Ariel Schwartz, writing for Fast.Co Exist:
It took nearly a decade’s worth of work, but Iraq finally has its first national park: the Central Marshes of Iraq, a 1,000 square kilometer site filled with marshlands that had previously been systematically drained by Saddam Hussein because of their usefulness as a hiding place during wartime.
If you haven’t gotten enough hyperloop by 3 pm eastern today, listen in to PRI’s The World. I’ll be talking with host Marco Werman about how hyperloop stacks up the high-speed transit in other countries.
I’ll be on the public radio show Science Friday tomorrow at 2 pm eastern to talk about hyperloop, maglev, and high-speed rail. The segment should be available online sometime broadcast, but you can also listen live with your radio or online.
Jim Motavalli, writing for the New York Times:
Consider New York’s public pay telephones. They may be outdated in the digital age, but they have telephone wiring and are often supplied with electricity. More important, they already occupy precious city real estate — and already have the permits necessary to stay there. Is it possible to imagine some of them seamlessly replaced with electric vehicle charging stations, with vital dedicated parking spaces?
David Biello makes an interesting point at Scientific American that the grid just isn’t set up right now to handle a large amount of distributed solar power, like the kind you see on people’s rooftops. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t push for more solar installations, just that we need to consider changes in infrastructure along with it.
Matt Johnson, writing of Greater Washington:
According to Musk, pods would depart LA and San Francisco every 30 seconds during peak periods. Each pod can carry 28 passengers. That means that under the maximum throughput, the Hyperloop is capable of carrying 3,360 passengers each hour in each direction.
For context, a freeway lane can carry 2,000 cars per hour. A subway running at 3 minute headways (like the WMATA Red Line) can carry 36,000 passengers per hour. The California High Speed Rail, which this project is supposed to replace, will have a capacity of 12,000 passengers per hour.
That means that Musk’s proposal can carry only 20-25% of the passengers of the California High-Speed Rail under ideal circumstances. But are those ideal circumstances reasonable? Probably not.
(Thanks to PSM reader Paul Beard.)
Alexis Madrigal, writing for The Atlantic:
It’s not that there couldn’t be cheaper ways of doing things. I’m sure there are. But in comparing Musk’s plan with the California HSR proposal, we’re looking at two very different levels of detail. Musk’s is a sketch. The HSR proposal has been worked over by so many parties for years, and many more costs have been discovered lurking in the details of putting in a major transportation system in the second decade of the 21st century.
David Biello, writing for Scientific American:
This hyper loopy concept springs from Musk’s disappointment in California’s high speed rail plans, which are both slower than other trains out there at an average speed of 264 kph and more expensive per mile at a total estimated bill of nearly $70 billion. Of course, that has something to do with California land prices and U.S. rules and regulations. The Hyperloop, such as it is, offers no solution to political gridlock, NIMBY-ism or high land prices. In fact, it is almost absurd to suggest that all the land that would be needed for the Hyperloop to connect L.A. and S.F. would cost just $1 billion. If the physical science of the Hyperloop is not outrageously loopy, there is a near complete vacuum on the social science side.
Yours truly, writing for NOVA Next:
Musk is selling the hyperloop as “a fifth mode after planes, trains, cars and boats.” In reality, it owes a great debt of gratitude to that second mode, trains. And while Musk suggests that his untested system is good enough to replace trains, it’s up against some stiff competition. Today, we have high-speed rail and magnetic levitation trains that are speedy, efficient, and—perhaps most important—proven.
“It’s still too far out there in terms of being shown to be viable,” says Dean Peterson, a senior scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and former director of the Super Conducting Technology Center there, where he worked on maglev trains. “It has potential,” he adds, “but some of his concepts still need further work.”
I’ve read a lot about the hyperloop in the last 18 hours, and I can say with reasonable certainty that this is probably the most extensive look at the technology behind the hyperloop and how it relates to high-speed mass transit on a broader scale. I had a blast reporting this piece—everyone I spoke with had amazing stories and insights.
Well, Elon Musk finally announced his much-hyped hyperloop. Looking over the proposal now. I’ll have an in-depth look at it—and its relation to HSR and maglev—tomorrow on NOVA Next.
