I-Like-To-Bike

Are you looking for predictions of what futuristic "ideas" might show up in an unsold screenplay or a YouTube video?

cooker

No, we are trying to predict actual LCF outcomes. Since nobody has predicted that some aspect of LCF will "go mainstream", wolfchild's claim that none of our predictions will "go mainstream" misses the point of the thread, and is just him being snarky. Not surprising, as he learned from a master.

Ekdog

I believe voters in the United States will continue to approve state and local ballot measures in favor of mass transit and cycling infrastructure. I'm hardly going out on a limb here, as the trend has already begun.

U.S. Voters Approve Billions for Transit and Green Space - Urban Land Magazine

I-Like-To-Bike

Is that what "we" have been predicting the last few days?

Sounds to me more like spacey daydreams and SF script fantasizing with zero relationship to predicting any outcome based on any predicted reality.

jon c. 

the negativity gurus are the ones who don't think things will get that bad?

I-Like-To-Bike

Negativity gurus are those who do not uncritically support and offer electronic high fives to every bizarre "idea" proposed by the Predicting Guru.

Is related to the the definition of fake news as any news that doesn't fall in line with the claimant's preferred political orthodoxy.

tandempower

Hi fives are an ego trip. It's not about high-fives. Positivity is about avoiding snarkiness and focusing effort on constructive thinking toward what good things can be achieved and how.

When people are making predictions and discussing them constructively And someone responds with negativity about the very possibility of predictions coming true, it makes you wonder what level of negativity they would have to reach before they start choosing constructive positivity instead of spitting and beating down every attempt at constructive discussion.

Walter S

Let's check in five years. How will you measure this one? What "things" are going to get "so bad"?

If somebody repeatedly thinks that the predictions they see are unrealistic does that promote them to the status of a negativity guru or is there some kind of initiation?

Are five year predictions specifically supposed to be positive? What if you don't think positive things will happen? Is that not a valid prediction?

Machka 

I'm confused ... if I think that things are going to be relatively positive in 5 years, am I a negative person?

Walter S

The whole discussion is meaningless because one person's "positive" is another person's "negative". To me it's a positive that we won't have autonomous moving platforms in our bike lanes in five years. But to the inventor of that idea I'm being so negative.

wolfchild

Let me clear up the confusion for you.... Here on this forum anything that's positive out in the real world and anything that benefits and improves peoples lives is interpreted as negative...and anything that's negative and disrupts, upsets, complicates and makes peoples lives inconvenient is interpreted as positive... To be considered a positive person on this list you have to be negative towards all the positives out in the real world.

cooker

Tandempower: Sorry if I came across as negative. As I may have said before, I think you have some very creative ideas, but perhaps not always practical. And creative ideas are great for stimulating discussion, but eventually pragmatics have to come into it.

I think your core idea here is a good one. Instead of having a heavy transit vehicle full of people come to a complete stop to pick up one passenger, why not use a transfer pod to accelerate the passenger to vehicle speed so they can board on the fly? It would save on energy and speed up travel times.

However there are logistical problems: having the pod stop in the bike lane to pick up and drop off passengers would be disruptive and perhaps dangerous for cyclists. Also, to catch the bus or tram, the pod would have to exceed normal traffic speeds, and maybe dodge around other traffic, creating serious risk for the passenger. Would you ride in it?

Of course these problems may be solvable, and perhaps eventually they must be solved, since as I said, the basic idea is a very good one. However it is not likely to happen within five years.

So, in practical terms, what progress towards this ultimate objective do you think we will see by the end of 2021?

Machka 

The way Melbourne does it seems to work fairly well ... probably not perfectly, but what system is perfect?

There are variations in different parts of the cities, but one of the layouts where they have trams is like this:

Footpath | Bicycle Lane | Motor Vehicle Lane(s) |Tram Platform | Tram Line(s) | Tram Platform | Motor Vehicle Lane (s) | Bicycle Lane | Footpath

The tram is in the middle. Tram platforms are often located near intersections (they don't run the full length of the road), so that when the lights change, would-be passengers cross from the footpath to the tram platform. The tram has to stop for the light anyway, so it might as well pick up some passengers then too.

This does not block anyone. Cyclists and motorists don't get all tangled up in automatic platforms running here and there. Plus it allows pedestrians to walk from the footpath to the tram platform, giving them a little bit more exercise.

