Can the automobile survive?

[Arjen]

not for engineering and technical industries.

Agreed. I am a computer programmer, video conferencing is not as good as being in the same office when it comes to exchanging information. Asking questions on the spur of the moment, even in the coffee corner, asking people I hadn't thought to ask because they happen to be present, better gauging by body language if I'm asking the right question or giving proper answers. Having a larger canvas to share information, physically showing what to do with tools.

the crimes of the managerial class

My boss is the kind of manager who helps me with my daily job, because he allows me to mostly concentrate on what I am good at - programming, analysing problems, solving puzzles. He likes his job, he says it is all about enabling people in his department to do what they are good at.
There are good managers, and bad ones. Same goes for programmers. I have no inclination to become a manager, although sometimes I take on managerial things. Sometimes needs must.

 

[DE1083]

I think some type of personal transportation will be required for a long time. Here in Hot Springs AR, the community is spread out over a large area. There is limited public transportation services during the week, limited service on Saturday and no service Sunday. Some people have travel 15 - 20 minutes just to get to the nearest store. If you don't have a car (or access to a friend with one) you are basically stuck. You can't get from Hot Springs to Little Rock (the nearest airport) except by car or Uber for example. If you live an area with limited population density, individual transportation will still be required.

 

[Byeman]

Agreed. I am a computer programmer, video conferencing is not as good as being in the same office when it comes to exchanging information. Asking questions on the spur of the moment, even in the coffee corner, asking people I hadn't thought to ask because they happen to be present, better gauging by body language if I'm asking the right question or giving proper answers. Having a larger canvas to share information, physically showing what to do with tools.

and mentoring can't be done remotely.

 

[GTX]

and mentoring can't be done remotely.

I disagree. I have and continue to mentor people, some remotely.

 

[Arjen]

My personal experience is that mentoring can be done remotely, but not as effectively as when you're physically together.

 

[Justo Miranda]

My personal experience is that mentoring can be done remotely, but not as effectively as when you're physically together.

In my opinion, both reasoning is valid, but people born in the last century react better to personal contact and young people are much more familiar with telematic contact, they even create new languages and interpret emotions better than we do... The future is clear: each in their own small cubicle with an antenna on their head and a cable on their ….

The Naked Sun - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Arjen]

I have read The Naked Sun a long time ago, and what I felt then came back to me hard when you just remembered me of it: do not try this at home. It was a good read, but living in a world like that would have given me the screaming heebie-jeebies then. And it still would now.

Massive thread drift. Again.

 

[Jason Dykstra (Wyvern)]

That was already invented more than a century ago, it is called in various ways: railway, bus, trolleybus or tram. It means losing the freedom of the driver of a vehicle in a collective environment that can be unpleasant and even dangerous. Defenders of collective transport also like the idea of eliminating cash and forcing people who travel to inform them in advance of their destination and causes of the trip, all controlled from the headquarters.

Sorry, but I don't find the idea of sitting in a metal box smelling a mixture of my own gas and others' exhaust for two hours each day of my life as looking anything like "freedom". A full train keeps moving, and car stuck in traffic doesn't. I'd be biking it everywhere or at least riding a moped but where I live, the roads are in a constant state of anarchy and road users have no respect towards others.

Also, proponents of the car will lobby for urban planners to design roads and towns in a way which is anti-pedestrian, thus forcing one to walk. This forces people to travel in the same direction to the same destination, all decided for them by lobbyists, businessmen and lawyers. Now the car doesn't sound so free huh?

 

[shin_getter]

Sorry, but I don't find the idea of sitting in a metal box smelling a mixture of my own gas and others' exhaust for two hours each day of my life as looking anything like "freedom". A full train keeps moving, and car stuck in traffic doesn't. I'd be biking it everywhere or at least riding a moped but where I live, the roads are in a constant state of anarchy and road users have no respect towards others.

I just got off the train, and it keeps on stopping about every kilometer (to let people on and off) making it a significantly slower means of transport then the highway going through the same route.

The real problem is that road surface usage efficiency is low due to low density of traffic due to poor sensing, coordination and reactions of drivers demanding huge safety distances and crude switching methods to enable acceptable accident rates.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pbAI40dK0A


The question is: when will someone figure out grade separation, standardization of traffic protocols and vehicle system performance and sort out all the painful BS that is needed to change how people live. (This is what boring company is really doing, if you really think about it)

By the end of it you get train like density with personal vehicle like end to end transport at speeds limited only by physics.

