RIDEGURU
"It can’t just be flying cars and jetpacks"
Interesting read at the Verge.
...Maybe it has to do with the obstacles that stand in the way of making public transportation better. Typically, public transportation involves citywide systems that are complex and require a lot of money to be operated. They’re already deeply embedded — literally, in the case of New York’s subway system — in the infrastructure of cities, which makes optimization and electrification and disruption and all of the other buzzy “-tion” words that Silicon Valley and the tech industry love more difficult. Fixing public transportation requires cooperation, planning, and the acceptance of the community. Ideas are voted on. Careers are wagered. That sometimes makes it hard to separate the ideas from the politics.
Meanwhile, flashy “future of transportation” ideas enjoy the freedom of being removed from those burdens. They’re usually proposed with the caveat that mundane problems like “regulation” or “funding” will naturally be solved along the way if the idea is good enough. But most of these companies are incentivized to frame it this way. It’s solving the technology that’s the real problem, the technology companies tell us. Of course the regulators will work with our ingenious idea, the engineers say. And if not, we’ll just show up anyway and force their hand...
Comments
Disney is creating a gondola system to move park goers from Disney Hotels to Parks. I cannot wait to see how they do it. Awesome Mass Transit idea.
Here in Boston there is a proposal by a bunch of developers to build a gondola system from downtown to the seaport district, where there has been a ton of development lately. Probably will never happen but it's a cool idea. Subways are way more efficient at moving people around but are very complicated to build, obviously.
"They’re already deeply embedded — literally, in the case of New York’s subway system"
Found the new yorker.
Couldn't this be said of all subway systems? Jeesh. New yorkers think the world revolves around them.
LOL people from not new york are just jealous of an awesome city.
awesome? nah. big? yeah. But full of trash. Seriously, you can't walk down the sidewalk in manhattan without having to detour around piles of black trash bags. Every night. why can't you guys fix this.