Morning Ed: Transportation {2017.05.08.M}
Ramesh Ponnuru directs our attention to a private railroad project in Florida, and its enemies.
Norway, along with others, are looking to green up their ferries. They’re also building ship tunnels. (Video)
Hey, we’ve all been there. (It actually looks like it was a viable driving path but the water was just a bit too high.)
Rest stops are boring by design.
Toyota thinks the US has reached Peak Automobile.
Zoom!!!
It sure seems to me that once you have the tunnel, you have the capacity for better modes of transportation.
How important is it really that we turn off our cell radios on flights?
Dan Neil: Dymaxion Car-Cool, How Does It Drive?
Japan, a country of train geeks. 🙂Report
Obama to discuss climate change in Italy
No irony that he’s flying to Italy to discuss climate change. Apparently video teleconference doesn’t work in Italy. I wonder if he’s doing all this for free?
http://thehill.com/homenews/news/332328-obama-to-discuss-climate-change-in-italyReport
Musk has some interesting ideas about greatly decreasing the cost of digging tunnels. Digging the same distance much faster and for much, much less cost per foot. Part of his solution is smaller diameter bores than we would use for regular subways. But big enough for cars sitting on sleds.
What about taking his tunnel breakthroughs, if he pulls them off, and using them for scaled down, very fast, “express” subway cars? Want to feed people into a city center from an outside bedroom area quickly and efficiently? Use single cars that can be filled and then travel non-stop to their final destination for unloading. Then shift the now empty car to the tunnel heading in the return direction.
This wouldn’t be a stop-to-stop mass transit system for moving around cities but a way to get commuters downtown and home very quickly. Single station at the end of each tunnel. Much faster and cheaper than driving. Commute crush on the highways go away.
Use the maglev system that is being developed for the Hyperloop. The cars should be able to reach somewhere between 150 and 250 miles per hour, high speed rail speed. The top speed would probably be limited by passenger comfort during acceleration and deceleration. The Concorde accelerated from 0 to 225 mph in 30 seconds with no discomfort to the passengers.
Loading and unloading passengers should be very efficient as everyone is getting on at the same time and off at the same time.Report
Autoplay is the devil!!!!!Report
I thought I’d visited this page, as well as all the links, and don’t recall anything autoplaying. I suppose my modifications to my browser’s behavior deprive me of something useful on occasion, but I’m willing to take the trade-off.Report
Traffic tunnels in an earthquake zone. Not one of Elon Musk’s strongest ideas.Report
eh, it’s been done enough times elsewhere in such zones.Report
That’s different. In Japan, there’s a greater danger of giant stomping lizards.Report
And huge flying moths, so you obviously want to get underground. The Japanese are really in a no win situation with this.Report
Hah, now your gettin’ it. Ten for that you must be mad…Report
LA has a subway system. Musk isn’t doing anything that hasn’t been done before when it comes to tunnel systems in SoCal.Report