google car?? LOL
you are pootling on in you Gcar, and it stops at a clearly open road... "end of road" it keeps saying.... LOL
Or how about you are woken from your snooze by it crashing against gate, that is not on the map!!! ROFLMAO
Buses? PAH. Begone with your filthy peasant-wagons
A bus is a fantastically efficient way to move a large number of people. Buses however are not. They are a dreadful system for getting people to work. The difference is not as subtle as that sentence may make it seem. What lies behind it is that when you want to move a large number of people from one place to another all at …
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Saturday 27th December 2014 08:59 GMT Sir Sham Cad
Re: google car?? LOL
I can see you have a complete understanding of the technology in question and your opinion is based on knowledge and data.
The frigging cars can "see" the environment around them, they don't just use the sat nav and ignore the actual surroundings. FFS! You're thinking of humans.
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Saturday 27th December 2014 15:52 GMT JeffyPoooh
Not See .NE. See Not
When I taught my kid to drive, I made it very clear that there's a vast difference between 1) looking and not seeing anything, vs. 2) looking and seeing that the road is clear. My kid is programmed correctly, thus hopefully avoiding an entire class of 'I didn't see' accidents.
I wonder if the Googly Cars and similar are actually programmed correctly? Giving how Google can't even program a browser to not crash, I have my doubts.
The good news is that they'll trickle onto the roads in small numbers and we will soon see. It'd be a huge risk if they loosed a million onto the roads one morning.
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Saturday 27th December 2014 08:29 GMT gaz 7
The best urban transport
Is the bicycle.
It is pollution free once manufactured.
It is space efficient unlike any form of motorised transport, be it electric or autonomous (or both)
Around urban areas it is usually faster than anything else (unless it's 3am)
It is stupendously cheap to run & needs very little maintenance
It is door to door
It keeps the user healthy and increases life expectancy and vastly reduces risks of diseases, cancer, dementia etc.
Not everyone needs to (or be able to) ride a bike for every journey, but if UK could convert 10% or 20% of urban journeys to bike, then that would free loads of road space. It would really improve air quality which is illegally dangerous in most major UK cities.
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Saturday 27th December 2014 08:50 GMT illiad
Re: The best urban transport
Bike is good, but...
freezing, soaked, wind blasted...
Used by **utterly** loony couriers about london... I am amazed there are no fatalities yet...
money wasted due to 'lipservice'... eg 5 foot long 'cycle lane' ... Cycle lane put in road that is barely wide enough for car...
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Saturday 27th December 2014 10:02 GMT Bloodbeastterror
Re: The best urban transport
Your points are valid but not completely thought through.
You get cold & wet walking to your car or waiting for a bus.
The use of a bike by a few loonies (yes, I agree there are too many, and "no fatalities yet"...? Do you not read the newspapers?) doesn't mean that the bike itself is at fault. As commented, it's healthy and life-prolonging as long as you're sensible.
And equally the cycle lanes badly-implemented by non-cycling civil servants don't detract from the utility of the most energy-efficient person mover ever invented.
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Saturday 27th December 2014 10:51 GMT Charles 9
Re: The best urban transport
"You get cold & wet walking to your car or waiting for a bus."
That's why they invented parasols. At least you can use one en route to the car or while standing at the bus stop. Once you're inside, though, you're in an encapsulated vehicle that keeps you dry. Cycles are open-air and not well-suited for inclement weather.
Manual bicycles are also ill-advised for areas that are full of uneven terrain. Hilly San Francisco springs to mind, as does a place I know nearby that's in the Appalachian foothills.
Perhaps what's needed is an encapsulated bicycle with optional motor a la a Derny. This would be the most versatile kind of vehicle: no wider than a bicycle, protects from bad weather, and optional external power in case of uphill climbs or other tricky terrain.
Then again, there's still the matter of large shopping trips. How will we get our stuff (too much for the bike) home without having to do a boomerang trip with a vehicle rental?
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Tuesday 20th January 2015 03:09 GMT Martin Budden
Re: The best urban transport
"the most energy-efficient person mover ever invented."
Nope, that would be a boat. OK I admit I'm gratuitously making the most of how you forgot to say "urban", but the fact is there is no more energy-efficient way to move than sitting still doing absolutely nothing while the wind and/or current pushes you gently along.
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Saturday 27th December 2014 16:15 GMT Doctor Syntax
Re: The best urban transport
"Cycle lane put in road that is barely wide enough for car..."
One local stretch of road which has had a cycle lane for years is wide enough. Today, however, was only the second time I've seen a cyclist riding along there. He was on the footpath. The other, some years ago, was riding at night in the middle of the car lane.
