sector bad only out for their own benefit
public sector good have the well being for all citizens at heart
The person/company I cited as doing something better is a private sector entity. But don't let that get in the way of your caricature of me.
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It's just my opinion, but I think OAM has an ultra simplistic view of Big Business, Europe, and a few other things.
It's like getting information from some movie, it's just weird. To me.
I think you've had a veil over your eyes for 12 decades and so lifting that veil may be difficult.
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I think we need more of this............... right, Badge?
NORFOLK, Neb. (AP) — Philanthropist MacKenzie Scott is donating $15 million to a Nebraska community college. The Sioux City Journal on Sunday reported Scott’s gift to Northeast Community College. The newspaper reports the donation is the largest ever in the Norfolk-based school’s history.
One official at the college initially thought an email about the donation was spam because gifts that large to the Nebraska school are so rare. Scott donated $5.7 billion in 2020 by asking community leaders to help identify 512 organizations for seven- and eight-figure gifts, including food banks, human-service organizations, and racial-justice charities.
https://www.klkntv.com/philanthropist-scott-gives-15m-to-nebraska-college/?fbclid=IwAR0xHlmqQM0kW0luv5tTRqMJCNR6EhJVDSsoAjtg2pRIiB6dC7kTrrZyAc4 (https://www.klkntv.com/philanthropist-scott-gives-15m-to-nebraska-college/?fbclid=IwAR0xHlmqQM0kW0luv5tTRqMJCNR6EhJVDSsoAjtg2pRIiB6dC7kTrrZyAc4)
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Well, I have worked for a large company, I have a first hand sense of how they work. I've traveled extensively in Europe and have a French wife, so I have some firsthand knowledge of that as well. A LOT of what you post is, to me, naive crap, garnered from Hollywood movies.
My French cousins who have never traveled to the US have a similar kind of view of how life is here, and it's based on movies, and strange French reportage.
Companies evolve, or die, with changing times.
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My take on Europe drastically changed with my several visits there. They are more like "us" than some of "us" would have you believe.
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Of course they are like us in most respects. A LOT of Americans admire Europe, from afar, having spent maybe a week there as a tourist.
I had coworkers at my level in the company living in Europe. Their standard of living was maybe half mine. Same compensation basically. They were scraping by and envious of us in the US.
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IMHO, a lot of the public vs private Innovation debate here is misguided. The bigger issue, a lot of times, is simply size and burecratic inertia.
Large bureaucracies are generally terrible at Innovation irrespective of whether they are public or private.
Innovation generally comes from small start-up types. Once the Innovation gets off the ground and proves successful, frequently the start-up that launched it will be acquired by a much larger, established company.
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IMHO, a lot of the public vs private Innovation debate here is misguided. The bigger issue, a lot of times, is simply size and burecratic inertia.
Large bureaucracies are generally terrible at Innovation irrespective of whether they are public or private.
Innovation generally comes from small start-up types. Once the Innovation gets off the ground and proves successful, frequently the start-up that launched it will be acquired by a much larger, established company.
Generally, but the response of many large companies to this pandemic has been stellar.
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its not the purpose of a company to be innovative
their purpose is to make money
now if they need to be ahead of the pack to make money then they become innovative
to produce a needed product not currently being produced or to produce an existing product cheaper
the public sector does not have pressure on it to be innovative and thats why most of our innovative products come from the private sector from the pressure to make a profit
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I've seen it work (and not) if a quasi-independent development group is set up outside the "rules" so to speak.
Skunk Works was real.
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I've seen it work (and not) if a quasi-independent development group is set up outside the "rules" so to speak.
Skunk Works was real.
yes but even then the innovations came from private sector contracted by the government
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its not the purpose of a company to be innovative
their purpose is to make money
now if they need to be ahead of the pack to make money then they become innovative
to produce a needed product not currently being produced or to produce an existing product cheaper
the public sector does not have pressure on it to be innovative and thats why most of our innovative products come from the private sector from the pressure to make a profit
why in the heck hasn't toilet paper been innovated? even during a pandemic? terrible greedy selfish big corporations
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why in the heck hasn't toilet paper been innovated? even during a pandemic? terrible greedy selfish big corporations
just what innovation is begging to be made with toilet paper
we used to use corn cobs and the Sears catalog
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why in the heck hasn't toilet paper been innovated? even during a pandemic? terrible greedy selfish big corporations
I was involved in two projects to try and replace toilet paper with something new and better. Toilet paper is one of the few products sold where "some assembly is required". There is quite a bit of tech in making TP, which is why the different brands have differing characteristics.
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Leaves were a handy substitute, so long as you knew how to identify (and of course steer clear of) poison ivy.
Out west you'd have to use rocks, if you had such an emergency.
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My son was quartered with an Azerbaijani company in Iraq at Haditha dam. The AZs provided area security. They apparently used the same portajohns and the AZs would wipe fecal matter on the sides of the johns and not use TP. It was quite the issue apparently.
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this thread has finally reached its proper destination in the dumper
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if it was a really good idea, the private sector would have done it or will do it.
I make this argument a lot, which is why I think I might have some credibility as to why it doesn't really apply very well in this case...
Eminent domain.
For something like HSR, you need to secure rights of way, often through areas where there are entrenched property interests and high property values. This is not an easy thing to do, especially when you're talking about a ~400 mile run in California.
Even if it would make money [which it won't; we agree there] there are risk factors in the ability to even be able to build it on time and within schedule that no private entity probably wants to take on. Now, if it was going to be WILDLY profitable, that's different, and maybe they'd be jumping on board.
But the private sector would find it easier to build another airport--even if it required bulldozing a neighborhood that they'd acquired through eminent domain, than trying to deal with a 400 mile run of HSR.
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It's just my opinion, but I think OAM has an ultra simplistic view of Big Business, Europe, and a few other things.
It's like getting information from some movie, it's just weird. To me.
Well, to be honest there are areas where he's right. Big businesses hire lobbyists. They hire lobbyists to make sure that the government doesn't do things that will hurt them--and sometimes to make sure that the government doesn't do things to help upstart competitors.
Not sure why he then wants to give more power to government, considering big business puts legislators in their own pocket... Seems like bigger government would just give MORE power to big business [as has happened in Europe].
But in general, I agree. OAM has an ultra simplistic view.
That's what happens when you look at the world through a prism of simply wanting certain things, without any thought given to the economics or logistics involved.
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(https://i.imgur.com/9t6FUjF.jpg)
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Well, to be honest there are areas where he's right. Big businesses hire lobbyists. They hire lobbyists to make sure that the government doesn't do things that will hurt them--and sometimes to make sure that the government doesn't do things to help upstart competitors.
This is true, but in general, the lobbying efforts are not to shut out new competition. Some of it is simply to educate lawmakers. "Educate".
I can't see how say Exxon is somehow keeping some other means of energy suppressed. They likely try, and certainly lobby for tax breaks, if they can get them.
And nobody is suppressing HSR in the US, it just doesn't make any sense outside the NE Corridor.
This is akin to my French cousin asking me how many times I have been involved in a gun fight in the US. He was serious. For him, life here is like he sees in cop movies.
He was scared to visit.
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(https://i.imgur.com/9t6FUjF.jpg)
WTF?
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This is true, but in general, the lobbying efforts are not to shut out new competition. Some of it is simply to educate lawmakers. "Educate".
I can't see how say Exxon is somehow keeping some other means of energy suppressed. They likely try, and certainly lobby for tax breaks, if they can get them.
And nobody is suppressing HSR in the US, it just doesn't make any sense outside the NE Corridor.
All true. But "Education" for Exxon might be telling a lawmaker about how much fewer campaign contributions they can expect to receive if they subsidize technology X, just as much as how much more campaign contributions they might receive if they reduce taxes or environmental regulations on Exxon.
It's a competition. Anything that artificially raises or lowers costs of their oil or upstart technologies help to determine whether those technologies are financially viable to compete.
I've argued here in favor of a carbon tax [offset against other tax reductions to be revenue neutral]. That makes oil more expensive, which tilts the market somewhat to lower-carbon energy sources. I'm sure Exxon's lobbyists would be out in FORCE to "educate" lawmakers telling them a carbon tax will destroy the economy and cause them to not be reelected if they pass it...
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This is true, but in general, the lobbying efforts are not to shut out new competition. Some of it is simply to educate lawmakers. "Educate".
cell phone companies starting up 30 years ago used plenty of "education" to lobby for competitive advantage over landline companies
and in return, landline companies used lobbyists to educate politicians to be fair about changing competition
cell phone companies won big
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Well, to be honest there are areas where he's right. Big businesses hire lobbyists. They hire lobbyists to make sure that the government doesn't do things that will hurt them--and sometimes to make sure that the government doesn't do things to help upstart competitors.
Not sure why he then wants to give more power to government, considering big business puts legislators in their own pocket... Seems like bigger government would just give MORE power to big business [as has happened in Europe].
But in general, I agree. OAM has an ultra simplistic view.
That's what happens when you look at the world through a prism of simply wanting certain things, without any thought given to the economics or logistics involved.
Big gov't vs small gov't seems like a pretty simplistic dichotomy to me.
I don't have an ultra simplistic view of things, I simply either converse as ifa - I'm ignoring the economics or logistics on purpose, as in a thought experiment, or
b - I'm acknowledging the economics or logistics are a given and don't want to waste time mired in that and not the larger idea
I fully acknowledge I skip some steps, which is purely for brevity's sake. It's like modern philosophy.....it's slowed to a crawl the past 60 years because it got bogged down in the words of the idea rather than the ideas themselves. Philosophy is an untenable bore now, thanks to that.
No, I'm not going to take the time to fill in all the steps along the way so that someone who is going to disagree with me anyway can think me less simplistic. I don't see the point.
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why in the heck hasn't toilet paper been innovated? even during a pandemic? terrible greedy selfish big corporations
It's called a bidet.
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its not the purpose of a company to be innovative
their purpose is to make money
This is all I was saying. You agree with me.
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I was peripherally involved in one lobbying effort. It was about patent law. Our lobbyist was trying to educate our Rep on patent law. Our lawyers had prepared a VERY simple overview. The lobbyist said "This is far too complicated". It had to be dumbed down ... and was.
I doubt our Rep gained much from it. There has been a long term effort to modify patent law to be more aligned with Europe, but we have it in our Constitution in a way that narrows what can be changed. Europe has a "first to file" approach, which is simpler, the US has "first to invent", which often is not.
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Big gov't vs small gov't seems like a pretty simplistic dichotomy to me.
I don't have an ultra simplistic view of things, I simply either converse as ifa - I'm ignoring the economics or logistics on purpose, as in a thought experiment, or
b - I'm acknowledging the economics or logistics are a given and don't want to waste time mired in that and not the larger idea
I fully acknowledge I skip some steps, which is purely for brevity's sake. It's like modern philosophy.....it's slowed to a crawl the past 60 years because it got bogged down in the words of the idea rather than the ideas themselves. Philosophy is an untenable bore now, thanks to that.
No, I'm not going to take the time to fill in all the steps along the way so that someone who is going to disagree with me anyway can think me less simplistic. I don't see the point.
It's fair to have a thought experiment and disregard economics or logistics...
But as it relates to two of the topics here [autonomous cars and HSR], you're advocating for things that simply cannot be discussed without an understanding of economics and logistics--and in the case of autonomous cars, cannot be discussed without a thorough understanding of current technology.
So there's no point in a thought experiment.
You say "we can do this today" re: autonomous driving and one of us points out all the myriad reasons that no, we realistically cannot.
You say "HSR seems like a good idea" and we point out all the economic reasons why it solves a problem nobody has, why it's not going to be economically competitive with air or car travel, and therefore why it will be doomed to low ridership and hemorrhaging tax money.
And you ignore it completely.
It's kinda like a thought experiment... But without much thought.