Ultimately, 19th century technology will only give you 19th century results. It is time to figure out the 21th century technology.

 

[Byeman]

I disagree. I have and continue to mentor people, some remotely.

not operations

 

[Scott Kenny]

The question is: when will someone figure out grade separation, standardization of traffic protocols and vehicle system performance and sort out all the painful BS that is needed to change how people live. (This is what boring company is really doing, if you really think about it)

By the end of it you get train like density with personal vehicle like end to end transport at speeds limited only by physics.

Ultimately, 19th century technology will only give you 19th century results. It is time to figure out the 21th century technology.

THIS!!!!!!

Seriously, what incompetent hack puts pedestrian accesses in high speed vehicle areas?!?


And to answer your question, believe it or not the answer was Walt Disney, in the designs for EPCOT. Multiple layers of roads and stuff, with delivery vehicles using a different level of roads than passenger cars, and then with pedestrians walking well above that.

Picture a major city center, tall buildings etc. Services like water and sewer in tunnels so that you didn't have to dig them up. But the only thing in those tunnels was the services, no vehicle traffic normally so that regular maintenance wouldn't be in people's way. Then you had another set of either tunnels or base roads for delivery vehicles, say at the ground floor. Above those were the passenger car levels, call those as at about the 3rd or 4th floor in a building. And on top of those at probably the 6th floor or so is where the pedestrians could walk, zero chance of getting run over because there's no cars at the pedestrian level skybridges.

Expensive as hell to set up initially, cheap to maintain.

 

[Jason Dykstra (Wyvern)]

when will someone figure out grade separation, standardization of traffic protocols and vehicle system performance and sort out all the painful BS that is needed to change how people live.

Same can be said about railways

 

[GTX]

not operations

Well of course it depends upon the nature of the job.

 

[riggerrob]

The other thing is that while suburbs and rural towns are cheap for the owners, they absolutely aren't for the wider community. They require extensions to the electricity, water and gas networks which are expensive relative to the population of these suburbs. In general, economies of scale are not achieved here.

Similarly, while public transport is a large expense - so are all of the facilities created to sustain a very large traffic of road vehicles. Of course, reducing the need for cars or road transport would not allow us to simply remove the roads and facilities that have been built, but it might reduce wear and maintenance costs. And a lot of these facilities are funded through public spending or at least by a larger population than regular drivers.

Yes.
I work for Coast Mountain Bus Company which supplies all the city busses in Vancouver and surrounding suburbs. Public transport is heavily subsidized in the biggest city in the province. Something liek half of the population of the Province of British Coulmbia lives in the Lower Fraser River Valley. Only half of our operating costs are paid for by bus fares. The rest of the cost is paid by municipal, provincial and federal taxes or subsidies.
IOW The province finds it cheaper to heavily-subsidize buses, Skytrain, Seabus, etc. than to build enough bridges and parking lots to allow everyone drive to work.
It takes me an hour to commute from home to work by a combination of bus and Skytrain. Fortunately I enjoy reading in the back of the bus. It only takes half an hour to drive the same route off-peak hours. I avoid driving during afternoon rush hour.

 

[shin_getter]

Same can be said about railways

Railways by design have cargo masses move in the same direction and can not switch directions easily. A single train can not serve multiple destinations and in practice it means trains stop and people move off to wait for another train, which result in much longer travel times regardless of vehicle top speed.

The only way to save trains is to fit catapult that lets it launch passengers onto another train without stopping, but I'm quite sure that the baseline homo sapians are too fragile for that kind of cargo handling.

What is needed for revolutionary surface transport is density of trains but independent routing. In some sense monowheels that can go at 60mph with some hacking can translate to density of a runner with speed of a car but again homo sapians are too fragile to survive an accident here, though to be fair some traffic rules to enable stable and dense 15mph might be doable.

Weather protected independently routed vehicle (aka Car) is just a superior experience. The biggest issue is 8 passenger sized footprint for 1 passenger use cases, huge distance between vehicles and poorly optimized control and switching that result in inefficiency. All these problems are solvable with right technology, incentives, standards and regulation.

 

[Scott Kenny]

Railways by design have cargo masses move in the same direction and can not switch directions easily. A single train can not serve multiple destinations and in practice it means trains stop and people move off to wait for another train, which result in much longer travel times regardless of vehicle top speed.

