rexpress

Whatever became of the UWB positioning system? The trials appeared to be successful, but to my knowledge the system has not yet been adapted in NYC or elsewhere.

Not sure which grips you're using, but I found using the stock foam grips gave me severe wrist pain quite quickly. I changed to Ergon GP1 grips (they have much better hand support) and now ride long distances without discomfort.

New York did some trials with UWB several years ago, which were claimed to have been successful. Since then, there has been very little news of permanent deployment or future developments either in New York or elsewhere.

Not sure whether this means that the various signalling suppliers are waiting for a customer to take on the technical risk of being the first to deploy UWB CBTC, or that there were costs or disadvantages that make it unattractive.

Opal in Sydney

In almost every CBTC system trains communicate with a central zone controller and do not interact directly with each other.

Urbalis Fluence works as you describe, but that is a very new approach to CBTC and as far as I'm aware has only one installation.

SelTrac has been around since the mid 80s, and was originally a German developed product (Standard Elektrik Lorenz) based on LZB technology.

My understanding of LZB is limited, but it appears to be a fixed block system with wayside detection of trains, albeit with shorter blocks than lineside signals would usually have. This is different to SelTrac which is moving block.

I had it done twice, both times without sedation by choice. I did have analgesics, and a cannula in my wrist in case I changed my mind mid-way.

It was quite tolerable, just a few moments of short lived cramping pains (similar to diarrhea pains) as the endoscope turned the corners of my insides. My recovery was about half an hour of sitting up and having tea and toast, while those that were sedated slept off the drugs.

I'd do the same again if ever I get another one, and recommend it to anyone who can't have or doesn't want sedation.

>Not sure why the conspiracy theorists have decided to make Oxford their place to protest all this stuff

Because they have maliciously or stupidly confused the permits which would allow residents to drive through traffic filters (instead of taking a longer route), with a passport system that wouldn't let them leave the zone at all.

But they will be able to travel without a permit, it's just that those journeys may need to be rerouted to take a less direct route to avoid the traffic filters.

Traffic filters are not new to the UK, and plenty have existed for decades in cities like London without controversy or conspiracy. They do not form an impermeable cordon around an area.

They restrict through traffic on certain streets, in order to provide faster and safer routes for either bikes or buses. As far as I can tell the Oxford proposal is less restrictive than traditional filters as permits allow car driver to bypass the restrictions a certain number of times a month.

That assumes that the tourists and visitors confine themselves to the major tourist areas. If you bother to cycle outside the major tourist areas of the Netherlands, whether to minor cities or villages, you'll still notice many people cycling for local journeys.

The mistake is people used to car dependence being unable to imagine any alternative, thus refusing to believe that it can be true.

Dutch cycling infrastructure is close to ubiquitous, extending practically the length and breadth of the country. The idea that bikes are used only in city centres is another distortion. But of course the bike tends to be used for shorter, local trips.

Your (roughly 130 km) journey would have been less fast had those people making their shorter distance journeys by bike got into their cars instead.

The original poster claimed that car usage is the norm in the Netherlands, which implies that anything else is outside the norm, or unusual. This is obviously incorrectly.

There are various other posts in this thread that also give statistics, and the number of car vs bike journeys is not so far apart.

In a country that famously has more bikes then people, the idea that if half the bike journeys converted to cars there would only be a ten percent increase in traffic is quite clearly ridiculous. Especially within cities bikes carry volumes of people that would overwhelm roads if those people used space-inefficient cars.

>First, let's establish that the Netherlands is a car country...On a typical day, 1 million people use public transport. Cars are the norm, not trains or bicycles.

Anyone visiting a Dutch city can see what a distortion this comment is. The sheer volume of bike traffic on largely safe infrastructure is phenomenal. Imagine if even half of these people took to cars instead, it would be gridlock. Life may be good for Dutch drivers, but only because so many others leave their cars at home.

The 'elderly parent to the doctor' case is still an argument for bike infrastructure. The more people choose to travel by bike instead of by car, the more space is available on the roads for those that need motor vehicles.

I've rented bikes in the Netherlands several times as a UK citizen, but perhaps in different areas.

Part of the reason the Netherlands is the perfect place for a car owner is that so many people are able to go by bike instead, freeing up space on the roads.

Not sure if your comment was confined to the USA or not, but I live in outer suburban London, and I have the schools, small Sainsbury's supermarket, libraries, a small gym, soccer grounds and tennis courts within an easy walk. Larger gym and larger supermarkets are an easy bike ride away. There is nothing at all unusual or remarkable about my particular part of London.

The local water company does not provide deluxe or budget versions, water is water. The same applies to gas and electricity. All are major household expenses.

In the context of a large city, there certainly is differentiation in transport. You can grab a large amount of the scarce road space for yourself with a car (even more if you park on-street) or taxi, or you can take a smaller share of it by getting on a bus, bike or tram.

But food at the supermarket, clothes, even water from the tap are all priced without regard to individual income. Why would road usage be any different?

