Technology
A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.
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Yes Louis Brennan designed a gyroscopic monorail in the early 1900's but there's a reason it didn't work out. Every car needs its own gyroscope which is a lot of dynamic components that need maintenance. A regular two rail train is much simpler and cheaper to operate. The idea these techbros have that everything is made better with individual pods is pretty wasteful when we already have better and cheaper solutions to virtually every problem they have tried to invent for us. Are we even super concerned about rural folks taking transit? By definition they are a small portion of the population and have the greatest need for personal transport. Where we need transit adoption is in urban areas with large populations who all want to drive their personal 2 tonnes of plastic and steel right into town and park it (for free obviously) in their own little parking space.
A gadgetbahn like this will only serve a limited population and won't be able to tie into the existing transit network. There might be niche situations where it's not a terrible idea but it is not a good generalized solution.
I could see those as an option for rural areas without much traffic. A full train might not be economical, but a small pod is. It could transport people to the closest proper train station where they can hop off.
But that would mean you'd have to maintain a ton of tracks for a handful of people.
Just fund trains.
Trains suck if you don't have frequency, and because of the population density with a good frequency more than half of the trains will be completely empty and the rest almost empty.
If you out half the funding from car infrastructure instead into train and bus infrastructure this would not be a problem. Induced demand works both ways.
Even with unlimited funding, you want to scale the size of the train to the population that could potentially ride on it.
A P42 locomotive pulling 7 Amtrak superliner cars is 700 tons of steel getting 0.4 miles per gallon of diesel. That's a crapton of mining and drilling and CO2, and it would be incredibly wasteful if it ended up carrying, like, two people at a time.
The population in rural areas is so low that no matter how you induce demand, it won't work.
Look up "interurban railways". Most towns east of the Mississippi used to have frequent rail service with whistle stops at every farm and crossroads. In addition to passengers these railroads also transported the harvest, Sears purchases, kit houses, even hearses!
Cars suck always.
Looking forward to the Adam Something video about this.
I immediately thought about connecting multiple of these together to make a train haha
Connect them together for efficiency, and maybe use both rails for stability and to reduce design conplexity. (you dont even need any additional infrastructure!) Also, have them arrive regularly, so that users don't need to bother with an app! Brilliant!
Seriously though, it's really amazing how people keep inventing trains but worse. I guess this idea makes some sense if there aren't enough riders for regular train service, but still...
JUST PUT A FUCKING TRAIN ON IT WTF ARE WE DOING
FUCKING DOING OUR JOB AS TRANSPORT MODELLERS AND DOING A FUCKING COST BENEFIT ANALYSIS THAT SHOWS YOU'RE NEVER GOING TO GET FUCKING MODE SHIFT FROM RURAL USERS UNLESS YOU RUN A FUCKING METRO STYLE 10 MINUTELY SERVICE WHICH IS FUCKING UNFEASIBLE WITH THE FUCKING RESOURCES WE HAVE AVAILABLE.
IN THE FUCKING UK WE HAVE A LARGE NUMBER OF FUCKING ABANDONED RAILWAYS FROM THE PERIOD OF FUCKING COAL MINING THAT WOULDN'T HAVE ANYWHERE NEAR THE FUCKING DEMAND NECESSARY TO JUSTIFY SETTING UP AN EXPENSIVE AS FUCK SIGNALLING SYSTEM TO BRING THEM UP TO MODERN FUCKING SAFETY STANDARDS, ALONGSIDE REPLACING THE FUCKING RAILS, SLEEPERS AND BEDS.
IF INSTEAD YOU CAN HAVE A FUCKING PUBLICALLY OWNED FLEET OF FUCKING ELECTRIC 'MINI TRAINS' THAT PEOPLE COULD USE FOR INFREQUENT BUT NECESSARY TRIPS, THAT COULD REMOVE A FUCKING SIGNIFICANT BARRIER TO MODE SHIFT, WHICH WOULD BE PRETTY FUCKING RAD
Read the article, that's literally the first thing they explain
Besides which, it's very obviously a train if you just look at it. It's a small monorail train specifically designed for this purpose using existing infrastructure.
People are never fucking happy.
A train is a collection of rolling railcars propelled by one or more locomotives. These are individual self-powered railcars.
So no, there’s no train here. Just monorail pods that will get congested as density increases.
The whole concept of a train is that all the cars move together and the only congestion is at the switching yards, where it can be optimized.
These pods are only used on rails with very low ridership. They would switch to a train if ridership increased.
Look at it this way: you can have a train that has a capacity of 100 people, but it only runs once a day due to the low demand, and only 2 people want to ride it at that time of day..Or you can have 10 pods, which do not require as much railway maintenance, and they can carry the 10 people who actually want to use this railway, completely on demand.
Yeah, a train is better if you want to move ten thousand people a day at peak hour. But this is a cheaper way to move ten people at different times across a day. And it's a cheaper way of inducing the demand that would justify the more efficient kind of expansion.
Trains are expensive to run if you don't have enough passengers (like in small villages).
Mobile fuck shack.
Why is it always fucking pods!? (Fucking-pods?)
I would love a mini rail system like this in my community.
Actually, I’ll take most any public transportation at this point.
Seems over-complicated…
I could imagine an autonomous, on-demand rural train service. Due to the low expected traffic, it seems like you could just build some additional sidings and use a more conventional design.
How would traffic pass each other? You would be stuck with the same issue as normal trains.
You could build some additional sidings
If someone was willing to invest into building and maintaining infrastructure there would be no need for this concept, but that's a political issue. The idea of this concept is do make the best of what you have.
Self balancing with an Outrigger wheel
The wheel is just there during the testing phase as a backup, seems the final pods don't have it, as it would make the idea useless.
However, what if it were possible to hail a small electric vehicle right when you needed it – via a taxi- or Uber-style app
Uber style app. Seriously, fuck no. Send trains or don’t, fuck Uber and their business model.
I'm cautiously optimistic about this, it seems like an okay idea and the fact that they have vehicles working on a test track IRL means it's at least not an obvious scam like hyperloop.
Also the fact that they have a specific use case in mind, don't say it's going to revolutionize all transportation, and are reusing existing infrastructure, all bode well.
Why is it always "pods"?
How else are they going to win the rail pod challenge?
Project founder Thorsten Försterling tells us that the team is working on a track-installed machine that will be able to lift individual pods off of one rail and place them on the other (without passengers in them at the time), keeping them from all collecting at either end of the route.
What the heck, can't you just have a Y at the end?
Fahr'n, fahr'n, fahr'n mit ein Gadgetbahn 🎶
That looks horrible. Cramped, the giant windows means it's hot and the sun is always in your eyes.... Any reason they need to only use one rail? We already have road & rail buses, trucks, etc...just use those.
Exactly what we need! More pods! SMH!
I think "Draisy" is faster on the track and a much more realistic project. But "Monocab" is a University project, so it's ok for me that a few millions are invested there.