Blaine Harden, reporting for the Washington Post back in 2010:
The nose of a bullet train is not particularly well-suited to the expensive and highly specialized mass-production machinery that molds and cuts metal to make hundreds of thousands of cars, trucks and toasters. The number of high-speed locomotives built for each bullet-train series in Japan is quite limited, from 40 to 120.
[…]
“The most cost-efficient way of transferring computer-assisted 3-D design to metal is with a hammer,” said Tatsuto Yamashita, who, unlike his father, never spent much time swinging a hammer.
The Architecture and Design Museum in Los Angeles has a new exhibit exploring the L.A. that might have been. If you’re like me and won’t be in L.A. before the exhibition closes on October 13, there’s an app that let’s you explore the curated works and their locations within the city.
That “Los Angeles” is subordinate to “Never Built” in the title has me hoping the concept won’t be limited to L.A, and that museums in other cities will pick it up.
(Via Boom.)
Eric Jaffe, writing for the Atlantic Cities:
Very few U.S. travelers go through an airport by intercity train as a result. One recent study found that Amtrak accounted for just 3 percent of all airport access at Newark, 2 percent at Baltimore, and less than 1 percent at Burbank. Newark is the only airport with an agreement between Amtrak and an air carrier (United) to let passengers reserve seats on both modes at the same time.
Contrast those figures with rail-air connectivity measures in Europe. There, intercity rail accounts for 20 to 25 percent of travel access at some airports. The European Commission has made air-rail integration — or air-high-speed rail integration, to be more precise — a major priority, adopting a resolution to connect all 37 core airports to intercity rail by 2050.
Tim Parshall:
Over the past decade, we also seem to be getting closer to a good estimate of how many species actually exist on the planet. You would think that we would have some scientific consensus on this number, but take a look at any biology or environmental science textbook and you’ll find the same broad range quotes … between 5 and 100 million species. There’s a huge difference between 5 and 100 million! And since our current list of named species is just 1.5 million it has seemed that we have a long way to go.
However, recent scientific studies appear to be narrowing in on the lower end of that huge range … somewhere around 10 million, perhaps less (though there is still a considerable difference of opinion).
Philip Ball, writing for BBC Future:
A new study by a collaboration of mathematical physicists and social historians in France shows that, simply by analysing old and new maps of the city, it’s possible to quantify what effect Haussmann’s plans had on the shape and life of Paris. The results offer a case history of how cities may evolve through a combination of spontaneous self-organisation and top-down central planning.
Paul Farhi, reporting for the Washington Post:
The Washington Post Co. agreed Monday to sell its flagship newspaper to Amazon.com founder and chief executive Jeffrey P. Bezos, ending the Graham family’s stewardship of one of America’s leading news organizations after four generations.
Bezos, whose entrepreneurship has made him one of the world’s richest men, will pay $250 million in cash for The Post and affiliated publications to The Washington Post Co., which owns the newspaper and other businesses.
In buying the Post, Bezos is getting a significant voice in Washington as well as a strong foothold in newspapers, one publishing industry in which he hasn’t had much influence. I’ll be curious to see what changes he makes—Bezos has been known for his long-term thinking and tolerance of thin profit margins, two qualities that are certain to be assets in the newspaper business.
Jane Mayer, writing for the New Yorker:
Starting in 2008, a year after the Supreme Court ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency could regulate greenhouse gasses as a form of pollution, accelerating possible Congressional action on climate change, the Koch-funded nonprofit group, Americans for Prosperity, devised the “No Climate Tax” pledge. It has been, according to the study, a component of a remarkably successful campaign to prevent lawmakers from addressing climate change. Two successive efforts to control greenhouse-gas emissions by implementing cap-and-trade energy bills died in the Senate, the latter of which was specifically targeted by A.F.P.’s pledge. By now, four hundred and eleven current office holders nationwide have signed the pledge. Signatories include the entire Republican leadership in the House of Representatives, a third of the members of the House of Representatives as a whole, and a quarter of U.S. senators.
Oh, that’s why.
David Kestenbaum, reporting for NPR’s Planet Money:
Climate change seems like this complicated problem with a million pieces. But Henry Jacoby, an economist at MIT’s business school, says there’s really just one thing you need to do to solve the problem: Tax carbon emissions.
“If you let the economists write the legislation,” Jacoby says, “it could be quite simple.” He says he could fit the whole bill on one page.
And:
If you do it right, he says, carbon tax can be nearly painless for the economy as a whole.
