Additional Dualmode Requirements

[Kirston Henderson]

Jerry,

After further though, I have identified some additional Must
requirements for a dualmode system not included in either the CEETI list or
your list. They are as follows:

1. Easy and rapid emergency escape from any stalled or burning vehicle
without external assistance for all passengers to an safe emergency walkway
and ultimately to the ground.

2. 100% effective emergency vehicle steering even in the case of loss of
complete electrical power.

3. Fault tolerant and self-healing control systems that allow any failure
to be detected and overcome to the point that the vehicle can reach a siding
where it can exit the main guideway. Such failures should be reported to
central control centers where appropriate action can be taken by human
monitors.

4. Provisions to prevent any vehicle from being blown by wind from the
guideway or derailing.

5. Capability of all vehicles to operate in reverse when necessary to clear
guideways in the event of some catastrophic failure of a vehicle or a
section of the guideway.

6. Guideway life of, at least, 100 years without need for maintenance that
would require the guideway to be shut down for more than a very few hours.
That includes that there be no need for painting or significant reapairs of
any sort. Wear items should be on the vehicle rather than the guideways.

7. Essentially silent operation to persons on the ground.

8. Resistance to guideways from being broken or collapsing during anything
other than the most severe earthquakes.

9. Normal operation under any weather conditions other than the most severe
hurricanes.

10. Desirable that standby emergency power generators be provided to enable
vehicles to be moved to stations at, at least, reduced speed and one at a
time if necessary,

11. Battery operated guideway controls and communication and communications
within vehicles to enable emergency communications at all times between
passengers in vehicles and central control center personnel.

Kirston Henderson
MegaRail®

[Kirston Henderson]

on 6/10/08 9:40 AM, Kirston Henderson at kirston....@megarail.com
wrote:

> Jerry,
>
> After further though, I have identified some additional Must
> requirements for a dualmode system not included in either the CEETI list or
> your list.

Oops! It should read "further thought." Too early for good
proofreading.

Kirston Henderson
MegaRail®

[Dennis Manning]

Forgive me but this list of "must requirements" sounds like it's designed
to make MegaRail the only qualifier. I find the "walkway" requirement
totally bogus.

[Kirston Henderson]

on 6/10/08 2:50 PM, Dennis Manning at john.m...@comcast.net wrote:

>
> Forgive me but this list of "must requirements" sounds like it's designed
> to make MegaRail the only qualifier. I find the "walkway" requirement
> totally bogus.

The requirements that I stated were requirements that we have imposed on
all of our systems because we consider them to be required features. These
requirements were not designed to make MegaRail® the only qualifying system,
but MegaRail was designed to meet all of these requirements and many of them
were difficult to meet and required a significant design and development
effort.

With regard to emergency walkways, we would love to eliminate them from
our systems because they are a significant cost item. Unfortunately, we
have never been able to find any other fully safe means of providing for
safe escape of passengers in emergency situation. If you know of some other
fully acceptable alternate, we would be pleased to learn of it. For one
thing, you can't depend upon fire rescue personnel to be available to rescue
perhaps hundreds of thousands of stranded passengers that could occur with
some sort of massive power failure. Please don't try to suggest that each
car have enough battery power available to move it the nearest stations,
because the car may have failed for some other reason than power failure.
Thus, such an approach is not acceptable.

Kirston Henderson
MegaRail®

[Jay Andress]

Kirston,

 

   I guess if you used a third rail (which you have previously stated was superfluous) to by-pass a disabled vehicle you wouldn't have hundreds of thousands of people stuck on the rails. I would also suggest that you should consider back-up generators like our system has so massive power failures wouldn't affect operations. Or you could include another of our features which is that the batteries are fully charged in the case there is a power failure.

   My point...each system has its own peculiar characteristics...Jerry Schneider's list needs to be an inclusive list not an exclusive list. For you to push the characteristics of your system as "must" items is inappropriate.

   

                                                                     Jay

--
new contact info: andre...@gmail.com

[Jerry Roane]

Jay

In Kirston's defense if he feels his system has good design features I see nothing wrong with that.  I obviously feel my design features are good and so should any design engineer who has been at it a while.  The CEETI study was trying to get us all to play nice but I disagree with that construct.  I think that Kirston should build his, you should build yours and with luck I will build mine and the other providers can do theirs.   Each of our systems work because they are systems and merging them is probably not a good idea.  Each have their strengths and weaknesses but if the end result is no competing ideas being allowed in, past an initial deign committee deciding features with a weekend's preparation, then the result will be less than any one of our systems.  IMHO.  I know this is preachy but I do believe that competition needs to be maintained so that each dual mode system is driven to be better over time.  If we combine all the ideas into one melting pot as this list of shoulds and musts suggests it will be heavier, slower and much more costly and worst of all not profitable for any one of us..  At this point in history that is the last thing our nation needs is worse than the best we can do.  I can design a car that can run on all three of these systems and probably a few more included but nothing about that combined vehicle would be optimum for any of the guideways. 

I disagree with a few of the suggestions because I rate features against cost with a different priority assigned to each gain from those features, but again that is the beauty of competition.  The market place will decide who is most right about the feature weighting.

The list of underlying design philosophies might be more valuable and the musts, shoulds and coulds fall out from the overarching design philosophy.  The ranking of energy, speed, air pollution, sustainability, etc manifest themselves in hardware. 

