Comment by michaelteter | Hacker News Reader

Comment by michaelteter | Hacker News Reader

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There's such an (exciting!) opportunity for us to create automated people mover systems that connect small and large systems to get people from very close to A to very close to B.

The design and engineering activities involved in solving this would be very enjoyable work, and the human benefits when (eventually) operational would be huge.

Every solution would need to be custom for its city/region, but one of the common ideas is concentric circles of trains, spaced at appropriate(ly large) distances, with trains running between in perpendicular direction. Basically wheels and spokes.

The wheel trains could stay in motion always, only slowing at connection points where the perpendicular trains would temporarily turn and run in parallel. Both trains would slow, cars would connect, passengers would come and go, and then trains would separate. Perpendicular train curves back in for its perpendicular direction of travel, and "wheel" train picks up speed and heads for the next spoke connection. Obviously any problem causes the joined trains to slow, even to a stop if necessary (to prevent human harm).

There are so many different possibilities here, but ultimately I think it should be possible for a human to walk 5-10 minutes to some station, get on some people mover, and eventually get out of another people mover within 5-10min walking distance of their ultimate destination... all without ever setting foot outside of a train aside from start/end points.

So, basically this: https://classicsofsciencefiction.com/2022/11/27/the-roads-mu...

(Or https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780739410516 if you want to actually read it.)

Hehe, the tldr was still too long for my time/attention. However...

> It’s much saner to have one car break down and allow 999,999 people to keep on schedule.

Obviously that's very wrong, as we know that one car breaking down on the freeway has a major negative effect on everything behind it. And if it's something bigger than one car... I recall one evening in Dallas when a chemical tanker turned over and created a situation which required all traffic on a major freeway to take an exit, use the access road, and then eventually return to the freeway. Even though it was after evening rush out, the ripple effect eventually spanned to two sequentially related freeways. Basically long road travel in the city stopped for hours.

In my mental fantasy, I see two vertical levels. One is for passengers and operates with more connections and stops, and one is for cargo (where transfers can be fully automated like with a successful airport luggage routing system... or probably some kind of system which Amazon has already perfected at scale).

They two improvements I see over today's public transport realities are:

1. If greenfield is possible, which unfortunately it really is not (unless we are planning a whole new urban environment), there is a physical network design which balances maximum travel time from any point to any point. This would be something elevator designers have already managed for big towers, I would think. But this time, it's in two dimensions.

2. There are novel temporary linkings of different vehicles to allow passengers to transfer from one to another without stopping either vehicle. I suppose in the extreme case, each passenger could be in a small sit/stand capsule, and some plucking and moving of capsules could be done by robotic systems which are aware of everything (including route/dest.)

Really, these are just lame solutions based on our current understanding of nature. Teleportation is the best answer ;).

So, Europe?

I can only speak of Netherlands from experience, and it is not what I mean. I don't expect anywhere else has done what I have envisioned.

The usual challenge is that the cities are old and organically structured. So the possible paths for public transport are limited; and there's very little space for big interchanges.

But what exists is way, way better than nothing. With trains, metros, trams, and buses (and walking), you can get around quite well. It just can take a long time due to timing mismatches between modes.

When the tram comes only once every 15 min, and your metro drops you without enough time to walk (or run!) to the tram, it means you now wait 15min for the next one. When I was commuting to work in Amsterdam via tram+metro, it took me at minimum 30 minutes with walk+tram+metro+walk. If I rode my bike, it was the same. But if timings didn't work out well, the public transport option could be +25 min longer... so 55min. And on cold sh*tty rainy days (half of winter), the metro would be jammed with people such that you might need to stand and wait for the next one. The bike option was always possible, but it's no fun to ride in cold rain with wind.

In summary, it was better than 60 minutes of bumper to bumper driving commute in Dallas/Fort Worth, but it had much room for better alternatives... if one could go greenfield.

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