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Clark Nova posted:if the mini bus needs its own lane, why can’t it be a tram? I assume china doesn’t have that thing where building streetcar tracks gets quoted at $800 million per mile for no discernible reason
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May 18, 2023 18:33
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gradenko_2000 posted:if you put the buses on some kind of rudimentary track system you'd drastically reduce the AI requirements needed to pilot them since their paths would be physically restricted I don't think going in a straight line is the hard part. but having rails makes it easier to keep the cars off. Usually.
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May 18, 2023 18:37
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no-one has ever been killed by a seafront train and they've been running for decades. you just have the thing go slow enough and paint a line on the ground so people know to look in case the train is coming.
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May 18, 2023 19:25
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genericnick posted:I don't think going in a straight line is the hard part. but having rails makes it easier to keep the cars off. Usually. Horace posted:no-one has ever been killed by a seafront train and they've been running for decades. you just have the thing go slow enough and paint a line on the ground so people know to look in case the train is coming. cat botherer has issued a correction as of 19:37 on May 18, 2023 |
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May 18, 2023 19:34
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cat botherer posted:? It's already generally acknowledged that most new on-street tram systems are just for the benefit of developers. Just shove that money into buses and real metro systems with big-boy underground or elevated trains. Who acknowledges that? Maybe in the US where it costs a billion per meter, but rails+overhead cables is a pretty strong combo for efficient transport.
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May 18, 2023 19:51
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genericnick posted:Who acknowledges that? Maybe in the US where it costs a billion per meter, but rails+overhead cables is a pretty strong combo for efficient transport. I figure electric trams pulling from overhead wires is a way better solution than cramming tons of lithium into every single bus
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May 18, 2023 20:05
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cat botherer posted:The tram system in Seattle would beg to disagree. Even the light rail gets blocked all the time by morons on its at-grade portion. Buses can go around, but trams get stuck. This was a very serious problem for me when I used to commute by the link a lot. The seafront train is a minibus, effectively. They run on tyres, the tracks are just paint on the road.
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May 18, 2023 20:07
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Pittsburgh Fentanyl Cloud posted:I figure electric trams pulling from overhead wires is a way better solution than cramming tons of lithium into every single bus  you can split the difference with a supercapacitor bus, though I haven't heard about these in years so in hindsight I guess it was probably just a scheme to make transit unworkable
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May 18, 2023 20:09
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Clark Nova posted:
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May 18, 2023 20:14
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genericnick posted:Who acknowledges that? https://streets.mn/2012/04/23/the-magic-of-streetcars-the-logic-of-buses/ https://www.vox.com/2018/7/13/17570156/us-streetcar-trend-public-transportation Developers love streetcars because they are more permanent and admittedly look cool. Unlike buses, they can't change routes. quote:Maybe in the US where it costs a billion per meter, but rails+overhead cables is a pretty strong combo for efficient transport. Buses can and commonly are run with overhead cables as well. That's not a specific advantage of streetcars. I really struggle to see the value prop of small streetcars versus buses, given that they carry similar numbers of people and buses are far cheaper. Bigger Euro-style trams can make a lot of sense, but you're pretty much talking about light rail at that point. This discussion also got kicked off from talking about minibuses. Streetcars make even less sense for that niche of low-capacity, high-coverage transit. Pittsburgh Fentanyl Cloud posted:I figure electric trams pulling from overhead wires is a way better solution than cramming tons of lithium into every single bus cat botherer has issued a correction as of 20:18 on May 18, 2023 |
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May 18, 2023 20:16
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buses ftmfw
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May 18, 2023 20:17
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I'm moving away from the light rail line but the new place is a block from a dedicated busway. epic win
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May 18, 2023 20:21
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Pittsburgh Fentanyl Cloud posted:I'm moving away from the light rail line but the new place is a block from a dedicated busway. epic win
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May 18, 2023 20:25
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cat botherer posted:I used that (or a?) dedicated busway the last time I was in Pittsburgh. Worked really good. It doesn't have the capacity of rail but still knocks the poo poo out of at-grade transit. There are nice busways on the west and on the east of the city, and they were both built on old tram rights of way. lol
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May 18, 2023 20:28
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cat botherer posted:Plenty of people, e.g.: Wait, what. Streetcars aren't just trams? America (derogatory)
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May 18, 2023 20:29
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Houston light rail is cool and good. Houston buses suck rear end because the roads are poo poo, so the ride is jarring. Plus the bus sounds like it's rattling apart. The rattling is far louder than the sound of the diesel engine. I have no idea why Houston buses are such poo poo. I don't think I've encountered the rattling apart problem on other cities' buses. edit: there is a big difference between a street car on rails that shares the road with car traffic and a light rail in separate right of way.