Besides reducing carbon emissions, a carbon tax brings in a bunch of money — it’s a tax after all. So, Reilly says, you can reduce, say, income tax to balance out the new taxes people are paying for carbon emissions. People pay more for gas, but they get to keep more of their income.
So why don’t we have it yet?
Brendon Slotterback has posted a great reply to my self-driving car article over at Streets.mn. He questions my use of the world “car”, especially after I note that “the lines between private and public transit will start to blur” with the advent of self-drivers.
A vehicle pulls up to your house to take to you to work – it’s got four seats, one of which you occupy on your trip to work while the others remain empty. Is it a car? Most people would answer “yes, dummy”.
What if that same vehicle arrived, but the other three seats were filled with some neighbors who happened to work near where you worked? They rode with you to your work, some getting dropped off nearby, others remaining in the vehicle after you left for a longer trip. Is that a car? Most people would probably say “yes, dummy, that’s just carpooling”. Others might recognize this as “transit”.
It’s a good point, though I think by the time the self-driving revolution is upon us, it’ll be moot. Excepting old rail fans or gearheads, most people will come to understand self-drivers as an entirely new class of transportation and will make new distinctions between services—shared rides vs. solitary trips, for example. These differences will parallel what we consider “cars” and “transit” today, but I don’t think most people will feel that way because the technology will be so different.
Today, the distinction between cars and transit is based partially on whether a ride is shared, but more importantly on the feeling of independence. With self-drivers, that distinction will blur, too. Solitary passengers won’t be any more in charge of their vehicle than shared riders—the only difference will be whether they have to stop somewhere along the way.
That’s probably just the tip of the iceberg. I have a feeling that automation will fundamentally change the way people understand transportation.
Google made big news last year when it announced that its self-driving cars had logged 300,000 miles, all of which were accident free. Suddenly, self-driving cars weren’t science fiction anymore. People began to imagine futures in which they hopped in, entered a destination, and kicked back. We’re not there yet—autonomous vehicles will have to log an estimated 300 million miles before we can be confident they’re as safe as regular drivers¹—but we may be within a generation or two. It’s entirely possible that babies born today will be among the last who feel they have to learn how to drive.
Just as the automobile began reshaping cities a century ago, the self-driving car will change urban areas yet again. But like the advent of the automobile, it won’t happen all at once. The revolution will happen in stages, and we’re already in the first. Cars can now park themselves, keep you in your lane, brake when traffic slows, and accelerate when it moves again. Many expensive cars do all of the above and more. Luxury vehicles are often testbeds for new technologies, and it’s unlikely that full autonomy will be any different. The first fully autonomous car for mass consumption will probably be quite expensive. When the first of its kind leaves the dealer lot—with the only driver input being a destination—we’ll have entered the second stage.
When self-driving cars are the rule, not the exception, we’ll be in the third stage. There’s no doubt the technology will trickle down—perhaps strikingly fast in this case, if the trickling down of today’s electronic nannies is anything to go by. Soon, new cars in all price segments will drive themselves. Purists will howl, but commuters will rejoice.
The benefits of stage three should be obvious to anyone who regularly drives. Parking will be a breeze—the car will drop you off and go find a spot on its own. If automation is combined with a smart parking system, traffic in big cities could drop by 30 percent—the proportion of cars in city centers currently circling for a space. Commuting, too, won’t be half the chore it is today. That time wasted in traffic? Wasted no more. Take a nap, eat breakfast, catch up on reading, text your friends.² You get the idea. Unless energy prices skyrocket, those far flung suburbs will regain some of their luster. The surge in commuting coupled with the higher densities allowed by self-driving cars³ will make today’s crowded freeways seem spacious by comparison.
We can feel pretty confident about these predictions, I think, because they’re pretty similar to how we use cars today. At some point, though, we’ll start thinking about cars differently. If cars can drive themselves around, passengers or not, what’s the point in owning your own car? Why not lease one from a pool? Welcome to stage four. Schedule it for your daily commute—perhaps with a price break for carpooling—and request one on-demand for more unpredictable needs. If wait times are short enough, it’ll be an attractive proposition.
Automakers, of course, have the most to lose and the most to gain. If they navigate this transition poorly, they won’t fare well. People will need fewer vehicles if they’re buying timeshares, and the market for automobiles will plummet. But if automakers can tackle the logistics of a such a system, they’ll make a killing.