As I mentioned in my earlier post, Melbourne is working on improving these and others of their tram platforms etc. I know projects like these, and 5 years isn't much time at all. Chances are they won't get very far, but some improvements are better than none.

To me, what Melbourne is doing makes more sense than trying to endanger the lives of cyclists and pedestrians.

tandempower

Negativity defaults toward rejection, whereas positivity seeks out seeds of potential success in order to avoid total rejection.

Negative minds just reject everything that's not status quo Haven't yet experienced enough negativity to seek positive change from status quo. Whenever they run out of money or favors or whatever else gives them faith in the status quo, they begin to seek a way forward and when that is hard to find, they begin to reject the rejection put on them and instead they begin rejecting others for their negativity. That is why I say that when things get bad enough, people give up their negativity.

Another way to look at it is that when things get bad enough giving into negativity leaves nothing left of life. So in order to survive you have to pursue something positive and constructive.

Exactly. It's just a logical application for autonomous vehicle technology, where multiple small vehicles can coordinate their movements to effectuate complex maneuvres without operator malfunction, cost, weight, needs, being a factor.

My default assumption is that no autonomous vehicle is going to do anything that isn't safe. If it isn't safe it won't be an option.

Much of the resistance to autonomous vehicles comes from the fear of change and job loss. If there was widespread acceptance that driving jobs are not ideal and other jobs are better and therefore it would be better to have autonomous vehicles then things would evolve more smoothly. However, we live in a world where many people want easy jobs and driving is easy, So much of what slows down progress in autonomous vehicles has to do with that, including a lot of what you read about fears of accidents and other things not related to the economics of it.

I think we will definitely see autonomous systems proving that they can make driving safer, which will shift the burden to proponents of human drivers to justify the safety risk of not having autonomous back-up systems.

I don't know what will tip the scale in favor of allowing vehicles and drones to operate driverless i.e. without a backup driver, but considering Amazon has gotten its flying delivery drone off the ground now, I don't see small surface drones as being something unrealistic to expect in the next five years

Walter S

Resistance to change is the least of the impediments to autonomous vehicles. It would be great if that were the only issue but as things stand it's simply irrelevant.

Reality tells a different story. The technology is not there. The ideas and hype have sprouted from people not realizing that it's simply not an incremental step in development to take the limited successes of autonomous vehicles and work out the remaining "kinks" and roll them out. It's not going to be that simple. The problems that remain are the most difficult ones to solve (that's why they remain). And the fact is that nobody knows what the solution will be or if there will be one.

Just because technology can do amazing things does not mean it can do arbitrary things. Break-throughs happen as a combination of human determination AND the physical nature of the problem. An infinite amount of determination is not necessarily enough to solve any problem - it also takes physics and chemistry. When I as a kid nobody conceived of the internet and it seemed to just spring up. OTOH people did dream that we would be flying around in little personal aircraft in the "2000s" as I was growing up. Where are they??

Just a couple big issues with autonomous cars include...

There are many issues with software and how to make appropriate decisions when deciding who will die in a crash. If you think crashes won't happen then you don't appreciate the unpredictable outcomes that result from mixing human and machine decisions on this level. Mercedes has stirred up controversy by saying its software will protect the occupants of the car at all costs - even if that means mowing down children. The court system has not even begun to decide who will be liable in these cases. The operator of the car? The manufacturer of the car? The vendor of the software? The manufacturer of certain sensors? None of these seem like good choices but who then? You won't see use in the public approved without these things figured out first. And there won't be just one answer and the problem will be solved a little differently and evolve all over the world - not a quick process.

But that's just one of many issues. Just because you solve some real hard problems is not good enough. If reality still has impediments you need to keep going. Even more significant are the sensor technology limitations. Computers don't get an accurate enough model of the world from the sensors they have now. That's dramatically worse in rain/snow/ice. Technological advancements on the periphery of this problem continue, while this one remains stumped. You might say "Oh, they'll figure that out". But it's not happening and the physics and potential cost of the resulting hardware are not known.

Autonomous vehicles on the factory floor - yes. Autonomous vehicles in our public roads - no.

Walter S

I can't consider "vehicles and drones" in the same equation. The autonomous vehicles potentially on roadways is a completely different thing than drones flying around in the sky.

