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PRISM Engineering NEWS

Traffic Engineering is evolving around the world




Video location:  ChongQING CHINA, 2018 BY GRANT JOHNSON, TE

Chinese are Thinking Outside the Box, Literally

5/30/2016

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The STRADDLING BUS extends just outside the box space of two lanes, and does not impact those two lanes, keep as is, but this special bus travels overhead.  WATCH

In watching this video of something pretty cool, that looks like it is going to be seeing the light of day in China (where they NEED solutions), I thought "wow, now that is really thinking outside the box."

I discovered that a Chinese engineer Song Youzhou is the designer of the bus. He says that prototypes are being constructed. In an interview this week, he said that five Chinese cities — Nanyang, Qinhuangdao, Shenyang, Tianjin and Zhoukou — have signed contracts with his TEB Technology Development Company for pilot projects that will involve the construction of hundreds of miles of tracks starting this year.

As I looked it over a bit more,  I started having second thoughts, PRO and CON.

Lets start with the CONS

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CONS

PROS

  • Could be difficult for drivers underneath to get used to their surroundings moving, or the illusions of stopping or moving.
  • Might have significant impact with automobile accidents (same with light rail)
  • Accidents could take place in its "tunnel" below and cause damage/delay
  • Escape slides do not seem safe as they would empty into moving traffic lanes
  • Pedestrian stations are too few, not designed for short distance trips. 
  • Less flexible in route, fixed rail paths.
  • Like a huge truck, turns will result in this wide bus far extending outside the two-lane path width (depending on length of car).
  • Animation shows wide bus making corner on intersection left turn overpass, but this overpass will need to be very wide to do it.
  • Cars underneath in a turn will see a chorded pathway defined by the train, not a round turn as shown in fake animation. Path edges perceived by drivers underneath will shift in unexpected ways, not following a curve.
  • Before the "bus" turns at a corner, all traffic below must be stopped and cleared to prevent a turning movement conflict.
  • There will be a "merge" traffic operations problem at the tiny entry / opening to the two lanes within the guardrail path.
  • If a car is on the rail at opening of guardrail path, then the airbus is stuck, bus could impale car to guardrail if hit, >>blockage.
  • Could run out of power if a long traffic jam occurs (since recharge battery powering only takes place at transfer stations).

Summary

  • 1 of these could eliminate 40 Buses from the road, and increasing capacity for other cars
  • Cost only 1/5th the cost of building a subway (still seems very high cost for just building an elevated car on existing ROW).
  • Can be mobilized in 1 year vs 3 years for subway construction (only in China!).
  • Spectacular views overhead (unless solar is used at top instead),
  • Nice smooth ride, no stop and go nonsense (unless cars conflict with at-grade tracks).
  • more environmentally friendly, no fumes, is electrically powered.
I think the idea has legs (pun intended).  However, if we are going to avoid all of the at-grade traffic problems that will inevitably occur with this new device, it would be necessary to build a more separated facility.  In my opinion, this thing FAILS on the corners, on the turns.  It seems like a perfect idea for any straight corridor.  So maybe the train could just operate on straight paths ONLY, and transfers could take place at perpendicular locations.  This would avoid the conflicts of curves mixed with at-grade traffic, which I think is a critical fail.  Its kind of like LRT, but elevated, but unlike LRT it has a much much bigger footprint that has to be accommodated.  This means loss of capacity for at-grade traffic, to stop nearly all traffic at intersections while this thing navigates a turn.
More newspaper articles on this development, click READ MORE

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FORD has NIGHT DRIVING CAR in Arizona

5/6/2016

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The USA is once again Leading the World on the forefront of auto-technology!

from USA TODAY: "SAN FRANCISCO - Call it a car with night vision goggles.
​
Ford engineers working on the company's autonomous car technology recently succeeded in making a self-driving Ford Fusion lap its Arizona Proving Grounds in complete darkness, using laser radar, or Lidar, as its guide.

OK, so obviously they are making a point, and a great one at that. 

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It is possible, NOW, to have a car get around without any lights and so the cameras on board are not really cameras at all. They are LIDAR devices, a kind of radar that many engineering firms use to survey terrain, buildings, and all conditions of the environment.

It's not just Google doing this stuff.

