Time for delivery companies to work weekends







What to do in high speed rail?

Last week, new studies came back on the California High Speed Rail project. They have raised the estimated cost to $99 billion, and dropped the ridership estimate to 36.8 million and $5.5 billion in annual revenue. Note that only around 20 million people currently fly the SF to LA corridor — they expect to not just capture most of those but large numbers of central valley trips.





Of course, having no stops is not that valuable because only a few people want to go from SJ to SF. People would want a stop at the airport as I have indicated, and at least one in Mountain View or Palo Alto. Each stop costs a bunch of time, and eventually the trip gets long enough that the single-track trick becomes less useful. For a while I’ve wondered if you could make trains that could dock, so that the main train runs non-stop and is able to shed cars which stop at local stops (not that hard) and to dock with cars coming from local stops (harder.) I proposed this 7 years ago near the start of this blog, and there are serious rail designers thinking along the same lines — see the video in that link.


Robocars play a role in all this too. Even the HSR authority realizes they have a big problem, in that once people get quickly to an HSR station, they still have to get to their real destination. Using local transit may mean spending more time on a local bus than on the HSR. The mobility on demand of robocars is a great answer, and I’m pretty sure that with a 2030 forecast completion date (if they’re lucky) we’ll have robocars long before then. And the one thing cars can’t readily do is go very fast efficiently between cities.



Paying drivers to leave the road


That’s why the two main success stories in congestion today are metering lights and downtown congestion charging. Metering lights limit how fast cars can enter the highway, so that you don’t overload it and traffic flows smoothly. By waiting a bit at the metering light you get a fast ride once on the highway. Sometimes though, especially when the other factors like accidents come into play, things still gum up.

Now that more and more cars are connected (by virtue just of the smartphone the driver carries if nothing else) the potential will open up for something else in congestion — finding ways to encourage drivers to leave a congested road.  read more »

ITS vehicle to vehicle demo at ITS World Congress

I’m just back from the “ITS World Congress” an annual meeting of people working on “Intelligent Transportation Systems” which means all sorts of applications of computers and networking to transportation, particularly cars. A whole bunch of stuff gets covered there, including traffic monitoring and management, toll collection, transit operations etc. but what’s of interest to robocar enthusiasts is what goes into cars and streets. People started networking cars with systems like OnStar, now known in the generic sense as “telematics” but things have grown since then.


Coming up with value for V2V is a tricky proposition. Since you can only talk to cars very close to you, it’s not a reliable way to talk with any particular car. Relaying through the wide area network is best for that unless you need lots of bandwidth or really low latency. There’s not much that needs lots of bandwidth, but safety applications do demand both low latency and a robust system that doesn’t depend on infrastructure.

The current approach to safety applications is to have equipped cars transmit status information. Formerly called a “here I am” this is a broadcast of location, direction, speed and signals like brake lights, turn signals etc. If somebody else’s car is transmitting that, your car can detect their presence, even if you can’t see them. This lets your car detect and warn about things like:

  • People in your blind spot, or who are coming up on you really fast when your’re about to change lanes
  • Cars about to run red lights or blow stop signs at an intersection you’re about to go through
  • Privacy is a big issue. The boxes change their ID every minute so you can’t track a car over a long distance unless you can follow it over every segment, but is that enough? They say a law is needed so the police don’t use the speed broadcast to ticket you, but will it stay that way?

It turns out that intersection collisions are a large fraction of crashes, so there’s a big win there, if you can do it. The problem is one of critical mass. Installed in just a few cars, such a system is extremely unlikely to provide aid. For things like blindspot detection, existing systems that use cameras or radars are far better because they see all cars, not just those with radios. Even with 10% penetration, there’s only a 1% chance any given collision could be prevented with the system, though it’s a 10% chance for the people who seek out the system. (Sadly, those who seek out fancy safety systems are probably less likely to be the ones blowing through red lights, and indeed another feature of the system — getting data from traffic lights — already can do a lot to stop an equipped car from going through a red light by mistake.)  read more »

Car users frustrated with their tech












Another pedal-powered monorail: Skyride






My phone should know when I start a trip














Anybody have a better signal to propose?

I'm loving the Shweeb concept

There was a bit of a stir when Google last week announced that one of the winners of their 10^100 contest would be Shweeb, a pedal-powered monorail from New Zealand that has elements of PRT. Google will invest $1M in Shweeb to help them build a small system, and if it makes any money on the investment, that will go into transportation related charities.