I reject railroad rules as one example.  I talked to the head federal railroad guy and he told me face to face that monorail was not rail so any federal railroad rules simply do not apply.  We have discussed egress with tension structures before to avoid the sidewalk in the sky.  In either case the Triangular guideway remains unchanged.  If someone makes us build a sidewalk next to a 180 mph car then it will just be built to the letter of the imposing "authority".  I doubt that the skywalk will survive the first 500 miles built.  It is not safe or practical.  We can recycle the sidewalk steel into the foundations of our piers when they are dismantled.  The rope ladder equivalent can be part of the passive restraint system so the customer is lowered to the ground safely with no fireman needed.  Designing those types of mechanisms is trivial.  Building hundreds of thousands of miles of skywalk inches from high speed cars may not produce the lowest body count.  ;-)  I am fine with most of the other suggestions.

Jerry Roane

[Jack Slade]

I know of one other safe alternative. How far is it straight down to the ground? Ships use rope ladders, approved by all marine insurers, but I dont think it is too hard to make a little improvement on that.

 

Some of your other items I agree with, but others I would put into another class: Desirable for future improvements. I consider the transportation problem to be a state of emergency that needs to be solved in the most basic way...total safety is not achievable, and all all of the add-on frills can be implemented at a future date.

 

Jack Slade

Kirston Henderson <kirston....@megarail.com> wrote:

[Jay Andress]

Jerry,

 

   I have no problem with competition. The problem I have is that Kirston is saying that the standards for a national dual mode system should REQUIRE ("MUST" have) an escape walkway and other features that are unique to his design. So basically he is saying that your system does not qualify and should not get any financial support. I don't think you would agree with that?

                                                           Jay

[Jerry Schneider]

At 07:06 AM 6/11/2008, you wrote:
>Jerry,
>
> I have no problem with competition. The
> problem I have is that Kirston is saying that
> the standards for a national dual mode system
> should REQUIRE ("MUST" have) an escape walkway
> and other features that are unique to his
> design. So basically he is saying that your
> system does not qualify and should not get any
> financial support. I don't think you would agree with that?

-----------------------------------------------------
The important question has to do with an ability
to get passengers to safety quickly, in the event
that a system-wide failure occurs. Assuming that
there would be thousands (or many more) of
vehicles stopped, it seems to me that any system
has to provide for a feasible and desirable
evacuation capability. The same is probably true of a partial system shutdown.

To me this means much, much more than a few fire
trucks and ladders which certainly could not
handle the job. How it is to be done is NOT the
issue. How can you expect to get a system
approved that could not provide for an evacuation
of thousands of people sitting in stalled,
hot/cold vehicles that, in some cases, they will
not be able to get out of - and if they do,
cannot get down to the ground easily and safely?
When I look at the apparent physical fitness
level of the population these days, I see lots of
people who I suspect would not be able to manage
to use evacuation methods that require some
reasonable levels of physical agility and
strength, including walking several miles.

Can it be proved that the probability of an event
that would shut the whole or a major part of a
system down is zero? Or, 99.9%. Or some lower
level? Maybe so. That would seem to be one
alternative - but it would take some doing to prove it.

Or would every vehicle have to carry battery
power sufficient to move it to the nearest
station or egress ramp, with the air conditioning
or heating system on, and then on to a storage
facility/area so that other vehicles could get
off the system. In the case of a dual mode
system, the egress ramps might be as much as 5 miles apart.

Or can a system recovery technique be designed
that can quick fix the problem, allowing a
system-level startup to be performed within
something like a maximum of 30 minutes, while
passengers are kept informed about progress, to avoid a panic of some short?

There may be other alternatives that would work.
In some cases, systems carrying only freight
(e.g. perishable items) might also be required to
prove that they can handle a whole or partial system shut-down event.

The requirements for dealing with this issue
might come from a government agency or from an
insurance carrier, or both - at least in the
U.S. It might not be a problem in some other countries. Who knows?

One final point. Any evacuation scheme must also
make sure that it cannot be easily used in
reverse to insure that people cannot use it to
gain access to the elevated automated guideway,
for whatever actions that they might wish to undertake.

><<mailto:kirston....@megarail.com>kirston....@megarail.com> wrote:
>
>on 6/10/08 2:50 PM, Dennis Manning at

><mailto:john.m...@comcast.net>john.m...@comcast.net wrote:
>
> >
> > Forgive me but this list of "must requirements" sounds like it's designed
> > to make MegaRail the only qualifier. I find the "walkway" requirement
> > totally bogus.
>
> The requirements that I stated were requirements that we have imposed on
>all of our systems because we consider them to be required features. These
>requirements were not designed to make MegaRail® the only qualifying system,
>but MegaRail was designed to meet all of these requirements and many of them
>were difficult to meet and required a significant design and development
>effort.
>
> With regard to emergency walkways, we would love to eliminate them from
>our systems because they are a significant cost item. Unfortunately, we
>have never been able to find any other fully safe means of providing for
>safe escape of passengers in emergency situation. If you know of some other
>fully acceptable alternate, we would be pleased to learn of it. For one
>thing, you can't depend upon fire rescue personnel to be available to rescue
>perhaps hundreds of thousands of stranded passengers that could occur with
>some sort of massive power failure. Please don't try to suggest that each
>car have enough battery power available to move it the nearest stations,
>because the car may have failed for some other reason than power failure.
>Thus, such an approach is not acceptable.
>
>Kirston Henderson
>MegaRail®
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>--

>new contact info: <mailto:andre...@gmail.com>andre...@gmail.com
>
>
>

[Jerry Roane]

Jay

I agree with you on this.  On the walkway in the sky-- I am resigned to the idea that there will be ridiculous hoops to jump through initially.  If we have to do environmental impact studies looking for snail darters or build enclosed visual blocks for the first guideway or two I am prepared for those ideas to make their way to the front of the line.  I am sure several AASHTO requirements will be imposed as well as attempts to jam other rules into guideway that simply do not fit.  This is baggage I expect and with time, these extraneous things will atrophy.  No self-respecting regulator personality is going to let this one go without an attempt to influence the outcome.  Those turf wars will happen with human behavior being what it is.  The sidewalk is just an example of rules creep that we will see to get a few hundred miles built.  The laws I try to go by are natural law.  The design philosophy of simplicity would drive us not to include extraneous features or expensive processes. 