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This is all I was saying. You agree with me.
yes and as I also pointed out most of the innovations come from private companies from capitalistic pressure to make that profit
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The battery swap idea comes to mind also. After a number of issues were noted, OAM concluded he just thinks it's a good idea.
When I finally belatedly understood why my two battery approach doesn't work, I admitted it doesn't work. I didn't insist it was a good idea anyway.
It's not. Sounded good though. To me.
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The battery swap idea comes to mind also. After a number of issues were noted, OAM concluded he just thinks it's a good idea.
When I finally belatedly understood why my two battery approach doesn't work, I admitted it doesn't work. I didn't insist it was a good idea anyway.
It's not. Sounded good though. To me.
theres a difference between sounding like a good idea and it being feasible
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I mean, they allow for much, much more efficent transit space-wise in high-usage routes? (I was thinking more of light/commuter rail, which it seemed like you also took issue with)
If you're going to a place that's dense, car storage and mobility are a nightmare. I have family that worked in SF. To go to work cost $25 a day before factoring in gas and wear and tear. And I lived about 7.4 miles from the close end of the bridge. Some folks come from farther than that. Light rail is a tremendous advantage there. In some spots it's just a park-and-ride arrangement that skips traffic and fosters growth.
I don't totally know the full ins and outs of HSR, so I can't speak on it directly. It seems like there are certain spots it would make sense if the geography allowed. Something like Madison to Milwaukee (that might be too hilly). The kind of thing where 75 miles or so to expand commuting range. SF to San Jose is I think not geographically feasible (too much in the way maybe?).
Public transit is effectively a density problem. If the density is high enough, public transit makes a great deal of sense.
I find that "light rail" tends to be pushed in tons of places that it makes no sense, though, and actually causes economic harm. Light rail is tremendously expensive, and once it's built it needs to be maintained. That takes a lot of money. Ridership on most light rail systems does not cover the cost of building/maintaining/operating the infrastructure, so it has to come from somewhere.
You know where that money often comes from? Buses. Bus lines are pared back to save money that can be used to keep the light rail afloat.
Which means that in a lot of places, you end up hurting the people who need transit the most (those who can't afford anything else) and ride the bus, in order to provide rich suburbanites subsidized light rail.
The other argument to me is that flexible infrastructure is better than fixed infrastructure in a lot of ways. Let's say we build HSR from SoCal to NorCal. But because of the taxes needed to operate that HSR, more and more tech companies--as is being predicted here--leave Silicon Valley for places like Austin. Daily weekday trips between SoCal and San Jose drop by 15%, and daily trips between SoCal and Austin go up 10%.
For airlines, that's an easy problem to solve. Just fly less planes daily to San Jose and more planes to Austin. For rail, there's no answer. You just lose more money.
Airplanes and buses are flexible infrastructure. HSR and light rail are fixed infrastructure. We seem to keep wanting to build the latter hoping that the economics will work out, but hope ain't a winning strategy.
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It's fair to have a thought experiment and disregard economics or logistics...
But as it relates to two of the topics here [autonomous cars and HSR], you're advocating for things that simply cannot be discussed without an understanding of economics and logistics--and in the case of autonomous cars, cannot be discussed without a thorough understanding of current technology.
So there's no point in a thought experiment.
You say "we can do this today" re: autonomous driving and one of us points out all the myriad reasons that no, we realistically cannot.
You say "HSR seems like a good idea" and we point out all the economic reasons why it solves a problem nobody has, why it's not going to be economically competitive with air or car travel, and therefore why it will be doomed to low ridership and hemorrhaging tax money.
And you ignore it completely.
It's kinda like a thought experiment... But without much thought.
The point on that was that if today's tech was magically instilled country-wide tomorrow, we'd still have far less deaths than with people behind the wheel. OF COURSE we couldn't make it happen literally overnight. It's absurd to even call that a hurdle. It's not about actually implementing it tomorrow. DUH!
But my detractors cling on to that ?mistake? instead of the actual point being made. It's super fun.
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The battery swap idea comes to mind also. After a number of issues were noted, OAM concluded he just thinks it's a good idea.
When I finally belatedly understood why my two battery approach doesn't work, I admitted it doesn't work. I didn't insist it was a good idea anyway.
It's not. Sounded good though. To me.
I believe I said it was the most likely outcome. Even given the issues. And I said time will tell.
I don't mind being wrong. But time hasn't told us anything yet. You're wearing out your "jump to conclusions" mat over there.
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theres a difference between sounding like a good idea and it being feasible
If only technology wasn't static!!! Oh wait....
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The point on that was that if today's tech was magically instilled country-wide tomorrow, we'd still have far less deaths than with people behind the wheel. OF COURSE we couldn't make it happen literally overnight. It's absurd to even call that a hurdle. It's not about actually implementing it tomorrow. DUH!
But my detractors cling on to that ?mistake? instead of the actual point being made. It's super fun.
As I pointed out, neither Waymo nor Tesla is ready for fully autonomous technology.
Waymo can probably do it safely, but so far I believe everything they do is very limited in scope. Maybe we'd have less deaths, but only because Waymo vehicles never exceeded 35 mph on the freeway lol...
Tesla or GM Supercruise might be something we could roll out for freeway driving, but it's not fully autonomous either. And so far I don't think either is capable of operating on surface streets.
But... You claimed the hurdle was that people wouldn't accept safer technology even if we COULD magically install it country-wide, if it wasn't safe *enough*.
So it was just your way of sh!tting on unenlightened rubes who can't see things as clearly as you... As usual.
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If only technology wasn't static!!! Oh wait....
well while youre at it if you base your wish list on the hope technology will allow it in the future why mess around with autos just start beaming folks places like Star Trek
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Public transit is effectively a density problem. If the density is high enough, public transit makes a great deal of sense.
I find that "light rail" tends to be pushed in tons of places that it makes no sense, though, and actually causes economic harm. Light rail is tremendously expensive, and once it's built it needs to be maintained. That takes a lot of money. Ridership on most light rail systems does not cover the cost of building/maintaining/operating the infrastructure, so it has to come from somewhere.
You know where that money often comes from? Buses. Bus lines are pared back to save money that can be used to keep the light rail afloat.
Which means that in a lot of places, you end up hurting the people who need transit the most (those who can't afford anything else) and ride the bus, in order to provide rich suburbanites subsidized light rail.
I mean, I guess I'm mostly just thinking about high density places. I don't think you need light rail in less dense places.
I don't know about the preciousness about buses. Short distance buses make lots of sense. Long distance buses make medium sense. Medium distance buses in hyper dense places as commuter options are kinda a mess. And you're trying to solve medium-distance needs for the most part. (I get that it's going to be a consistent cost, but that kinda part of public goods and such. Some transit infrastructure doesn't necessarily directly pay for itself, but the indirect benefits carry value)
What are the places it's pushed where it won't work?
We agree about some of the longer stuff. 400 miles of light rail is deeply impractical.
(The angle of folks who can't afford anything else is also interesting because of the way economics are turning in some places. We're now at a point where downtowns are getting more expensive and far flung places less. So if you want cheaper housing further out, the extra efficiency of train over bus starts to matter in a big way)
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I'm not a fan of the light rail in Phx. I haven't ridden it in a few years, but when I took it to the airport once, it took about 45 min to travel that 5 miles or so.
I recall the next time I needed transportation to the airport, I did the $20 van pickup service.
It just drove me crazy that we were basically having trouble outpacing bike riders on that thing.
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But... You claimed the hurdle was that people wouldn't accept safer technology even if we COULD magically install it country-wide, if it wasn't safe *enough*.
So it was just your way of sh!tting on unenlightened rubes who can't see things as clearly as you... As usual.
That is the hurdle. If you don't like my tense, then I'll say that WILL BE the hurdle. Cool. Same point made.
I try to only tend to shit on unenlightened rubes when they pair it with confidence.
You seem to be unable to have flights of fancy that omit the actual implementation and all that it entails. That must be frustrating.
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This area added a tax to fund light rail. One problem is obviously it doesn't transition to heavy rail, you have to get off one kind and get on another at a station. Buses as noted are more flexible, and you can build grade separated dedicated bus lanes. I'm not too interested in walking to a light rail station to go to a heavy rail station and wait for a train, again, to get to the airport or wherever.
We haven't taken the subway since COVID obviously, it's convenient for us for travel within the US, but they built a disconnected international terminal they use for flights to Europe and Asia. $1.5 billion for a terminal with 12 gates, I think they have, sparsely utilized. That was stimulus money from 2010.
And the airport train doesn't run to it, you need a bus.
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I'm not a fan of the light rail in Phx. I haven't ridden it in a few years, but when I took it to the airport once, it took about 45 min to travel that 5 miles or so.
I recall the next time I needed transportation to the airport, I did the $20 van pickup service.
It just drove me crazy that we were basically having trouble outpacing bike riders on that thing.
Is that the only thing close to anything else in Phoenix?
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I mean, I guess I'm mostly just thinking about high density places. I don't think you need light rail in less dense places.
I don't know about the preciousness about buses. Short distance buses make lots of sense. Long distance buses make medium sense. Medium distance buses in hyper dense places as commuter options are kinda a mess. And you're trying to solve medium-distance needs for the most part. (I get that it's going to be a consistent cost, but that kinda part of public goods and such. Some transit infrastructure doesn't necessarily directly pay for itself, but the indirect benefits carry value)
What are the places it's pushed where it won't work?
Phoenix is a good example of where it won't work... But it doesn't stop them from trying.
Full disclosure: the author of the blog I'm about to link is pretty strongly libertarian, so obviously he comes at this from a certain point of bias. However I strongly recommend reading some of his posts with the Phoenix Light Rail tag. It's some really good insight.
https://coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/tag/phoenix-light-rail
Specifically, though, this is a really good one: https://coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2014/10/phoenix-light-rail-update-we-spent-1-4billion-to-reduce-transit-ridership.html
If you look at Phoenix, they were showing consistent increases in transit ridership for a decade. As soon as they built light rail, transit ridership--in a city that's been growing like gangbusters--immediately stagnated. Bus ridership went down and light rail went up, at almost a 1:1 number. Was that worth it?
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The issue is a lot of places like to think they're high density enough for light rail, but... They're not. Every medium-sized city has people who fetishize light rail. But rarely does it actually work out.
You get these enlightened city planners who think they can "revitalize downtown" by connecting the suburbs to the city center via light rail. Of course, in a lot of cases those suburban workers work in... The suburbs. Light rail, rather than being a real commuting option, tends to be what drunks use to get downtown to party so they don't have to drive. That's not a bad thing (I've done it), but hardly worth the billions that cities throw at it.
The poor largely don't need medium-distance travel. Usually a big part of being poor is working relatively low-skill jobs, which doesn't require commuting "downtown" every day.
Light rail is a great thing for middle-class folks who have nice houses and shiny vehicles they leave at their park & ride to feel good about themselves for taking "transit" to work and being green. But it's a really expensive solution for that "problem", and the cost of that solution then tends to crowd out meaningful transit options for those who need it most.
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This area added a tax to fund light rail. One problem is obviously it doesn't transition to heavy rail, you have to get off one kind and get on another at a station. Buses as noted are more flexible, and you can build grade separated dedicated bus lanes. I'm not too interested in walking to a light rail station to go to a heavy rail station and wait for a train, again, to get to the airport or wherever.
We haven't taken the subway since COVID obviously, it's convenient for us for travel within the US, but they built a disconnected international terminal they use for flights to Europe and Asia. $1.5 billion for a terminal with 12 gates, I think they have, sparsely utilized. That was stimulus money from 2010.
And the airport train doesn't run to it, you need a bus.
Explain to me a little more about the light-rail heavy rail thing. Were is that taking you to and from?
The bus thing is interesting because the dedicated bus lanes create their own sense of chaos and slowdown, unless you're just talking freeway.