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May 18, 2023 20:30
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genericnick posted:Wait, what. Streetcars aren't just trams? America (derogatory) cat botherer has issued a correction as of 20:35 on May 18, 2023 |
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May 18, 2023 20:32
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Deadly Ham Sandwich posted:Houston light rail is cool and good. I actually spent my bus ride yesterday pondering how loud the rattling on buses is. This was on a pretty decent street too. There are just so many metal parts on the inside.
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May 18, 2023 20:35
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Seattle has both at-grade street cars without signal preemption AND at-grade light rail without signal preemption. it’s amazing how consistent this city is with taking the absolute worst middle ground solution to every problem
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May 18, 2023 20:40
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Streetcars are mostly North American and have sexy names like Desire, Destiny and Faith. Trams prefer to stay anonymous and mysteriously European.
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May 18, 2023 20:41
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Deadly Ham Sandwich posted:edit: there is a big difference between a street car on rails that shares the road with car traffic and a light rail in separate right of way. e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stadtbahn
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May 18, 2023 20:50
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reminds me of when the expo line first opened, shuttled thousands of people up and down the 10 corridor, and still had to stop at lights on the way to let a handful of cars pass. they fixed it but it was pretty funny for a while
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May 18, 2023 21:00
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Mr. Sharps posted:Seattle has both at-grade street cars without signal preemption AND at-grade light rail without signal preemption. it’s amazing how consistent this city is with taking the absolute worst middle ground solution to every problem rapid ride buses preempt signals all the time. it's automatic at the intersection near my house and often results in waiting a long time to cross as a pedestrian.
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May 18, 2023 21:07
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 lol every day
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May 18, 2023 21:17
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Mr. Sharps posted:Seattle has both at-grade street cars without signal preemption AND at-grade light rail without signal preemption. it’s amazing how consistent this city is with taking the absolute worst middle ground solution to every problem cat botherer has issued a correction as of 21:32 on May 18, 2023 |
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May 18, 2023 21:30
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Mr. Sharps posted:Seattle has both at-grade street cars without signal preemption AND at-grade light rail without signal preemption. it’s amazing how consistent this city is with taking the absolute worst middle ground solution to every problem Seattle has a really cool mass transit tunnel that can accommodate both busses and light rail at the same time, though! 
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May 18, 2023 21:38
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Hubbert posted:Seattle has a really cool mass transit tunnel that can accommodate both busses and light rail at the same time, though! Mercifully, and uncharacteristically pragmatic for Seattle, it now only has trains.
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May 18, 2023 21:41
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If Seattle had tried to build a proper subway it presumably would have cost $500 trillion and taken a thousand years to build
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May 18, 2023 21:50
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But they would have started in the 70s so they'd have even more cool abandoned tunnels by now
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May 18, 2023 22:12
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Pittsburgh Fentanyl Cloud posted:
Now that the UK has enacted stronger penalties for blocking roads in protest, I think they ought to just intentionally crash a lorry to block up traffic. Only grumbles when a car does it, but seething rage if people dare impede you.
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May 18, 2023 22:48
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cat botherer posted:It's a lot blurrier than that. As has been said, light rail can sometimes be at-grade and have to deal with traffic lights and turning cars, and sometimes trams can have their own dedicated ROW over portions. Admittedly, American streetcars specially usually are at grade, slow moving, and have limited capacity. I would just label European trams as usually just a better done version of light rail. Also, the new Crenshaw line in LA also requires riders to enter and exit an entirely different station to get to the EXPO line. ———- As for the minibuses, I would actually be relatively fine with them using lithium if only the efficiency you are getting out of it is something better than a Tesla. It is going at low speeds, and it doesn’t seem to require that much new infrastructure. It is designed as well to complement an existing integrated system. Seattle is also just weird in that it is a compact city that would obviously benefit from mass transit but obviously it just isn’t allow to happen. I think the morale of the story is minibuses seem fine and make sense in China and if any money is spent in the US it probably should be so people can have basic bus service at this point.
