New transportation technologies

Transportation topics in KC
pash
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Re: New transportation technologies

Post by pash »

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Last edited by pash on Sat Feb 11, 2017 4:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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FangKC
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Re: New transportation technologies

Post by FangKC »

Cliche or not, Chevy's 200-mile Bolt EV is a game-changer for the masses
...

First off, it will be capable of traveling more than 200 miles (Chevy's still scant on exact numbers) on a single charge and it will cost around $30,000 after a $7,500 tax deduction. Those are the two biggest figures you need to know and ones that make it a very impressive car not only for General Motors but also the American car market.

...

And those batteries that span underneath your feet can be fully charged on a 240-volt charger in nine hours while 90-miles worth of charge can be had in around 30 minutes on a DC fast-charger. Chevy was quick to point out, though, that the nine-hour charge is something virtually no customer will ever face, as the average American drives fewer than 40 miles per day.

...
http://mashable.com/2016/01/06/2017-che ... .IvmNAn5q3

http://www.chevrolet.com/culture/articl ... t-car.html

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aknowledgeableperson
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Re: New transportation technologies

Post by aknowledgeableperson »

Someone in China is developing a drone capable of transporting a single person. Cost is expected to be about $200,000. It may not be a Jetson's type of vehicle but I guess the same principal.
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DaveKCMO
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Re: New transportation technologies

Post by DaveKCMO »

aknowledgeableperson wrote:Someone in China is developing a drone capable of transporting a single person. Cost is expected to be about $200,000. It may not be a Jetson's type of vehicle but I guess the same principal.
loosened gun control and flying pods. what could possibly go wrong?
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Re: New transportation technologies

Post by shinatoo »

KC named as one of the seven smart cities finalist.

These 7 American Cities Will Compete for $40 Million to Create Transportation Utopias

http://flip.it/WTmfa
missingkc
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Re: New transportation technologies

Post by missingkc »

Does anyone know the projects KC is considering should it win?
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Re: New transportation technologies

Post by missingkc »

Just found this:
If awarded the funds, Bennett said he’d like to digitize a new MAX rapid bus line on Prospect Avenue and develop new regulations and infrastructure for autonomous vehicles. He added that it also would be used for an expansion of the city’s bike-sharing program and green spaces, as well as improve access to city transportation services.
What does it mean to "digitize" a bus line? Is it to provide it with the sort of rider-centric technology in place for the street car?
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WinchesterMysteryHouse
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Re: New transportation technologies

Post by WinchesterMysteryHouse »

Did I read that the Smart City Kiosks cost 600,000 apiece?
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Re: New transportation technologies

Post by flyingember »

WinchesterMysteryHouse wrote:Did I read that the Smart City Kiosks cost 600,000 apiece?
Electrical work, sensors, police integration, portal creation and testing, fabrication, installation, backend server system, meetings, etc

$600k sounds cheap for that
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Re: New transportation technologies

Post by pash »

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Last edited by pash on Tue Feb 14, 2017 3:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.
shinatoo
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Re: New transportation technologies

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$600,000 Cisco list price, but we'll knock 75% off for a great client like you. ;-)
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WinchesterMysteryHouse
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Re: New transportation technologies

Post by WinchesterMysteryHouse »

flyingember wrote:
WinchesterMysteryHouse wrote:Did I read that the Smart City Kiosks cost 600,000 apiece?
Electrical work, sensors, police integration, portal creation and testing, fabrication, installation, backend server system, meetings, etc

$600k sounds cheap for that
What is this thing going to do that a smartphone cannot?
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Re: New transportation technologies

Post by flyingember »

WinchesterMysteryHouse wrote:
flyingember wrote:
WinchesterMysteryHouse wrote:Did I read that the Smart City Kiosks cost 600,000 apiece?
Electrical work, sensors, police integration, portal creation and testing, fabrication, installation, backend server system, meetings, etc

$600k sounds cheap for that
What is this thing going to do that a smartphone cannot?
why run busses and trains when a car can get people around?

Not everyone has a smartphone and the city needs to do things that everyone can use.
aknowledgeableperson
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Re: New transportation technologies

Post by aknowledgeableperson »

May not be so technological but another look at public transit and causes of it's demise.
http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/ ... li=BBnbfcN
"Cities such as New York and San Francisco have extensive public transportation systems that carry millions of residents by bus, train, boat, and light rail. But in recent years, there’s been an expanding fleet of private vehicles too: Lyft, Uber, Juno, Uber Pool, and the Google Bus, to name a few. These offerings give commuters more choices, but may also undermine the public services available. They raise fundamental questions about the future of how people will get around cities.
I used to think these services were just for the rich—a friend of mine who lived in New York insisted on taking an Uber Pool to work every day because he said it was a much better experience than public transit. But as the options increase, they carry an expanding array of people. This morning, for instance, I walked one block from my house to take a private van service called Chariot to my office in San Francisco. Before Chariot, this commute took at least 40 minutes and consisted of riding a bus to the subway to another bus. Chariot—a shared van service run by a private company—brought me directly from my house to my office in just over 20 minutes. And it cost roughly the same price as the lengthier public transit option.
The ease of Chariot has made me wonder if my friend were right: Why should anyone use public services if the private sector can provide the same service more efficiently? On an individual level, after all, the private bus was much more pleasant and not much more expensive. On the government level, privatization could save money. Privatizing public bus services could save $5.7 billion a year, according to a paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research in March."
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DaveKCMO
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Re: New transportation technologies