Drones are another idea with a lot of snazz that's really not going anywhere because the physics just don't work. What Amazon has gotten "off the ground" is an extremely inefficient way to deliver a package that will never become mainstream. It's idiotic to think that much product delivery will happen on drones. The power of a drone severely limits its payload. And it can only reasonably deliver one package at a time and after every package needs to go get fresh batteries too! Compare that to the per package cost for delivery by a UPS delivery truck and there's no contest.

There's no technological development that will change this unless you think batteries (where huge sums of development have already gone in the last 50 years with diminishing returns) will suddenly be able to store hundreds of times more energy than they currently do. Not in this decade for sure and maybe never! And even then drones are no sure bet because you need to consider the cost of that energy which is by its inherent nature orders of magnitude more energy than required by a delivery truck.

Amazon does a great job of stirring up general product sales by talking about nifty stuff like this so they do. The impact this will have on real people in the near future is nil.

https://www.flexport.com/blog/drone-delivery-economics/

Drones perform poorly on both of these economic aspects of last-mile delivery. The current prototypes that companies have unveiled usually carry just one package, and after the drone makes its delivery, it has to fly all the way back to its homebase to recharge its batteries and pick up the next package.

Compare that to the current status quo: delivery trucks. A delivery truck from UPS makes an average of 120 stops a day to deliver hundreds or thousands of packages. Don’t they seem to be better than drones?

Delivery by drones will happen but not as a general thing for most of the public. Drone delivery will be limited to specialized applications of a time critical nature and particularly to destinations where there are no roads.

I-Like-To-Bike

Autonomous vehicles in our public roads in screenplays -yes.
Autonomous vehicles predicted on our public roads in an alternate reality inspired by screenplays and/or vivid imaginations - yes.

Autonomous vehicles in our public roads - no.

tandempower

How long before autonomous systems intervene for safety, e.g. by braking automatically in anticipation of potential crashes? Already in the last week or so I have seen one news report of a truck rolling over a child and another one where a tesla braked before it's driver could react. ABS already exists so what basis is there for blocking further safety advances utilizing autonomous control systems?

Walter S

10 Cars with Automatic Emergency Braking Systems | Autobytel.com

tandempower

If that's already reality, then I would expect tractor trailer 'trains' of multiple semi trucks and buses piloted by a single operator to be coming soon.
Such systems are already being tested in Europe.

Roody

Yes--the damn things don't work yet and they probably never will. But Uber is so gung-ho on them that they've been found violating the laws that currently prohibit autonomous vehicles. As usual, the corporations rule and bikes are seen as getting in the way of progress.

Roody

I think it's good for us ALL to keep this in mind. And also, predictions aren't always easily understood to bepositive or negative. Often, we predict that something will have a positive outcome, but then it comes to pass and the outcome is negative for individuals and society.

tandempower

The whole discussion about positivity and negativity flowed out of a comment I made toward I think it was wolfchild regarding a prediction that none of the predictions on this thread would come true. My comment wasn't specifically directed toward him or toward the positivity or negativity of various predictions in the thread. It was toward the negative attitude expressed by certain posters in this subforum where expressing rejection in some way or other is the driving theme in posts.

My point was that when You get enough negativity in life, you stop wasting energy on rejection and start focusing on constructive thinking, whether that is toward formulating positive alternatives to problems of the status quo or toward analyzing an understanding things more deeply so as to appreciate them and thus refine critical thinking to respect positive aspects of whatever is being critiqued. What you stop doing is getting defensive in response to constructive critique and/or focussing on rejecting others and their ideas without consideration of the logical basis for them.

Cooker often exemplifies someone who disagrees with things that I say for various reasons but nevertheless recognizes and understands the basis for why I say them. Most others simply don't bother to do anything besides pile on rejection in every possible way, which is unconstructive or even anti-constructive. There are many things that I disagree with it for many reasons but I always make the effort to understand why the people who support those things do. Only by doing is it possible to consider ways to respect others' values in discussions involving conflicting viewpoints.

Often when I criticize others' negative attitudes here, the response is that only supporters and high-five givers are accepted here but that's not it. It's that they need to learn how to have constructive discussion with people they disagree with.

cooker

Do you predict that will change in 5 years? I think not.

Rollfast

You do realize that the purpose of buses is to serve all the riders along it's stops...


Not a taxi.


Many new buses are electric or hybrid powered now as well.


I love all the enthusiastic people who probably have never used the services they talk about in years.