You must log in or register to comment.
“we heavily biased the network against trains and now it’s just saying the optimal car consists of several metal struts connecting just two thinned out wheels that the driver sits on top of and propels themselves using pedals. It was busy redesigning intersections to have clear safe lanes for these bi-cycle ‘cars’ with plenty of trees / room for pedestrians when we pulled the plug…”
Even in bike racing the optimal form ends being to become a train. A peloton is just a train made up of bikes.
And then imagine if instead of wheels a bicycle was on a track with even greater reduced rolling resistance than skinny overinflated tires and didn’t require lumbar strength for balance.
Damn now I want pedal powered train
Even the slime mould knows it: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/slime-mould-attacks-simulates-tokyo-rail-network
Do you hear that, Mr. Anderson? That is the sound of inevitability.
This is just the AI bias showing through: It’s all that training.
Nice pun, I think you railed it
They were certainly on the right track
People who are biased against trains have a real loco motive.
They’re all intent on just derailing the conversation!
Ha! I was thinking along these lines reading science fiction the other day. In every novel where stuff has to get moved overland, it’s always a train. No matter their tech level, trains are the simplest, most efficient solution.
Well if every vehicle becomes autonomous then isn’t that just a large scaled high speed train?
A less efficient train, because it has a bunch of small engines and batteries instead of one big one
But you don’t have to smell unshowered people. I’m willing to sacrifice earth climate for my nose good.
Yes. That is the point. Trains are optimal.
Inter-vehicle cooperation and autonomy makes highways act like trains, yes, with a bunch of unnecessary steps
So what you’re saying is the optimal form is some kind of crab train?
Choo choo Charlie intensifies
As a tf2 player. A crab train is majestic.
Hey there 👋, I know you mean well by that comment, like I get it, I do. ☺️ But I just wanted to let you know:
THERE HAVE BEEN ZERO STUDIES DONE ON THE SAFETY OF CRAB TRAINS.
ZERO.
But despite that, they are gaining widespread support, and now even people like yourself are calling them “optimal.”
Listen: Someone I know lost an arm in the pincer mechanism of one of these trains. More work needs to be done before we can consider them safe, nevermind “optimal”. Don’t buy into the techbro BS.
Friends don’t let friends crab train.
Hey, when the train needs blood the train gets blood
Trains only move forward and back. Crabs only move side to side. It only makes sense.
Minimum rolling friction by having hard wheels on a hard surface. Minimum wind resistance by making it long and narrow. Minimum stop time by having big doors.
BAM: train.
If trains were optimal, they’d have pincers.
They do though?
Look how sweet, they’re holding
handspincers
Sharing because I was delighted to learn this: trees are also an example of convergent evolution. I’m personally rooting for us to become trees. Pun intended.
There’s likely some cases of convergent evolution, but I’m not sure this is settled for all trees.
I’d suspect that at least some trees with last common ancestors that are shrubs have re-enabled genes that enable the tree phenotype rather than independently evolving the tree phenotype.
But still really cool (and maybe turns on exactly how much evolution your consider needs to happen before it’s convergent evolution.)
Okay so now we are looking at some kind of tree-crab-train as the crown of creation, am I understanding this correctly?
Sounds like a creature from All Tomorrows
That seems unfairly obvious, but I certainly didn’t consider it before.
Okay, now solve for local transportation and create a single network that’s highly optimized for both long distance, medium distance, and last mile solutions. Bet you it looks like cargo trucks, buses, and road infrastructure.
Highly optimized for traffic jams.
Wouldn’t it be neat if companies weren’t flocking to a few neighborhoods in a few cities, creating not only traffic jams but driving up housing prices as well? Isn’t it silly how local governments are competing on who can throw the most money at private enterprise to get the new widget factory or tech campus built there?
I just hate the whole concept of housing as an investment vehicle. You get all these old ass shit houses worth a million dollars for no damn reason.
It looks like trains, bikes, and walking
And trams. Which admittedly look a lot like trains but run to a high frequency rather than a timetable.
Looks like fast frequent all neighbourhoods city tram system with tap on, tap off, coherent pricing, decent buses and free park and ride at tram stops.
Okay, now solve for local transportation and create a single network that’s highly optimized for both long distance, medium distance, and last mile solutions.
Why does it need to be a single network? A shipping container can go on ship, train, and truck pretty seamlessly, and that combined multi-modal network can connect sources and destinations that no one method is sufficient for.
And once you design an optimized network under your parameters, it starts to look like a hub and spoke model, with high volume arterial routes connecting the hubs, pretty close to how parcel delivery tends to work. And once you have that, you can optimize specific segments, including using hubs connected by air for time sensitive stuff (same day, next day, 2-day service), waterways or rail for really heavy or bulky stuff, and all sorts of intermediate methods or a variety of last mile delivery needs for the specific needs of any given package.
With how bad semis rut the road I’ve been wanting to see them with retractable train wheels on the back
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermodal_container this is kinda the same idea… same container can be transferred from ship to rail to truck
More like Carcinistation!
Cars in a station?
IDK why but I actually thought the title was this pun when I first read it. It was only after reading your comment that I realized that OP didn’t actually cash in on the joke (skill issue, smh).
You appear to have downvoted yourself.
Crab-spotting is completely undervalued as a cultural activity.
Train cars are crabs. They’ve got an exoskeleton, they’re squat bodied, many legged, and have pincers on either side. All they have to do is start moving that body plan around some and they will be crabs.
Checks out: while they CAN move forward, they highly prefer to move side to side