The wealthy are always able to buy the nicest things, and addressing income inequality is a very valid goal. But what realistic alternative is there to the price mechanism that still allows for a level of individual choice, and permits vehicle journeys that are economically necessary (e.g. tradespeople) while discouraging car journeys that could me made by other means.

As for the minimum wage earner, they are the least likely to be able to afford to keep a car. The current roads free-for-all means their bus journeys are far slower due to the traffic, and more expensive due to the larger number of buses required to maintain frequency on congested roads.

A possible solution to reduce inequality from road charging while still maintaining the benefits of the price mechanism would be to return the proceeds (after maintenance costs) to the residents of the city in the form of transport credits. These credits would be able to be spent on road access, public transport, or cycling as the individual preferred.

It certainly seems progressive to me. Charging private vehicles to access the roads reduces demand, which allows other modes such as buses, trams and bikes to move more people more quickly.

I don't see what's progressive about letting private cars clog the roads up and slowing down London's vast and comprehensive bus network.

I do a regular 25 mile commute one way across London, train back myself.

One of my routes includes Hampstead and Highgate, a decent amount of climb. I tried the 3 speed hire Bromptons, but went for the 6 speed when I purchased one. The upgrade was well worth the money, I doubt I'd be able to get up those hills on the 3 speed.

Cycling provision in Hungary is patchy, to a point where journeys may be impossible in areas where cycling is banned on certain roads. But as far as I can tell (without being able to understand Hungarian), it seems that there is a big push underway to develop infrastructure.

I recently had a ride from Bük to Csepreg which was mainly on a separate cycleway by the road. From Csepreg I was able to enter forest tracks which were very beautiful. I've also noticed quite a bit of new infrastructure in various parts of the country.

I can imagine Hungary becoming a very appealing cycling destination if they continue to develop the network.

The hand-wavy hypotheticals were there in both of our posts.

And where you said "It's none of your business what 10% of people are doing. I don't know how it degrades quality of life" you were also explicitly hand-waving away the costs that these businesses impose on those not directly involved in the transactions.

So yes, in my post I was at least considering these costs. In your post, you were choosing to wave them away as inconsequential. I certainly do see the difference.

I haven't witnessed the Dutch situation in person, but it seems the "willing and able to serve the market" might be predicated on being able to make the streets squalid, and in some cases displace profitable businesses by burning through speculative VC funds. It seems entirely reasonable that local government would want to stop this.

The libertarian fantasy that each individual or organisation should have unfettered freedom to do whatever they please would be more attractive if such individuals or organisations were also compelled to pay the costs of whatever negative externalities they create.

If we're going for hyperbolic examples, imagine being a single mother who works a lot and also has a limited income. Her convenient local shop has been replaced by a mini delivery warehouse burning through VC capital that was able to offer the landlord a better rental rate, but charges customers twice what the older shop did for the kid's medication...

The reason the urbanists and others focus on the negatives is that when an individual chooses to use a car in an urban environment they claim benefits for themselves, but impose costs on others who do not have a choice in the matter. Pollution, congestion, the loss of amenity caused by making urban areas more hostile for walking or cycling, loss of efficiency for bus routes caught in traffic that could otherwise move large numbers of people at speed; these are all costs paid for by people who do not choose or cannot afford to drive.

I think the only solution is to charge for road use on a per-mile basis and at a price that varies according to demand, as well as pricing on-street parking at a level that reflects local land values.

The only way reasonably dense cities such as Amsterdam could accommodate everyone's desire to drive is by tolerating dirty air, severe congestion and roads that are dangerous and unpleasant for people walking or cycling. From experience it is entirely possible to raise a family in a city without owning a car, even in a country that isn't as enlightened towards urban planning as the Netherlands.

The thing about Dutch planning that is even nicer than their car constraining policies in the cities is that safe cycling is provided for way beyond city limits. A few years ago I took my family on holiday to the Netherlands and we travelled safely and comfortably by bike, both in the cities, the countryside and the villages in between.

It doesn't surprise me that not everyone is happy. Car drivers have been able to claim the lions share of scarce road space for themselves for so long, equality must feel like victimisation.

Just wondering if this is an example where you are looking for dynamic scope instead of lexical scope? E.g:

y = 1;

expression = Block[{y},1+y];

Print[expression]

2

There are also the 'formal' symbols, e.g. https://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/character/FormalY... if you want a symbol that will never be assigned a value but can still be substituted using ReplaceAll etc.

For context, picking on Clojure because it too is a nice, niche language, https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=%...

But in fact the long term decline Google Trends gives for Mathematica and Clojure also shows for plenty of other languages, including mainstream ones such as JavaScript and Java.

I'm not sure what the explanation is, but I'd be wary of relying on Google Trends to make predictions about the life expectancy of any particular language.

It's been a few years since I used Maxima, which was at university but without much introduction to the language. The dynamic scoping was a particularly unpleasant surprise, lexical scoping was not available which lead to buggy behaviour. I returned to the warm embrace of Mathematica fairly quickly.

Worse than that, poor people's bus or bike journeys end up being impeded by road hogging SUV's and other single occupancy vehicles.