Lets convert roads into 'Trainways'

[runs as required]

Welcome to a new thread inviting posts about the convergence* of railway signalling principles, automatic train control systems and (from a railway perspective trackless) self driving road motor technologies.

the new Sunderland built Nissan Gresley 8 seater

 

You remember converting Railways into Roads? So why not now convert Motorways into Trainways!

pic of the outside lane with ‘zero headway’ traffic moving at 90+ mph

I had the idea while (enjoying sitting as a passenger) listening to the radio about automated cars having accidents when interacting with human drivers who routinely disregard traffic regulations.

So either automated cars have a knob to select ‘degree of lawbreaking’ or can only be dependably safe on reserved routes.

 

Modelling the Future rather than the past

I’d like to also celebrate the role of working models in the evolution of pioneer transportation modes.

I’m thinking of Murdoch, then of  Isaac Jackson, the Wylam furnessman and amateur clockmaker who devised the working  table-top models for the blacksmiths to copy and scale up for. Puffing Billy.

Could RMweb mastermodellers upstage Faller by devising more sophisticated ‘trainway’ models ?

 

some sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_car

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/self-driving-cars/

The Lutz pod

MOVE-UK

UK Government's Autodrive project

 

*a convergence progression:

waggonways> plateways >edgerails and flanged wheels>common user railroad (S&D)>company carrier(L&B )>timetabling>guards/policemen>signalmen>absolute block>interlocking>continuous brake>ATC>traffic control > urban tramway/trolleybus system>road/railers>automated trains>moving block signalling>city road traffic control centres> automated road motors - Google etc

 

dh

 

[Tony_S]

I think there was some research in Sweden into vehicles forming convoys on Motorways. It may have been something to do with Volvo.

[Allegheny1600]

Reverse Beeching!?!

I like it.

[runs as required]

The relationship between transportation and urban form

I first got interested in transport development in relation to urban master plans way back in 1960 when in BR(E) CCE's office at Kings Cross we worked closely with Dutch railways on upgrading the Harwich-Hook of Holland ferry terminal facilities. The NS co-ordination of railway development with the Randstadt (Dutch Ring City) during our visits really caught my imagination and I've spent most of my working life with one foot ‘plodging’ in transportation, the other in Land Use and architecture ever since.

 

Metroland out of Baker Street, then the post Grouping Southern Railway and the 1933 formation of  L^{ONDON TRANSPOR}T (the LPTB) are the historic examples of transport led development, later there were Barbara Castle's 1968 PTEs encouraging the emergence of the various Metros/trams. .

 

The New Urbanists

The US has been the source of a very influential urban design movement that has gone back to what they see as the classic American city and pre Model T Ford small town. New Urbanism is particularly suited to Market led projects by real estate Developers.

 

The film  "The Truman Show" was shot in a pioneer New Urbanist project at Seaside, Florida

 

 

It is being argued that this kind of linear boulevard herring bone structure might well suit the emerging automated trackless road motor in its various forms.

There is nothing new in a linear string of settlements along a pathway.  Historically some of the earliest villages and towns were also based on the herring bone plan - for it offers the shortest road length to number of  long narrow 'burgage plots' serviced.

 

dh

[Ozexpatriate]

Welcome to a new thread inviting posts about the convergence* of railway signalling principles, automatic train control systems and (from a railway perspective trackless) self driving road motor technologies.

All quite possible with autonomous vehicles - minus the need for 'block control'-like signalling mechanisms.

 

I think there was some research in Sweden into vehicles forming convoys on Motorways. It may have been something to do with Volvo.

Something autonomous vehicles will handle quite readily. Projections are that with autonomous vehicles, there will be a 95% drop in road accidents - mechanical failures will still occur.

[runs as required]

older streets with railways this side of the pond

 

I am lucky enough to vivid memories of the old Liverpool Overhead: the 'dockers' umbrella because through the 1950s a 'pretend' uncle boiled Barker & Dobson’s Everton toffee nearby.