While I had a preference that Google fund a virtual world for developing and racing robocars I have come to love a number of elements about Shweeb, though it’s not robocars and the PRT community seems to not think it’s PRT. I think it is PRT, in that it’s personal, public and, according to the company, relatively rapid through the use of offline stations and non-stop point to point trips. PRT is an idea from the sixties that makes sense but has tried for almost 50 years to get transit planners to believe in it and build it. A micro-PRT has opened as a Heathrow parking shuttle, but in general transit administrators simply aren’t early adopters. They don’t innovate.

What impresses me about Shweeb is its tremendous simplicity. While it’s unlikely to replace our cars or transit systems, it is simple enough that it can actually be built. Once built, it can serve as a testbed for many of PRT’s concepts, and go through incremental improvements.  read more »

















Transit energy chart updated from latest DoE book


What’s new?

  • Heavy rail numbers also worsen.

Border Travel in an underpants bomber world











911 should be able to stop a train

It was over 5 years ago that I blogged about a robot that would travel in front of a train to spot cars stuck on the tracks in time to stop.

I recently read a local story about an RV that was demolished while stuck on the tracks here. The couple had time to talk to 911, who told them to get out, and it’s not clear from the story but it seems like a moderate amount of time may have passed (a couple of minutes) before their RV was smashed.

Here’s what should happen, and perhaps it does happen in some places:

  1. The 911 service should receive GPS and cell tower location on the caller. The moment the caller indicates they are stuck on the tracks, the 911 operator should push a button which figures out which tracks it might be and which trains might be approaching that crossing.
  2. Ideally trains are reporting their location with GPS as some do, but schedules can be used, or all trains anywhere near the area can be alerted.
  3. Signal lights close to the crossing should immediately go red, and cell phones of operators on the relevant trains should be called, and the computer or 911 operator can indicate which crossing is blocked. If the engineer is approaching that crossing they can emergency brake.

This can be enhanced a few ways:

  • Each crossing can have a big sign, “If stuck, get out of vehicle immediately, clear track (show direction) and call 911, and give this crossing number NNN.” The crossing number would work even if GPS and cell towers don’t locate the crossing.
  • Alternately, there could be a 10 digit phone number, different for each crossing. There is, however, some risk of abuse and false reports. You don’t want a war dialing telemarketer to stop trains. An operator may still need to confirm.
  • As noted, the sign should try to tell people to clear to the area slightly “upstream” (ie. towards the oncoming train, but not on the tracks, obviously.) That’s because when the train hits the car it throws it sideways and forward, never backwards along the path the train came from.
  • If you don’t see or hear a train, it makes slight sense to get out and call while walking so the call comes sooner. If you can see the train they can see you and it’s probably too late anyway. But human safety is more important.
  • The trains may have another way to reach the engineer, such as a private radio system, but just having a cell phone on each train (plus knowing trains staff personal cell phones and calling all of them) seems like a quick and easy solution. The cell in the train can have a very loud and flashing ringer, especially if it’s an emergency call.

It takes a long time to stop a train, but I bet most vehicles that get stuck on the tracks are stuck minutes before the train comes.

Can we stop electric cars from playing music for safety?

I struck a nerve several years ago when I blogged about the horrible beep-beep noise made by heavy equipment when it backs up. Eventually a British company came up with a solution: a pulsed burst of white noise which is very evident when you are near the backing up vehicle but which disperses quickly so it doesn’t travel and annoy people a mile away as the beeps do.

Now I am seeing more and more suggestions that electric cars, which run quite silently when slow, make some noise for safety. This is fine, but there are also suggestions that there will be music and vanity noises, like ringtones or “cartones.” I can certainly see why this would appeal to people. (Already many think that their car is the place to play mind-numbing bass to announce musical taste to all others on the street.) There are even proposed laws.

While the cartones would be quieter than the backup beep or the heavy bass, I really fear that people will overdo what they think is the purpose — being attention grabbing. They will want to distract, and that will create a cacophony on the roads. It’s hard to make sounds that are meant to be attention grabbing (or vanity oriented) not travel beyond the range that you need them for safety.

I don’t want to imagine what it might be like living as I do with a 3-way stop outside my window, with each car singing a different tune or strange noise every time it slows down and starts up again. Who will want to live near intersections or parking lots?

I have a few proposals:

  1. Like the beep-beep solution, use white noise that just doesn’t travel very far, but is easily noticed when close.
  2. Use natural sounds, like waves crashing, birds chirping, wind blowing. We are tuned to hear those sounds in an otherwise silent environment, but our brains also can easily ignore them in background form.
  3. Do indeed tune the volume based on ambient noise. This is suggested in the O’Reilly article linked above. They propose it to be loud enough. It should also be quiet enough.
  4. Don’t do it at a speed where the tires and wind and electric motors are making enough noise already.
  5. As robocar sensors become more common, such as LIDAR and radar, only make the noise when there are people who might come in contact with the vehicle. Otherwise, be silent.
  6. Since robocars will not hit people in any normal operation, even people who don’t know they are there, such vehicles need not make any noise. HOwever, if they see a human or anything else on a collision course, let them make a more loud and useful noise that really gets attention, like a burst of white or pink noise, or even a horn if they ignore that. Start quiet, get louder if it is not reacted to in a human reaction time.