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Monday 29th December 2014 23:34 GMT Suricou Raven
Re: The best urban transport
The issue with cycle lanes is that you have traffic rushing past at a relative speed of maybe forty miles an hour, about three inches away from your handlebar. One false move, one driver misjudging the width of his vehicle, and you're beneath it. Many cyclists prefer to ride on footpaths, legality be damned, because a collision with a pedestrian is highly unlikely to prove fatal to either party. A few bruises and scrapes is better than roadkill.
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Sunday 28th December 2014 09:55 GMT Flocke Kroes
Cycle shopping
The trick is to buy small amounts each day on your way home from work. That also lets you pick fresher food, or half-price food on its smell-by date. It reduces the chance that something will go off because the week passed and you did not need it. Personally I prefer a bus because it is hard to read a book while riding a bike. The subsidy is worth it. If some of the passengers had to drive (or ride a bike) everyone else would have a really bad day.
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Saturday 27th December 2014 14:21 GMT disgruntled yank
Re: The best urban transport
In the parts of the US where I grew up, one could count on a fair number of days with snow in the air and on the ground. People may be fairly good, but only fairly good, at clearing sidewalks, the roads are narrowed by the snow pushed to the side, and are filled with drivers even flakier than usual, and now spewing slop from their tires. So those days are not good for bicycle tirps.
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Saturday 3rd January 2015 22:06 GMT Michael Wojcik
Re: The best urban transport
In the parts of the US where I grew up, one could count on a fair number of days with snow in the air and on the ground....those days are not good for bicycle trips.
Yes, and ice is worse. Bicycles have been popular at all the university campuses I've been at in the past couple of decades - all northern states in the Midwest or Plains - and every winter I see cyclists slide on the ice and go down. Haven't seen anyone get seriously injured but it's just a matter of time. And it'd be far too easy to slide into traffic.
Of course, it's also damned difficult just walking when every surface is coated with ice, but at least you're moving slower and not tangled up with a metal frame when you start to slip.
I like to ride my bike on errands around town spring to fall, but November through April it's largely out of the question. And that's half the year. (And I wouldn't dare ride it from home to the university; it's only about seven miles, but most of that is on narrow rural roads with 55mph speed limits. They're dangerous enough with a couple tons of Volvo protecting me.)
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Monday 29th December 2014 12:43 GMT itzman
Re: The best urban transport
Is shanks pony.
When I lived in London, I was constantly amazed at how little extra time it took to walk the whole way than walk to the tube/bus, spend money to be exposed to filth dirt and disease, and walk the other end.
Bikes are OK, but they still need to be parked somewhere
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Monday 29th December 2014 21:15 GMT Wommit
Re: The best urban transport
"Is shanks pony.
When I lived in London, I was constantly amazed at how little extra time it took to walk the whole way than walk to the tube/bus, spend money to be exposed to filth dirt and disease, and walk the other end."
I used to walk from St Pancras to Back Hill, Many times I have been nearly killed by twats, sorry, cyclists running red lights, cycling on the pavement, cycling through parks filled with parents & kids playing. One guy knocked an old woman over (she was stupidly crossing while the pedestrian light was green, Tsk tsk) and the swore and cursed HER for being in the way!
The noticeable facts were that they were all convinced that they were in the right, they were untraceable and (I suspect) uninsured. Oh, and were all foul mouthed sods.
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Monday 29th December 2014 20:23 GMT Bucky 2
Re: The best urban transport
Alas, the problem with bicycles is similar to the problem with a religion.
In principle, it SOUNDS great. But when you actually add the people, you run into problems. Often terrible problems. It becomes easy to equate the douchebaggery of one psychopathic group of practitioners (e.g.: ISIS, Critical Mass) with the entire group.
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Monday 5th January 2015 19:26 GMT cray74
Re: The best urban transport
"I did some rough calculations whilst cycling over the Itchen Bridge one day. My CO2 output per mile was easily exceeding a small car's..."
I've heard some solar car races ban muscle assistance for that reasons: humans spew as much CO2 per horsepower as a petrol-burning engine.
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Thursday 1st January 2015 19:48 GMT Daniel B.
Re: The best urban transport
Actually, the best urban transport would be a motorbike. You have the advantage of taking less space on the road and less parking space, the ability to filter through stopped traffic and using far less petrol on your trip (cars usually do 12 km/L, my 150cc does 32 km/L). It can also do higher speeds, which means you are actually matching everyone else's speed and thus having a less frightening commute than the bicycle experience.
It's also far better for longer distances: if your daily commute involves 10 km or more each way, you're bound to end up sweating on a bicycle. A bicycle is better suited for short distances.
