Trains, Trams, Subways and Buses

[blumenkraft]

Amtrack not accepting cash.

What a sneaky way to survive people's movements... Sons of mothers!

[Bruce Steele]

Sigmetnow, This train situation is a new development and yes a debit card can fix it , I will help get her a card. There are some services in every county and there are people like Willi who help those at the very bottom . I know without someone as an advocate life is very hard indeed. I have access to her bank account and can deposit for her but you can’t believe how many times she has been rolled for what little she has.
 The lack of pay phones that limit communication, the lack of showers and public restrooms , and the use of electronic money make life harder.  I can try to help but there are thousands with no advocate. We all need to chip in a little with some actual connections to other humans outside our economic strata . We build the walls collectively .

[Pmt111500]

Elsewhere HapHazard stated:

I'm somewhere between interstitial & Rod, with a bias towards interstitial.

And honestly I think we should just start talking about trains.

I think there was a thread where trains were sort of focal point but now I'm too lazy to find out what it was called. (Kassy found it, thank you. I'm still wondering what 'buses' are doing in the thread's headline, if they're powered by overhead electric then maybe.))

I think this policy and solutions-section would be a place to talk about new train tech, advancements in routing efficiency, well planned yards to onload and offload cargo (we need to admit every property can't have a railroad beside it), optimal speeds of cargo/passenger shared lines, signalling, PTC, and how companies can compete in a network that is not controlled by shared authority (which is common in Europe). On the passenger rail, there could be some talk on how to diminish the empty seats and possibly about some new methods of coupling carriages to quickly (and quietly) add and remove them, so the stops on stations wouldn't be so short you can just get one suitcase out in the time allotted for a stop. This probably means carriages should have small multiple-unit type motors for shunting, could this be automated? When it is necessary to build rail to rail overpasses, any news on rail bridge/tunnel tech?.... U

a link to my blog, a very poorly constrained study on US passenger rail, attempting to get it to the European level of service (it's obvious this is a bit utopian, but less than some hyperloop-stuff): http://erimaassa.blogspot.com/2012/07/trafficking.html?m=1

(Umm, won't fix the overtly verbose opening)

Anyway, here's my image of European-level passenger rail network for US , thicker lines, golden bits would be totally new rail and most of the others would need an upgrade...

[Pmt111500]

Later did an even more utopistic plan to get finnish passenger rail to the level of Switzerland... The resulting image presented, this network and associated multiple unit passenger/car carriages could serve c. 90% of Finns so well they'd need to drive a car for only local (under 50 km) trips. Parts of Lapland are still without service, connections to Atlantic ports are hard to build over Scandinavian mountains. Umm, this is not especially interesting to non-finns, so may delete this post later. If someone is interested, pm, way more details available (station locations, unserved communal centers, distances to served stations, estimate of the amount of additional track to build. No budget of course :-D)

[kassy]

Merged threads since being too lazy is not a proper criterium for creating a new thread.

[zizek]

Well.
I would consider that a win for the pro Tesla camp.
I will quite happily present actual scientific study's and real world verifiable data to back my opinion As will the rest of you.
Don't expect zizek to pay up .
They never do .....

...... Do I really have to explain to you what happens when a large corporation is in direct competition with poorly funded public services? The year is 2020 and you would think after decades of austerity leading to the privatization of services from health care to infrastructure which have lead to horrible outcomes we would get the picture already..... But I guess this time things will be different??!?!

Here's a little primer of Musk's vision:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/ridesharing-versus-public-transit/
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-29/when-a-town-takes-uber-instead-of-public-transit
http://news.mit.edu/2020/how-does-ridesourcing-substitute-public-transit-network-0727

<Moved this from the Tesla thread since most of the articles are about Uber and none quote Elon. The whole business model and what it does to society and who is actually funding it are interesting. kassy>

[Sigmetnow]

Bloomberg: "Fortress postpones plan for a train to Las Vegas from Southern California after failing to sell a record amount of unrated municipal debt to finance the project.”
https://t.co/vzGj4A5Sqh?amp=1

https://mobile.twitter.com/business/status/1322728473211949056

[gerontocrat]

Some say that uber and robotaxis will kill mass transit systems. Others say not so.

https://www.sustainable-bus.com/news/electric-vehicle-outlook-2020-bnef-electric-buses/
Today there are 500,000 e-buses in operation globally. And the share of battery-operated vehicles is bound to cover «over 67% of the global bus fleet in 2040». The figure and the forecast are pointed out in the newly-released Electric Vehicle Outlook 2020 by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF).

500,000 e-buses today in operation. They’ll take 67 of the global bus fleet by 2040, BNEF says

What is interesting, in BNEF’s report, is that, according to the researchers, electric bus vehicles «will not fully take over the market. Diesel and eventually hydrogen fuel cell buses round out the rest of the fleet by 2040 in areas where installing charging infrastructure is difficult, or where temperatures are extreme, or near industrial clusters where hydrogen production is being deployed, or finally where local incumbents favor such technology».

Being more specific, according to BNEF, fuel cell applications will account for 6.5% of bus annuals sales in 2040.

[Sigmetnow]

 

11/22/20, 5:34 PM
China may have the world’s biggest high speed rail network, but it’s reliant on guys sat on top of a train with wooden sticks to de-ice the overhead power lines in winter! @25kV 

➡️ https://twitter.com/ogilvie_cj/status/1330640786711588865
Screen cap below; 53 second vid at the link. (Sound on!)