Jerry Roane

[Sergey Prokhorenko]

We don't have to require evacuation of passegers from flying jumbo jet.
Requirements should be more abstractive.

Sergey Prokhorenko

[Kirston Henderson]

on 6/10/08 8:08 PM, Jay Andress at andre...@gmail.com wrote:

> I guess if you used a third rail (which you have previously stated was
> superfluous) to by-pass a disabled vehicle you wouldn't have hundreds of
> thousands of people stuck on the rails. I would also suggest that you should
> consider back-up generators like our system has so massive power failures
> wouldn't affect operations. Or you could include another of our features
> which is that the batteries are fully charged in the case there is a power
> failure.
> My point...each system has its own peculiar characteristics...Jerry
> Schneider's list needs to be an inclusive list not an exclusive list. For
> you to push the characteristics of your system as "must" items is
> inappropriate.

Jay,

If you provide enough third guideway and switches to provide the sort of
by-pass capability, you will probably have just further increased the cost
of the system by the number of switches used. You can go that way if you
like, but I suggest that you take a good look at the total cost involved.

We also provide a limited amount of back-up power generation, but I am
enough of a realist to know that even if you do that, conditions may still
arise in which that backup capability may either fail or not be useable.

We do not intend to provide batteries in our vehicles, except for the
dualmode types, and that leaves a lot vehicles without propulsion power.
Including and maintaining batteries in all vehicles increases both new and
maintenance cost.

As far as Must Requirements, do you want such a propulsion battery
requirement added? If CEETI had followed their assignment from TxDoT to
study dualmode systems, I suppose that each vehicle would have been required
to have contained some sort of self-power. In the case if our own systems
designs, we are providing for both dual and single mode vehicles so that
automatically removes our systems from consideration.

But back to the reason behind by original Must Requirement of providing
Emergency Escape Walkways, I continue to believe that such are necessary to
enable people to escape from a stalled, or perhaps, burning car. Remember
that we have seen some pretty close calls over the last few years in the
case of fires. Remember the Seattle Monorail car fire. After than, the
fire departments of both Seattle and Las Vegas that were working on more
monorail systems made emergency walkways a requirement for elevated
transportation systems. I would not be surprised to now find such a
requirement to be widespread in fire codes.

Perhaps the most sensible thing to do is to forget entirely about
attempting to set forth any set of requirements and continue to allow each
company to establish their own design requirements as has generally been the
case in the past.

Kirston Henderson
MegaRail®

[Kirston Henderson]

on 6/11/08 1:35 AM, Jack Slade at skytr...@rogers.com wrote:

> I know of one other safe alternative. How far is it straight down to the
> ground? Ships use rope ladders, approved by all marine insurers, but I dont
> think it is too hard to make a little improvement on that.

Rope ladders are fine for most people as long as you never have to make
the guideway higher than the length of the ropes. They are pretty useless
to a lot of very young and to many handicapped people. By the way, are
those rope ladders considered acceptable for passenger liners and if so, why
do they have such strict lifeboat and lifejacket requirements?

Kirston Henderson
MegaRail®

[Edward Sax]

Pretty good argument for suspended cab configuration with built-in release & gravity winch-down to allow its controlled descent with passengers safely seated inside.   Absence of cable tension or motion might allow doors to be unlatched if landing not on water or precarious perch.  Trick is to keep any of these things from happening at the wrong times.

[Walter Brewer]

Perhaps the difficulty in this running discussion involves the difference
between performance specs, and design specs.
Performance specs identify what is wanted, design specs how to achieve it.

My guess at this stage for PRT the emphasis should be on performance, and
let the several "hows" get considered as part of competitive candidates to
meet the specs at the systems level. Thus the several approaches to rescue
that have been discussed are design options to meet a safety performance
standard.

Scanning Jerry S's original list the items are primarily performance
oriented. The "Musts" especially. The "Shoulds" are a mix. #'s 5, 6, 13, 15,
19, for example fall considrably in the design spec category.

I realize in the the real world this distinction may be trumped by some
existing requirements which were evolved over time for rather different
approaches, and very different technology. (Railroad rules applied to PRT
for example).Those will just have to be dealt with as time goes on.

Walt Brewer

----- Original Message -----
From: "Kirston Henderson" <kirston....@megarail.com>
To: <transport-...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, June 11, 2008 3:27 PM
Subject: [t-i] Re: Additional Dualmode Requirements

[Jack Slade]

Kirston, you have it backwards....you just never make the ropes shorter than the height of the guideway.

 

Jack Slade

Edward Sax <es...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

[Kirston Henderson]

on 6/12/08 12:13 AM, Jack Slade at skytr...@rogers.com wrote:

Kirston, you have it backwards....you just never make the ropes shorter

than the height of the guideway.

