5 ms·

Cars in tunnels is a great idea, just like the subway: burry it so as to not impact life on the surface. Unfortunately, it is very expensive to operate that wa

by athenot 10y ago

Cars in tunnels is a great idea, just like the subway: burry it so as to not impact life on the surface. Unfortunately, it is very expensive to operate that way. The easiest tunnels to build are the ones Paris did for their subway a century ago: dig up the soft limestone under the street, lay tracks, close it up. But you still need to deal with ventilation (especially for non-electric cars), fire suppressant, evacuation, flooding and general maintenance. In the best-case scenario, tunnels are just very expensive. Then there are places like Atlanta (sitting on granite) or San Francisco (in a fault zone) where things get a lot more complicated.

cbr 10y ago
When building a city from scratch you can cut-and-cover everything, and you can choose somewhere with good soil conditions for what you want to build.
vmarsy 10y ago
To avoid accidents and other dangers, I'd see a mechanism where you park your car in a pod, and the pod is on rails, and it is getting routed automatically to your destination, that way even "dumb cars" could use it. There's already a system in France where you can park your car on a train, but loading/unloading isn't optimized at all, it's like loading/unloading a ferry : some batch processing. A steaming process would be more efficient That wouldn't remove the need for ventilation and other things you mentioned if that system is underground. But it could be above the ground , on buildings 2nd floors, where the first floor would be retail stores and whatnot
- MagnumOpus 10y ago
  > you park your car in a pod, and the pod is on rails Why not have seats on the pod, that way you don't have to ferry around a 2-tonne car. Indeed if you have solved smart automation, why have rails at all? Presto, you arrive at the idea of self-driving taxis as a public service.
- derefr 10y ago
  For the autonomous cars, it'd be interesting if they could do the equivalent of what computers do by "binding to a domain", letting things like these loaders connect to them and "drive" them onboard. Really, the car would (should!) still be driving itself—it's the thing that gets certified on how to handle safety issues, after all; the car would just be given a dead-reckoning location target by the zone controller, which the car would get to as best it knows how, with the zone controller scanning to "see" when it had successfully boarded, just like with a human-driven car. If there were few-enough human-driven cars, you could have a team of valet staff accompanying the train, acting as glue for the few human-driven cars in the pack.
zanny 10y ago
Would you build rail transit underground in a new city? A large part of why subways are even things to begin with was because they were added late in the development of most cities that justify building them. Newer cities like Dallas have above ground commuter rail exactly because the city still had room to build it above ground. If anything, it is much more valuable to segment the city in ways that you don't need subways or roads. You should have districts that are internally navigable strictly by foot, bikes and tram between adjacent districts, and only have rail / road when going beyond the local microcosm of city. You want greenery anyway, you might as well put it in the bounding lines between regions of your city and have the roads / rail between those to minimize noise pollution outside of the transit hubs.
rwhitman 10y ago
I've thought about this. My thought has been, bump the street level up one story to create a pedestrian / bicycle promenade and move building entrances to the second floor. Keep the existing street below intact, with parallel parking etc. Essentially build a boardwalk above a commercial street, so that traffic can flow below. (Though for ventilation purposes, it would be best if most cars at street level were electric.) Raising the street grade one story has been done before, when flush toilets were introduced in the late 1800's. Notably in Seattle and Chicago but in pockets other low-lying cities as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Underground https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Underground
- dhd415 10y ago
  That reminds me of a 1920s drawing of the "city of the future" that had several levels of roadway with a promenade or pedestrian level on the third or fourth story: https://worldstreets.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/future-city-popular-science-1925.jpg https://worldstreets.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/future-city...
  - hammock 10y ago
    Downtown Chicago comes pretty close with subway on the lowest level, trucks and commuter rail above that, and cars/pedestrians on the surface. There is also a large network of pedestrian tunnels which is useful in winter (and when coming from aforementioned commuter trains). And until 2003, there was even an airstrip only 2mi from downtown.
    - rwhitman 10y ago
      Montreal's Underground City is a pretty great example of how to give public pedestrian connectivity underground in winter. Well worth checking out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_City,_Montreal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_City,_Montreal
    - rspeer 10y ago

by athenot 10y ago

cbr 10y ago

When building a city from scratch you can cut-and-cover everything, and you can choose somewhere with good soil conditions for what you want to build.

vmarsy 10y ago

To avoid accidents and other dangers, I'd see a mechanism where you park your car in a pod, and the pod is on rails, and it is getting routed automatically to your destination, that way even "dumb cars" could use it. There's already a system in France where you can park your car on a train, but loading/unloading isn't optimized at all, it's like loading/unloading a ferry : some batch processing. A steaming process would be more efficient That wouldn't remove the need for ventilation and other things you mentioned if that system is underground. But it could be above the ground , on buildings 2nd floors, where the first floor would be retail stores and whatnot

MagnumOpus 10y ago
> you park your car in a pod, and the pod is on rails Why not have seats on the pod, that way you don't have to ferry around a 2-tonne car. Indeed if you have solved smart automation, why have rails at all? Presto, you arrive at the idea of self-driving taxis as a public service.
derefr 10y ago
For the autonomous cars, it'd be interesting if they could do the equivalent of what computers do by "binding to a domain", letting things like these loaders connect to them and "drive" them onboard. Really, the car would (should!) still be driving itself—it's the thing that gets certified on how to handle safety issues, after all; the car would just be given a dead-reckoning location target by the zone controller, which the car would get to as best it knows how, with the zone controller scanning to "see" when it had successfully boarded, just like with a human-driven car. If there were few-enough human-driven cars, you could have a team of valet staff accompanying the train, acting as glue for the few human-driven cars in the pack.

zanny 10y ago

Would you build rail transit underground in a new city? A large part of why subways are even things to begin with was because they were added late in the development of most cities that justify building them. Newer cities like Dallas have above ground commuter rail exactly because the city still had room to build it above ground. If anything, it is much more valuable to segment the city in ways that you don't need subways or roads. You should have districts that are internally navigable strictly by foot, bikes and tram between adjacent districts, and only have rail / road when going beyond the local microcosm of city. You want greenery anyway, you might as well put it in the bounding lines between regions of your city and have the roads / rail between those to minimize noise pollution outside of the transit hubs.

rwhitman 10y ago

I've thought about this. My thought has been, bump the street level up one story to create a pedestrian / bicycle promenade and move building entrances to the second floor. Keep the existing street below intact, with parallel parking etc. Essentially build a boardwalk above a commercial street, so that traffic can flow below. (Though for ventilation purposes, it would be best if most cars at street level were electric.) Raising the street grade one story has been done before, when flush toilets were introduced in the late 1800's. Notably in Seattle and Chicago but in pockets other low-lying cities as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_of_Chicago https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Underground https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Underground

dhd415 10y ago
That reminds me of a 1920s drawing of the "city of the future" that had several levels of roadway with a promenade or pedestrian level on the third or fourth story: https://worldstreets.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/future-city-popular-science-1925.jpg https://worldstreets.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/future-city...
- hammock 10y ago
  Downtown Chicago comes pretty close with subway on the lowest level, trucks and commuter rail above that, and cars/pedestrians on the surface. There is also a large network of pedestrian tunnels which is useful in winter (and when coming from aforementioned commuter trains). And until 2003, there was even an airstrip only 2mi from downtown.
  - rwhitman 10y ago
    Montreal's Underground City is a pretty great example of how to give public pedestrian connectivity underground in winter. Well worth checking out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_City,_Montreal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underground_City,_Montreal
  - rspeer 10y ago