The only way to save trains is to fit catapult that lets it launch passengers onto another train without stopping, but I'm quite sure that the baseline homo sapians are too fragile for that kind of cargo handling.

What is needed for revolutionary surface transport is density of trains but independent routing. In some sense monowheels that can go at 60mph with some hacking can translate to density of a runner with speed of a car but again homo sapians are too fragile to survive an accident here, though to be fair some traffic rules to enable stable and dense 15mph might be doable.

Weather protected independently routed vehicle (aka Car) is just a superior experience. The biggest issue is 8 passenger sized footprint for 1 passenger use cases, huge distance between vehicles and poorly optimized control and switching that result in inefficiency. All these problems are solvable with right technology, incentives, standards and regulation.

One idea I've bumped into in fiction is using 2-4-8 seat cars on light-rail tracks instead of mass trains. You call the size car you want (you can get a bigger car than for 2 people but it'll cost you more), and it takes you pretty close to the destination, automatically changing rails and speeds as necessary.

That said, I'm pretty sure that a lot of the extensive light rail infrastructure in that case was possible due to the city having been heavily bombarded during the last war.

 

[DE1083]

I think the real issue is population density. I used to live in SD county prior to moving to Hot Springs AR. SDC within 4.5K sq miles has a larger population that the state of AR (53.1k sq miles). (with around 720 people per sq mile, vs 58 people per sq mile in AR). Cars or some type of individual transportation will continue to be required and the distance between cities/towns in some areas make anything other than a hybrid unrealistic.

 

[pathology_doc]

This isn't a "freedom" issue.

Oh, but it is. Very much so.

I'd argue that society needs to eliminate unnecessary commuting by white collar workers to obsolete physical offices.

You really don't grasp why physical offices are necessary, do you?

 

[GTX]

Oh, but it is. Very much so.


You really don't grasp why physical offices are necessary, do you?

Care to elaborate on any of that?

 

[shin_getter]

One idea I've bumped into in fiction is using 2-4-8 seat cars on light-rail tracks instead of mass trains. You call the size car you want (you can get a bigger car than for 2 people but it'll cost you more), and it takes you pretty close to the destination, automatically changing rails and speeds as necessary.

That said, I'm pretty sure that a lot of the extensive light rail infrastructure in that case was possible due to the city having been heavily bombarded during the last war.

Due to long stopping distances thanks to low friction steel wheels, headway (distance between trains) is long so wait times don't go down that much with smaller vehicles. Switches and track is also expensive so it takes huge investment to get one close to destination. (add that to unions forcing expensive drivers for trains and inflating construction price to the moon....)

Steel wheels just isn't optimizing for the problem of passenger travel. I don't get why transit advocates have such a hard on for them over buses that does basically the same thing but with more flexibility and scalability. Note that there is no reason why a rubber wheeled self steering vehicle can't be very long and have huge capability, other than issues with mixed traffic and that is only if run it with them.

If it isn't just sloganeering, it appears that the main "advantage" of trains is sheer inflexibility which demands technocratic management of all of society around it to utilize it properly, which is the 'right' social arrangement of society of people too low value to make decision themselves.

 

[Scott Kenny]

Due to long stopping distances thanks to low friction steel wheels, headway (distance between trains) is long so wait times don't go down that much with smaller vehicles. Switches and track is also expensive so it takes huge investment to get one close to destination. (add that to unions forcing expensive drivers for trains and inflating construction price to the moon....)

Steel wheels just isn't optimizing for the problem of passenger travel. I don't get why transit advocates have such a hard on for them over buses that does basically the same thing but with more flexibility and scalability. Note that there is no reason why a rubber wheeled self steering vehicle can't be very long and have huge capability, other than issues with mixed traffic and that is only if run it with them.

If it isn't just sloganeering, it appears that the main "advantage" of trains is sheer inflexibility which demands technocratic management of all of society around it to utilize it properly, which is the 'right' social arrangement of society of people too low value to make decision themselves.

I'm not sure that the "cabinets" (English translation of a Japanese word) are steel wheels. They might be, it's just not explored by the author. The wait time for one is never more than about 5 minutes. And they have dedicated "tracks" with different speeds involved, so if you're zooming across Tokyo your cabinet gets shunted into the high speed lanes for most of the trip and then gets shunted down into the low-speed lanes for the last mile or so.