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One thing heavy rail has done here, finally (it took decades) is to spark development around the various stations. It was slow to happen because the city was dying when MARTA was built, population declining etc., but that shifted around 2000. Now many of the subway stations are marked with big development of apts and condos. This is less so, by a lot, in the poorer areas of the city. Buckhead wouldn't be what is it without MARTA I think.
(I don't really like Buckhead, but it's impressive looking. We did look at condos there, the environment generally felt sterile.)
(https://i.imgur.com/jLU6vaW.png)
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Explain to me a little more about the light-rail heavy rail thing. Were is that taking you to and from?
The bus thing is interesting because the dedicated bus lanes create their own sense of chaos and slowdown, unless you're just talking freeway.
We have no light rail here, as yet, other than a streetcar which is lame. Light rail, in general, pulls power from overhead lines, is slower, and often not grade separated.
Heavy rail runs up to 70 mph and pulls power off the rails and is always grade separated. Below is where they built a freeway at the same time as the subway line, and put it in the median, which makes sense when you can do it. (that is the King and Queen building in the background in Sandy Springs)
(https://i.imgur.com/T52nz6J.jpg)
My idea for bus lanes is for them to be grade separated where possible and blend into city streets where not.
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(https://i.imgur.com/ElB4CTr.png)
This is one of the light rail proposals, it would link two heavy rail lines. But you'd change trains at each end to continue.
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That is the hurdle. If you don't like my tense, then I'll say that WILL BE the hurdle. Cool. Same point made.
I try to only tend to shit on unenlightened rubes when they pair it with confidence.
You seem to be unable to have flights of fancy that omit the actual implementation and all that it entails. That must be frustrating.
My frustration is at a high level right now... You've got that right.
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It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future ....
I've mentioned before autonomous vehicles and EVs. I don't know if Level 4 is inside a decade or not, it might be more like 2035. If trucks get auto, a lot of jobs will go missing.
Longer term, automation will increasingly replace jobs for less well trained workers and that will be an issue.
So... To get back on track.
My prediction is that the next decade will be the decade of mRNA.
After reading about the work leading up to the vaccines, it seems that there has been a lot of promising research on the possibilities of mRNA, but I think the fact that there had been no successful uses to date kinda made it an arcane research area. Well, I think that just ended. There's going to be money thrown at mRNA treatments/vaccines/etc, and it's quite possible that we've just unlocked one of the next stages in our ability to conquer the way we handle medical care.
I'm quite excited about this one, and I think it's near-term enough that we might see some pretty impressive things within the decade.
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Another one... What are folks' thoughts on Radical Life Extension?
This is, of course, the idea that we solve the medical problem of "aging." We as a species generally grow for only about half of our lifespan, and the second half is mostly crap just starting to break down and fail. What if it doesn't have to fail? What if we can be 25 years old [physically] forever, or at least turn average human lifespans into the 150-200 year range instead of ~80, with productive bodies for most of those years?
I don't think we'll have significant progress on this in the next decade. But research in finding ways to conquer aging are ongoing.
If this is just a really tough engineering problem, rather than something insoluble, it will happen eventually. The question is when, and how close are we?
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This seems pertinent, if we're discussing thought experiments between engineers and fans of philosophy...
http://existentialcomics.com/comic/385
(https://i.imgur.com/NwHxQ5t.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/4tAYodE.png)
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I read a short story ages back about a super fighter plane transported somehow to WW One. It turned out to be nearly useless.
I have pondered how useful I would be if transported to say 1500 AD. Not very.
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I read a short story ages back about a super fighter plane transported somehow to WW One. It turned out to be nearly useless.
I have pondered how useful I would be if transported to say 1500 AD. Not very.
Yeah, makes sense... The plane itself is useless if you don't have a fueling/arming/maintenance infrastructure.
My brother was a USMC pilot (now commercial with United). When he graduated flight school, he wanted transport planes as his first choice, helicopters as his second, and fighters as his third. Transport is the choice gig--because it gets people into a direct pipeline to the airlines when you get out of the service. But fighters were of no interest to him. Obviously the fact that he's tall enough he might severely injure/destroy his legs in an ejection doesn't help. But the bigger thing is that he'd heard from people who'd done it that a fighter jet gig is basically 2-3 hours of briefing, 45-60 minutes of flying, and 2-3 hours of debriefing. That's just plain not fun!
So he ended up with helicopters, before eventually getting into a fixed-wing flight instructor gig that gave him the necessary hours to get the United job when he retired from the Corps.
I could probably be pretty useful in 1500 AD. I'm pretty big, so I'd be good at the sort of manual labor that dominated life back then lol!
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I could help out with the solar system stuff, theory and what not. Germ theory. I think I can make soap, that would be a thing. I could distill stuff if someone could make the glassware I needed.
Fertilizer used to come from birds, bat guano, etc. It was very expensive. Then the Germans figured how to make ammonia from air (explosives as well). That was a huge under appreciated invention. Germany was in trouble otherwise.
They got in trouble anyway.
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Good point... I could make beer ;-)
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By the year 2035, AlphaBeta will be able to make beer with his mind.
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Another one... What are folks' thoughts on Radical Life Extension?
This is, of course, the idea that we solve the medical problem of "aging." We as a species generally grow for only about half of our lifespan, and the second half is mostly crap just starting to break down and fail. What if it doesn't have to fail? What if we can be 25 years old [physically] forever, or at least turn average human lifespans into the 150-200 year range instead of ~80, with productive bodies for most of those years?
I don't think we'll have significant progress on this in the next decade. But research in finding ways to conquer aging are ongoing.
If this is just a really tough engineering problem, rather than something insoluble, it will happen eventually. The question is when, and how close are we?
I don't think much will come of it unless it includes a substantial part of our lives being in weightlessness. 80 years of earth's gravity is a sonofabitch.
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Is that the only thing close to anything else in Phoenix?
I'm not sure what this means. Yes, Phoenix spreads out and not up.
The light rail here went from downtown out to Mesa (through Tempe). For me, I had to walk about one block to the station with my wheeled carry-on. No problem. But it's slow and stops at some red lights and old ladies with walkers make more progress at times. A lot of stops. There's a station near the airport, but you take a 2 min bus ride to get IN the airport.
Then it's expanded north....Phoenix has a bit of an uptown. So it goes up there and further into Mesa. It's possibly expanding west. It's useful for specific things - going to the airport if you live near it the path, if you live downtown or uptown and want to go to an ASU game, if you live in NW Mesa or Tempe and want to go to a Suns game, things that like.
Otherwise.....no.
On a map, it's like a giant L-shape and now it has arms expanding out from that. Is it expanding into hoity-toity Scottsdale or Paradise Valley? No. People living there wouldn't use it. Is it expanding up towards a ghetto-ass mall that has closed down? Of course! Because reasons.
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We also sleep almost a third of our lives. What if we didn't need to?
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We also sleep almost a third of our lives. What if we didn't need to?
Again, weightlessness would help with that. A body at work eventually needs rest. If that work is much easier, you'd need much less rest.
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Weightlessness also causes some serious side effects that are not completely understood even now. If they don't exercise on the ISS a LOT, they really deteriorate badly.
Even so, they deteriorate in a few months and can't walk when they come down.
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life sucks, you pay taxes, then you die
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why in the heck hasn't toilet paper been innovated?
Why because you can't use the Sears & Roebuck Catalog anymore?
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We have no light rail here, as yet, other than a streetcar which is lame. Light rail, in general, pulls power from overhead lines, is slower, and often not grade separated.
Heavy rail runs up to 70 mph and pulls power off the rails and is always grade separated. Below is where they built a freeway at the same time as the subway line, and put it in the median, which makes sense when you can do it. (that is the King and Queen building in the background in Sandy Springs)
(https://i.imgur.com/T52nz6J.jpg)
My idea for bus lanes is for them to be grade separated where possible and blend into city streets where not.
Well shoot. I'm thinking heavy rail. There's like six cities that should have light rail. The nomenclature is sometimes odd because there are some light rail spots I'm thinking of that go grade separated for the important stretches. So you spend really minimal time in not grade separated spots, that's my bad.
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Phoenix is a good example of where it won't work... But it doesn't stop them from trying.
Full disclosure: the author of the blog I'm about to link is pretty strongly libertarian, so obviously he comes at this from a certain point of bias. However I strongly recommend reading some of his posts with the Phoenix Light Rail tag. It's some really good insight.
https://coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/tag/phoenix-light-rail
Specifically, though, this is a really good one: https://coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2014/10/phoenix-light-rail-update-we-spent-1-4billion-to-reduce-transit-ridership.html
If you look at Phoenix, they were showing consistent increases in transit ridership for a decade. As soon as they built light rail, transit ridership--in a city that's been growing like gangbusters--immediately stagnated. Bus ridership went down and light rail went up, at almost a 1:1 number. Was that worth it?
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The issue is a lot of places like to think they're high density enough for light rail, but... They're not. Every medium-sized city has people who fetishize light rail. But rarely does it actually work out.
You get these enlightened city planners who think they can "revitalize downtown" by connecting the suburbs to the city center via light rail. Of course, in a lot of cases those suburban workers work in... The suburbs. Light rail, rather than being a real commuting option, tends to be what drunks use to get downtown to party so they don't have to drive. That's not a bad thing (I've done it), but hardly worth the billions that cities throw at it.
The poor largely don't need medium-distance travel. Usually a big part of being poor is working relatively low-skill jobs, which doesn't require commuting "downtown" every day.
Light rail is a great thing for middle-class folks who have nice houses and shiny vehicles they leave at their park & ride to feel good about themselves for taking "transit" to work and being green. But it's a really expensive solution for that "problem", and the cost of that solution then tends to crowd out meaningful transit options for those who need it most.
Yup, I was completely mixing up nomenclatures, so that is my bad. Some of the concerns (park and rides) struck me as more rapid transit system situations.
I tend to be accepting of grade separated transit in some cases, depending on where you are and the scale you can get it to. I thought the Phoenix stuff was interesting, but it makes sense why it's not doing much. Phoenix is not particularly dense. Phoenix does not have any particularly crowded urban center. It's also a relatively low-functioning line. Outside running through downtown and I guess Tempe, it seems to have relatively low reach geographically (I get that it's more expensive, but having a slightly expansive system kinda matters). But I will concede, in a place without density or foot traffic, it's a crap idea. (I do kinda chuckle at Phoenix's idea of putting stations next to mall parking lots)
But there are other cities, ones that feature actual density in the urban core. Ones that concentrate jobs. Ones where parking can't keep up. They seem to make sense there. The argument about being green, I'm sorry, it's just not the case. Those middle class folks do it because spending several grand a year to store a car at your job is unpleasant, as is waiting it out in traffic. That transit offers a chance to be somewhat on schedule, not battle 45 minutes of traffic, and that matters to some folks. I dunno if it is worth the money. But I know if I dropped at least 100,000 more cars in downtown Chicago all day, it would not be great.
Now I will agree, some of where it’s being done is not good. And there’s another sort of moving target factor. So much of any investment like that is long-term. Paradoxically, by the time you really, really need that level of transit, you’re likely too late. By the time your traffic arteries are pushed to the point of causing so much lost time, by the time you’re building endless parking structures to keep up. the cost to build over all the stuff is titanic. I look at a place like Nashville, that is growing fast with little planning. At some point, robust public transit will be valuable, but at the moment, it’s not valuable enough (I think they scuttled high-speed bus stuff as well). But of course it’s hard to predict. New York built a lot of public transit and in retrospect probably should’ve built more.
(It leads to an interesting question about vestigial infrastructure and long-and-short term questions. I think you’ve worked on railroads. You mentioned they’re efficent for freight, but no one would ever build them. No one would build the interstate either)
TLDR I think separated rail makes sense in some places. Light rail, less so if it is still operating mostly on city streets.
