Fuck Cars
A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
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This is the problem with running a channel where the algorithm just wants you to be against stuff for clicks. You become jaded and start to work against what you originally set out to do.
What if these got popular on a disused line and the local authority notices there are suddenly a few thousand people a day using these things just to get off the road. Maybe that's the start or a process to reinvest in a small service on that old line. Or if not, then it's still a bunch of people not driving.
Or they could just pack up the company, go home and moan on the Internet about the situation..
i mean, they can't work with a few thousand people. you'd need a few thousand pods, because they only take two people. and they can't turn around by themselves, or navigate switches (look at the wheel profile), so you need new infrastructure for that. and they say that you order them via an app but since they can't just go wherever you need to wait for a free track, so depending on where you are on the line you could need to wait for your ordered "pod" to navigate almost the entire system, waiting at stations behind other pods for who knows how long.
what's more, this idea isn't new: single-rail "gyrotrains" were invented in 1910, but never took off because of the extra mechanical complexity involved compared to jush using a normal train. and before you say "modern tech fixes that", the main problem was that gyroscopic precession would fling the cars off of corners. that's a physics problem which these pods appear to have solved by going extremely slow.
so, we have here a system that's vastly more expensive, complex and unreliable than scheduled rail bus service, proposed to fix the same problem as scheduled rail bus service. just buy a rail bus.