Tunnel Boring Machine in Pittsburgh

The Pittsburgh Port Authority is extending the city's subway system with the help of a German made tunnel boring machine. The machine costs $10 million and requires significant worker support. The Pittsburgh Post Gazette reports significant setup time:

Yesterday, the 500-ton machine made by Herrenknecht AG was taking a breather as workers installed giant rings behind it, which its 20 hydraulic arms will push against to keep moving through the soil...

[Later], it will start churning again and spend the next three to four weeks moving about 100 yards forward and slightly downward ...

[Then], drilling will halt for another three weeks or so while workers finish installing the trailing gear that extends from the rear of the machine -- the control cab, the hydraulic and electrical lines that power the machine, and pipes that pump a water-and-clay mixture to the front of the cutting heads to help them slice through the earth, and then transport earth and stone back to the surface.

I found a Video on YouTube which explains how the machine works:

NOTE: Those of you reading this post in a feed reader may need to click through to the website to view the video. Sorry for the inconvenience.

When I watched this video all I could think about is Bebop and Rocksteady boring to the Technodrome in core of the earth to escape the Ninja Turtles.

This machine is pretty amazing as it is, but hopefully it will continue to get better and we'll be able to build tunnels without spending half a billion dollars. With ubiquitous tunnels, Manhattan could be green, even outside Central Park. Mountain routes could be flat and straight. Sounds good to me.

Links: Pittsburgh Post Gazette

Bus Rapid Transit Video

StreetsBlog has an interesting video on Bus Rapid Transit in Bogotá, Columbia:

NOTE: Those of you reading this post in a feed reader may need to click through to the website to view the video. Sorry for the inconvenience.

I read an article in IEEE Spectrum over the summer about a similar system in São Paulo, Brazil. I wonder if there's anything unique about the city structure, culture, government, or weather of South America that encourages the adoption of Bus Rapid Transit. What do you think about Bus Rapid Transit? I'm on the fence, but this video certainly makes the Bogotá systems look much better than any bus system I've ever used.

Links: StreetsBlog Post | Spectrum Article on São Paulo Buses | Bus Rapid Transit Policy Center

Personal Rapid Transit in Los Angeles

The Los Angeles City Council will focus tomorrow on the city's transportation crisis. Councilwoman Wendy Greuel, Chair of the Transportation committee, requested feedback on the city's "transportation vision." Roy Reynolds, Managing Director of PRT Strategies, responded in a letter published in CityWatch:

Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) technology has matured from its first implementa-tions in the 1970s and is ready for wider deploy-ment, possibly as early as 2010. We can best introduce this technology to you via the attached treatment we’d done last month in response to MTA’s request for comments re. the downtown Connector Study. PRT is a reasonable elevated solution for this application, and many others in the City.

It’s time to consider a high-tech solution to LA’s traffic problems. The first phase of your project seeks goals and objectives and it’s time for a new approach – that is, unconventional but achievable solutions, utilization of all available RoWs, computerization and dealing with freight cartage where PRT can be applied.

The first initial impression of PRT is that it cannot deal with heavy passenger volumes. With study and understanding, and simple mathematical projections, PRT can readily match standard bus and rail capacities given 1) that hundreds of vehicles can operate on its trackways with VERY short “headways” – perhaps as minimal as one second separations, and 2) that PRT is NOT a linearly-oriented system – it’s infrastructure is far more useful and flexible if multiple networked paths are built between stations.

PRT stations can also be built INTO structures, acting as second floor in-building portals. This leads us to the potential for public/private partnerships – a currently popular strategy in dealing with large civic expenditures. In this example, the property value of a structure is increased, and PRT becomes appealing to a middle-class demographic when it’s realized that a private and secure ride can be had on demand to/from home or office.

Links: Letter in CityWatch | PRT Strategies

Today's Irony

I worked for Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH) in 2006 and found my time there to be thoroughly boring. So I was surprised today to find a PowerPoint deck by BAH employee Paul Hoffman about Personal Rapid Transit (PRT). He presents a a very good overview of the subject, including this table:

Need	Design Feature and Goal of PRT
Faster total travel times	14 – 65% faster overall travel speeds than rail
Lower operating costs	25 -50% lower than light rail Comparable or slightly higher than heavy rail Lower or comparable with automobile
Lower capital costs	25-50% lower than light rail 35-75% lower than monorail or heavy rail
Reduced energy use	Auto equivalent of 70-90 mpg Up to 50% less than rail
Capacity	Comparable to light rail and advanced bus systems Lower than heavy rail per corridor, higher on a capacity/cost basis One-way guideway equal to 2-3 highway lanes
Small right of way	3’-5’ wide guideway Able to be installed on curb or median Stations integrated into buildings

He doesn't site sources for any of the statistics he lists, so I would take them with a grain (or 5 lb. bag) of salt. Click the link below to read further.

Links: Paul Hoffman's PowerPoint Deck

Experts or Politicians?

Honolulu is planning a $3.8 billion mass transit system. The Honolulu Star Bulletin reports that the city council has decided to let a panel of experts decide which technologies to pursue:

The City Council passed a measure yesterday that authorizes a panel of experts to select the technology for the city's planned multibillion-dollar mass transit system, despite concerns by several councilmembers that this crucial decision would be made behind closed doors.
...