   I agree that ropes would work for those with very able bodies.  I'm in reasonably good shape and I think that I might have some serious trouble going down on a rope.  A lot of older and handicapped people and a lot of small children simply could not do it.

Kirston Henderson
MegaRail®

[Luca Guala]

Jack,

Ships use fall chutes, airplanes use inflatable slides. Some time ago we tried to convince the Italian Ministry of Transport that chutes were safe for operation on elevated systems, to get rid of walkways. They objected that chutes and slides were OK if they were addressed to trained personnel like ship sailors or if a trained person was present like flight attendants. This was not the case for automated systems so the proposal was rejected

Cheers, Luca

[Luca Guala]

Sergey
That is opportunity cost. If you enforce evacuation during flight, then
flight won't happen.
The Moscow monorail has a walkway all along the elevated line
Cheers
Luca

[Michael Weidler]

I am curious as to what kind of emergencies your are proposing which can not be handled by either an escape chute (the modern ladder) or simply pushing the disabled vehicle to the next station? Note that a wide area power black out is why you need a back up power source. Having all the customers exit their vehicles where they stop during a blackout is a very bad idea . --- On Wed, 6/11/08, Kirston Henderson <kirston....@megarail.com> wrote:

From: Kirston Henderson <kirston....@megarail.com> Subject: [t-i] Re: Additional Dualmode Requirements

[Michael Weidler]

I agree.... those 6 year olds in the playground are so much more clever than any adult.... --- On Wed, 6/11/08, Luca Guala <gu...@systematica.net> wrote:

From: Luca Guala <gu...@systematica.net> Subject: [t-i] R: [t-i] Re: Additional Dualmode Requirements To: transport-...@googlegroups.com

[Luca Guala]

Michael

 

Ø       I agree.... those 6 year olds in the playground are so much more clever than any adult....   In a certain way… they are, and certainly they are more hazard prone than most MOT officials. In another way, I’d like to write something about bodyweight, bone structural resistance and kinetic energy but I understand that you don’t like complicated explanations Cheers Luca

[Kirston Henderson]

on 6/12/08 2:31 AM, Michael Weidler at pstr...@yahoo.com wrote:

I am curious as to what kind of emergencies your are proposing which can not be handled by either an escape chute (the modern ladder) or simply pushing the disabled vehicle to the next station? Note that a wide area power black out is why you need a back up power source. Having all the customers exit their vehicles where they stop during a blackout is a very bad idea .

   Even if you provide a backup generation system, there are always some possibilities in which even the backup system may also fail.  Severe earthquakes are an excellent example.  Furthermore, if you have a fire aboard a vehicle, occupants must either escape quickly or die and all of the pushing schemes that you could come up with wouldn't provide protection in such situations.

Kirston Henderson
MegaRail®

[Sergey Prokhorenko]

Moscow monorail is wasted money.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Luca Guala" <gu...@systematica.net>
To: <transport-...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2008 11:06 AM
Subject: [t-i] R: [t-i] Re: Additional Dualmode Requirements

>

[Walter Brewer]

Sergey,

Do you have data such as daily and peak hour ridership, capital cost,
operating cost? How long is it?

Walt Brewer

[Walter Brewer]

How about a reasonable size footstep for one or two people which is attached to a light cable wound around a drum. Drum rotation forces fluid through a calibrated orifice to lower the people at safe speed to the ground. The orifice can be self adjustable like some metering jets on carburetors to adjust for weight. Above the step can be a handhold or strap to connect the person more securely to the cable.

Many many years ago I used such to deploy gunnery targets from aircraft on a tow cable. Like advertising signs we now see at sports events. I may then have made a patent disclosure, including the possibility as an escape from upper stories from buildings. I found such was already on the market for home use at least. Although I think the restraining energy dissipating mechanism was friction instead of hydraulic.

Right after 9/11 there was discussion of such devices for very tall buildings.

 

Walt Brewer

 

 

----- Original Message -----

From: Kirston Henderson

To: transport-...@googlegroups.com

[Michael Weidler]

The point being that even 6 year olds can manage to use slides. It does not require "professional" knowledge.

--- On Thu, 6/12/08, Luca Guala <gu...@systematica.net> wrote:

[Luca Guala]

Michael

 

Ø       The point being that even 6 year olds can manage to use slides. It does not require "professional" knowledge. Actually my 2 ½ years old daughter tackles slides very well. When I tried to follow her once, I managed to hurt an ankle and damage my jacket. Now I stay at my place, alongside the slide like all parents. A child seems capable of doing with no harm many things that would kill an adult. There is a physical explanation for this but it is not very simple. Moreover children do it for fun while people escaping a stranded vehicle probably have a different psychological attitude. The position of the Italian MOT officials is that adults may not be able to deploy the chute, and even if they do, they can easily get hurt sliding down. If a trained attendant is present to help them down, then the number of accidents will be reduced but on an automated driverless vehicle, they claimed, this is not possible. Given the risk adversity of Ministry officials, we didn’t insist further. Cheers, Luca

 

[Michael Weidler]

Why would an earthquake affect an on-vehicle battery back-up? Why would there ever be a fire in the passenger cabin? Sounds to me like you have a bad design.