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The Phx light rail is basically the median, wherever it runs. The only thing separating it and traffic is the curb. You're free to walk all over it (but you're not supposed to). Hell, at every intersection, you could drive onto it with your car.
My least favorite part about Phx people-movers is that bus stops are almost universally set like 30' past intersections (outgoing), so that whenever a bus stops, traffic inevitably backs up into the intersection. Someone smarter than I am needs to explain what in the hell kind of idea THAT is.
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I prefer heavy rail, or buses. I wonder the cost of building grade separated bus lanes versus light rail.
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I prefer heavy rail, or buses. I wonder the cost of building grade separated bus lanes versus light rail.
Question, do we consider mildly separate lanes as “grade separated?” I drove in a city recently that had turned a four-lane road into two lanes with bus/turn lanes.
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Grade separated, to me, means bridges over intersections, no stop lights. The bus would only stop at bus stations, or stops.
Bridges in an urban area would be too expensive, but this could be fairly cheap in suburban areas. Bus lanes don't work that well because of traffic lights.
Imagine a suburb say 12 miles away from downtown. You build specific bus bridges etc. from there to downtown with say 8 stops along the way. When it hits the built up urban part it just runs on regular streets, maybe on bus lanes. But further out the bus can go station to station at 50 mph. Each stop is maybe two minutes apart.
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When possible, there should always be a separate turnout area for busses and other pick up vehicles.
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Wouldn't that be nice.
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If dealing with never-ending traffic issues interests you, then you have to play City Skylines. It's like SimCity, but better and you can honestly just call it a traffic simulator if you want. It can warrant 100% of your attention for hours at a time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucvEiSFnU0k (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucvEiSFnU0k)
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Don't grade-separated or dedicated bus lines have many of the same downsides as light rail? If you're building bridges over intersections and devoting a ton of money to the construction and maintenance of a lane that ONLY buses can drive on, it sounds like a hell of a lot of money that could be better spent expanding routes to serve more people with buses.
It just seems silly to dedicate an entire lane, at a cost of tens of millions of dollars (or more if you're bridging over every intersection), to buses that will come by once every 5 minutes, when you could just spend that money on a lane that could handle 500+ cars over those same 5 minutes.
If the goal is to punish unenlightened car drivers who refuse to use transit, you've done your job. If the goal is to actually improve congestion, you've spent a crap-ton of money to do very little.
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Don't grade-separated or dedicated bus lines have many of the same downsides as light rail? If you're building bridges over intersections and devoting a ton of money to the construction and maintenance of a lane that ONLY buses can drive on, it sounds like a hell of a lot of money that could be better spent expanding routes to serve more people with buses.
It just seems silly to dedicate an entire lane, at a cost of tens of millions of dollars (or more if you're bridging over every intersection), to buses that will come by once every 5 minutes, when you could just spend that money on a lane that could handle 500+ cars over those same 5 minutes.
If the goal is to punish unenlightened car drivers who refuse to use transit, you've done your job. If the goal is to actually improve congestion, you've spent a crap-ton of money to do very little.
It's an interesting thought because reducing use of single car traffic is one of those things that has huge benefits, but is a giant pain in the ass until those benefits are realized. The goal to reduce congestion also causes cities to be much less livable and become literal and figurative parking lots.
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As an aspiring city planner, Cities: Skylines is great. Then again, I also enjoy sim and tycoon games.
Grade separation of mass transit greatly enhances the reliability. The biggest issue with grade-separated transit is that it has to go somewhere. The LRT lines in Denver that run down the freeway median haven't lived up to ridership projections, but the Vancouver SkyTrain is kicking ass.
Geography also plays a factor. One big reason why I think North Link in Seattle will be a huge hit is that anything going north and south through the city is choked down to 6 bridges over the Lake Washington Ship Canal. Not only has the LRT opened another crossing, it isn't subject to random closures (raising and lowering of bridges)
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It's an interesting thought because reducing use of single car traffic is one of those things that has huge benefits, but is a giant pain in the ass until those benefits are realized. The goal to reduce congestion also causes cities to be much less livable and become literal and figurative parking lots.
It all stinks a little too much of social engineering to me. A lot of people continue to CHOOSE to drive their cars because they like it. It's their personal space, it gives them freedom, it avoids having to deal with others' schedules, etc.
It seems like a lot of transit policy is designed to make it artificially painful to drive a car, rather than making transit itself desirable.
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Traffic? What's that?
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Traffic here has really picked up of late, after a year of being way down.
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Here too, but the population probably went up 40% in November (Covid spike!!).
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Major changes in our lives over the next decade
So you're saying the Browns bring home the bacon for the 1st time in almost 60 yrs?
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Major changes in our lives over the next decade
So you're saying the Browns bring home the bacon for the 1st time in almost 60 yrs?
Let's not get crazy.
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Let's not get crazy.
So you're saying there's still a chance?
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It all stinks a little too much of social engineering to me. A lot of people continue to CHOOSE to drive their cars because they like it. It's their personal space, it gives them freedom, it avoids having to deal with others' schedules, etc.
It seems like a lot of transit policy is designed to make it artificially painful to drive a car, rather than making transit itself desirable.
I mean, to some degree I suppose it is. But the economics of the situation are what they are. We build roads, expand roads, build parking lots, code land to ensure parking spaces, while typically neglecting other modes of transportation (walking, biking, mass transit, etc.) What does that get you? Incentive to own a car, definitely. Which means we need more roads and more parking. Things get more spread out, which only gives you more incentive to have a car. Which leads to...
The other side of the coin is that while cars are expensive, maintenance is fairly cheap. If you have a car, and in many places it's difficult to go without one, the costs differences between public transportation and driving your car are negligible. For example, I could take the bus route to work, but that would take longer, be more uncomfortable, and much less flexible, all while barely reducing the cost. I still need a car, because while there are some beautiful parks and a giant lake by my house, the only actual store within convenient walking distance is a gas station. It would be pretty dumb of me to actually use the available public transportation.
I find when people are calculating the "economics" of mass transit, they are actually just talking about whether it turns a profit. But that isn't the economics, that's just whether it turns a profit. The economics of the situation also include what we have given up by making cars a near necessity and how much we value that, as well.
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I don't like that car ownership has such a high floor to it.
You can't get normal financing for cars under around $10K. So you have to outright purchase a cheap car, realistically for at least $2K. So someone who is poor and has no savings is kind of stuck. They can't buy a $8K car and make payments over 60 months (something that they could actually afford and do) and they can't save up $2K to outright purchase a car.
So hours/days/years of their lives are spent waiting at bus stops. Riding buses. Walking. Riding the damned light rail. Only able to look for a better-paying job nearby or along bus routes, etc. It's shitty.
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Poor people pay more than rich people do for the same item, when it cannot be purchased outright. They take longer to buy it and thus, it costs them more.
Poor people's time is the saddest part of what they sacrifice. It's not the lack of pretty green grass or HP under the hood or even respect. It's time. They're forced to take 3 hours to do what a car-owner does in 20 minutes.
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It all stinks a little too much of social engineering to me. A lot of people continue to CHOOSE to drive their cars because they like it. It's their personal space, it gives them freedom, it avoids having to deal with others' schedules, etc.
It seems like a lot of transit policy is designed to make it artificially painful to drive a car, rather than making transit itself desirable.
So, this feels to me, just sort of observing, like it kinda puts all the onus on the idea of transit policy and not very much on the reality of cars.
Traffic and parking problems are a reality of urban living. As much as one might argue public transit is a boondoggle (oft true), wide roads and massive amounts of parking ain't free, especially in some cities. Explaining that someone chooses to drive because they like to do it sort of sets aside the fact that many people choose not to drive when given the option for a litany of reasons. Traffic is unpleasant. Parking in urban centers is expensive. If the choice is to be on someone's schedules or be at the whim of a daily traffic flow, some people like schedules. Some people like the idea that if they get on the 8:15 train, they'll very likely be near their office at 8:50.
This idea that it's there to "enlighten" folks is hogwash. If it's not there, no one chooses at all. They just suck it up with fewer options. I suppose the argument is “making one choice worse is social engineering” but I don’t understand how we equate fewer options with actually more freedom.
Many moons ago (too many), I had a summer job in the city. Some days I could borrow my parents’ car to drive in. More often, I took public transit. And I sometimes got to choose. The train ride (there were two legs) was about an hour 15. The drive, 45 minutes on a good day, a little longer on a bad day (and worse now). I’d pay about 1/8 of my daily pay to park and still walk up a hill, if there was room in that lot. Otherwise, I could pay $4-$5 more for the garage. Transit was about 60 percent of that cheaper price, without worrying about gas or milage or bumping someone while drowsy at 6:15. Depending on the day and when the shift started, I guessed and made choices. I had choices to make.
I understand there are many issues with rail. It’s often unfeasible, impractical or shortsighted. But I’ve also sat in a hot car for two hours trying to cross Chicago when I timed a drive wrong. This is neither freedom of choice nor is it the joy of operating on my own schedule. And if the El and all those trains stopped existing, Chicago and everywhere else wouldn’t suddenly figure out a way to make that trek easier.
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Well it's kind of funny.
We build clusters of 12-story buildings and 40-story buildings and 6-story buildings and surround them with a flat plane of roads. That's enough in the largely 1-2 story, 2-dimensional suburbs and country.
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It's a failure of imagination that we haven't built big-city, downtown transportation more 3-dimensionally. A road AND a subway AND a train AND....something else. Downtowns should basically have floors of transportation. You're driving into a big city, at some point, you're faced with stacked roads and you pick a level. You get closer to the city center and maybe a third level up and/or a tunnel.
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It would have been a more intelligent evolution.
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Chicago has some multi-level streets.
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and trains
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Lots of trains. It's actually a pretty good system, when you combine Metra Rail with the L trains and busses. Someone thought that out pretty well.
Metra:
(https://i.imgur.com/sMFBaZR.png)
CTA L:
(https://i.imgur.com/mkspA3z.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/Xojb1YR.png)
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Traffic and parking problems are a reality of urban living. As much as one might argue public transit is a boondoggle (oft true), wide roads and massive amounts of parking ain't free, especially in some cities. Explaining that someone chooses to drive because they like to do it sort of sets aside the fact that many people choose not to drive when given the option for a litany of reasons.
The difference and the complication is that the roads and parking lots are needed first so when they a built it is for current needs and maybe a little overbuilt for projected growth.
As discussed at length in this thread, public transit needs density to be worthwhile. Until that density is reached, it is highly inefficient.
That creates another issue. Once the requisite density is reached it is either too late to go back and retrofit light rail or subway onto the existing infrastructure. I shouldn't say "too late", it isn't impossible, just massively expensive. It would be fairly cheap to build a subway or light rail in the middle of nowhere but that would also be useless. It is vastly more expensive to build a subway or light rail in a high density area where it would actually be useful.
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Lots of cities have multi-level roads, trains, etc. In addition to never travelling internationally, I appears that Fro has not done much domestic travel either.
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why does it always have to be about the AfroMan?
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(https://i.imgur.com/MruajjC.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/GT1zUTb.png)
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Daniel Burnham was pretty brilliant.
Burnham Plan of Chicago - Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burnham_Plan_of_Chicago)
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why does it always have to be about the AfroMan?
Disproportionately large number of breathtakingly stupid posts.
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I think it's important to recognize that the development of a city has a LOT to do with the time frame in which it grew.
Big cities like NYC and Chicago, smaller but older cities like Philly and Boston, grew to become what they were before cars were ubiquitous. Density wasn't a design "choice", it was the necessity of people having access to commerce. Walking and public transit were how you got from point A to B.
City planning and city development changed once we got to the post-war and baby boom eras, when cars were not so much a luxury as something any middle-class family could afford (even if they only had one per family, unlike most families today). It also corresponds to a quite large racial change as we got into the civil rights movement and post-Jim Crow era, where there was a lot of "white flight" out of the cities to the suburbs. It was also a big time of people moving from the farms and rural communities closer to city centers, and many of those people preferred the less dense suburbs. And finally with the interstate system, national infrastructure was starting to be developed around the automobile.