In my first year as a student in Liverpool the Overhead still existed - with the Dock Road cobbles below overcrowded with the streamlined Corpy green trams and Crossley bodied AEC buses crossing to the Pierhead, and the Lanky pugs and Sentinel steam waggons of the United Africa Company jostling one another. Occasionally you could even encounter a Class 8 Princess steaming slowly along behind a man with Red Flag to turn off through the dockwall to the Riverside Station at the Landing Stage with a Canadian Pacific express from Euston.

 

The southern terminus in tunnel at the Dingle had the most spectacular approach over the Cheshire Lines at Brunswick and Herculaneum docks.

By the time we bought our first house (arrowed) for £700 on Grafton St, the Overhead had long gone, but we could lie in bed and watch the Kelly boats loading coal for Ireland and see right across to Moel Famau in north Wales.

 

 

Paris has an elevated ring Metro (Ligne 2 and Ligne 6) opened between 1900-1909 running around the line of the old 1870 siege fortifications. It crosses the Seine on the artistically detailed iron double-deck Pont Bir-Hakeim (left). Note the elegant cast iron classical columns and capitals (right) - even though the viaduct is clearly a bad neighbour cutting right by the old Classical gate house rotunda by Ledoux. 

 

 

But most spectacular of all has to be the literally over-the-top Wuppertal overhead suspension railway 8 miles long opened in 1901. Note the extrovert new overall glazed station structure on the right.

 

The survivors are now important tourist attractions, though I think it is doubtful whether modern interpretations of such megastructures would be regarded as anything but 'concrete monstrosities' by their everyday users and local residents.

 

As students our wise old professor always used to stress how the most successful transportation 'ought to be fun'.  That is a real challenge !

 

Yet my first memories are of living through the blitz.in Plymouth. The effect on transport was fun to a four year old.- due to all the resulting frantic improvisation; the ferry and the little Suthern train that ran around to Turnchapel.

dh

[Ozexpatriate]

older streets with railways this side of the pond

New York City turned the "High Line" into a park.

 

I recall someone here posting a (Russian I think) super-duper suspended monorail concept.  I can't think where it was posted.

[M Graff]

Like the Scania, Mercedes and Siemens project?

[runs as required]

I recall someone here posting a (Russian I think) super-duper suspended monorail concept.  I can't think where it was posted.

Interesting; was it built?

 

I have visited some truly horrendous concrete linear high rise concrete cities built around a core motorway.

dh

[runs as required]

Peruga's MiniMetro, an automated urban people mover

 

Here is a contemporary European transit system engineered into an existing city.

Perugia 160,00 pop, is a historic Italian city dating from Etruscan pre Roman times clustered along a hill top in the central Apennines. Not only a popular tourist destination, it is the Umbrian Region capital, a university town and its industries include Perugina chocolate.

 

Like all such cities it has a traffic problem, one that most tackle with out-of-town Park and Ride sites. But Perugia has installed a more dramatic ‘people mover’ system. It  transfers commuters and visitors from car parks and the main FS railway station and sweeps them up into a tunnel to deposit them right under the historic core. Escalators up through old cellars deliver up into the old piazzas and streets. Udeniably (in my old Prof's terms) it is transportation 'fun'.

 

 

The MiniMetro opened in 2008; and more detail can be found here  It is beautifully conceived.

Check the quality of the stations - designed by the top French architect Jean Nouvel (the interchange station with the FS is at centre right).  The elegant welded steel viaduct curves through an approach to the old city above the carefully landscaped tree shaded parking areas. Note also the careful detailing of the cars, their cable guides and the turntables for the cars at each end (bottom right).

 

As a Brit, I can only be impressed at the costly elaborate installation that an Italian Region has managed to wheedle out of Central Government. It is inconceivable, particularly nowadays in Austerity Britain,  that any public realm outside London could be so endowed.

 

But also, as a Brit, I question its practicability. It is a closed system; requires intensive maintenance and when I visited, five years into its life, the stations were looking hard used. I've been an advocate of the Park and Ride strategy for cities such as York. My own view is that one could have introduced an 'at grade' reserved track  that could equally have tunnelled under the city, with similar stations (like the old Kingsway LT tram subway) but would have had more scope for future adaptation.

