Brad Ideas - Transportation - Comments

Thing abou LENR/coldFusion

Alain — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 14:26:10 -0800

@Sean
Just to say you that your dream to put nuclear energy
in a car is now possible with working Cold Fusion, as
implemented by Defkalion Green Tech, and Andrea Rosssi Ecat...

http://www.defkalion-energy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=926

... thanks for the comments on Stirling... instructives.
bytheway cold fusion is not pathologic science, it could even probably respect standard quantum mechanic (if Widom-Larsen theory is right)
keep tuned.

I'm torn. Obviously this

Matthew Newton — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 03:40:59 -0800

I'm torn. Obviously this would mean more working opportunities for those who need it, but then again the weekend is being eroded bit by bit and it irks me.

It seems that the companies don't believe they would generate enough business to compensate for running up their costs so much.

Lifi

Barry Sweezey — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 21:37:17 -0800

Information can be transmitted through the visible light emitted from the traffic signal with lifi. No need for a radio transmitter.

I completely agree with you

Niina — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 07:53:28 -0800

I completely agree with you Brad. I don't understand why weekend deliveries are not the norm. Retail, Restaurant, and overall entertainment industries work weekends. Why can't the postal service. Jobs are needed now more than ever. There are plenty of people who would kill for the job. Prices for weekend delivery should be the same as every other day as well. Transportation is no way limited on the weekend so there is no excuse for the price increase. This generation needs everything everyday, and as soon as possible, which in most cases, next day. Suppliers better meet demand, or they will fail.

Train but no stations

DensityDuck — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 16:26:02 -0800

"Because the train can only stop if a very few places at the speed it wants to go, a lot of towns would end up having construction and noise and street blockage and not get a lot of use from the train."

This is, incidentally, one of the reasons why the BART doesn't go to San Jose. Milpitas and Fremont didn't like the idea of a mass-transit system going through the middle of town but not having a whole bunch of stops along the way.

Buy more?

brad — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 16:12:50 -0800

Do people buy more food because of a 24 hour store? Perhaps not. But they do buy more from that store. And they may buy more of other things.

But today, online commerce is big but still small compared to brick and mortar. One of the things that sits in the way of online commerce is shipping time. Yes, faster shipping costs money, as does 7 day/week shipping. But customers want it. Is 5/days week the most efficient sweet spot for shipping? If 6 days/week costs more, does 4/days week also cost more, or would it cost less? There are many factors — economies of scale, customer demand, and cost of infrastructure (depots, trucks) spread out over the days of the week vs. cost of operations (people, fuel, etc.) which spread out in different ways.

My point is that with online and 2 day delivery, which is what I get with Amazon Prime, if I am ordering Thursday or Friday, I am much more likely to order online if I can get it Saturday or Sunday rather than Monday or Tuesday. Otherwise that 2 day penalty might send me to a brick and mortar store, or to another online store with a closer depot when it comes to ground shipping. So 7 day shipping will increase the amount of shipping business, possibly by a lot. It’s not like food at all. If everything were bought online, then you could debate what’s the optimum shipping frequency.

And by the way, I think that optimum frequency might be more than once/day. I think in the future, shipping times will be measured in minutes and hours for many products, and 2 day shipping will be 30 hour shipping or 47 hour shipping. I think it’s already time to move that direction. One thing that does sit in the way is the normalization of sales tax. Amazon does so much business in California that to avoid sales tax it has a huge warehouse near Reno that can easily get stuff to California in 1-2 days. The tax saving is big, but the real answer in the future will be a warehouse 30 minutes away and robot delivery options, and the brick and mortar industry will be radically downsized.

Yes, but there is more

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 05:59:41 -0800

Yes, there is some small chicken-and-egg problem. However, the main point is that no more money can be spent than is already being spent, and weekend deliveries mean extra costs, so in the long run the only way to do this is to increase the cost, either for all deliveries or charge a premium for weekend deliveries.

Think of a 24-hour supermarket. More convenient for shoppers? Yes. Do people buy more food as a result? No. So, this means that the prices go up since even if fewer people shop during the normal hours, there are fixed costs associated with opening a store, so opening at all hours generates more costs.

The problem here is that if one store starts, then it will get more revenue, so others have to follow suit, but the end result (as far as prices go) is worse than if none had tried. Sort of like the prisoner's dilemma.

Weekend Delivery

James — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 04:22:49 -0800

We might have a bit of a chicken-and-the-egg problem. Weekend delivery is expensive, so few people use it. But, if more people used it, it would cost less per package. The other thing to consider is that most packages are still going to take two days to deliver, even with deliveries being made 7 days a week. I think the general mindset is, "if I have to wait 2 days, it is a big deal to wait 3 or 4?" When you need it NOW, you are not going online to get it anyway. Think about a guy who rips his good shirt the morning of a job interview. He is not going to fire up his computer, he is going to the mall to buy a new one. I too have bought exciting "toys" online, and been frustrated that I can't have it right away. But, I went online because I saved money, and I selected the cheapest shipping option to maximize my savings.