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May 18, 2023 22:53
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Ardennes posted:I think the morale of the story is minibuses seem fine and make sense in China and if any money is spent in the US it probably should be so people can have basic bus service at this point. For most people, bikes or just walking would probably be ideal to fill in the gaps of a rail/bus system. However, that's not going to work in some situations, and then there's stuff like outlying rural areas that don't have the demand to justify high capital-investment transit, or even just paying a bus driver. You really need 24/7 high-availability transit if you want to banish cars to the land of wind and dust. Self-driving minibuses and that kind of thing could really work there.
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May 18, 2023 23:36
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silicone thrills posted:Gonna be honest, im super shocked people dont get run down at the airport more often. People are more pissed in airport pickup/drop off traffic than i've ever seen anywhere Airports are heavily policed and there are witnesses and cameras everywhere. You can bully and hurt people all you want in the streets but airports are still serious business because of the terrorism angle. When there's a lot of traffic, there's also people in uniforms directing traffic and telling people to keep it moving.
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May 19, 2023 00:01
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Some comedian on Just For Laughs once accurately described Montreal's 'subway' system, which has tires but is otherwise joined to an electrified third rail and has elevated platforms and multiple doors and all the other stuff of a subway: "That's not a subway. That's a bus in a cave."
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May 19, 2023 00:34
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Mister Speaker posted:Some comedian on Just For Laughs once accurately described Montreal's 'subway' system, which has tires but is otherwise joined to an electrified third rail and has elevated platforms and multiple doors and all the other stuff of a subway: "That's not a subway. That's a bus in a cave." born on a mountain commute in a cave...
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May 19, 2023 01:13
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cat botherer posted:Yeah I'm thinking of the slow automated minibuses as coming in at a more a la-la fantasyland scenario where we're taking real efforts to solve the biosphere collapse, where highly localized automated transit could get rid of almost all of the remaining use cases for personal cars, in concert with really good commuter rail and regular buses and poo poo. I think your analysis of these buses is really spot on and is a good answer to that last mile problem that I haven't really seen before.
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May 19, 2023 01:13
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 seeing these posts daily now on r/australia lol quote:I remember hearing stories from the Australian/American army exercises held in NT in the 90s. The Yanks had just started using the HMMVV (Hummer) as their main army vehicle. They were flying Hercules cargo planes over from their US bases full of tyres because the Hummers were so wide they couldn't drive in the wheel ruts on our outback roads, so the sidewalls of their tyres were being shredded by spinifex, rocks, etc.
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May 19, 2023 03:15
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It is good to know that Mexico City has a "cave bus system" that moves 4.5 million people a day.Weka posted:I think your analysis of these buses is really spot on and is a good answer to that last mile problem that I haven't really seen before. It is one of the ways I think autonomous vehicles actually do make some sense, especially if you can have frequent local service. The higher on the food chain and the more mix traffic you have, I think the worse it is going to get. I think people went a little too far of thinking buses are necessarily inferior to rail when honestly, they can easily complement each other. It is just that ripping out its streetcar systems for infrequent bus service was clearly a mistake (San Francisco/Philadelphia actually were able to figure it out). In the case of China, you already have, for the most part, high quality heavy rail service, so it is less of an issue. Ardennes has issued a correction as of 05:27 on May 19, 2023 |
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May 19, 2023 05:19
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cat botherer posted:It's a lot blurrier than that. As has been said, light rail can sometimes be at-grade and have to deal with traffic lights and turning cars, and sometimes trams can have their own dedicated ROW over portions. Wtf, S-bahn is clearly supposed to be a right proper train. Which reminds me that the Copenhagen S-bahn is going driverless in 2029. Pretty cool, especially if they decide to just run the rush hour schedule 24/7. Also we had some cool protests last week where lorry drivers blocked the highway exits or, because they weren't allowed to, just drove obnoxiously slow to block traffic. It was quite half hearted because of the illegality, but showed very well how fragile car dependent infrastructure is.
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May 19, 2023 06:22
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BonHair posted:Wtf, S-bahn is clearly supposed to be a right proper train. Which reminds me that the Copenhagen S-bahn is going driverless in 2029. Pretty cool, especially if they decide to just run the rush hour schedule 24/7. S-bahns are actually a different mode (there is a schell between the stadt and bahn), and yeah are heavy rail, while stadtbahns are more tram like. But yeah S-bahn/RER systems are pretty useful and it is a shame that the US resists electrification and EMUs. Just think if you took a city like LA which has diesel commuter trains and just made an electrified s-bahn system out of it, it would completely change regional transportation in the city. Ardennes has issued a correction as of 06:45 on May 19, 2023 |
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May 19, 2023 06:43
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