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What’s a Gadgetbahn? (2017)
- hirundo 8y agoSwarms of single occupancy drones, summoned by phone apps, drop out of the sky and embrace people with tentacles, flit off at their preferred maximum g-force and gently deposit them at their destinations, squirting away for the next fare. Make it so.
- darkpuma 8y agoA key aspect of Gadgetbahns is they are always Not Trains™ and the reason for that is because trains are old tech that is hard to hype, but moreso because hard data already exists for how expensive trains are to build and Gadgetbahn advocates would rather have the luxury of pulling numbers out of their ass.
- throwaway2048 8y agoAnother thing they share is they have almost all the same requirements as trains, and thus, inevitably, similar costs.
- bobthepanda 8y agoYeah. A lot of times, you will see things like “this new technology can be built elevated/underground really cheaply so you don’t have to buy the land underneath!” Except that’s not how property rights work in Western countries at all, and at a practical level things like emergency walkways or fire ventilation or maintenance passageways end up eating whatever the miniscule difference in right-of-way width is.
- darkpuma 8y agoYou also have the matter of the Gadgetbahn advocate convienently neglecting to mention that most of the cost of a typical subway system goes into the cavernous stations. They pretend the costs of a modern subway station is purely the cost per mile of tunnel, and that's the number they compare their pure cost per mile number to. So the subway cost per mile includes stations, while the Gadgetbahn cost per mile doesn't include anything other than tunnel boring. Certainly not the costs of each ludicrous car elevator.
- Theodores 8y agoAM/FM is an engineer's term distinguishing the inevitable clunky real-world faultiness of "Actual Machines" from the power-fantasy techno-dreams of "Fscking Magic." This applies with the gadgetbahn. It is best when a gadgetbahn doesn't actually work properly, is slightly dilapidated and from a future that never happened. There used to be a monorail at Birmingham Airport (UK) that took people to the trains or maybe to the exhibition centre. This eventually was scrapped but for a while it provided visitors with something to talk about. Rather than discuss the food on the flight (yawn) you could discuss the monorail. I thought the monorail added great value and was well worth the trouble of its existence just because it provided people with a little conversation starter. Heck, I am talking about it now, decades on. Therefore it is well worth any city getting a gadgetbahn rather than some giant Ferris Wheel to put them on the map. A gadgetbahn can give the illusion of being 'business travel' and serious in a way that something like the London Eye cannot.
- bobthepanda 8y agoGadgetbahns are nice pluses assuming unlimited resources, but in reality they end up taking limited resources away from other projects or bread-and-butter services. Conversation starters don't really pay the bills. Detroit's PeopleMover is a useless toy gadgetbahn that was expensive and served not a lot while the citywide bus system literally fell to pieces. The arguments around monorail vs light rail in Seattle during the '90s and '00s probably set back transit back a good decade. Hyperloop/AVs are currently being used as talking points across the United States as an argument to put off public transportation investments for decades more. In some cases they even get in the way of things; Sydney tore its city center monorail down to build a useful light-rail link for commuters instead.
- snazz 8y agoOne comment on the article is particularly apt: “And remember: monorails, maglevs, and now hypeloops and robot cars are the transportation of the future! Always have been, always will be!”
- mrhappyunhappy 8y agoIsn’t that a name of the zone in WoW? Or am I thinking Gadgetzan?
- antoineMoPa 8y agoI don't care what gets built, but the province really needs more trains. "The market is too small", people tell me. But then I see all the cars on the highway between Montreal and Sherbrooke and I'm pretty sure there is enough people there to fill a train every 1-2 hour. What the current prime minister really wants is just more room for cars (see "3e lien") . The "much more modern things" (than trains) are probably just a way to keep us thinking & talking while not building train lines for another 3 years.
