Techbros invented trains...again. Except much more complex, much more dangerous, and with much less capacity.
Techbros invented trains...again. Except much more complex, much more dangerous, and with much less capacity.
Techbros invented trains...again. Except much more complex, much more dangerous, and with much less capacity.
Great, lets waste a few million euros on yet another "Dahir Insaat" style pod based Gadgetbahn. I can't wait to stand in traffic in my pod because a lot of people want to exit at the same station.
The tram train idea is the best one.
https://youtu.be/r5M7Oq1PCz4 This one of his is funnier and makes better points.
Hey Groesbeek! Stelletje benzineverslaafde boomers! Zo, nu ik jullie aandacht heb, een oplossing, gezien jullie er geen zin in hebben dat er een grote zware spoorlijn dwars door je dorp gaat. Dus hier het alternatief:
Een tram.
Jullie hoeven een minder opzichtige halte te bouwen EN lichtere infra die veel beter bij de "Franse flair" van jullie straatbeeld past, terwijl de buren bij Nijmegen en Kleve hun spoorverbinding weer hebben. Iedereen blij.
Definitely the best solution.
Fuvk it; still better than cars. The physics alone are an improvement.
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.
Living not too far away from the place where the Moncocab is being developed and tested, I've actually had the chance to see them in person and actually sit in one (They are much more spacious than Adam makes them seem)
This system is not intended for mass transport. It is intended for rural places, connections between villages and small towns. A connection between bigger cities with these obviously makes no sense - for villages however these could be absolutely great.
Also, maybe this is worth mentioning. Monocab ain't a profit oriented company (yet). It is a project by the Technical University Ostwestfalen-Lippe in cooperation with some other universities.
I can see why people are sceptical - but really this is a proof of concept. maybe it'll turn out a flop - maybe it'll work great. I am willing to see where they take it.
I'd think a short, reversible, single-car tram (like Coventry's VLR) would work a hell of a lot better for connections between villages/small towns than Uber for rails with needlessly complicated gyroscopic bs.
Well, keep in mind we're talking about long single tracks spanning many villages and towns - in places where there is not a ton of demand. The train would: 1. Rarely be there in the moment somebody actually needs it 2. Almost always be empty.
Notice I said the monocab ain't meant as "mass" transport. You wont see 30 monocab back on back all the time - you'll see one, maybe, every half an hour or so - but they'll be there when somebody needs them - not uselessly when nobody cares.
These are much more, as somebody else already pointed out in the videos comments, I believe, indented to replace call busses - instead of having to call a bus and wait half an hour or more, you can just hop into a mobocab which is on standby and get moving.
They need public transport but they are too proud to admit it
They want to monetize public transport without paying for building any new infrastructure.
But you see, this is a small capacity, on demand monorail "pod" that serve the purpose of antisocial that is unwilling to share a public transport like the rest of the peasant do.
Can they just invent fucking human bubbles and we can adapt the logical already existent forms of public transport instead
That’s exactly why tech bro solutions always have pods. Tells you a lot about their world views. Everyone outside their close social bubble is disgusting to them and needs to be separated from them.
But they’re not wrong. Look how many people use Uber instead of calling a cab. Look how many use Doordash instead of calling to order from a restaurant. Look how many use self checkout instead of going through an ordinary cashier lane.
People don’t want to interact with each other anymore. They don’t want to make phone calls with strangers. They don’t want to deal with strangers in person. They just want to push a button and get whatever it is that they want.
I think this is some kind of mass stress response to the alienation we all feel from living in modern cities. Of being sequestered into suburbs and having our lives regimented into school/work schedules. We’ve lost the sense of community we had from when we used to live in villages and walk around to get places and we knew everyone around us.
I'm pretty sure this is just a way of utilizing abandoned rail lines that aren't fit for full size trains.
We have a lot of abandoned rail here in Canada. I've often thought about making a very simple low-speed "rail chair with wheels" that I can put in my backpack and mess around with for fun. Hooking up to old rails is cool, but not as cool as having trains. Bring back trains!
Definitely be careful though! There's plenty of rail that's overgrown, horribly maintained, looks like it hasn't been touched in 20 years but gets a train every few weeks or something. You'll want to be very sure that it's impossible for a train to be on the same track.
(There's a town in my state that has some rail that is physically cut off from the railroad it used to be part of, so something like that would be the safest)
I can see this working in places where there's a single abandoned line and no budget to recover it. I've seen plenty of these in SE Asia. A small government investment (skip all the app bullshit etc) could make these work to inter connect small villages that otherwise would waste hours on shitty poorly maintained roads. If it can be made low-tech, I can see this being useful.
and unsurprisingly it's a german project, a country which is absolutely fucking covered in rural lines that are just rusting away
like, holy shit, can we stop branding everything that isn't a bog-standard train as "tech bro gadgetbahn"? this thing very explicitly has a specific problem it's trying to solve.
Germans had a working solution to this for decades, but apparently gave up on it for some reason (not competitive with road traffic is probably the correct one)
It was called a railbus and they were once quite prevalent on European branch lines. Finland had and Sweden loads as well, in rural areas, until someone decided that a normal bus is better for some reason.
Trains are expensive, high-capacity vehicles.
If these small cheap vehicles can repurpose tracks in low demand areas, what's so bad about it?
See the whole video. Adam is using a clickbait title but the problem is actually a local Dutch government not the bros themselves, and the solution is a tram train.
Aside from it being built by tech bros, i actually like this. It could serve a purpose similar to public transport like car sharing (not carpooling) and rental bikes. This would be far from as efficient as regular trains or street cars, but those modes of transports need volume. As soon the population that uses the rail decreases to a point it becomes to expensive to run a train every one or two hours, often the expensive physical infrastructure remains while the service disappears. In those cases i could totally see this being a better option than heavily subsidising or totally removing trains on that section of rail. But to be honest, I can't imagine there are enough of those places on earth carry the costs to develop this tech, also because these cars are only the best fit if the abandoned line is a single track line.
Glory be
I can't wait for the horse to be invented again! Then running, then walking, then crawling, then swimming, then floating, then not moving at all and then death!
If these dudes want to make a bunch of money just make the high speed trains and rail system we need in America. Everyone will buy tickets. You will be a literal train baron. I don't get these half assed ideas. Just do the damn thing.
The are raising venture capital for whizzbang ideas rather than products that exist and require real planning, logistics, and engineering to bring to market in a cost effective way that will only generate enough profits to entice stable long-term investors with actual expectations. Like Tesla AI cabs rather than city bus/metro systems that do actual heavy-lifting to reduce traffic