[ale] Mass Transit Solutions?

[Charles Shapiro]

Uh, as a mostly pedestrian and bicyclist this scares me to death.

It's dangerous enough out there with the drunks and the SUVs. Add trying to
cross a street where a minor sensor failure can kill you into the mix and
it'll become pretty much impossible to move around the city EXCEPT in an
automobile.

-- CHS


On 6/16/06, James P. Kinney III <jkinney at localnetsolutions.com> wrote:
>
> So the big questions I have to pose is:
>
> What can be done about it that is financially feasible, politically
> possible and technically available?
>
> Of course I have some thoughts on this. :)
>
> We already have an extensive network of asphalt. Neighborhood
> associations have enough clout to kill off a rail line in the areas
> where it is needed (Why has the Tucker Marta spur never been built?).
> The Grand Darpa Challenge has demonstrated we currently posses the
> technical ability to auto-navigate a car through some of the worst
> terrain.
>
> Is it feasible to have current cars retro-fitted with self-nav as an
> intermediate step to a purpose built light vehicle with self-nav
> designed in?
>
> There are social issues with peoples current choice of cars that can't
> be addressed with technology (Why do so many little, tiny women drive
> gigantic 3 ton monsters like Chevy Suburbans north of I-20?).
>
> My thinking on the self-nav is it could allow a smoother traffic flow
> process that would be safer and much more fuel efficient. Ad 60% of the
> work done by the engine is to simply move the air out of the way,
> self-nav would allow cars to safely tail-gate literally bumper-to-bumper
> and thus greatly reduce wind drag on the entire mini-train.
>
> A second factor in this (long range proposal) would be a super light
> weight, single commuter vehicle. Much of the mass of the current vehicle
> design is involve in the safety of the passengers. Let's face it, cars
> crash because drivers make mistakes. If the crash likelihood is reduced
> by removing as much of the human error as engineering possible, the
> overall mass of the car can be reduced dramatically with tremendous
> efficiency results. Likewise, the reduction in size increases the number
> of these vehicles that can be on the roads at any given time (which
> extends the useful lifetime of the existing road size and also reduces
> maintenance as the vehicles are lighter and thus don't produce the wear
> on the roadway that the heavier ones do.)
>
> Of course, the nav systems would have to be fully open source to ensure
> that the travel details of any one person are not used nefariously. In
> fact, the entire traffic control system should be fully open source to
> engender an enhanced trust of the system by the population at large.
> Having a talking guvment head telling me "Of course it's safe and
> secure" is rather pointless. Having 40-50 research engineers jointly say
> it is means much more.
>
> More?
>
> On Fri, 2006-06-16 at 09:08 -0400, William Bagwell wrote:
> > Catch up? The idiots should never have *abandoned* in the 50s what had
> > existed in the 1930s! A bit before my time so I'm not exactly sure when
> > they were first built, but depression era trolley lines ran as far as
> > Marietta to the north and Stone Mountain to the east. (Probably others
> > too.) Cheap, simple rail trolleys that cost a nickel to ride... Or so I
> > have been told, I only remember the rotting stations as a small child.
> >
> > Lingering bitterness over Atlanta killing the trolley, was a primary
> reason
> > why Cobb county rejected joining Marta when it was first proposed back
> in
> > the late 60s or early 70s.
> --
> James P. Kinney III          \Changing the mobile computing world/
> CEO & Director of Engineering \          one Linux user         /
> Local Net Solutions,LLC        \           at a time.          /
> 770-493-8244                    \.___________________________./
> http://www.localnetsolutions.com
>
> GPG ID: 829C6CA7 James P. Kinney III (M.S. Physics)
> <jkinney at localnetsolutions.com>
> Fingerprint = 3C9E 6366 54FC A3FE BA4D 0659 6190 ADC3 829C 6CA7
>
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