You started to see cities that were less large and established (i.e. most of our 2nd-tier cities today) grow around the automobile. This would also be true of cities that aren't "2nd-tier" cities like Los Angeles, more due to the time frame in which they saw rapid growth. There is a "downtown LA", but it's not a "downtown" in any reasonable sense compared to cities in the eastern US corridor.
In the first case, density existed before the automobile. In the second case, the automobile led to cities being less dense.
Now everyone wants to reverse that in order to force more density--on people who don't want it. You know who likes dense walkable cities? Young childless couples. Give them a few rugrats running around and suddenly they want a SFH out in the suburbs, with big parks, and bike lanes, and room to breathe.
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Nothing like being able to hear six noisy neighbors simultaneously.
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Disproportionately large number of breathtakingly stupid posts I disagree with.
There, I made you nicer.
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Lots of cities have multi-level roads, trains, etc. In addition to never travelling internationally, I appears that Fro has not done much domestic travel either.
Not in how I'm envisioning it.
I'm talking stacked roads with lights and sidewalks and all along the 2nd stories of buildings. And third. Maybe have a 10th-floor train loop for a cluster of very tall buildings.
But don't worry about clarifying my idea, just make sure to insult me.
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why does it always have to be about the AfroMan?
No idea.
Wouldn't it be nice if I was just another random poster?
That'd be great.
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I rather like urban living, but there also is a large park across the street.
https://urbanize.city/atlanta/post/midtown-condo-for-sale-market-pandemic-covid19
Supposedly condos are hot here now.
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are you calling me just another random poster?
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I rather like urban living, but there also is a large park across the street.
https://urbanize.city/atlanta/post/midtown-condo-for-sale-market-pandemic-covid19
Supposedly condos are hot here now.
I almost used you as an example of another demographic that likes downtown walkable living. The older, retired childless couple.
There is something to be said for that sort of convenience--I may try it myself when the kids fly the coop. Especially if I'm still working but continue to have a WFH situation and don't have to worry about a commute, but then may consider it when I retire as well.
It'll probably either be that or a golf course community ;-)
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are you calling me just another random poster?
No, you're a treasure. :88:
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Our building is mostly older folks, almost no kids. The apts nearby are young folks.
They are building more fast.
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Not in how I'm envisioning it.
I'm talking stacked roads with lights and sidewalks and all along the 2nd stories of buildings. And third. Maybe have a 10th-floor train loop for a cluster of very tall buildings.
But don't worry about clarifying my idea, just make sure to insult me.
I'm trying to come up with how this would work structurally, not to mention air quality issues and accessibility issues (ADA).
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I almost used you as an example of another demographic that likes downtown walkable living. The older, retired childless couple.
There is something to be said for that sort of convenience--I may try it myself when the kids fly the coop. Especially if I'm still working but continue to have a WFH situation and don't have to worry about a commute, but then may consider it when I retire as well.
It'll probably either be that or a golf course community ;-)
I'm going with the golf course
doesn't even need to be a community
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I'm trying to come up with how this would work structurally, not to mention air quality issues and accessibility issues (ADA).
sorry, no wheelchairs allowed on the 10th floor
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ADA access is required for public transit.
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I'm trying to come up with how this would work structurally, not to mention air quality issues and accessibility issues (ADA).
Don't trouble him with engineering, logistical, or economic hurdles. It really harshes his mellow.
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I'm trying to come up with how this would work structurally, not to mention air quality issues and accessibility issues (ADA).
Think the sides of the main terminal at Denver International Airport. Multiple levels of roadways.
(https://imagewerx.us/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/KDEN-Terminal-1-logo.jpg)
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Don't trouble him with engineering, logistical, or economic hurdles. It really harshes his mellow.
It really cannot work. First, most of these buildings are private. That's huge.
You'd have to build public spaces within these private buildings, for access, and also new public elevators. It's a non-starter.
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Think the sides of the main terminal at Denver International Airport. Multiple levels of roadways.
(https://imagewerx.us/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/KDEN-Terminal-1-logo.jpg)
Yes, but that was part of the design originally. Building roadways and rail within city blocks along existing buildings would compromise the structural integrity of the buildings, at a minimum. To reinforce would be so costly, you may as well knock down all the buildings and start over.
How the hell would you do this here?
(https://i.imgur.com/yO67hr4.jpg)
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ADA access is required for public transit.
perhaps it's not public, it could be private
probably work better if the government wasn't involved
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Private projects are also subject to ADA standards (except single-family residential, in most places).
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oh well, perhaps this group can't solve the transportation issue for the world
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We Texans have solved our transportation problems long ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTZ7jWFKFb0
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(https://i.imgur.com/yO67hr4.jpg)
I'm still going the airport roadway route. Recall that most departure-level roadways were not built at the time the rest of the terminal building was. Separation of arrivals and departures by level was something that was retrofitted into most terminals (MSP and LAX come to mind immediately). Set the edge of the structure above the curb or midway into the lane, then use ramps and bridges to get to the second level.
However, the bigger issue is that not all second and third floors are on the same elevation above grade.
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Yes, but that was part of the design originally. Building roadways and rail within city blocks along existing buildings would compromise the structural integrity of the buildings, at a minimum. To reinforce would be so costly, you may as well knock down all the buildings and start over.
How the hell would you do this here?
(https://i.imgur.com/yO67hr4.jpg)
I specified it should have happened along with the growth - the evolution of the area.
People are great at attacking and shitting on things I almost said. They have a hard time insulting my actual ideas, though.
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You say all of this public space would be needed and public elevators for some reason.....but I'm picturing it being no different than the ground level. Access to a 10th-floor train loop would be restricted to those working in those buildings and having business in them. Movement between levels would be part of the road system.
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Sure, it's a wild-eyed, silly idea. But I'm using this space to think aloud and just found it funny that while our places of business are 3-dimensional, our access to them are only 2-dimensional. That seems somewhat short-sighted, no?
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I'm trying to come up with how this would work structurally, not to mention air quality issues and accessibility issues (ADA).
Don't people have access from ground-level roads and sidewalks into buildings now? It would be the same, just 1 story up.
We've been talking about auto traffic here, right? So my friend in a wheelchair drives his van in from the suburbs and has business along the 3rd-floor of a downtown building. Along the way, as he gets closer to the inner city, he simply exits the ground-floor road and drives up the onramp to the upper levels. He drives the last few blocks on the 3rd-level roads to his stop. He turns into the third level of the parking lot and gets out. Rolls his way into the same-level building entrance and conducts his business.
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Instead of asking questions for clarity, we just crap on each other's ideas here. That's what the internet seems to be for, and I'm as guilty of it as anyone. It seems anyone asking earnest clarity questions would be a weirdo or something. But yeah, there's a specific portion of my idea.
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Sure, it's a wild-eyed, silly idea. But I'm using this space to think aloud and just found it funny that while our places of business are 3-dimensional, our access to them are only 2-dimensional. That seems somewhat short-sighted, no?
But in major cities, it's not 2-dimensional.
Badge already pointed out that there are a lot of multi-level roads in Chicago. Lower Wacker Drive, for example, acts almost as an "express" to get through the city from I-290 to Lake Shore Drive, whereas if you're on Upper Wacker you're dealing with lots of pedestrians, traffic lights, cross streets, etc.
Much of public transit in these cities in underground subways, and in some cases you can get directly into businesses without going back up to ground level.
Major cities are already 3-dimensional in ways that you're completely discounting because they don't fit your picture of what 3-dimensional means.
I'd venture to say that the failure here is one of imagination. City planners across the entire world have been trying for a hundred years to try to optimize designs in order to improve the way cities flow. The Chinese, as one example, can simply dictate how a city should be constructed and if you look at the recent and massive growth of cities like Shanghai, you know that in many of these cases they can design almost a "blank slate" and construct it without worrying about impact on legacy systems.
Yet... Nobody, across the world--being the experts in their fields with the most incentive to get it right and make their cities more functional--is implementing your idea.
I guess they're just short-sighted, unlike you...
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Don't people have access from ground-level roads and sidewalks into buildings now? It would be the same, just 1 story up.
1. Yes, of course they do. Anyone can walk into the first floor of most (non-government - those are locked, mostly, even though they are publicly funded) buildings. However, to gain access to an elevator you must either have a pass, or a client/resident who notifies security that you are coming.
They then ask you for your ID (what a concept!!) and decide whether or not you can enter.
2. No, it would not be the same, just 1 story up. Those spaces are private residences or offices.
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Underground Atlanta is a version, has not been a success as entertainment district.
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Badge already pointed out that there are a lot of multi-level roads in Chicago. Lower Wacker Drive, for example, acts almost as an "express" to get through the city from I-290 to Lake Shore Drive, whereas if you're on Upper Wacker you're dealing with lots of pedestrians, traffic lights, cross streets, etc.
Chicago also has the pedway, to keep pedestrians off the surface streets and out of the elements.
(https://i.imgur.com/J5ALaDn.png)
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We could do more of it.
https://urbanize.city/atlanta/post/atlanta-connector-park-midtown-higway-cap-georgia
Park on top of freeway concept.
The freeway really divides midtown.
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I like the idea, in concept. Entrances and exits could be complicated.
This has been floated in Chicago too, and has also been implemented a little bit.
McCormick Place is built over tracks, but those were there prior to the buildings. There has been talk of covering the area in yellow with a park, to increase lakeshore access.
(https://i.imgur.com/MsX2sMk.jpg)
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But in major cities, it's not 2-dimensional.
Badge already pointed out that there are a lot of multi-level roads in Chicago. Lower Wacker Drive, for example, acts almost as an "express" to get through the city from I-290 to Lake Shore Drive, whereas if you're on Upper Wacker you're dealing with lots of pedestrians, traffic lights, cross streets, etc.
Much of public transit in these cities in underground subways, and in some cases you can get directly into businesses without going back up to ground level.
Major cities are already 3-dimensional in ways that you're completely discounting because they don't fit your picture of what 3-dimensional means.
I'd venture to say that the failure here is one of imagination. City planners across the entire world have been trying for a hundred years to try to optimize designs in order to improve the way cities flow. The Chinese, as one example, can simply dictate how a city should be constructed and if you look at the recent and massive growth of cities like Shanghai, you know that in many of these cases they can design almost a "blank slate" and construct it without worrying about impact on legacy systems.
Yet... Nobody, across the world--being the experts in their fields with the most incentive to get it right and make their cities more functional--is implementing your idea.
I guess they're just short-sighted, unlike you...
Right, my idea is different than what's already out there. And my idea may be awful, idk. I'm just sharing.
Modern big cities' 3-dimensional transportation systems aren't anything the ancient Romans couldn't have built. It's limited, and probably for great, sound reasons.
Hell, even highway interchange stacks only go up to 5-6 at the most, right? And I'm envisioning several square miles of downtown city streets being stacked that high up. That's all.
It's weird that I'm willing to share ideas you all laugh at, but also laugh at and seem to bother you.
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I'm all about listening to ideas, but I'm also all about evaluating them from a design, logistics and economic standpoint. This conversation is in my wheelhouse. I've been doing this shit since 1984.
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I'm going with the golf course
doesn't even need to be a community
Give @FearlessF (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=10) a tent on a golf course, near the 19th hole and he'll be happy forever.
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Just throw transportation down the well
https://youtu.be/Vb3IMTJjzfo
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I'm all about listening to ideas, but I'm also all about evaluating them from a design, logistics and economic standpoint. This conversation is in my wheelhouse. I've been doing this shit since 1984.
I just view it as a low-stakes place to toss stuff out there.
Are EV batteries a certain shape and could they be a different shape?