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Saturday 27th December 2014 08:41 GMT fridaynightsmoke
From the user's POV, cars are awesome
I am perpetually surprised by those who think that things would be great if only there were a few extra buses, or an extra train per hour; and then all the car drivers would realise just how amazing public transport is and go straight to WeWillPurchaseYourCar.com. It's not remotely true, for most people even the best public transport possible is a poor substitute for a vehicle that's ready to go directly to your destination of choice, on demand. Even environmentally speaking, buses and trains really ain't all that; when you look on a per-passenger-km basis they pollute every bit as much, on average, as cars.
The real problems are road space and dependence. In most towns and smaller cities, things are generally OK or at least possible for maximum levels of car use (85% ish) to work well. The remaining 15% (too young/old/poor/disabled) have to rely on taxis or whatever bus 'service' the local council insists on. That's the killer app for driverless cars, if a taxi can be had for similar marginal costs to driving yourself (no driver to pay) then not owning/driving a car isn't a problem any more.
As for roadspace, even in the 1960s it was recognised that in central London you'd need 8 lane motorways on a grid roughly every mile to handle peak flows with full car use, with everything in between being rebuilt to handle distributor roads, parking etc. This would be somewhat of an undertaking.
The problem is that the logic that applies so well to London (sorry, really can't build enough roads, have some tubes and buses instead) had been misapplied everywhere else.
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Saturday 27th December 2014 10:17 GMT Frankee Llonnygog
Re: From the user's POV, cars are awesome
You're not really comparing like with like. From a transport efficiency point of view it doesn't make much difference if taxis have drivers or not. It only affects whether your money goes to Google or Uber (academic if Google buys Uber...). But you're comparing an intelligent system (using the net to dynamically match taxi supply and demand) with a dumb one (forecast demand and run buses on fixed routes at fixed times to meet it). A municipality could run (Note, I dont' say 'own') a fleet of minibuses and operate more or less door-to-door on demand, given an intelligent demand management system.
Hmm... I smell a software business opportunity
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Monday 29th December 2014 18:53 GMT Ken Hagan
Re: From the user's POV, cars are awesome
" A municipality could run (Note, I dont' say 'own') a fleet of minibuses and operate more or less door-to-door on demand, given an intelligent demand management system."
A minicab company could run a variation on the usual service whereby you get a reduced price but may have to stop to pick up the taxi's next fare(s) before actually delivering you to your destination. The reason we don't do it that way is probably because the scheduling problem was/is beyond your average taxi company. That might not be the case these days.
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Friday 2nd January 2015 11:02 GMT Uffish
Re: A minicab company could run a variation
I remember travelling around Nigeria by taxi/minibus. You went to some big field near the edge of town, found a taxi/minibus going to the town you wanted and purchased your seat on it. Other people would purchase their seats - deviations from standard routes were negociable. The scheduling problem was also negociable. No IT was involved.
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Monday 29th December 2014 16:18 GMT JamesPond
Re: From the user's POV, cars are awesome
And from the NHSs POV cars are awesome. In the 7 years since I stopped travelling 100 miles per day by train and sometime (well 20% of the time) by replacement bus, I've had maybe one or two colds and zero days off work due to colds / flu etc. In the preceding 10 years, you could guarantee at least 2 weeks off work every year through colds & flu. I can only attribute this to not sitting in a train carriage / bus for 2 hours every day sucking in everyone else's germs.
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Monday 29th December 2014 21:44 GMT Bob 18
Re: From the user's POV, cars are awesome
I agree. Since buses and trains use about as much energy as cars, the most effective way to reduce transportation energy use is to reduce demand. You can do that through compact urban design. At that point, you will need buses and trains because the city is too big to walk and too dense to fit all the cars people would need. From an energy perspective, public transit should be seen as an ENABLER of compact design, rather than an end in itself. Public transit users use less energy than automobile drivers primarily because they don't go as far.
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Friday 2nd January 2015 15:11 GMT wikkity
Re: From the user's POV, cars are awesome
It always makes me chuckle when schools are on holiday that just a small percentage of less cars on the road means my bus actually runs on time.
And it always makes me frown when I get stuck in a traffic jam when on a bus with 50 people crammed in when the turn off is only 20m away. When all it would take is for a few of the cars in front (with a single driver) to move a little closer to the car in front instead of leaving a gap twice the length of their car as they can't be bothered of moving every time.
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Saturday 27th December 2014 08:55 GMT Sir Sham Cad
toll lanes
Which is what you're proposing with the robin-hood priority lane permit idea is fine if you don't hit any junctions of which London has lots of especially Escheresque ones. If you do, you need to filter into the bottlenecked pleb lanes, which is where the buses will be, so you're still going to be held up by inefficient transport.
Trains and tubes run on a managed, dedicated route, so are more efficient if you have a station nearby.
That said, outside of the island of London, a car is a must and I'd happily pair my android phone to a google car via Bluetooth and punch in mum's postcode, sit back and let the robot car carry the Christmas presents if it wasn't too expensive.