- gregsadetsky 8y agoI would love more & cheaper VIA Rail trains in Canada as well... Especially when so many train cars are running empty! https://emptytrains.com/ https://emptytrains.com/ (petition started about a year ago). It was in the news (all articles/videos in French) [0][1]. [0] https://ici.radio-canada.ca/premiere/emissions/medium-large/segments/entrevue/71920/discussion-train-transport-canada https://ici.radio-canada.ca/premiere/emissions/medium-large/... [1] https://www.lesoleil.com/actualite/un-collectif-pour-des-trains-plus-aimables-5f46095f420abfcc57a2144be9690a74 https://www.lesoleil.com/actualite/un-collectif-pour-des-tra...
- Cthulhu_ 8y agoNext to a train line you'll need a lot of more fine-grained transport though - like buses - to get people from train stations to their final destination. In addition it needs to be as expensive (or cheap) as driving, and not take any more time. I used to live somewhere / have a commute where the time difference between public transit and driving was negligible. Nowadays I live somewhere much nicer, but I drive to work; the drive is 15-20 minutes, public transit would take me an hour. There is some traffic issues from time to time, but even with traffic it's faster than public transit.
- someguydave 8y agonearly all passenger trains are gadgetbahns, automobiles are much easier to scale and likely more environmentally friendly when occupancies on the train are low
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- mulmen 8y agoIs there a source on that? I would expect an electrically propelled train to be extremely efficient from an emissions standpoint and to have far far lower emissions when occupied, enough to offset running a few empty ones.
- wjjdjw 8y agoIf you look at the operational emissions, this is true. Infrastructure does however play a role. Planes have high operational emissions but require little infrastructure. Trains have little emissions but require enormous infrastructure. It's however completely unclear to me which CO2-calculators account the infrastructure, and which do not.
- mulmen 8y agoWhere does the CO2 cost of the infrastructure come in? Is that just in construction or do rails somehow emit CO2? Or are you just saying that rails take up space and that's an environmental impact too? I feel like I'm missing something.
- wjjdjw 8y agoThe German newspaper article names construction and operation of railway stations, and the construction of the infrastructure itself. My main point is: there seems to be a non-neligible impact, and CO2 calculators don't help me grasp that.
- 8y ago
- Animats 8y agoYeah, hyperloops. Going to be insanely cheap. Right. The one route that might have made sense, Dubai to Abu Dhabi, seems to not be happening. That was over empty flat desert, and had government support, so it might have been built. Monorails are a working technology, but still niche. China has 140Km or so. Japan has about 80Km. They're useful when you have to cram a transit system into a built-up city. The switch problem has been solved. But there's still little standardization; each is a one-off. BART started as a gadgetbahn. Active suspension. Solid state motor control. Computerized train control. Very fancy. All three of those systems had major problems in the early years. Forty years later, everybody has those features. Japan is building a maglev from Tokyo to Nagoya and on to Osaka. It makes sense there. Those are Japan's three biggest urban areas, and they're in a line. There's a mountain range in the way, and so much tunneling is required (about 250Km) that the tunneling cost is more than the maglev cost. 45Km of the route is already running in test, so most of the debugging is already done. Started in 2007, planned opening 2027, coming along nicely. The Morgantown (WV) personal rapid transit system, built in the 1960s, is still running. Last year it got a refresh - new electronics and propulsion. Works OK, but was never cost-effective.
- _pmf_ 8y agoThe problem with billionaires guessing what lowly commuters want is that they focus on speed and comfort instead of the more mundane issues as "bum with distinct urine smell", "person who ate several garlic cloves the evening before" and "menacing group of youths".
- adrianN 8y agoThe problems you point out can't be solved by more money for public transit, and are not what people in countries with better public transit than the US complain about.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- C1sc0cat 8y agoFrom a UK perspective (commuting to London 60+ miles each way) speed and comfort are an issue. See the "new" trains by Siemens on the Bedford - Brighton line which have worse comfort and reliability that the older electro stars.
- JonathonW 8y agoTo be a little contrarian: what would New York City look like today if they had dismissed the Subway as a "gadgetbahn" back in 1894?