At this point, the lines between private and public transit will start to blur. What I described above bears a resemblance to personal rapid transit, or PRT. A dream of the 1960s and 1970s, PRT consisted of small pods, hailed on demand, that whisked passengers to their destinations along monorails or traditional rails. The main difference between PRT and self-driving car subscriptions is that the self-drivers won’t need new tracks or dedicated rights-of-way—they can use existing roads. The efficiencies in this system will be massive. Cars can be delivered and routed as needed, and they can be used more consistently throughout the day, picking up new passengers after dropping others off. Parking lots can be largely eliminated and replaced by central facilities where the fleet will return for refueling and maintenance. Streets can be narrowed, asphalt lots reclaimed.
There is one big difference between self-driving car systems and PRT, though. PRT, as it is typically envisioned, is publicly-owned and maintained. In all likelihood, that won’t be the case with self-driving cars. Automakers and rental car companies are best positioned to take advantage of the self-driving revolution. Both already have portions of the subscription part down—leases and rentals—but the logistics will pose a real challenge.
Regarding privatization, Allison Arieff, editor at SPUR, raises an important point—how will self-driving cars influence social equity? “If you could afford a BMW before,” she writes, “you’ll be able to afford a subscription to BMW’s suite of offerings in this scenario.” She’s absolutely right—there are certain to be varying price points. That’s just how markets operate. But don’t count on the self-driving market looking exactly like today’s auto industry.
The strongest competitor will be the company with the widest network and the highest availability of vehicles. In this regard, the market for self-driving vehicles will be more similar to the cell phone industry than today’s automotive industry. Today, vehicles are sold on the strength of their quality and features. Tomorrow, subscriptions to vehicles will be sold based on the reach and availability of their network.⁴ Within each network there will certainly be a wide-variety of vehicles available depending on how much you’re willing to pay. But niche automakers won’t succeed unless they dramatically scale up their network.
There are potential downsides to self-driving cars, of course. It’s very likely that the poor will be left out yet again. Cars are costly to buy and maintain. Will self-driving cars be any different, cost-wise? The poor probably won’t be able to afford plans that provide high availability, limiting their mobility. Companies with the widest networks and most cars will probably attract the most customers. Smaller players will be either forced out or bought out, concentrating today’s highly competitive automotive market; tomorrow’s self-driving car industry could quickly devolve into an oligopoly. When that happens, be prepared for wave after wave of profit-driven price-hikes.
Throughout all this, cities will be adapting. For a brief period, it’s possible that cars will function in cities the way we had always hoped they would—traffic will flow more smoothly, parking be less of a headache. But that will only be for a brief window. Revolutions in mobility have a tendency to decentralize populations rather than concentrate them. Sprawl may become even more acute than it is today.
When people stop owning cars, the line between public and private will blur further. Who will pay for the upkeep of roads, consumers or companies? What about parking spaces? Will private companies be able to take advantage of free parking, as individuals do today? Or will free parking be a thing of the past?
Parking lots may become passé, but there will be a new need for vast facilities to store, clean, and maintain self-driving cars. Given the realities of real estate, those facilities will probably sit on the outskirts of town. Highways would still be jammed during morning commutes, only there may be two pulses of traffic instead one—the first consisting of empty cars fetching their masters, the second ferrying them to work. The added convenience and efficiency of self-driving cars could raise demand, too, bringing even more cars on the road. Self-driving cars can make more efficient use of roadways, but those benefits may quickly be erased. Prepare for another round of highway expansions.
Where’s public transit in all of this? That’s a good question, and one I’m not sure anyone has adequately answered. It’ll probably still exist, though in what form I have no clue. Who will ride it is similarly up in the air, but motivations will probably remain the same—time, expense, and convenience. If mass transit can best self-driving cars at one or more of those, it’ll retain its place in the mix.
Two or more of these stages in the self-driving revolution will probably happen during our lifetimes. Changes to cities will lag, though not by much. When the automobile first caught on, cities quickly changed pedestrian laws, made way for parking, and, within just 50 years of the first mass-produced automobiles, tore down entire neighborhoods to build highways. Will the self-driving car precipitate such drastic changes? Perhaps. We’ll find out soon enough.
Photo by Google.
Related posts:
Marchetti’s constant, or why the 30 minute commute is here to stay