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But unless you’re going to the same destination mass transit isn’t ideal. If there are enough shared routes, and the cost advantage of shared transportation ad

But unless you’re going to the same destination mass transit isn’t ideal. If there are enough shared routes, and the cost advantage of shared transportation add up to a big enough benefit than it works. But my ideal transport is teleporting, which I think a subterranean hyperloop pod is closer to.

jcranmer 8y ago
The concept of Loop is basically yet-another-repackaging of personal rapid transit. And the operational history of personal rapid transit has essentially shown that it sounds good in theory but doesn't work that well in practice. The real problem is that the suburban ideal of detached single-family homes combined with low-density commercial parks is not an environmentally-friendly way of living, and when you try to scale it up, what you get is an unavoidable mess of traffic that has no real solution. If you care about moving people, the first thing you want to do is get people out of their cars; and that means that you need to concentrate one of the endpoints (invariably workplaces) to allow people to walk to their destination at that point. The land use policies are going to have to change if you want to be environmentally-friendly, and anyone who promises a way around that is selling you a fantasy.
- njarboe 8y ago
  These tunnels could solve the traffic problem. That is the whole point. They can be stacked to great depth to get traffic congestion to zero. People are willing to pay for this and it is only our ignorance and stupidity getting in the way of at least trying. The point of cities is that one has a huge number of people you could potentially interact with. With horrible traffic, this is not the case. With mass transit, you can only go certain places at certain times. Just call a tunnel with automatic pods in them mass/public transit (that is what it would be) and fell good about a better future for all of us.
  - jcranmer 8y ago
    > They can be stacked to great depth to get traffic congestion to zero. No, they can't. How do you handle vertical circulation? Also, the capacity of highways is absolute rubbish compared to trains. I've run the numbers before--you'd need about 10 times the number of tunnels with Musk's Loop proposal, and about 100x the number of stations to get the same kind of vertical throughput as you would with regular subways. > Just call a tunnel with automatic pods in them mass/public transit (that is what it would be) Loop is essentially (as I've said) personal rapid transit. PRT is definitely public transit, but every PRT system has generally found that the "mass" part is rather hard to achieve. The problem with this sort of thing is that it takes energy out of proven, working solutions to instead build technology that consistently hasn't lived up to promises. I might feel better about it if there were serious discussion as to why this system is going to succeed where others fail, but there has been absolutely nothing of that sort.
- mips_avatar 8y ago
  If personal rapid transit did work it would be better than a mass transit alternative. But I think it's pretty clear that surface streets and cars won't do this.

jcranmer 8y ago

The concept of Loop is basically yet-another-repackaging of personal rapid transit. And the operational history of personal rapid transit has essentially shown that it sounds good in theory but doesn't work that well in practice. The real problem is that the suburban ideal of detached single-family homes combined with low-density commercial parks is not an environmentally-friendly way of living, and when you try to scale it up, what you get is an unavoidable mess of traffic that has no real solution. If you care about moving people, the first thing you want to do is get people out of their cars; and that means that you need to concentrate one of the endpoints (invariably workplaces) to allow people to walk to their destination at that point. The land use policies are going to have to change if you want to be environmentally-friendly, and anyone who promises a way around that is selling you a fantasy.

njarboe 8y ago
These tunnels could solve the traffic problem. That is the whole point. They can be stacked to great depth to get traffic congestion to zero. People are willing to pay for this and it is only our ignorance and stupidity getting in the way of at least trying. The point of cities is that one has a huge number of people you could potentially interact with. With horrible traffic, this is not the case. With mass transit, you can only go certain places at certain times. Just call a tunnel with automatic pods in them mass/public transit (that is what it would be) and fell good about a better future for all of us.
- jcranmer 8y ago
  > They can be stacked to great depth to get traffic congestion to zero. No, they can't. How do you handle vertical circulation? Also, the capacity of highways is absolute rubbish compared to trains. I've run the numbers before--you'd need about 10 times the number of tunnels with Musk's Loop proposal, and about 100x the number of stations to get the same kind of vertical throughput as you would with regular subways. > Just call a tunnel with automatic pods in them mass/public transit (that is what it would be) Loop is essentially (as I've said) personal rapid transit. PRT is definitely public transit, but every PRT system has generally found that the "mass" part is rather hard to achieve. The problem with this sort of thing is that it takes energy out of proven, working solutions to instead build technology that consistently hasn't lived up to promises. I might feel better about it if there were serious discussion as to why this system is going to succeed where others fail, but there has been absolutely nothing of that sort.
mips_avatar 8y ago
If personal rapid transit did work it would be better than a mass transit alternative. But I think it's pretty clear that surface streets and cars won't do this.