--- On Thu, 6/12/08, Kirston Henderson <kirston....@megarail.com> wrote:

From: Kirston Henderson <kirston....@megarail.com> Subject: [t-i] Re: Additional Dualmode Requirements To: transport-...@googlegroups.com

[Jerry Roane]

Kirston

Tie the rope to the escape module.  ;-)  Boat drag racers with superchargers or turbo chargers are required to equip their boats with a one man submarine pod.  When the high performance boat blows up and sinks the escape module keeps the driver safe till the scuba divers come get him out.  Here is a comparison for you--  Say you strap 100 sticks of dynamite to the underside of your car and go drive around.  Is that a good idea?  I don't think so, but people do it every day because a gallon of gasoline is the equivalent of 10 sticks of dynamite.

http://www.brunswickme.org/fire/Smoke%20Links/smoke_49.html

 My friend growing up, Johnny Hughes, burned up in a car wreck.  It is OK to drive those things apparently.  Why would you limit solutions that have not yet been seen?  Sidewalks are old-school.  ;-) 

Jerry Roane

[Jack Slade]

From a posting long ago:  The quickest way to get people out of a vehicle that has a problem is to have it auromatically exit at the next station, which is less than 15 seconds down the line.

 

Additionally, in some of our systems there is nothing to cause a fire. In mine, Tad's, Ed Andersons, and also in Doug Malewicki's I think, all of the electrical and power supplies are separate from the vehicle, and a fire in one of the components would not spread to the passenger compartment. I don't think we should spend billions to prevent something which may never happen.

 

Jack Slade

 

Kirston Henderson <kirston....@megarail.com> wrote:

[Jack Slade]

You have to be kidding.  Perhaps the people who sail ships take an hour or two of training when they are hired, but from to autopsies of accidents that I have seen it is long forgotten before they ever have to use it.

It took the Captain of the Andrea Doria about 5 hours to figure out that his ship was sinking, and by then the list was so bad that the lifeboats on one side could no longer be launched.

 

I get your point, that authotities think that slides need trained people to operate them.  That is really B/S. Every kid knows how ro use a slide at age 2.

 

Jack Slade

Luca Guala <gu...@systematica.net> wrote:

Jack,

Ships use fall chutes, airplanes use inflatable slides. Some time ago we tried to convince the Italian Ministry of Transport that chutes were safe for operation on elevated systems, to get rid of walkways. They objected that chutes and slides were OK if they were addressed to trained personnel like ship sailors or if a trained person was present like flight attendants. This was not the case for automated systems so the proposal was rejected

[Jack Slade]

I agree!  The last thing I would ever think of doing would be to argue with an Italian or Frenck Official.

 

Jack Slade

Luca Guala <gu...@systematica.net> wrote:

[Luca Guala]

Jack

 

> You have to be kidding.  Perhaps the people who sail ships take an hour or two of training when they are hired, but from to autopsies of accidents that I have seen it is long forgotten before they ever have to use it.

It took the Captain of the Andrea Doria about 5 hours to figure out that his ship was sinking, and by then the list was so bad that the lifeboats on one side could no longer be launched.

 

Airlines require that flight attendants are trained to deploy the slide and help passengers down them. If you refer to the Andrea Doria as an example we can just as well start discussing of steam engines. That ship sunk 52 years ago. We are supposed to be a transport innovators list.

 

I get your point, that authotities think that slides need trained people to operate them.  That is really B/S. Every kid knows how ro use a slide at age 2.

 

The B/S is to compare the two things only because they look similar. Firstly, children are having fun, adults escaping an airplane or elevated vehicle are most probably in panic. Have you ever seen a person in panic? I have. Not a nice sight. Secondly, an adult human weighs 5 to 10 times more than a child, if a foot or hand gets trapped, the flexure moment on the bones is 10 to 30 times greater. Yet an adult’s bones are only 2-4 times more resistant to flexure than a child’s. Junctures are even more vulnerable. Thirdly, an amusement park slide is typically 2 m high at most. An elevated transit system runs at 6-8 m or more above ground. Fourthly, children with mobility problems do not use the slides, adults with mobility problems do use transit, so do the elderly, pregnant women, obese persons, etcetera.

 

Just to put things in the right perspective, I am the one who tried to convince the Italian MOT that fall chutes were a safe means of escape from elevated automated, unattended transit vehicles, not the one who rejected the idea.

Cheers

Luca

 

[Kirston Henderson]

on 6/12/08 10:15 PM, Michael Weidler at pstr...@yahoo.com wrote:

> Why would an earthquake affect an on-vehicle battery back-up? Why would there
> ever be a fire in the passenger cabin? Sounds to me like you have a bad
> design.

Michael,

To answer your questions: 1, Some catastrophic event, such as a severe
earthquake could damage sections of guideway leaving cars no place to go; 2,
Fires can be started in many ways, for instance by passengers carrying some
flammable items (including items of clothing) and smoking; and 3, with
regard to your insulting remark about our design, I suggest that you get
busy and develop some perfect design.

Kirston Henderson
MegaRail®

[Kirston Henderson]

on 6/13/08 12:51 AM, Jack Slade at skytr...@rogers.com wrote:

> From a posting long ago: The quickest way to get people out of a vehicle that
> has a problem is to have it auromatically exit at the next station, which is
> less than 15 seconds down the line.
>
> Additionally, in some of our systems there is nothing to cause a fire. In
> mine, Tad's, Ed Andersons, and also in Doug Malewicki's I think, all of the
> electrical and power supplies are separate from the vehicle, and a fire in one
> of the components would not spread to the passenger compartment. I don't think
> we should spend billions to prevent something which may never happen.

If you all can get by local fire codes and fire marshals, go ahead and
build you systems as you please. As for us, we intend to play it on the
safe side.

By the way, I can recall from recent memory, fires aboard an
over-the-road bus that killed several, a near-fatal fire in a car of the
Seattle monorail, and fires in airliners. The designers of those system
probably believed that they had created safe designs.

