The Transportationist

A wonderful quote turned up on the website: The Ponderings of Woodrow: on a blog post about bad predictions:

"Dear Mr. President: The canal system of this country is being threatened by a new form of transportation known as 'railroads' ... As you may well know, Mr. President, 'railroad' carriages are pulled at the enormous speed of 15 miles per hour by 'engines' which, in addition to endangering life and limb of passengers, roar and snort their way through the countryside, setting fire to crops, scaring the livestock and frightening women and children. The Almighty certainly never intended that people should travel at such breakneck speed." -- Martin Van Buren, Governor of New York, 1830

Another from a page: Famous Authoritative Pronouncements

"Rail travel at high speeds is not possible because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia."
Dionysius Lardner, Professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy at University College, London, and author of The Steam Engine Explained and Illustrated

Finally:
Great Quotes from Great Skeptics

"What can be more palpably absurd than the prospect held out of locomotives traveling twice as fast as stagecoaches?"
- The Quarterly Review, England (March 1825)

Posted by David Levinson at 03:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

What Will Life Be Like in the Year 2008? written in 1968. ...

Posted by David Levinson at 02:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I was at a transportation forum tonight that will be broadcast Wednesday (2/13/08) on Minnesota Public Radio's Midmorning program.

The forum had 8 experts (1 of whom was me) and an audience of about 75 people. The audience got the most airtime and there was a disproportionate discussion of monorails and PRT. But there was some sensible discussion as well. My words constituted possibly 60 seconds of the whole event. Ah, Democracy.

Posted by David Levinson at 09:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

From the New York Times: G.M.s Fuel-Cell Car Makes a Statement. GM demoed a fuel cell powered Cadillac (the poorly named Provoq) and a modified Chevrolet Tahoe that drives itself. Neither is ready for production, but maybe we are finally asymptotically approaching the long-forecast future of cars that drive themselves and do not pollute.

Posted by David Levinson at 04:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From Popular Mechanix (1939) via Boing Boing - Modern Mechanix: Skyscraper Airport for City of Tomorrow

If only air travel could be this simple. Presumably the building would be robust to planes crashing into it.

Posted by David Levinson at 05:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A YouTube Find from a reader ... why can't we have transportation visions like this anymore, or is it that we just don't believe them?

YouTube - Magic Highway USA

(Of course there are many many visions embedded in this one video).

Posted by David Levinson at 01:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I was talking with Benn (see previous post) at WCTR last week (before the article came out), and the question arose, "What is the next big advance in transportation?"

My answer:

The next big advance has to be cars that drive themselves (in mixed traffic). See the DARPA Urban Challenge

(1) it increases people's range, because they can sleep, work, etc. in their vehicle.
(2) ultimately, (version 2.0) we can put children and other mobility impaired into the vehicles, and send them on their way.
(3) the car can then park itself. (providing door-to-door service, reducing access/egress time for users in cities and saving on parking costs)
(4) it can go faster as the computer has faster reflexes, though it is still limited by braking speeds.
(5) it can close gaps and therefore increase capacity slightly (depending on how mixed the traffic is).
(6) it is deployable now (assuming it works) as it requires no new infrastructure. The requirement for both new vehicles and new infrastructure (the chicken and egg problem) is what has befallen most previous next new things in transportation (think Personal Rapid Transit).

I believe many of these vehicles will in general be smaller (think Bill Garrison's work), maybe 2 passenger, but perhaps configurable so that an attached platoon can save energy through aerodynamics and space for parking. Say you can chain a few of them together at home, for instance, then a family would go out, but if not everyone were going, the vehicle would be right-sized for the group, with only a little bit of slack.

Posted by David Levinson at 06:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)