Post by DaveKCMO »

i believe there's always a place for the private sector in transportation. as for privatization, that almost always comes are the cost of reduced wages. as more companies enter the space, demand for the curb will cause cities to actively manage or even charge for drop-offs.
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Re: New transportation technologies

Post by phuqueue »

Services like uber only "raise fundamental questions about the future of how people will get around cities" if you spend literally zero time thinking through those questions. In sprawlier cities with smaller, less effective transit systems, companies like uber and this Chariot that he talks about might be able to capture significant transit ridership if they can compete on cost and convenience, but in denser, transit-reliant cities, this will never be the case because population density requires transportation density, which is something that cars and vans by their very nature cannot provide. More than five and a half million people ride the NYC subway every day (this figure doesn't include bus riders and those commuting into or within the city via Metro North, LIRR, NJ Transit, PATH, or Amtrak, which collectively add millions more, although some of these will transfer to the subway and are already counted there). If you push all of these people into uber- and Chariot-style car and van services, you aren't going to "provide the same service more efficiently," you're just going to gridlock the entire city.

And New York might be the most extreme example, but the same will hold true on varying scales in every city that currently has heavy transit ridership. If you think traffic is bad in Chicago now, wait until 770,000 more people abandon the L for the roads. This guy seems to love his Chariot commute but maybe not so much when 660,000 Muni riders join him. These services are easy and convenient right now specifically because not many people use them compared to broader transit ridership numbers. He's extrapolating "it works for me" to "it would work for anyone," and then even further from "it would work for anyone" to "it would work for everyone." It doesn't work that way. Cars and vans physically take up space that is in short supply in densely-built environments. And the ratio of space they take up to number of people they can simultaneously serve is dismal compared to a bus or train.

I also find it hard to believe that he can actually get nearly door to door service for "roughly the same price" as transit unless his transit commute involves paid transfers, which is a surmountable political problem, not an intrinsic shortcoming of publicly-owned transit services. Alternatively, he could just be a Silicon Valley yuppie who thinks that a $5 private ride -- this is what Chariot charges during peak commuting hours -- is "roughly the same" as a $2.25 Muni ride, which is something that many poor people would probably disagree with him on. Or he has the luxury of setting his own hours, commuting at Chariot's off-peak $3.80 fare, which is a luxury many people don't have and still 70% more than a Muni ride. He gives far too little information to just take him at his word.

He does at least offer that his commute is now half as long, but at what cost? New York has privately-owned "dollar vans" (actually $3 minibuses) that serve gaps in the transit network and in some cases, duplicate service on busy corridors. They can be very quick and useful, in some cases -- for instance, traveling from Manhattan Chinatown to Flushing Chinatown, which takes about thirty minutes by dollar van and about 70 by subway. But the dollar van does this by taking a direct, non-stop route, and the subway makes a ton of stops (seventeen by one possible route), serving hundreds of thousands of people along the way. Chariot's map seems to include a lot of these "express" routes -- which is great for you if you happen to live and work next to one of the stops, but does nothing for all the people in between. Add stops for those people and you add time to the ride. Maybe his public transit route takes so much longer because it stops more frequently and serves more people? Maybe if you privatized the transit system and his Chariot ride had to start making all those stops, it would no longer be faster than his old public transit commute, but now costs twice as much? Silicon Valley likes to act like they're re-inventing the wheel, but they're only free riding on everything that's already in place. Uber can exist because there are already roads and there are already car owners and there is already income inequality to take advantage of. Chariot can exist because it only needs to run routes where it can make a profit, leaving transit-as-a-municipal-service and its operating losses to the city.
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Re: New transportation technologies

Post by phuqueue »

More on uber and whether it's more efficient than other transport modes (spoiler alert: no)

https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2016/12/01/ ... w-clothes/
As shown in Exhibit 2, for the year ending September 2015, Uber had GAAP losses of $2 billion on revenue of $1.4 billion, a negative 143% profit margin. Thus Uber’s current operations depend on $2 billion in subsidies, funded out of the $13 billion in cash its investors have provided.

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Uber passengers were paying only 41% of the actual cost of their trips. Uber was using these massive subsidies to undercut the fares and provide more capacity than the competitors who had to cover 100% of their costs out of passenger fares.
earthling
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Re: New transportation technologies

Post by earthling »

A $225 GPS spoofer can send autonomous vehicles into oncoming traffic
https://arstechnica.com/information-tec ... g-traffic/
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Re: New transportation technologies

Post by brewcrew1000 »

earthling wrote:A $225 GPS spoofer can send autonomous vehicles into oncoming traffic
https://arstechnica.com/information-tec ... g-traffic/
So its like a 21 Century version of cutting the brake lines
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Re: New transportation technologies

Post by bspecht »

earthling wrote:A $225 GPS spoofer can send autonomous vehicles into oncoming traffic
https://arstechnica.com/information-tec ... g-traffic/
Satnav is basic level "guidance" system for an autonomous vehicle, behind things like LIDAR – a public vehicle would never be allowed to run autonomously on satnav alone.
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