Kirston Henderson
MegaRail®

[Dennis Manning]

I note that the suspended monorail in Wuppertal took 100 years for the first
fatality. If you go to:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwebebahn_Wuppertal

You can read the accident history - all five of them including when an
elephant went crazy.

No fires mentioned and no walkways either. Imagine that!

Dennis

----- Original Message -----
From: "Kirston Henderson" <kirston....@megarail.com>
To: <transport-...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Friday, June 13, 2008 8:05 AM
Subject: [t-i] Re: Additional Dualmode Requirements

[Michael Weidler]

If the section of guideway is damaged how are they going to be able to walk on twisted walkways? BTW, your dual beam guidway is going to suffer a lot more damage than a monobeam design in an earthquake. And, yes, there is historical pecident for that statement from earthquakes in Japan. Smoking has been banned on public conveyances in the US for many years. Smoke and it's go directly to the nearest police station. It should be very near impossible to  have a fire in a well designed cab. And what ever happened to the idea of an automatic fire extinguisher system in the bogies and cabs?

--- On Fri, 6/13/08, Kirston Henderson <kirston....@megarail.com> wrote:

From: Kirston Henderson <kirston....@megarail.com> Subject: [t-i] Re: Additional Dualmode Requirements

[Michael Weidler]

1) fires aboard an over-the-road bus that killed several....     I take it then your system is similar to a 64 passenger bus? 2) a near-fatal fire in a car of the Seattle monorail......       Your technology is no better than what existed in 1962? 3) fires in airliners......       I'll bet that any cabin fire started in the galley. On top of which, this simply goes to prove (as all 3 examples do) that mass transit is a very bad idea.

--- On Fri, 6/13/08, Kirston Henderson <kirston....@megarail.com> wrote:

From: Kirston Henderson <kirston....@megarail.com> Subject: [t-i] Re: Additional Dualmode Requirements To: transport-...@googlegroups.com

[Jerry Schneider]

At 11:28 AM 6/13/2008, you wrote:
>1) fires aboard an over-the-road bus that killed several....
> I take it then your system is similar to a 64 passenger bus?
>
>2) a near-fatal fire in a car of the Seattle monorail......
> Your technology is no better than what existed in 1962?
>
>3) fires in airliners......
> I'll bet that any cabin fire started in the galley. On top of
> which, this simply goes to prove (as all 3 examples do) that mass
> transit is a very bad idea.

Let's add the several types of computer glitches that are likely
(some software, some hardware), that might occur for a system with
several thousands of vehicles in operation and several thousands of
people making inputs and doing any number of other unusual/unexpected
things while using the system, and some possibility of people trying
various ways to vandalize, trick or subvert the system to injure it
or to avoid paying a fare or for other nefarious reasons. Tornados,
torrential downpours and severe lightning storms also come to mind.
Also, one needs to consider the problem of restarting a system with a
large number of stalled vehicles on it, many occupied with
passengers. Maybe, some of the vehicles would be in tunnels as well.

Ideally, one would need some kind of evaluation by a panel of
liability insurance experts to assess the risks - which is sort of
what the Masdar consultants are doing now with their "what could go
wrong" exercise (I think). And a deep understanding of the attributes
of the people who would be system users. What are their capabilities
and phobias and so on.

- Jerry Schneider -
Innovative Transportation Technologies
http://faculty.washington.edu/jbs/itrans

[Kirston Henderson]

on 6/13/08 1:53 PM, Jerry Schneider at j...@peak.org wrote:

> Let's add the several types of computer glitches that are likely
> (some software, some hardware), that might occur for a system with
> several thousands of vehicles in operation and several thousands of
> people making inputs and doing any number of other unusual/unexpected
> things while using the system, and some possibility of people trying
> various ways to vandalize, trick or subvert the system to injure it
> or to avoid paying a fare or for other nefarious reasons. Tornados,
> torrential downpours and severe lightning storms also come to mind.
> Also, one needs to consider the problem of restarting a system with a
> large number of stalled vehicles on it, many occupied with
> passengers. Maybe, some of the vehicles would be in tunnels as well.
>
> Ideally, one would need some kind of evaluation by a panel of
> liability insurance experts to assess the risks - which is sort of
> what the Masdar consultants are doing now with their "what could go
> wrong" exercise (I think). And a deep understanding of the attributes
> of the people who would be system users. What are their capabilities
> and phobias and so on.

I doubt that there really any people who can anticipate or predict all
of the things that can go wrong, including starting fires. For one thing,
there is absolutely no way that I can think of to absolutely assure that a
cabin fire can not occur, even when using the very best available
technology. By the way, most of the airliner fires that I am aware of all
started with electrical wiring inside the cabin. It would be very difficult
to build any type of cabin for anything without some wires for such
functions a lighting, door operation, etc.

The matter of product and design liability is a very real issue. As a
matter of fact, I just had a conversation on this same subject with our
insurance agent today because she wanted to be sure that I was aware of the
sort of coverage we are going to need as soon as we field a system.

Kirston Henderson
MegaRail®

[Jerry Roane]

Jerry

Excellent points.  The sad part of all this is computers have the reputation that Bill Gates has given them.  His intentional business-driven plan to publish when most known bugs are "fixed" is why computers have a bad reputation.  Of course it is deserved because of this business approach to a technical system. 