"We should never cede our decision to spend billions of taxpayer dollars to un-elected, unaccountable, largely mainland experts," said Councilman Charles Djou. "A closed-door secret meeting on how to spend billions of dollars is something that is utterly unacceptable and something the Council should never condone."
...

The technology panel will be deciding whether the planned $3.8 billion fixed guideway system going from Kapolei to Ala Moana should be steel on steel, on rubber tires or on a magnetic levitation system.

I do understand the concern that an unelected expert panel cannot be held accountable to voters if they make a poor decision. However, if I were a city councilman I would rather delegate this decision to experts than try to make it myself. What does the average city councilman know about magnetic levitation? I only wish other local governments were so wise.

Links: Star Bulletin, Full Article | Star Bulletin Editorial

Electric Cars In Israel

Thank you to Elnatan Reisner for alerting me to this story.

Several large companies including Renault and Nissan, Israeli business leaders, and the Israeli government are getting together to promote electric cars. From the Register:

Israel today announced backing for Project Better Place, intended to switch motor transportation from oil to electric, and by a massive coincidence one of the project's prime movers, Shai Agassi of Better PLC, was evangelising at the DLD (Digital Life, Design) show in Munich. His objective, he says, is to "take one country off oil in a way that is repeatable." Israel is that country.

And the model is the mobile phone. Really. The point of choosing Israel, says Agassi, is that doing it in a chaotic country is important, and he claims Israel is the most chaotic nation he knows. Plus there are helpful limits to how far you can drive in Israel - the endurance of a electric car on one 'fill up' is about 200km, and that easily covers the furthest you can go within Israel.

He takes a pretty rational view of how far people are prepared to go to save the planet, and when it comes to cars that's not very far. It's got to be your car, no shares, with performance and size at least equivalent to today's models. It's got to be affordable (which includes image and cred, so lose points for non 'green' Hummers), and it's got to be fairly easy to 'fill up'. That last one's one of the gotchas of electric, and it's Agassi's primary point of attack. So you've got a vehicle that allows people to be green without it actually costing them anything to do so, and you've got the 'filling stations'.

Which work this way. Israel will be blanketed with a network of battery exchange stations and roadside charge points which allow the cars to be charged whenever they're parked. Agassi suggests there will be about 500,000 of these, and points out that it's doable, because they've got them in Sweden, Norway and parts of Canada, where if you don't plug in when you stop your engine freezes. Charge points and swap stations mean there's no need for lengthy charge periods, so 'filling up' should take no more time than it does currently at a petrol station.

My first reaction: Cool! This is a dramatic public private effort and in Israel! It's impressive that this effort has already raised $200 million in private funding.

My second reaction: I'm a little nervous about the "if you built it they will come" attitude. I'm not sure a network of recharging stations is the main missing link to a world of electric cars.

My third reaction: Cool!

Links: Register | Wall Street Journal | Haaretz

Autonomous Vehicle Safety

I had a conversation with someone yesterday in which I asserted that a shift toward more autonomous vehicles will improve safety. He immediately objected and listed a bunch of computer related disasters.

What I don't think this person realized is that computers have steadily taken a bigger and bigger role in the transportation they use every day. The biggest automotive safety advance in years, electronic stability control (ESC), is a computerized system. The National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), estimates that ESC reduces accidents by 35 percent. Every generation of commercial airliners includes more and more sophisticated avionics software. The airline industry is going through it safest period in years.

In contrast, the NHTSA reported 5,973,000 U.S. car accidents in 2006, which caused 42,642 deaths and 2,575,000 injuries. In addition, motor vehicle crashes were the leading cause of death for every age from 2 through 34. I don't have any statistics available to prove it, but I'm confident the vast majority of these accidents share one primary cause -- human error.

Links: NHTSA 2006 Fact Sheet | NHTSA on ESC

Tolls Everywhere - Marginal Revolution Edition

Links: Marginal Revolution | New Transporation

Safe Mining

Thank you to my father for alerting me to this story.

The Washington Post ran a fascinating article about the airline industry this past Sunday. The airlines have had an amazing safety record over the past few years. They attribute much of this success to a surprising source -- data mining. In one example cited in the story, analysts discovered an unknown bulge in a Vermont runway by mining takeoff angle records.

This success story is only possible because planes, air traffic control, and airports track an amazing amount of information. Commercial airplanes have been the safest form of transportation for a long time. Yet for some reason, we have not made similar investments into data collection for cars, the least safe major form of transportation. I suspect if we did we could make a major dent in car deaths.

Link: Washington Post Story

Congestion Pricing

New York City is considering various schemes to cut down on traffic in Manhattan. A New York state commission just released an interim report evaluating four plans, each of which combine one or more of the following: congestion pricing, bridge tolling, pricing of parking and taxis, and license plate rationing. I strongly support any effort to reduce traffic. However, I think congestion pricing is the most direct and logical choice. Ideally, all drivers should be charged for the delay they are causing by being on the road. The best way to do that is to build a comprehensive system of tolls whose fees change dynamically with the traffic. One of the four plans considered by the commission, the one proposed by Mayor Bloomberg, seems to be far closer to an ideal system than the others.

Link: Commission Report