3 ms·
Somebody looked at elevators and thought, "This is perfect: everything that moves should be an elevator!" But the whole world would need to be in a straight li
by ncmncm 4y ago
Somebody looked at elevators and thought, "This is perfect: everything that moves should be an elevator!"
But the whole world would need to be in a straight line. "This is perfect: we'll make everybody live in a line!"
And, not realize that elevators move in a straight line because they hang on a cable. If you lay it on its side, it becomes a train, and can go anywhere the tracks bend to.
- ZeroGravitas 4y agoGenerally train tracks bend because they have to, not because they want to. One of the things holding high speed rail back is the turning circle needed at high speed not fitting in existing rights of way, which were as straight as they could get away with at the time of building. And the inability to now just purchase a right of way directly between the two points of interest because it's owned by lots of different people. If you were building a traditional circular city and rail at the same time, the main trains would radiate out in lines as straight as the terrain allows and you'd probably spend a great deal of money building bridges and tunnels to make that possible if the terrain wasn't flat. If you were building two cities from scratch, and owned all the land between them, you'd almost certainly build a direct train line as straight as possible between them.