 

That's exactly how I think automated 'trainways' can be retrofitted and converted to provide a more responsive future transit system.

  dh

[Pacific231G]

Peruga's MiniMetro, an automated urban people mover

 

Here is a contemporary European transit system engineered into an existing city.

Perugia 160,00 pop, is a historic Italian city dating from Etruscan pre Roman times clustered along a hill top in the central Apennines. Not only a popular tourist destination, it is the Umbrian Region capital, a university town and its industries include Perugina chocolate.

 

Like all such cities it has a traffic problem, one that most tackle with out-of-town Park and Ride sites. But Perugia has installed a more dramatic ‘people mover’ system. It  transfers commuters and visitors from car parks and the main FS railway station and sweeps them up into a tunnel to deposit them right under the historic core. Escalators up through old cellars deliver up into the old piazzas and streets. Udeniably (in my old Prof's terms) it is transportation 'fun'.

 

perugia big.jpg

 

The MiniMetro opened in 2008; and more detail can be found here  It is beautifully conceived.

Check the quality of the stations - designed by the top French architect Jean Nouvel (the interchange station with the FS is at centre right).  The elegant welded steel viaduct curves through an approach to the old city above the carefully landscaped tree shaded parking areas. Note also the careful detailing of the cars, their cable guides and the turntables for the cars at each end (bottom right).

 

As a Brit, I can only be impressed at the costly elaborate installation that an Italian Region has managed to wheedle out of Central Government. It is inconceivable, particularly nowadays in Austerity Britain,  that any public realm outside London could be so endowed.

 

But also, as a Brit, I question its practicability. It is a closed system; requires intensive maintenance and when I visited, five years into its life, the stations were looking hard used. I've been an advocate of the Park and Ride strategy for cities such as York. My own view is that one could have introduced an 'at grade' reserved track  that could equally have tunnelled under the city, with similar stations (like the old Kingsway LT tram subway) but would have had more scope for future adaptation.

 

That's exactly how I think automated 'trainways' can be retrofitted and converted to provide a more responsive future transit system.

  dh

That looks a lot like the Poma 2000 system in Laon, in northern France. It roughly follows the route of an earlier tramway between the railway station and the hilltop town centre. It's cable hauled but, unlike a basic funicular, the cars swap from one cable to another at the half way point. It's automatic unlike the tramway  but I suspect the maintenance costs are high and it doesn't run in the evenings or on Sundays . the structure it runs on is rather heavy for the tiny cars and more obrtrusive than the part of the former tramway that ran up the hill on its own right of way.

CC Smiley.toerist

public domain

 

 

 

 

I thought it looked a little out of place in the historic (but like much of Picardie rather run down) town - more like something you'd expect to find in a modern ski resort. It was quite fun to ride but I'd love to have experienced the old tramway which had already been closed for several years when I first visited the town in the 1980s 

Sadly its building removed the feature of the tramway that ran through the middle of a building via an arched entrance between the tramway's office and a cycle shop.

 

Update I now see that the Perugia system was built by POMA so it is essentially the same.

[The Stationmaster]

Like the Scania, Mercedes and Siemens project?

 

 

I can just imagine the reaction if someone tried to install that on the A329 through the Goring Gap   

[runs as required]

I can just imagine the reaction if someone tried to install that on the A329 through the Goring Gap   

 

The most oft repeated predictions seem to be that the earliest automated driving applications will throw taxi drivers out of work (Uber) – to be followed by transport drivers.

1

Here in the north east, these appear to be the main occupations for men (apart from retailing and loading shelves) replacing the former traditional jobs and, since 2008, the disappearing public sector jobs.

Quite apart from the social consequences of further erosion  of employment opportunities, what might the impact of all this be upon urban and rural infrastructure?

2

Do automated vehicles mean a return to (railway age) Company owned vehicle quasi monopolies by the likes of Uber/Google and Amazon/Benz ?

mmm...there's something to ponder lying awake in  the small hours

dh