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No idea. Ask the electrical engineers here.
I try to be (a) civil (engineer).
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are you calling me just another random poster?
No, you're a treasure. :88:
Sheez who knew 2 butches
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I almost used you as an example of another demographic that likes downtown walkable living. The older, retired childless couple.
There is something to be said for that sort of convenience--I may try it myself when the kids fly the coop. Especially if I'm still working but continue to have a WFH situation and don't have to worry about a commute, but then may consider it when I retire as well.
It'll probably either be that or a golf course community ;-)
I would disagree a bit to the extent that nearly everyone likes walkable living. Never have I looked outside and thought man, I'm so glad I have to drive to get to the grocery store or was happy to see cars parked on the curb. I haven't been to every big city but Columbus is like most I've seen, streets that make way for people to walk around them rather than the other way around. Sometimes I see people riding a bike and think they must have a suicide wish.
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I like the idea, in concept. Entrances and exits could be complicated.
This has been floated in Chicago too, and has also been implemented a little bit.
McCormick Place is built over tracks, but those were there prior to the buildings. There has been talk of covering the area in yellow with a park, to increase lakeshore access.
(https://i.imgur.com/MsX2sMk.jpg)
This reminds me of the last time I was at Mccormick place. The uber guys were squeezed out of doing pickups at Mccormick. You had to meet them off property. The unions, the pols, the graft. Chicago is so insufferable in many respects, in spite of its many other attributes.
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A lid over that section of the tracks would make getting into and out of Soldier Field orders of magnitude easier. The only time I ever went there for an event, everyone was being squeezed through a very narrow choke point on the west side of the stadium. No one was allowed out the south end towards the parking garage.
Sometimes I wish us civil engineers would have the audacity to think sideways. Most of the ideas about how to deal with urban and human-scale issues mostly come from the architects, planners, and politicians. I know I was the only civil engineer that was showing any interest in transit planning, land use, zoning, etc. when I was in undergrad. There is still a lot of institutional intertia within MnDOT about working on Complete Streets issues.
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Yeah, f'ing architects, planners and politicians dump shit (literally) on us and say "make it work".
Been happening to me for 37 years.
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I live in a very walkable city (low SES Maryvale, where I'm the 1%), living adjacent to a post office (shipping out game orders) and a Super Walmart. Although, I prefer riding my bike with a backpack if I'm going grocery shopping there.
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I just view it as a low-stakes place to toss stuff out there.
Are EV batteries a certain shape and could they be a different shape?
They're not universally a certain shape today, so they could be basically any shape that makes sense.
Tesla uses commercially-available battery shapes, that look like oversized AA batteries--and by oversized I don't mean *that* much oversized. Kinda the size of your thumb. Some have said that cylindrical shape is a waste of space.
Other vendors have used and proposed other styles. Audi for example uses a flexible "pouch" style battery, which has been described as about the size of a bag of coffee.
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They're seriously that small and everyone calls me an idiot for thinking switching them out will be the way? Yeeesh.
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I think they are that small, but there's like a million of them.
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They're seriously that small and everyone calls me an idiot for thinking switching them out will be the way? Yeeesh.
Um ....
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ENu8uuPIss8
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I think they are that small, but there's like a million of them.
Well that's kind of important to know. I was asking about the whole battery thing, whatever that is, not a tiny portion.
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Well that's kind of important to know. I was asking about the whole battery thing, whatever that is, not a tiny portion.
Yeah, the Tesla battery packs are thousands of those cells. The Audi are hundreds of those pouches. And they're not individually serviceable.
But again per your question there is no "standard" size/shape/weight for the entire pack. It's unique to each EV and it's built into the chassis of the vehicle. Further, it's built in such a way as to be modular, so they can have a "standard range" and a "long range" EV that both simply contain different numbers of modules in the configuration...
There is no standardization whatsoever.
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yet
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yet
As someone who deals with things that must be industry-standard in order to sell to customers who treat them as commodities, I understand the market desire for standardization...
...and I don't see what will drive it here.
Each major automaker will drive enough volume to create a form factor for batteries that meet their own requirements. Some of them may actually try to become vertically integrated in battery tech, and at that point they don't need an industry standard because they're building for themselves. The smarts really get into the module construction and management, which isn't in the purview of the battery manufacturer.
We may see a drive to standardization. Especially if the market moved to battery swaps... But I don't think that's going to happen for numerous other reasons.
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The difference and the complication is that the roads and parking lots are needed first so when they a built it is for current needs and maybe a little overbuilt for projected growth.
As discussed at length in this thread, public transit needs density to be worthwhile. Until that density is reached, it is highly inefficient.
That creates another issue. Once the requisite density is reached it is either too late to go back and retrofit light rail or subway onto the existing infrastructure. I shouldn't say "too late", it isn't impossible, just massively expensive. It would be fairly cheap to build a subway or light rail in the middle of nowhere but that would also be useless. It is vastly more expensive to build a subway or light rail in a high density area where it would actually be useful.
I mean, I agree with many of these points, but also disagree at points.
So, the argument about roads and parking lots being needed first sort of implies a new city or something. Most cities, at least at the start, were designed around roads for limited car usage and without much parking at all. Now, cities expanded out. Some parts had space to stretch in that way, some didn't, and some didn't develop semi-dense centers farther out.
So you end up with sort of a guessing game. Can you build transit through less expensive land before it's gobbled up? Can you guess that a place will grow in that way. Some don't (Phoenix, Houston). But that's the same way with roads. Building bigger, more robust highway systems that allow for better traffic flow is easier and cheaper when it's not needed. But that's infrastructure.
And the takeaway is kinda an odd one. Like, public transit is super pricy. And things that make driving easier are also really pricy and unless you get it fantastically right often don't make stuff better. So I suppose the answer is do nothing a let places choke themselves out, but in the end people have this pesky habit of trying to do things to make the places they live nicer, for better or worse.
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As someone who deals with things that must be industry-standard in order to sell to customers who treat them as commodities, I understand the market desire for standardization...
...and I don't see what will drive it here.
Each major automaker will drive enough volume to create a form factor for batteries that meet their own requirements. Some of them may actually try to become vertically integrated in battery tech, and at that point they don't need an industry standard because they're building for themselves. The smarts really get into the module construction and management, which isn't in the purview of the battery manufacturer.
We may see a drive to standardization. Especially if the market moved to battery swaps... But I don't think that's going to happen for numerous other reasons.
too early to tell, but if a battery manufacturer makes a break through, they could be making batteries for all vehicles
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nyet
FIFY
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too early to tell, but if a battery manufacturer makes a break through, they could be making batteries for all vehicles
I'm anticipating standardized battery packs (or whatever) for each major class of cars. Sub-compact, compact, full sedan, light truck, etc.
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now you've started it
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So you end up with sort of a guessing game. Can you build transit through less expensive land before it's gobbled up? Can you guess that a place will grow in that way. Some don't (Phoenix, Houston). But that's the same way with roads. Building bigger, more robust highway systems that allow for better traffic flow is easier and cheaper when it's not needed. But that's infrastructure.
And the takeaway is kinda an odd one. Like, public transit is super pricy. And things that make driving easier are also really pricy and unless you get it fantastically right often don't make stuff better. So I suppose the answer is do nothing a let places choke themselves out, but in the end people have this pesky habit of trying to do things to make the places they live nicer, for better or worse.
I think the last statement is what irks me.
People act like I'm some sort of buzzkill who is anti-transit because I just don't think it's worthwhile to do something nice for a place to live. And that we should just sometimes "build it and they will come" and it'll end up being nicer than not doing it, so what's the harm?
The problem is that the harm is real, and it's called opportunity cost.
I like transit. I used to use the light rail when I lived in San Jose. When I go to San Francisco for a weekend vacation, parking is so expensive and there's little reason to have a car anyway, so I'd rather ride BART in from the airport to downtown. Same with Denver--if I'm staying downtown, I can ride the light rail in from the airport right to downtown and be in the heart of the city.
But the issue is that when you build light rail, it's tremendously expensive to build, operate, and maintain. That money has to come from somewhere, and because ridership is usually too low to make transit self-funding, it means that you're crowding out other public transit in favor of light rail.
If fundamentally the goal of public transit is to help the most people get around the city the most efficiently, light rail isn't usually the optimal solution. If it means then that you are basically subsidizing light rail for rich suburbanites while eliminating bus service for the working poor, it isn't exactly what I'd call a great strategy.
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I'm anticipating standardized battery packs (or whatever) for each major class of cars. Sub-compact, compact, full sedan, light truck, etc.
Where I think we'll eventually have full standardization is in rapid charging infrastructure.
Right now there is a standard called CCS, while Tesla is being like Apple and going proprietary. I believe if you want to charge a Tesla on a CCS charger, you need an adapter. Tesla has their own Supercharger infrastructure, and other EV makers are talking about building out charging infrastructure themselves.
Eventually I think that all goes away and will be provided by third-parties much like today's gas stations--which aren't owned or operated by automakers.
EV makers had to do it early because EVs aren't very good without charging infrastructure, and nobody was going to build charging infrastructure until EVs were common enough to justify the investment, so it was a chicken and egg problem. EV makers had to build it out themselves.
But now that EVs are common, I think rapid charging will become its own market, and be operated by companies who specialize in that itself.
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Yeah, there is profit to be had building charging stations. I'm a bit surprised the current filling stations haven't jumped on this (yet), probably capital issues.
We should start seeing signs on freeways for charging stations in addition to filling stations.
I guess the car does that for you now.
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Well that's kind of important to know. I was asking about the whole battery thing, whatever that is, not a tiny portion.
I wouldn't think you could possibly have thought something a bit larger than an AA battery could drive a vehicle.
The battery packs are heavy and large and are used to stabilize the frame. They also get situated very low so the car has a low CoG.
They usually handle pretty well as a result. They accelerate well also.
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Maybe it will wind up being charging stations....and on your car's screen, a whole new industry of 8 or 13 or 17 minute shows becomes a thing.
All I know for sure is that people are too impatient for current charging times. They'll have to come down to the time it tekes us to fill a tank of gas now for it to be 'the way.'
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Also be nice to get to 5-600 miles. Like I get with my car.
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if you could charge for 5-10 minutes a few times as opposed to sitting there for 45 minutes for a full charge that would be useful
then 750 miles from my place to my brother would be doable in 12 hours
from what I understand about lithium, this is how it could work
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Maybe it will wind up being charging stations....and on your car's screen, a whole new industry of 8 or 13 or 17 minute shows becomes a thing.
All I know for sure is that people are too impatient for current charging times. They'll have to come down to the time it tekes us to fill a tank of gas now for it to be 'the way.'
I think this discounts the fact that the only time a typical EV user charges at a rapid charger is on a road trip.
How many are willing to accept a slightly longer time for a road trip two or three times a year to literally NEVER visit a charger otherwise--since their car is charged in their garage while they sleep.
if you could charge for 5-10 minutes a few times as opposed to sitting there for 45 minutes for a full charge that would be useful
then 750 miles from my place to my brother would be doable in 12 hours
from what I understand about lithium, this is how it could work
That's actually how it typically works for Tesla. You can get from nearly empty to ~70% battery in about 20 minutes, and then it's another 25 minutes to get the additional 30%.
If you plan your route into the car's navigation, it knows where the Superchargers are along the route. If you stop at one to charge, and there's another only 160 miles away, it'll only fill you up to say 200 miles of charge instead of filling it to 100%, to save time and plan for you to stop at that next one.
There are also things that are done to precondition the battery to be able to charge faster, and it will start doing that on your route a few miles before you get to the charger to make sure the battery is ready.
Sure, it's not 5-10 minutes, it's more like 20 minutes, but that's not 45 minutes at every stop.
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Getting a restroom and food/drink break for 20 minutes is OK. Longer than that would be tough for me.