  • The car drove with no headlights, and no driver.
  • It collected environment object and terrain data by beams of laser light shot out into the desert.
  • On-board computers instantly concluded where the car was in relation to the landscape data provided by those laser scans.
FORD DRIVERS wore military-grade night vision goggles in order to monitor the car's behavior.  See how this went down with the Youtube video below:
 Ford is testing dozens of these vehicles all over.  So are other car companies.  This phenomenon is happening all over the world. The auto makers know it is coming, and being pushed by Google they are moving quick to implement.
Google is also expanding its self-driving car test program, but Google lacks the car manufacturing capability, for now.  

FORD / GOOGLE ALLIANCE  last week

a week ago... Ford and Google Teamed Up (alliance) to Support Driverless Cars!

In an April 27 New York Times story it was reported that:
​DETROIT — In an unusual alliance between a traditional automaker and a technology company, Ford Motor and Google on Wednesday joined to lead a coalition of companies that advocate federal approval of driverless cars in the near future.
By teaming up to promote regulations that favor fully-autonomous vehicles, Ford and Google may be moving toward closer cooperation on the actual development of driverless models.
Ford’s chief executive, Mark Fields, has said in recent months that his company is evaluating potential partnerships with other firms on autonomous vehicles, but has not made any formal moves in that direction.
Still, by forming a public policy coalition that includes Google, Ford is aligning with Silicon Valley’s most prominent supporter of cars that can operate without a driver.
Source:  
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/28/business/ford-and-google-team-up-tosupport-driverless-cars.html?_r=0
The nation’s top auto safety regulator, Mark Rosekind, said the federal government wants to reduce the death toll in auto accidents, and thinks driverless technology could help reduce the annual death toll from traffic accidents: 32,675 people died in auto accidents in 2014!  He said 90 percent of vehicle accidents are human error.

It seems like a no-brainer that computers can do a better job at reducing these mistakes, many of which are from distracted driving, something a computer has no problem with.

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SELF DRIVING CARS: A New MODE of Travel

5/4/2016

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Self driving cars will change everything, for the better. They will increase capacity of the roadways by three times minimum, and that means more room for bike lanes, ped lanes, and medians and rail.  It means a lot of good things.  Its not just Google pioneering on this, far from it.  Giant Tech companies are way ahead in my opinion, because they actually BUILD cars, and Google is making things from scratch, hence the little bug like cars.   Recently, Google announced that it would be testing its prototype of a driverless car on roads in the summer of 2016 inside of California.  Many still think that Self-driving cars are a futuristic idea, decades out.  This simply is not true. Numerous car companies are ALL working on it, all independently.  Ford, Mercedes, BMW, and Tesla, etc. all have self-driving features in the works.

I believe we should be embracing this technology because it is going to vastly improve the quality of life and help lower vehicle miles traveled, lower or eliminate congestion, eliminate accidents, reduce the death rate of 30,000 dead each year by significant margins.  They will also enable the idea of shared vehicles with businesses like UBER leading the way in changing the culture of vehicle ownership vs. shared vehicles.

But Bullet Trains are still the rage in some countries, like China where I lived for 2.5 years. I rode these fantastic trains. They are awesome and useful and BEAT the car ride HANDS DOWN because you go much faster and also don't have to have the stress of driving.

But let's bring that to the USA and see how it fits here.  First of all, 100% of the people here have a car, or two, or more. In China, only 10% have cars and in very poor cities, even less.  This is such a huge and significant cultural difference in how we move about.  So the transportation market to choose to ride a train is much much higher in China than in the USA because of this little talked about demographic:  Car ownership.   If those people without a car in China want to travel to a nearby city they have to take a train, or for more money, a bus.  If they can afford a Bullet Train ticket, they will take a Bullet Train and get there 4 or 5 times faster, but for a corresponding increase in price.  Most ride the cheap trains out of necessity.

Once a bullet train gets installed in California, China will be another decade ahead of us in terms of infrastructure installed and possibly technological advances in HSR. They already have, right now, these trains connecting at high speeds between ALL major cities in that country, and we have nothing like that. In fact, we have nothing even similar because the antiquated AMTRAK train is just that.  The Bullet Train in California when finally fully constructed in 20 years will be a start but it will serve a very small demographic of people who live here, and it may be less than state of the art in the world. 

How Googles Self Driving Car WORKS--

TWO YEARS AGO: One of Google's safety drivers takes a ride in their second generation vehicle, the Lexus, to understand how Google's self-driving technology works on the road.

Now they feel they are READY FOR THE ROAD!

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