What this points to is that the transportation system has to be inherently robust for safety and we have to launch a PR campaign to describe all the microcomputers that run our lives every day.  Guideway provides a big step forward in controllability especially if there are no merges.  If you add the merge to the guideway then you will be relying more on electronics to keep you safe than if you are mechanically constrained to be safe in addition to the electronic control safety. 

As for fire, the airlines are now using better plastics that are self extinguishing.  It took them a while to change but the new plastics are better for fire than the olden days.  It was a bit of cheapness that gave the airlines a bad reputation for fire.  If wires are run in conduit they can burn up all they want and it will not burn the coach.  Again a combination of cheap approach combined with the weight cost of lifting tons of metal and wires with no visible means of support to fly.  Many homes have fireplaces and no body evacuates them when a fire is in the fireplace.  Same with electrical equipment you just build it so it can burn up and not light the rest of the car.  This is a no brainer just do it.  As for fire marshals acting without legislative backup.  They are going to do what they need to do to CYA and Kirston and Luca are probably right the "authorities" will opt for building training wheels for the first few systems.  Once the toddler drives for a few blocks with training wheels and experiences the knee scars caused by the training wheels defeating the lean of the bike then the training wheels will come off and the kid can ride like a grown up.  As long as the training wheels are cheap and don't cause too much blood shed like a kid being struck by a 180 mph car as he tries to write Marty loves Mary on the track then we should be OK.  It is a diversion and an expense that is just part of doing business.  The "authorities" will receive comments from me and others akin to this comment so it will not go without consequences.  As long as they understand that they must weigh consequences against consequences we will be fine.  At 60 foot spans we can build monkey bridges (tension structures) that can take the human loads for the cost of a few cables and a lot of rungs.  After the first fatality of Marty we can recycle that steel.

By the way the guideway cars are light enough you can push them back off the guideway with your foot if you have the patience.  The coast down time will get you off the end of the guideway so it is going to be hard to get stuck on the guideway.  From the dual mode study data the MTBF will be better so this whole discussion is not about hardware but about "authority" being granted jurisdiction.

Jerry Roane

[Eric Baumgartner]

Michael

 

Please don't berate the point.  Kirsten doesn't need the grief.  Fire issues are always a concern. 

 

 

The Apollo 1 was the best the US could make but three astronauts died when a faulty electrical circuit started a fire and in the 100% oxygen atmosphere they incinerated in seconds with not even a proper escape hatch.  That space was smaller than any PRT

 

 

Our local bus shelters show the scars of people with lighters who try to light the shelters Plexiglas windows.  Plexiglas is self extinguishing but once it gets going nothing will stop it.  The Montreal EXPO 67 American pavilion was a geodesic dome that burnt completely after careless welders set it ablaze.   With everything made of plastics these days it is amazing that more things don't go up in flames.  Mass transit has plenty of vandalism issues but take those same riders and give 10 minutes alone with nothing to do and they can destroy anything.  Just wait till the first college student is successful at leaving a slow fuse on an improvised bag of dog poo that starts burning when the next passenger gets on. 

 

 

 

 

Eric Baumgartner
eri...@shaw.ca

----- Original Message -----

From: Michael Weidler

To: transport-...@googlegroups.com

[Jack Slade]

Kirston: I know that fires can be fatal, at times, in existing transportation methods. I don't know of any of these machines that have really been built with the object of making them as fire-proof as possible, although you and the general public may think so.

Can you name me any system that has been built with an automatic fire extinguisher in the compartment where fire can occur? I can't think of even one. Even in aircraft the fire can be burning for several minuites before the crew notices it, and deploys the extinguishers, and I know of no ground-based system that is equipped, either.

I think we can do a lot better, without asking too much of existing technology.

 

You have mentioned earthquakes. I have done a lot of thinking about that, also, and have come to the conclusion that nothing can be made totally safe when one occurs. However, burning vehicles will certainly not be the main problem. Let me know if you find experts that disagree with this opinion. The one fact that stands out is that flexibility survives better than rigid structures, but I don't know how far I can go with flexible support pillars.

 

Jack Slade

Kirston Henderson <kirston....@megarail.com> wrote:

[Walter Brewer]

In San Diego a few years back a waiting passenger sitting on a metal bench at a bus stop was electrocuted because the seat was not properly grounded.

 

 Walt Brewer

[Walter Brewer]

I'm not "up" on very modern airplanes, but piston engine airline aircraft at least used to have automatic fire extinguishers in engine compartments.

 

 Walt Brewer

----- Original Message -----

From: Jack Slade

To: transport-...@googlegroups.com

Sent: Saturday, June 14, 2008 2:43 AM

Subject: [t-i] Re: Additional Dualmode Requirements

[Richard Gronning]

I don't think that the fire extinguishers were ever "automatic." Modern aircraft have 2 bottles per engine that can be fired by a crew member. Cargo holds have fire extinguishing systems too.

[Walter Brewer]

Gee! All those years I've been sitting there watching the sparks fly out exhausts, and bigger sparks and flames from an engine failure, and I thought an extinguisher doused the contraption in the process!! Is propeller feathering under some failure modes automatic, and with it the fire suppression? Do turbines, thrust and/or prop have fire extinguishers?

[Jay Andress]

  On our proof-of-concept vehicle (which is an adapted City-El electric car from Denmark) there is a kill switch that cuts all electric. The driver just has to tap it with the palm of his hand. It would be very simple to tie that into a fire extinguisher.

   While it is not the primary reason that the MonoMobile is a suspended vehicle, exiting during a fire or other emergency could actually be very easy...just pull an ejection handle and passengers are lowered through the bottom of the floor.