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As someone that takes a few long trips in the car every year (family/kids, friends in different states), I like to drive well beyond 160-200 miles between stops. I usually go from tank of gas until almost empty between stops. And even then, I stop long enough to fill the tank and use the restroom, then it's back on the road.
I just got back from a trip to Louisiana last week and was able to go about 400 miles between stops. Not sure I could handle stopping every couple of hours for 20 mins. That would drive me crazy.
But being as I live out in the sticks, so to say, I don't envision going EV for quite some time. Not enough (or any) infrastructure in my area to support such a thing.
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Also be nice to get to 5-600 miles. Like I get with my car.
Hybrid?
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As someone that takes a few long trips in the car every year (family/kids, friends in different states), I like to drive well beyond 160-200 miles between stops. I usually go from tank of gas until almost empty between stops. And even then, I stop long enough to fill the tank and use the restroom, then it's back on the road.
I just got back from a trip to Louisiana last week and was able to go about 400 miles between stops. Not sure I could handle stopping every couple of hours for 20 mins. That would drive me crazy.
But being as I live out in the sticks, so to say, I don't envision going EV for quite some time. Not enough (or any) infrastructure in my area to support such a thing.
exactly
quite some time for me is very possibly, not in my lifetime
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If you look back 20 years at EVs, there was on, a GM car that failed. I forget it's range, it was not much. Tesla did put this on the map. Now nearly every car maker not from Japan is jumping in on it.
Even the Chevy Bolt today is a decent vehicle, it's just expensive, but 250 mile range is pretty decent. These aren't suited for everyone obviously, but they will become more and more accepted, usually as a second car.
Advantages:
Very low "fuel" costs
Almost no maintenance - brake pads almost never wear out because of RGB, and no oil to change
Can recharge at night
Disadvantages:
Initial cost
Long distance travel requires stops to recharge
Range drops over time
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I think the last statement is what irks me.
People act like I'm some sort of buzzkill who is anti-transit because I just don't think it's worthwhile to do something nice for a place to live. And that we should just sometimes "build it and they will come" and it'll end up being nicer than not doing it, so what's the harm?
The problem is that the harm is real, and it's called opportunity cost.
I like transit. I used to use the light rail when I lived in San Jose. When I go to San Francisco for a weekend vacation, parking is so expensive and there's little reason to have a car anyway, so I'd rather ride BART in from the airport to downtown. Same with Denver--if I'm staying downtown, I can ride the light rail in from the airport right to downtown and be in the heart of the city.
But the issue is that when you build light rail, it's tremendously expensive to build, operate, and maintain. That money has to come from somewhere, and because ridership is usually too low to make transit self-funding, it means that you're crowding out other public transit in favor of light rail.
If fundamentally the goal of public transit is to help the most people get around the city the most efficiently, light rail isn't usually the optimal solution. If it means then that you are basically subsidizing light rail for rich suburbanites while eliminating bus service for the working poor, it isn't exactly what I'd call a great strategy.
OK. I think I can say we're friendly. But on like three of these posts, you've basically capped by saying "You know who likes walkable nice urban downtowns? Entitled jerks." I don't think you're a buzzkill. But that read a little buzz-kill-y.
And you described density being "forced" on people as people look to reinvigorate downtowns. I get that it's working toward a goal that might be inefficient, but for better or worse, there's a general sense that having a hollowed out downtown like Detroit's was (or Times square was) is bad. And it might not be, but I don't know I'd get too worked up about people feeling that way. (Also, in the Bay Area, your central areas are often more expensive than the suburbs, which is a curveball)
The SF example is an excellent and interesting one and I think cuts to the core (also, we're conflating rails. BART isn't light rail, MUNI is, though it has non-light rail parts). Efficiency can mean different things. Rail travel like BART is more efficent on a time front. This we know. We know this because you didn't take a bus from San Jose or the airport even though it's cheaper. Now the argument might be, time saved isn't worth money, but it's a factor that at least has to be acknowledged. And poor folks, just like rich folks, appreciate getting home 40 minutes earlier because they're on a train instead of a bus (I've ridden BART, plenty of diversity on those trains).
Now, don’t read this as a full-throated endorsement of all kinds of light rail everywhere. Phoenix is a place without density. Houston too. It’s tricky because you’re kind of projecting down the line. If you project density, you’re rather build that earlier rather than later. A Bay Area with no BART isn’t more efficent to get around. It’s just cheaper to get around slowly.
I don’t know the answer and kinda waffle. But I’m unconvinced that if we could convert all of BARTs ridership into bus riders that we’d be worlds more efficient in the kind of mid-range people-moving that BART does (now perhaps the answer is to be more like LA, where mid-range people moving is an hour in the car or not at all, I dunno).
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As someone that takes a few long trips in the car every year (family/kids, friends in different states), I like to drive well beyond 160-200 miles between stops. I usually go from tank of gas until almost empty between stops. And even then, I stop long enough to fill the tank and use the restroom, then it's back on the road.
Same, give or take some nice lunches. Gas, relieve self, eat, sometimes eat on the road.
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I get plenty of gas while I'm driving.
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This city is going crazy with new construction.
Urbanize Atlanta: Commercial Real Estate Development News (https://urbanize.city/atlanta/)
Being near a MARTA station is a definite selling point, though I wonder how often folks use it who pay $3 K a month for an apt. We used it for domestic air travel before the China thing.
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Even the Chevy Bolt today is a decent vehicle, it's just expensive, but 250 mile range is pretty decent. These aren't suited for everyone obviously, but they will become more and more accepted, usually as a second car.
The second car is the key and that was how foreign cars got their toe hold in America after WWII. The German VW Beetle was initially seen as a low status marker in the single car family era. Then increasing numbers were sold as second cars to families and it became a status symbol. (Ie, it went from "all I can afford is a Beetle" to "I can afford a second car".)
EV's are expensive so they obviously do not suffer from the low status issue that early German and Japanese cars had to overcome but I do think that in most of the Country they will get a toe hold first as second cars.
Downtown Cincinnati is 218mi from me and Downtown Columbus is 111. I'd be very leery today of taking an EV with a range of 250mi either to Cincy or on a round trip to Columbus. Those would only leave me with 28-32 miles of range to spare. I'd be worried that would not be enough in the case of a detour or congestion or whatever. However, I would consider one if my wife and I were in the market right now because if either or both of us needed to make a trip like that the one on the trip could use the non-EV.
Advantages:
Very low "fuel" costs
Almost no maintenance - brake pads almost never wear out because of RGB, and no oil to change
Can recharge at night
Disadvantages:
Initial cost
Long distance travel requires stops to recharge
Range drops over time
This seems like a good summation to me. One extra disadvantage and potential solution:
Since I have kids, I would consider it a disadvantage to have to plug the car in every night and unplug it in the morning. When I was childless this wouldn't have been much of an issue, but now when I go to the car I usually have a diaper bag backpack on my back, a car seat for my six month old daughter in one hand, my two year old son's hand in my other hand, and bottles/sippy cups/etc somewhere in there. I'd be concerned that I'd either forget to plug it in at night and wake up with an insufficiently charged car or forget to unplug it in the morning and break the cord, outlet, or car.
Could wireless charging work for EV's? It works great now for my toothbrush, smart watch, and phone but is it too inefficient to scale up to the level of charging a car or is there some other issue that I'm missing? What I am imagining here is some kind of charge pad that you would put on your garage floor and plug in then just park over it and viola, car charges! Is this impossible? Too inefficient, too much juice, too dangerous?
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OK. I think I can say we're friendly. But on like three of these posts, you've basically capped by saying "You know who likes walkable nice urban downtowns? Entitled jerks." I don't think you're a buzzkill. But that read a little buzz-kill-y.
And you described density being "forced" on people as people look to reinvigorate downtowns. I get that it's working toward a goal that might be inefficient, but for better or worse, there's a general sense that having a hollowed out downtown like Detroit's was (or Times square was) is bad. And it might not be, but I don't know I'd get too worked up about people feeling that way. (Also, in the Bay Area, your central areas are often more expensive than the suburbs, which is a curveball)
The SF example is an excellent and interesting one and I think cuts to the core (also, we're conflating rails. BART isn't light rail, MUNI is, though it has non-light rail parts). Efficiency can mean different things. Rail travel like BART is more efficent on a time front. This we know. We know this because you didn't take a bus from San Jose or the airport even though it's cheaper. Now the argument might be, time saved isn't worth money, but it's a factor that at least has to be acknowledged. And poor folks, just like rich folks, appreciate getting home 40 minutes earlier because they're on a train instead of a bus (I've ridden BART, plenty of diversity on those trains).
Now, don’t read this as a full-throated endorsement of all kinds of light rail everywhere. Phoenix is a place without density. Houston too. It’s tricky because you’re kind of projecting down the line. If you project density, you’re rather build that earlier rather than later. A Bay Area with no BART isn’t more efficent to get around. It’s just cheaper to get around slowly.
I don’t know the answer and kinda waffle. But I’m unconvinced that if we could convert all of BARTs ridership into bus riders that we’d be worlds more efficient in the kind of mid-range people-moving that BART does (now perhaps the answer is to be more like LA, where mid-range people moving is an hour in the car or not at all, I dunno).
I wasn't trying to be contentious... It was perhaps a reaction to the "sometimes people want to do something nice where they live" i.e. I must not want to do something nice where I live. Probably an overreaction on my part.
I used to take the light rail back when I lived in San Jose in 2001. Oddly, it wasn't faster. My commute was from the very south end of San Jose up to the north end of San Jose.
- No traffic: 20-25 minutes
- Normal rush hour traffic: 1 hour
- Light rail: 1 hour
- On a motorcycle with lane splitting, regardless of traffic: 20-25 minutes
I enjoyed it because I didn't have to fight traffic... And also because it was free... Subsidized by my employer--and maybe even the city? Not sure.
If it had cost me $200+/mo I probably would have stayed in a car. My roommate was a coworker, so we could carpool when needed. I also had flex time, so I could have shifted work hours a bit to avoid some of the worst of the traffic.
I kinda view the light rail in San Jose as an unnecessary luxury, as San Jose is much more "sprawl" than SF. Traffic can suck, but parking doesn't.
SF is definitely one place where the density makes sense. Especially because the cost of living in SF means that many SF workers have to commute in from elsewhere, and parking in SF is madness.
Oddly in SF we've got workers who can't afford to live there coming into the city via BART to work, while tech employers on the Peninsula operate buses to bring folks who can afford to live in SF down to their jobs on the peninsula. What a system!
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Since I have kids, I would consider it a disadvantage to have to plug the car in every night and unplug it in the morning. When I was childless this wouldn't have been much of an issue, but now when I go to the car I usually have a diaper bag backpack on my back, a car seat for my six month old daughter in one hand, my two year old son's hand in my other hand, and bottles/sippy cups/etc somewhere in there. I'd be concerned that I'd either forget to plug it in at night and wake up with an insufficiently charged car or forget to unplug it in the morning and break the cord, outlet, or car.
Could wireless charging work for EV's? It works great now for my toothbrush, smart watch, and phone but is it too inefficient to scale up to the level of charging a car or is there some other issue that I'm missing? What I am imagining here is some kind of charge pad that you would put on your garage floor and plug in then just park over it and viola, car charges! Is this impossible? Too inefficient, too much juice, too dangerous?
Depending on your commute, you may not need to plug it in every night.
But that's not much of a disadvantage. I wouldn't put dirty little kids those ages into an expensive EV anyway! :57:
Wireless charging isn't sufficiently strong enough yet to do it. It's also very lossy, so you'd end up wasting TONS of money in your electric bill on charging that your car didn't actually get to use.