- adrianN 8y agoLess room for cars on the roads and a lot more surface trains.
- Cthulhu_ 8y agoIt isn't though; it's a conventional rail system, nothing too fancy there. And it solved an actual problem, unlike e.g. the monorail vs conventional high speed rails.
- tempestn 8y agoIt's conventional now, but initially the idea of putting trains underground beneath a city must have sounded a lot like a Hyperloop or whatever does today. (Which isn't to say that I think these current gadgetbahns are good ideas.)
- darkpuma 8y agoYou're mistaken. Decades before the New York Subway (opened 1904), you had the Cobble Hill Tunnel running three quarters of a kilometer under the streets of Brooklyn (1844). And the New York Subway was preceded in an much more substantial way by the Metropolitan Railway in London (proposed in the 1830s, began construction in the 1850s), that would eventually become the London Underground. The Metropolitian Railway took a conservative incremental approach to existing technology. The locomotives were steam and the tunnels were cut and cover. Subway systems as we know them to day are the product of nearly two centuries of incrementing on already proven technology. If you want a real example of a 19th century Gadgetbahn in New York, the obvious example is the Beach Pneumatic Transit (which was a total flop and was remarkably similar to Elon's "hyperloop" in numerous other ways as well.)
- bewo001 8y ago
- agurk 8y ago> The word is a portemanteau of the English “Gadget” and the German word “bahn”, which means rail or train. To nitpick bahn[0] can refer to these concepts, but actually has a wider meaning. The most well known of these is of course the Autobahn. I've always taken it to be closer to the British English word 'way' as used in railway, motorway and right-of-way. Perhaps Gadgetway would be a more consistent term, or even Gerätbahn if we're going for a full loanword. [0] https://www.dict.cc/?s=bahn https://www.dict.cc/?s=bahn
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Quequau 8y agoThe town I live in is too small for an U-Bahn. Nevertheless it's obvious to anyone paying attention that on-street parking, commuting, and delivery are creating impediments to our happiness and well being. I have often wondered what a delivery U-Bahn might look like... something that was devoted entirely on deliveries of materials and packages. Anything to get more of the cars and trucks off the streets and devote more space in the city to people.
- _pmf_ 8y ago> and delivery are creating impediments to our happiness and well being. > I have often wondered what a delivery U-Bahn might look like Instead of having delivery vans on the sidewalk, you'd have U-Bahn-to-store forklifts on the sidewalk.
- kalleboo 8y agoLondon used to have a subway dedicated to mail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Post_Office_Railway https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Post_Office_Railway Chicago too https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tunnel_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Tunnel_Company Many cities including New York had pneumatic tube mail systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tube_mail_in_New_York_City https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tube_mail_in_New_Yor... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tube#In_postal_service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pneumatic_tube#In_postal_servi...
- sideshowb 8y agoThe Simpsons covered this topic back in 93 :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marge_vs._the_Monorail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marge_vs._the_Monorail
- pjc50 8y agoSome other examples include the Bruno Latour classic report on the French "Aramis" system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aramis,_or_the_Love_of_Technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aramis,_or_the_Love_of_Technol... "Guided buses" seem to be in the same category. Edinburgh had some which were replaced by conventional trams at great cost. Cambridge has some which has endemic problems: https://www.smartertransport.uk/guided-busway-defects/ https://www.smartertransport.uk/guided-busway-defects/
- sigi45 8y agoWe need proper Biohazard filters in our trains. Thats way more important and actually relevant than those Gadgetbahns and no one is talking about it :(. I'm more sick than collegues using there cars and bikes. That is really expensive. And there might be a moment in time where it is not a cold virus.
- adrianN 8y agoNo one is talking about it because you can't prevent infections from spreading in crowded environments.
- sigi45 8y agoSo there is no advantage at all having some filter on top of the train, pushing the air from top or bottom to the other direction? I would assume that those droplet infections should become less.