… it’s the tangibility-intangibility light 
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I live in the UK. We have had a number of Americans stay with us, but one constant is their observation of UK traffic lights. The length of time it stays amber - only a few seconds - is a lot longer than on traffic lights in America. It allows approaching cars to slow down (or speed up) as they approach, and before th lights turn green, it enables drivers to change gear from neutral to first, unless they have been wearing out their clutch by sitting in gear. Every single American has said “Wow! That’s a good idea!”. It’s a long time since I’ve driven in the US, but my recollection is that they stay amber for a fraction of a second. A “New York Second” as they say - the length of time it takes for the driver behind you to sound their horn when the lights turn green.
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It’s very much regulated and standardised in the UK- the Amber phase after a green is 3 seconds, while the Red/Amber phase before a green is 2 seconds.
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Yes and no. Yes, they’re way less space and fuel efficient than trains. Absolutely. I want there to be more and better trains, and fewer cars, in general. I prefer to use them when available.
But, I can’t get in a train car at my front door and get out right at my destination. I need to walk/bike/bus/drive to a train, wait, transfer, transfer at the other end, and walk/bike/bus/drive to my final destination. Possibly with more intermediate wait and transfer steps. A train of cars that can join and disconnect all along the route would have value a train on rails does not, if you could make it work. Doesn’t mean I like this proposal (I don’t), but I can understand the appeal and value.
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… so much assumed here:
- That people can follow the car in front of them reliably and better than their own control
- That following the car in front of them is accurate or responsive to the situation
- That there’s sufficient feedback from the AVs to actually coordinate
- That people can understand and adapt to the mode switch
- That pressure waves won’t propagate along a stop-start chain (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Suugn-p5C1M )
I’d need to see, at a minimum, serious modeling of the actual performance. This feels like an initial recommendation that lacks a system view of what they’re recommending.
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For me an “idealist” would be someone who supported a transportation system that didn’t rely on private vehicle ownership to get around a major city.
Also FWIW The Minority Report was meant as a dystopian vision of the future more than a utopian one.
There’s no real reason to believe we can make that work though. One of the primary reasons trains work as well as they do is because they are relatively simple and don’t have nearly as many points of failure as a networked system of vehicles would. “What if we just connected a bunch of cars together into one super-car?” is the transportation version of forming Voltron.
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Are you ready for four-color traffic lights?
When the headline is a question, the answer is always “No.”
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I am reminded of a Gilbert Shelton cartoon in which he imagined a system for traffic lights to be controlled by the amount of money you put into them as you approach.
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Someone I once worked for imagined a system of auto-guided cable car pods suspended above the roads. Each pod would be about the size of a car and run independently. You could catch a pod near your house, and it would join into a train when it got to a main road where there were many pods going to the same destination. An intermediate destination might be a node where pods would split off to head to different end points.
I can see it working but needing a huge load of infrastructure to be built,
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The pods would have to jump from one cable to another without falling.
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Maybe it could be done with something like the points on a railway. I’m not a mechanical engineer.
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And this is exactly how the techbros will “resolve” any trolley-problem-esk situations their autonomous cars face.
Premium subscription? We got your back, Jack!
“Free” version with ads and data sellout? Sorry, dude. But here are some ads for funeral parlours!
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Every optimized means of human transport eventually end up at trains. It’s like crabs in evolution.
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Karl Peglau has entered the chat.
Alas, his ideas came after “three different-coloured circles” were firmly established. My colour-blind son is quite disappointed with that turn of events.
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Or trees, or weasels…
“What… what is it?”
“It appears to be a train… made out of weasels.”
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Is that where the red and amber lights flash alternately? I remember seeing that years ago and was trying to remember where.
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Not here, I’m afraid. UK traffic signals are:
Red > Red&Amber > Green >Amber > Red
The only flashing signal is at pedestrian crossings where the amber phase between green and red will flash to indicate that any pedestrians still crossing have right of way.
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I’ve never seen Red and Amber flashing alternatively. But I do recall a Red > flashing Amber > Green in Venezuela. I was told it let you get into gear so you could go as soon as it went Green. Seemed like a real bad idea to me.
I spent ~3 months driving there. Learned some bad habits, like rolling through reds (“red light is just a suggestion” I was told). My wife smacked me upside the head the first time I tried that here in the Great White North.
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