10 Mph Moving Sidewalks Could Make Crosstown Buses Obsolete
nymag.com
nymag.com
Faster isn't always better. Moving faster is overrated.
A moving sidewalk seems much more plausible and practical than a hyperloop in improving transportation.
In the last 2-3 years (and I'm there at least once a month) the moving sidewalks have maintenance signs on them and have never worked. As a matter of fact I put a small sticker on the belt/handrail and it hasn't moved guaranteed in about a year. It makes the walk to Customs and Immigration quite the haul.
It could be that they have disabled them permanently so people don't get to the customs/immigration area to quickly and overwhelm an already overwhelmed system. Don't know....
http://blog.sfgate.com/thebigevent/2015/07/10/35-years-befor...
Check out Whale Bus:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/14/Fr...
I have an alternative idea: Electric monowheels(or kick scooters):
-Not fixed-route.
-Barely any maintenance.
-Even the non-exploding ones cost as much as (subsidized) public transport over their lifetime.
-Same speed as this moving sidewalk and bicycles - could potentially share the bike lanes with the latter.
Two major disadvantages though are weight and usability in bad weather. I guess nothing beats cars when it comes to comfort of traveling.
GEORGE: Like at the airport? (getting excited)
JERRY: Yeah.
GEORGE: That's a great idea!!!
JERRY: Tell me about it!
GEORGE: We could be zipping all over the place.
JERRY: They could at least try it.
GEORGE: They never try anything.
JERRY: What's the harm?
GEORGE: No harm!
For example, compare these two options:
Option 1: Take 10 or 20 bus routes. Each being 5 to 10 miles long. Convert all buses to electric power.
Option 2: Take the same routes. Rip-up 200 miles of sidewalk (yeah, they'll be some overlap, this is just a quick mental exercise). Develop new technology. Install 400 miles of it (you need two directions of travel). Staff for installation, support, etc.
The first passes "physics" in that asking "does it make sense given all we know?" test results in a pretty quick "yes!". The second is such an obscene deviation from what would make sense from almost any perspective that it is surprising anyone would consider discussing it at all.
Take, for example, having 400 miles of active sidewalks. You just replaced a few buses with 400 miles of sidewalk moving most of the time. Why would anyone wait if the sidewalk is right there. Whereas before people would wait a few minutes for a ride now you are going to have dozens of miles of expensive power-consuming active sidewalks moving all the time simply to carry a single person 100 meters to then have them cross the street and get on the next active sidewalk. And, if it snows, now you are carrying tons of snow until you devote a small army of trucks to go clean the snow. I mean, the more you think about the reality of this utopic concept the stupider it sounds.
It'd probably make far more sense to have a small fleet of electric scooters available for rent and use only along a predetermined route. If you get off that route they turn off. So now, you'd have small one or two person clean scooters distributed along a 5 to 10 mile route for anyone to hop on and off as needed. At most you might have to walk a block or two to get one. This isn't an idea that I thought through. I'm just pulling it out of a hat to illustrate that the "physics" of this off-the-cuff concept would make far more sense than ripping-up hundreds of miles of sidewalk to install a monster of a system that makes less than zero sense.
The "does it pass physics" test refers to stuff that just doesn't make sense. Like a miracle, or the earth being 6,000 years old, or buying a supercomputer to do basic math or commuting in a Humvee. In other words, there are things that defy reasonable reality to such an extent that they simply don't make sense.
I don't think you've thought this part through. Not that snow isn't a problem that needs dealing with, but "carrying tons of snow" is not the problem you have. If this works anything like a traditional conveyor belt then while it is running it is dumping all the snow at one end, the same end where it is dumping all the passengers, whereupon you are no longer "carrying" that snow. There could be heating elements or blowers along the way that melt the snow such that it drains off the side, or perhaps the slowing-down-at-the-end step involve grating separation such that snow falls through to some lower level? Something along those lines. I'm not sure what the precise solution for snow-on-a-conveyer-belt is but surely it would make use of the massive running conveyer belt as part of the solution, not rely on a "small army of trucks".
Do the math on the cost of accelerating and decelerating people + snow and melting of moving the snow. Calculate the cost of the personnel needed to manage that and the cost of the trucks needed to manage equipment, etc.
The entire thing is dumb beyond description.
Let's put it this way. If you had to pay for it yourself you'd take a look at the outrageous immensity of the bill, turn around and say "hey guys, what's wrong with a couple of buses?".
