Adam Kovacs and Adam Westbrook explain why Elon Musk’s Hyperloop and Boring Loop are not serious solutions to real-world transportation challenges.
Related:
“What’s a Gadgetbahn?” Anton Dubrau, Catbus
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JR East, the East Japan Railway Company, wants Tokyo commuters to stand on both sides of station escalators instead of reserving one side for impatient people who want to walk. A study found that most escalator accidents happen when walkers stumble over luggage or run and slip, so the all-standing policy is safer and more efficient.
Good luck with that. The policy was tried in Hong Kong, London’s underground and DC’s Metro, but it didn’t go over well. Standing to one side on escalators and walking on the other is too firmly embedded in urban behavior. In Washington, there’s even a song about it:
How did New York City subways get so bad? Politics. A New York Times video.
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China has almost 300 million private cars, and some of the worst traffic and air pollution in the world. Auto sales are brisk, crashes and road rage are epidemic, and it’s so dire a futuristic transit concept first proposed 45 years ago might finally get the green light.
In 1969 architects Craig Hodgetts and Lester Walker proposed the Bos-Wash Landliner, a towering vehicle running between DC and Boston with enough space underneath that passenger cars could dive under it. China’s Shenzhen Huashi Future Parking Equipment Company (HS Future) introduced a similar electric-powered “Straddle-Bus” design at a 2010 trade fair and updated it a few years later but got no, um, traction, and the concept went back into hibernation.
Until now. HS Future says it will start building the first 116 miles (186 km) of track in western Beijing’s Mentougou District for the “Widebody Elevated Dimensional Fast Bus” aka 3D Express Coach” at the end of the year. It will only travel through the city at about 38 mph (60 Km/hr) but holds 1400 passengers, isn’t troubled by traffic jams, doesn’t need its own dedicated lane or parking lot, and only costs about 15% of what a subway would.
“The quality of life in cities has much to do with systems of transport, which are often a source of much suffering for those who use them. Many cars, used by one or more people, circulate in cities, causing traffic congestion, raising the level of pollution, and consuming enormous quantities of non-renewable energy. This makes it necessary to build more roads and parking areas which spoil the urban landscape. Many specialists agree on the need to give priority to public transportation. Yet some measures needed will not prove easily acceptable to society unless substantial improvements are made in the systems themselves, which in many cities force people to put up with undignified conditions due to crowding, inconvenience, infrequent service and lack of safety.”
— Laudato si’, Encyclical Letter of Pope Francis on care for our common home
Here’s a musical tip on escalator etiquette for the DC Metro subway system.
“Stand Right,” sung by Aaron Myers, accompanied on piano by the composer, Oren Levine, with Percy White on bass.
See the musicians Friday Dec. 18, 8:00 pm at Mr. Henry’s on Capitol Hill.
h/t: Perry Stein
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Last week New York comedian Matt Little was at the First Avenue subway station waiting for the Canarsie Line when a fellow traveller walked down the stairs carrying a slice of pizza. Nothing unusual about that, except the diner was a rat. Mr. Little recorded a video on his phone, and it’s been watched 6 million times on YouTube:
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