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Here's the state of Tesla full self driving tech...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=antLneVlxcs
https://www.motorbiscuit.com/tesla-full-self-driving-beta-is-surprisingly-sketchy-driving-across-this-city/
Since Tesla’s Full Self-Driving system doesn’t allow your car to drive itself, you always have to be ready to take control of the steering wheel. The video shown above starts quite well with the system effectively navigating through moderate traffic. However, once it encounters additional obstacles such as stopped cars, it quickly becomes confused. Eventually, the EV loses its place on the lanes, switching back and forth quickly.
Later on, in the video, we see Tesla’s Full Self-Driving system begin to struggle with poorly painted lines on the road itself. As a result, the driver has to intervene as the system gets confused continuously. One of the scariest portions of the video comes as the EV approaches a set of parked cars. The system mistakenly reads a turning lane as one of the normal lanes and proceeds forward, coming to a stop directly behind a parked car.
Thankfully, the driver in this video remained very vigilant while utilizing the system. Given its major mistakes, a distracted driver (https://www.motorbiscuit.com/cellphones-arent-the-only-distraction-drivers-should-be-wary-of/) could’ve easily created a serious accident.
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My step son (who is a fine fellow indeed, and he just fly back to SF) lives in South Beach, SF, and works for some fruit company down south in some cup-city. He takes the company bus, which he says is nice and has wifi. Well, he would if they worked from not at home.
He said he worked here in ATL just as well as at home, and the night life now is of course far superior. We had a great time last night at a Basque restaurant (Cook and Soldiers) with our neighbor physics professor guy (who is a very fine fellow as well).
I just did my taxes and I ended up owing, for a change. I need to check a few things, I still get some income from Ohio.
This is the second year in a row using the standard deduction. I'm going to pay off the mortgage soon. It's at 3.375% which normally sounds like a "deal" if you can deduct it. Property tax is a bit stiff.
It is interesting that we focused mostly on EVs and autonomous. What else is going to change? Working from home? Vaccines? Amazon has taken over retail to a sig degree. Did you foresee that a decade back? I didn't.
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Behold Atlanta's priciest home, a $14M buildout atop the Waldorf Astoria | Urbanize Atlanta (https://urbanize.city/atlanta/post/buckhead-penthouse-condo-most-expensive-waldorf-astoria)
I prefer our place. We have decks. Three of them.
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(https://i.imgur.com/pwXJpeL.jpg)
There is a concept to cap that freeway with a park on a deck which would connect east and west midtown for a billion dollars. The west to the right is not as well developed. The freeway is a vast river of 16 lanes of ridiculous traffic every day.
We live far left out of view.
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I wasn't trying to be contentious... It was perhaps a reaction to the "sometimes people want to do something nice where they live" i.e. I must not want to do something nice where I live. Probably an overreaction on my part.
I used to take the light rail back when I lived in San Jose in 2001. Oddly, it wasn't faster. My commute was from the very south end of San Jose up to the north end of San Jose.
- No traffic: 20-25 minutes
- Normal rush hour traffic: 1 hour
- Light rail: 1 hour
- On a motorcycle with lane splitting, regardless of traffic: 20-25 minutes
I enjoyed it because I didn't have to fight traffic... And also because it was free... Subsidized by my employer--and maybe even the city? Not sure.
If it had cost me $200+/mo I probably would have stayed in a car. My roommate was a coworker, so we could carpool when needed. I also had flex time, so I could have shifted work hours a bit to avoid some of the worst of the traffic.
I kinda view the light rail in San Jose as an unnecessary luxury, as San Jose is much more "sprawl" than SF. Traffic can suck, but parking doesn't.
SF is definitely one place where the density makes sense. Especially because the cost of living in SF means that many SF workers have to commute in from elsewhere, and parking in SF is madness.
Oddly in SF we've got workers who can't afford to live there coming into the city via BART to work, while tech employers on the Peninsula operate buses to bring folks who can afford to live in SF down to their jobs on the peninsula. What a system!
For sure. All good.
It does seem silly, though honestly, it's probably growing in efficiency. Traffic is just getting more ridiculous there. It's odd.
I will say this, if all the buses were like those tech buses, lets go for more buses. Those things have wifi and are nice. The only issue is that instead of getting that hour of transit to read a book or doodle on a phone, you have to work. Those folks are smart about spurring workaholism.
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What Is This Electric GM Concept With Corvette-Style Headlights? (roadandtrack.com) (https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a35191038/gm-chevrolet-ev-concept-ces-2021-corvette/?utm_source=facebook&utm_campaign=socialflowR%26T&utm_medium=social-media&fbclid=IwAR3VuYOzJjOa-LS_Bz3Wy2eAXzqjuvlM74TEo3egjw3HVBayKgBDBtZfa8E)
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Depending on your commute, you may not need to plug it in every night.
But that's not much of a disadvantage. I wouldn't put dirty little kids those ages into an expensive EV anyway! :57:
Wireless charging isn't sufficiently strong enough yet to do it. It's also very lossy, so you'd end up wasting TONS of money in your electric bill on charging that your car didn't actually get to use.
Thank you for the answer. I thought maybe it was something like that.
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A typical family with two parents and 2.3 kids could easily make do with one EV and a minivan or SUV. The dad drives the former to work, he can likely charge it there.
The financial payout doesn't make sense, yet, but it's getting close.
Electricity here is about 6 cents per kWhr. A Bolt battery is 66 kWhr capacity good for 258 miles (rated range). That is about $4 for a complete recharge. A Chevy Cruise getting 30 mpg would use almost 10 gallons of gas over that distance, call it $30. If you consider oil changes and brake pads over say 100,000 miles ...
that would be 351 recharges total costing $1400 versus over $10,000 for the Cruise. Add in 10 oil changes and one set of brake pads for the Cruise and it starts to look appealing, if I did the math right.
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Just saw an ad, looks like Ford is finally making an F150 hybrid, which I've been asking about for a couple of years.
It's only 47 hp on top of the normal twin turbo ecoboost engine delivering only an advertised 4mph improvement, and they don't seem to be using any regen braking at all, so it's not a firm commitment to the cause, but maybe it's a step in the right direction.
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Hybrids for trucks strike me as very useful (regen braking included), especially if paired with a Diesel. You need torque in a truck, often as not.
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Thank you for the answer. I thought maybe it was something like that.
FYI I did a quick Google search on loss in wireless charging, and found this:
https://debugger.medium.com/wireless-charging-is-a-disaster-waiting-to-happen-48afdde70ed9
It's lossy but the amount is inconsequential if you're just charging a phone. At an EV level I think it would be massively pricey and a major unnecessary load on our power grid, all to avoid plugging in a cable.
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SpaceX is reportedly close to completing the assembly of a Super Heavy prototype, which will shoot Starship into orbit (msn.com) (https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/spacex-is-reportedly-close-to-completing-the-assembly-of-a-super-heavy-prototype-which-will-shoot-starship-into-orbit/ar-BB1eN896?ocid=msedgntp)
Had we had this discussion ca. 1970, I'd guess much of it would be about space flight. Today, not much, but stuff is happening.
I think robotic probes can do exploration, humans are only needed for colonization, in my view. Mars and the Moon are obvious targets for the latter, but I think we're 20+ years off either. The L5 points are interesting for colonization, but radiation remains a concern.
I could see using robots on Mars to build a habitat, probably underground, for human occupation later. We'd need energy, probably from a nuke, and shielding, probably from the Martian surface. Then oxygen and water of course and food and waste reprocessing.
It would be neat to see the outline of a plan somewhere. I have read that the Saturn V was over built for the Moon as von Braun considered it as something needed for Mars as well. It burned 15 TONS of fuel PER SECOND in the first stage.
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Hybrids for trucks strike me as very useful (regen braking included), especially if paired with a Diesel. You need torque in a truck, often as not.
Yup that's why it has always seemed like a no-brainer to me.
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Would you personally buy a Diesel hybrid versus some gas truck if the mpg difference highway was say 33 mpg vs 24 mpg, and city was 27 mpg vs 18 mpg?
Presume the former had more torque but less hp. This depends on where the price of fuel goes of course.
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Would you personally buy a Diesel hybrid versus some gas truck if the mpg difference highway was say 33 mpg vs 24 mpg, and city was 27 mpg vs 18 mpg?
Presume the former had more torque but less hp. This depends on where the price of fuel goes of course.
It depends on the price of fuel for sure, but yeah, I'd be into something like that. For me torque is more important than hp, since I do a lot of towing.
I'd also like to see regen braking on something like that, and I'm not married to the idea of diesel. Total Cost of Ownership can work against the diesel, and with the torque provided by the electrical motor, that could help make up for the difference between gas/diesel.
Honestly I prefer my twin turbo F150 gasser over my friend's turbo diesel GMC 2500 for almost all use cases. I've towed the same load with both, and other than towing up very steep, long grades, my F150 feels better. And it's much much MUCH better as a daily driver.
However, if I were doing a lot of towing through the mountains in, say, Colorado, then the diesel would be the obvious choice.
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I've said it many times before, but I actually prefer towing with SUVs over pickups. It has to be 4wd of course.
But the way I travel and use my toys, with a family of four and a large dog, having the enclosed space in the back is more valuable than having an open truck bed. And SUVs are superior tow vehicles for slick boat ramps as well.
If Ford or Chevy still made a 3/4 ton Suburban or Expedition then that's the vehicle I'd have, but they both stopped doing that at least a decade ago.
A turbo/hybrid motor with regen braking on a 3/4 ton 4x4 Suburban would actually be my ideal tow vehicle, but I doubt we'll ever see something like that.
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2021 Chevrolet Suburban Diesel First Test: The Most Efficient Full-Size SUV (motortrend.com) (https://www.motortrend.com/cars/chevrolet/suburban/2021/2021-chevrolet-suburban-diesel-first-test-review/)
But because the Suburban is already powered by punchy V-8 engines, the six-cylinder diesel doesn't tow as much as the 5.3-liter or 6.2-liter V-8s. The rear-drive Suburban Diesel can tow up to 8,000 pounds, where the four-wheel-drive model can pull 7,800 pounds. Payload capacity is rated at 1,625 and 1,538 pounds, respectively. In contrast, the standard V-8 can tow 8,300 and 8,100 pounds, respectively, and the 6.2-liter is rated at 8,200 and 7,900 pounds.
Rated at 26 mpg highway now, so it's half there. Add hybrid and regen and you likely are near 30 mpg and a big improvement around town.
Diesel of course costs more.
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Pretty cool!
But those are still 1/2 ton tow ratings and payload capacities. Old 3/4 ton Suburbans could tow up to 12,000 lbs.
My F150 with max towing package is rated to 11,500 lbs. My travel trailer is 6500 lbs dry and can weigh up to 9500 lbs wet and loaded.
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Then you need more oomph obviously. They could make one of the large Diesels with hybrid also. I don't know if a heavy hybrid could increase to ratings on the engine above because of battery weight.
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FYI I did a quick Google search on loss in wireless charging, and found this:
https://debugger.medium.com/wireless-charging-is-a-disaster-waiting-to-happen-48afdde70ed9
It's lossy but the amount is inconsequential if you're just charging a phone. At an EV level I think it would be massively pricey and a major unnecessary load on our power grid, all to avoid plugging in a cable.
Thanks for the link, interesting article.
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Then you need more oomph obviously. They could make one of the large Diesels with hybrid also. I don't know if a heavy hybrid could increase to ratings on the engine above because of battery weight.
easy decision if you're towing regularly, the legendary Duramax® 6.6L Turbo-Diesel V8 paired with an Allison® 10-speed automatic transmission.
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(https://media1.giphy.com/media/5xtDarAcWXuXvuB80uI/giphy.gif)
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easy decision if you're towing regularly, the legendary Duramax® 6.6L Turbo-Diesel V8 paired with an Allison® 10-speed automatic transmission.
That does solve most towing challenges, but of course isn't a hybrid. I lean to think the extra weight of even a mild hybrid would offset any increasing in towing capacity.
And then some probably. You'd end up with better city mpg, but a lower gross towing figure (some of which is about braking).