What's wrong with buses includes that they take up a lot of space, have a high energy cost to run, tend to have a relatively low peak throughput, tend to be noisy and polluting, and you often have to wait a long time for the next one.
It's expensive to build these contraptions now but the cost is likely to come down over time. Once built, by energy cost per person they don't compete with "make people walk on a non-moving sidewalk" but do compete pretty well with most of the alternatives. You COULD build them in such a way that the cost of dealing with snow is minimal, it's just a matter of deciding on a suitable strategy and implementing that strategy. The dumbest, simplest strategy would be to add some sort of roof or canopy or shade structure such that snow and rain fall on either side of the conveyer belt. (Like, say, the conveyer belt entrance to Bally's Casino in Las Vegas: https://rlv.zcache.com.au/ballys_las_vegas_conveyor_belt_pos... )
Other options include digging a suitable drainage/collection area that snow can fall into as the belt turns or, yes, melting snow with a heater as it passes a grating. The heater option is only energy expensive while it's snowing but it's still likely cheaper than having guys with trucks clear it. But if the area just plain has too much snow for melting it to be practical you go with the roof option.
In the real world, to those of us with experience in non-trivial construction projects, such an idea is ridiculous beyond comprehension.
Take a look at the insanity that the California high speed train has become. A train to nowhere that nobody is going to use and will not be high speed and will cost massively more than the sixty billion politicians promised it would cost. And that's a "simple" project compared to tearing-up a city.
But,yeah, cool science fiction.
EDIT: Just thought of adding one thing. This is the same kind of "there's a paper about this" project as flying cars. There are people --and INVESTORS!!!-- who keep throwing time and money at flying cars. They don't make sense. It's a bad, bad, bad idea. Yet here we are, every six months someone wants to build a flying car.
You have to dig up and destroy hundreds of miles of walkways.
You have to replace brick, concrete and tiles with hundreds of miles of very, very expensive electromechanical technology.
You have to do this in TWO directions.
You have to hire thousands of workers, technicians and engineers.
You have to fund the development of the technology because it doesn't exist for this application.
You have to provide power, lighting, etc.
If this is in snow country, you have to provide a small army of snow removal trucks and crews to keep the darn things clean. Even then you'll still pay to move tons of snow, which won't be cheap.
You'll have to widen sidewalks in lots of places in order to accommodate all forms of traffic and work around existing infrastructure (subway station entrances?).
You'll have to have medical services available because you will have people getting hurt as they fall off the thing and do stupid stuff at 10 miles per hour.
Liability is likely to be huge.
And, of course, there is no practical way to charge for usage so we are probably going to sock everyone with yet more taxes to build yet another bullshit project nobody is going to use.
If the context is to replace "crosstown buses" you are talking about tens to hundreds of miles of sidewalks and all of the organization, infrastructure, cost and support to take something simple (buses and bus routes) and turn it into something complex, pointless, questionable and unlikely to really work.
The cost of such a ridiculous system would be staggering. Not sure why anyone who reads HN would need this spelled out.
I disagree most strongly about the need to dig up and destroy walkways. We have 3 dimensions to work with - to go up, or, down. In any case I would see this analogous to a public urban rail system such as a metro or a tram.
I don't see it as a big issue to dig a tunnel for this - lots of cities implement rails and such that go wherever public transportation is needed.
The only argument which I agree is the biggest hurdle - which is actually an unknown - is how to make the system sufficiently robust so you don't need an army of engineers to maintain it. The fact that there are no known robust systems is not a good enough argument. Lots of mechanical systems were in the development over a century after someone figured out how to make them as practical to make a major impact(steam engines, automatic weapons).
How robust is the most robust implementation possible and how expensive it is are the two major questions to my mind. If it's too expensive to maintain - then it's too expensive to maintain.
I mean, the thing is ridiculous to such a degree that it is surprising to see anyone arguing in favor of it.
Buying a fleet of electric buses would make far more sense than this insanely ridiculous idea.
Anything is better than a bus.
Buses have never been the opposite of obsolete. They were always a step backwards.
Trolleys with dedicated lanes make sense.
When travelling distances of less than 30 miles, buses are for people who hate themselves.
There is evidence of this still embedded in the pavement of cities which have, or used to have, above-ground trolley systems.
Waiting for a bus usually means waiting outdoors. There are tons of reasons why bus stops are no fun at all.