NYC's Subway Should Be Full of Hoverboards Instead - The Atlantic "The New York City Subway Is Beyond Repair -- Forget trains. It’s time for something radically different." by Peter Wayner
I remembered during the construction of the BART Dublin-Pleasanton extension that someone explained to someone who lost their property to the extension that the BART tracks have the capacity of a 10-lane freeway. But I wanted some numbers, so I checked on Metro Operations Planning, and I found (numbers rounded from Figure 3):
Of self-balancing scooters, the Segway is the best-known to me, and checking on its Wikipedia article, I find that the greatest top speed of a Segway model is around 20 km/h (13 mph). So not stopping won't help this one very much.
Basic Freeway Capacity Studies, Basic Freeway Segments Capacity Analysis, 2000 Highway Capacity Manual, Chapter 23 -- the capacity of a freeway lane is typically 1500 - 2000 flat-road cars per hour. To compete with the more capacious urban-rail systems with the same number of lanes/tracks will require very stuffed flat-road cars.
So PW's numbers don't work out.
The New York City subway is a miracle, especially at 3 a.m. on a Friday night. But the system is also falling apart, and it’s going to cost billions to keep the old trains running: $19 billion, at least according to one estimate from city planners. The time has come to give up on the 19th-century idea of public transportation, and leap for the autonomous future.PW has in mind not only autonomous cars, but also this:
Right now, fully autonomous cars are rolling around Pittsburgh, the San Francisco Bay area, and parts of Michigan, shuttling people from here to there with minimal manual intervention. Instead of fixing the old trains, let’s rip out the tracks and fill the tunnels with fleets of autonomous vehicles running on pavement. The result would be radical improvements in throughput while saving money and increasing the ability of the system to survive a fire, flood, or terrorist attack.
Autonomous vehicles, by contrast, can be incredibly lithe, especially if you skip over the car-shaped models and head for the super-lightweight transports called “hoverboards” or “scooters.” These clever devices with computer-driven balancing look a bit like skateboards but carry enough battery power to go a dozen miles or more.I cannot believe that this is serious.
I remembered during the construction of the BART Dublin-Pleasanton extension that someone explained to someone who lost their property to the extension that the BART tracks have the capacity of a 10-lane freeway. But I wanted some numbers, so I checked on Metro Operations Planning, and I found (numbers rounded from Figure 3):
- Small People Movers: 5,000 - 20,000 pphpd ... 10 - 30 km/h avg. speed
- Light Rail: 10,000 - 30,000 pphpd ... 20 - 40 km/h
- Light Metro: 15,000 - 45,000 pphpd ... 25 - 45 km/h
- Heavy Metro: 30,000 - 100,000 pphpd ... 30 - 50 km/h
Of self-balancing scooters, the Segway is the best-known to me, and checking on its Wikipedia article, I find that the greatest top speed of a Segway model is around 20 km/h (13 mph). So not stopping won't help this one very much.
Basic Freeway Capacity Studies, Basic Freeway Segments Capacity Analysis, 2000 Highway Capacity Manual, Chapter 23 -- the capacity of a freeway lane is typically 1500 - 2000 flat-road cars per hour. To compete with the more capacious urban-rail systems with the same number of lanes/tracks will require very stuffed flat-road cars.
So PW's numbers don't work out.