That about sums it up

Phillip Helbig — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 03:09:05 -0800

"We online shoppers shop 7 days a week and we want out stuff as soon as we can get it. I understand the desire to take the weekend off, but usually there are people ready to take these extra shifts. This will cost the delivery companies more as they will have to hire more workers to operate on the weekend. And they can’t just do it for ground (otherwise a 3 day package sent Friday arrives the same time as an overnight package.)"

That about sums it up. If it were not a financial loss for the companies, I'm sure they would be doing it, so it probably is a loss. If you want the premium, why not pay for it? I don't think "online shoppers demanding" is really the way to go about this. Consider that the bloke driving the lorry probably doesn't earn enough to shop 7 days a week.

Is it really that important?

Phillip Helbig — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 01:01:42 -0800

Not that long ago, 12 hours a day, 6 days a week were the normal working hours. The fact that most people work less today (at least in the civilized world; I'm not talking about the States where 3 minimum-wage jobs are needed to pay the mortgage on the oversized house and finance the SUV) is an example of progress. Yes, you might appreciate people working on weekends, but I don't think that most people working on weekends appreciate it.

Lets do the maths. Basically, people spend all they can (and more); there is not a problem of people not being able to spend their money. This means that working weekends will cost more, even if there is somewhat less work during the week. This means the prices will go up.

Is there anything really so important that you can't wait an extra 2 days so that someone can spend some time with his children?

Using HSR with robocars

brad — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 16:09:31 -0800

The trick is not to think like we do today. I have a post earlier about a robocar airport, and the same principles could apply to rail. Which is to say that your car goes right up on the train platform and drops you there, and there are rows of cars waiting when the train arrives, and luggage robots take your bag later if you prefer not to wait for it. (Though on trains today the norm is you keep even large bags with you as they don’t have time to fuss at stations.)

If you want to go really fast, that’s when public transport makes sense. Drag is high enough at high speeds (square of velocity after all) that it now makes a lot of sense to share. And I want high speed to go from SF to LA, be it in the air or on the ground. Getting the land for the rails is difficult, and planes can go even faster, so I am not sure trains make a lot of sense, even at 250mph, but this is the one place private cars don’t make as much sense. Though it is true, as you say, that a 120mph car might not be too bad, especially if drafting other robocars, and while it will be slower than the plane, 3.5 hours in a private space might be better than even 1.5 hours on a public plane and quick transfer robotaxi trips. Today the plane trip is about 2.5 hours, but that depends on your start and stop points. Unlike longer flights, you can pretty safely arrive at the airport only 30 minutes ahead of takeoff for the short haul SJC to LAX run with carry-ons and if you miss it, there is another flight pretty soon (at a cost.)

Security of HSR

Eric Saund — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 15:28:56 -0800

I can concede this point.
The biggest security threat to HSR or any other rail is not what passengers do, but along the tracks.

The question to come back to is, how much time is lost dealing with the overhead of a central station and batch scheduling? Even without five to fifteen minutes getting through security, significant time is spent checking and waiting for baggage, queuing, getting seated, and especially the slack time most of us build in to make sure we don't miss the departure time. These are significant time-wasters that put HSR at a disadvantage with respect to a highway-capable personal transit vehicle, especially a faster/safer one than we have now (robocar).

How much security

brad — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 21:46:06 -0800

It’s an interesting question if HSR would get the security of planes. It does get more security than regular trains today.

While a bomb on an HSR is bad news, there will probably be many survivors. But there are presumably more on an HSR than on most planes
HSR is government funded. If the argument is put forward that airport-level security on HSR will ruin the whole point of the huge HSR investment, after it is spent, they might change their minds and deliberately have lower security even in spite of the danger.
As weight is less of an issue, it’s easier to have bomb-proof luggage cars on HSR, and you can even put them at the back where the passengers would not be killed.
I’m not sure you really even need to make people check their weapons on the HSR. What can you do with a gun that you can’t do in a crowded security line?
You can’t crash an HSR into the World Trade Center.

Just use robocars - I second this

Eric Saund — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 22:05:14 -0800

I second this. If built in California, high speed rail will be obsolete for most of its lifetime. It's beat by airplanes for scheduled station-to-station travel requiring pick-up, taxi, public transport, or rental car on the other end (HSR will require the same security and boarding hassle as airplanes). And it's beat by robocars for mid-range point-to-point asychronous travel. Caravaning at 100+mph gets you from S.F. to your final L.A. destination in four hours which is in practice what air takes now. It would be *much* cheaper and more versatile to build more roads than the roadbed, overcrossings, and single-purpose precision track needed by HSR.

A great attraction of a car is that it's *your* car. You're familiar with it. It's got your junk. You clean the coffee stains or not if you want to. Robocars augment this by adding safety, efficiency, parkability, and all the other features Brad has discussed. For an infrastructure set up for the car culture, HSR and many other forms of public transit are toast---but that's a good thing for most of us.

Yawn..

Han Solo — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 15:22:05 -0800

What a weak whine. But you didn't actually disagree with what I said, because you know it is true. That is also why Brad is afraid to respond - the truth hurts.

I feel sorry for you, you and Brad being slovenly dregs of society.