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Saturday 27th December 2014 16:44 GMT Doctor Syntax
Re: toll lanes
"Trains and tubes run on a managed, dedicated route, so are more efficient if you have a station nearby."
This is only half true.
They're only more efficient if you have a station nearby at both ends of the journey and if they're directly connected by a single route. I always assume that those who laud public transport are those for whom that is the case.
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Sunday 28th December 2014 11:18 GMT Doctor Syntax
Re: toll lanes
"This is only half true." etc
Interesting - a couple of downvotes.
Over the years, from school, through university to work I've used a wide range of ways to travel - on foot, cycle, motorcycle (does a BSA Bantam count?) car, bus, train and tube, individually or in combination. I've managed to miss out horse riding, ferries & flight but I think it was a fair sample.
The single worst commute was by train and tube from High Wycombe to central London in pre-privatisation days. No matter whether it was walk or drive to the station, train to Marylebone or Paddington, one tube or two all the rides, walks and waits for trains and tubes added up. At best they added up to at least an hour and a half each way or, as I regarded it, the equivalent of two extra full-days work a week, unpaid and unproductive. The Paddington route ran alongside the traffic jam that was the A40 and was clearly a better solution than that, but efficient? No.
I'm aware that for many an hour and a half each way would be less than many experience. But it's not what ought to be an acceptable way to expect people to live in what's supposed to be an advanced society.
But, my downvoters, don't you realise that your presumably preferred trains, electric cars or whatever aren't the solution? They're part of the cause of the problem. Every advance in transport since the invention of the horse-drawn omnibus has facilitated the clustering of workplaces into ever larger lumps, ever increasingly separated from where people live. It's an unsustainable mess. We ought to be looking at how to fix it, not doing more and more of the same.
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Monday 29th December 2014 12:49 GMT itzman
Re: toll lanes
The way to fix it is bring the work to the people.
It's almost at the stage where a huge amount of manual and clerical work doesn't need a real office at all or a real factory.
Remote robots and virtual offices are the answer.
Buses certainly are not.
BTW the free for all minicab solution exists for real in Soweto/Johannesburg. The trains are simply too unsafe to ride. Mind yuou, competition between minicab drivers goes as far as shooting the opposition...
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Monday 29th December 2014 15:14 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: toll lanes
> Over the years, from school, through university to work I've used a wide range of ways to travel - on foot, cycle, motorcycle (does a BSA Bantam count?) car, bus, train and tube, individually or in combination. I've managed to miss out horse riding, ferries & flight but I think it was a fair sample.
What? No teleportation?
No wonder you would complain. :-/
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Monday 29th December 2014 21:48 GMT Bob 18
Re: toll lanes
> Every advance in transport since the invention of the horse-drawn omnibus has
> facilitated the clustering of workplaces into ever larger lumps, ever increasingly
> separated from where people live. It's an unsustainable mess. We ought to be
> looking at how to fix it, not doing more and more of the same.
See the paper on Scaling in Cities:
http://www.santafe.edu/media/workingpapers/12-09-014.pdf
It says (basically) that larger cities are more expensive and harder to get around. But the economic value created by bringing people together in large clumps is worth more than the economic drag of having to live and navigate through that clump.
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Tuesday 30th December 2014 22:28 GMT CarbonLifeForm
Re: toll lanes
The point of mass transit is to aggregate trips, where a trip is a vector with an origin (e.g. my domicile) and a destination (e.g. my workplace). In a perfect world where everyone lived in Megacity One and worked in Megacity Two, then all trips for all people would be vectors from Megacity One to Megacity Two, with vectors in the opposite sense at quitting time; and all trips could all be aggregated into one single Great Bus of Doom.
Or, if everyone telecommuted, the trips would be from your bed to your desk with a detour at the loo and/or fridge, then back again.
Reality is a perturbation of this of course, with more traditional cities substituting the city center for Megacity Two, and outskirts, suburbs, living areas, etc. for Megacity One.
It is in fact a more efficient use of resources like a road to group people who share the same trip on fewer, larger capacity transports. Fifty single occupancy vehicles on a road take up a great deal more space than a single bus with fifty passengers on it.
It is not necessarily a more efficient use of people's time however, particularly as you deviate from the Megacity model, e.g. you work and live in the outskirts, you live and work in different outskirts, etc. You are not aggregating identical trips anymore.
The Google car model is no panacea. Yes, you can get in your car and snooze. And if all things remained equal, great! But by definition they won't if everyone were to follow the same idea. A self driving car is not a teleporter. It will be on the same road as human driven cars (unless they're outlawed - good luck with that!) and will be as inefficient at aggregating trips. So expect a long commute anyway; you'll just be working, because the car will drive itself.
So, why not telecommute instead?
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