Let’s not give up on this opportunity to return peace to our public spaces as electric cars and robocars become popular.

RV daisy chain power grid





RV water tank should have UV disinfector




What is the moment of sin in drunk driving?

Recently, some prosecutors, in efforts to crack down on drunk driving, are pushing for murder convictions. This is happening in the case of really blatant disregard on the part of the drunk drivers — people with multiple DUIs getting smashed, going out, and killing.

In watching coverage of this trend, over and over again I heard it said that the killer’s sin was “getting behind the wheel when drunk.” And that is in fact what we punish with DUI laws. Because so many people have done it (without killing anybody) there is surprising sympathy for the drunk drivers — there but for the grace of god go I.

But is that the right sin? That decision is always made once the person has impaired judgement. Something to me seems wrong about punishing a decision made when one has lost the ability to make good decisions. While I don’t drink, and have no sympathy for the actions of drunks, I think the real transgression comes much earlier.

The real transgression is allowing yourself to get impaired in circumstances where you would then be sufficiently likely to make deadly wrong decisions. A simple example of this would be having enough alcohol to move from sober to drunk when you have your car with you and plan to drive home. Of course, many people in that situation will do the right thing, and still be clear enough to know they should get a cab home, and then come back to pick up their car later. But of course, many don’t. And worse, there is often an incentive not to — such as paying for two taxi fares, and dealing with the car’s location becoming a no-parking zone in the morning.

I believe people should be punished for risky decisions they make while sober, more so than ones they make while drunk. It should be expected that people will make poor decisions and take unacceptable risks when drunk. That is what impairment means. It is the decisions they make when sober, when they know right from wrong, that the law should punish.

Now let me describe how this might work in theory, and then discuss the harder question of making it work in practice.

The simplest way to behave well is to never take your car to go drinking. That car parked outside is too much temptation once you are drunk. And this is what the designated driver concept is about. To get more specific, you must not take the drinks that make you impaired without first, while still not so impaired, making plans to get home so you have no temptation to drive your car. This can include arranging a ride with a sober person, pre-contracting with a taxi company for later pickup, or putting your car keys into escrow.

Car key escrow, for example, would involve giving the keys to a friend or the bartender, who will not return them to you until you are sober. A high-tech version might be a simple lockbox. You can put your keys in the lockbox (provided by a responsible bar) and can only get them out by blowing into the box with alcohol below the limit. The act of escrow, taken while sober, makes you legal. The act of drinking beyond your limit without making alternate plans is the immoral act. Having any recorded plan for getting home — cab, designated driver, transit ticket, keys in escrow — is enough to be acting morally.

Now how to enforce this? Well, we can’t really have police coming into bars, and asking all patrons who are beyond the limit to prove they made alternate plans. Police could check inebriated people leaving bars, but don’t typically have the time for this. If this sort of rule is to be enforced, it would have to be through legal liability on those who serve alcohol (bars, party hosts) to assure none of their guests go beyond the limit without plans, or at least the easy ability to make plans. (Cheap key lockboxes might help in this area.)

And of course, anybody who did drive drunk would be guilty since they obviously didn’t make adequate plans. This approach would simply expand the culpable act to the broader situation of having deliberately (while sober) put yourself in a situation where this has a real chance of taking place.

There are problems of course. Often “guests” come to parties uninvited and get drunk. We’ve all had a fairly drunk person at a party we barely know. Or we may not know the drinking habits of the friends we do invite. Bartenders deal with people arriving who already got sauced at another bar and just have the last few drinks before they drive in the 2nd bar. We want people to act responsibly, not have to go overboard and be paranoid about each guest. Ideally we want the full weight of the law to fall on the sober person who got drunk while his or her car was outside.

One unconnected option might make sense. Parking laws might be changed to let you get out of certain kinds of parking tickets if you can show proof you took an alternate way home because you are drunk. Taxi drivers who take drunks home could issue such a dated receipt. Friends could testify under oath that they drove you home because you were drunk. This might make people more willing to leave cars behind in certain areas. It would have to be clear what those areas were (for example, parking that was free at night but becomes metered or prohibited at 7am) so that the parking does not become a problem. Still the extra parked cars are a better thing to have than cars with drunks behind the wheel.

Some random travel notes


Baltic Ferry








Taxi in Stockholm




Transit in St. Petersburg





Air Travel


GPS Headaches




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