 

                                                              Jay Andress

  

On Sat, Jun 14, 2008 at 2:43 AM, Jack Slade <skytr...@rogers.com> wrote:

Kirston: I know that fires can be fatal, at times, in existing transportation methods. I don't know of any of these machines that have really been built with the object of making them as fire-proof as possible, although you and the general public may think so.

Can you name me any system that has been built with an automatic fire extinguisher in the compartment where fire can occur? I can't think of even one. Even in aircraft the fire can be burning for several minuites before the crew notices it, and deploys the extinguishers, and I know of no ground-based system that is equipped, either.

I think we can do a lot better, without asking too much of existing technology.

 

You have mentioned earthquakes. I have done a lot of thinking about that, also, and have come to the conclusion that nothing can be made totally safe when one occurs. However, burning vehicles will certainly not be the main problem. Let me know if you find experts that disagree with this opinion. The one fact that stands out is that flexibility survives better than rigid structures, but I don't know how far I can go with flexible support pillars.

 

Jack Slade

--
new contact info: andre...@gmail.com

[Richard Gronning]

OK, about props, I know little. I flew a Cessna 152 around for a while and it had all the fire fighting ability of a Chevy. I flew C-130s in the USAF, but they're turbine engines with props. You pull the fire handle and, among other things, like arming the fire fighting bottles, shutting off fuel, etc., it feathers the prop. (There was more than one way to feather a prop.) It's a process! You go through a check list. Sometimes the process is memorized and sometimes one crew member reads it off while another acts upon the items.

As far as I know, all commercial jet engines have fire fighting (extinguisher) bottles.

I hope that this discussion helps with the design of PRT SM/DM systems. I could see such bottles in electronic compartments to be fired by monitors or passengers. All PRT systems should have actual, live, people looking and monitoring events. Security in these days is usually thought of in terms of attacks. Security would also mean fire detection and the ability to fight the fire. People trained in such events can be located in remote areas. It would be the case with SM. How about DM?

Dick

[Kirston Henderson]

on 6/14/08 1:43 AM, Jack Slade at skytr...@rogers.com wrote:

KH Comments set of by ***

Kirston: I know that fires can be fatal, at times, in existing transportation methods. I don't know of any of these machines that have really been built with the object of making them as fire-proof as possible, although you and the general public may think so.
 
Can you name me any system that has been built with an automatic fire extinguisher in the compartment where fire can occur? I can't think of even one. Even in aircraft the fire can be burning for several minuites before the crew notices it, and deploys the extinguishers, and I know of no ground-based system that is equipped, either.

***    I can't, but I suspect that might be difficult to incorporate a fully effective fire extinguishing system inside any cabin that would not kill the occupants.

You have mentioned earthquakes. I have done a lot of thinking about that, also, and have come to the conclusion that nothing can be made totally safe when one occurs. However, burning vehicles will certainly not be the main problem. Let me know if you find experts that disagree with this opinion. The one fact that stands out is that flexibility survives better than rigid structures, but I don't know how far I can go with flexible support pillars.

*** I don't know of any way to fully protect people from severe earthquakes.  All that we can expect to do is the best that we can.  Our approach is to use all steel guideway and support posts and make them as flexible as possible so that they can sway in the event of an earthquake without breaking.

Kirston Henderson
MegaRail®

[Michael Weidler]

Well, dang! I need to break out my Beatles albums since we seem to be stuck in the 60's. --- On Fri, 6/13/08, Eric Baumgartner <eri...@shaw.ca> wrote:

--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "transport-innovators" group. To post to this group, send email to transport-...@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to transport-innova...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/transport-innovators?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---

[Eric Baumgartner]

I just used examples of emerging technology. 

 

 

 

Eric Baumgartner
eri...@shaw.ca

----- Original Message -----

From: Michael Weidler

To: transport-...@googlegroups.com

Sent: Sunday, June 15, 2008 6:29 PM

Subject: [t-i] Re: Additional Dualmode Requirements

[Luca Guala]

2) a near-fatal fire in a car of the Seattle monorail......       Your technology is no better than what existed in 1962?

I wonder if anyone is aware of the details of the Seattle monorail accident. It is worth reading , as a case study. What happened caused only minor casualties. The reason for the accident was a mix of human error and outright planning stupidity. It this accident had happened to any other “ordinary” vehicle in the same circumstances, it would have had much worse consequences. The Seattle monorail was an extremely safe system, made unsafe by an alteration to the line. The criticism came from the fact that the passengers had to wait for a cherry picker before being evacuated and many panicked because there was a small fire caused by the seizure of a brake. The fire did not spread and was anything bur near fatal. Nobody got burnt nor suffered seriously from inhaling the smoke. Instead of rebuilding the line as it was before the stupid alteration, the monorail was blamed and was shut down. Regards Luca

 

[Jerry Roane]

Luca

On my last trip to Seattle I made it a point to go ride the monorail and check out the repairs of those two cars.  The repair parts were fabricated in a hurry after the city decided that the monorail was valuable to the city as not only an icon of the city but also because it connected tourists to the other icons of the city where they spend money.  The only noticeable flaw I saw was the windshield sections on the corners had been fabricated with some waves in them but other than that they looked good.  The person driving the car was just a regular worker looking person.  I asked lots of questions and tried to snag a monorail trinket or two.  This monorail goes right down the middle of a busy downtown street at second story window level of some major department stores and I did not hear one complaint from the locals about visual intrusion.  The locals don't ride it because they don't live at the space needle and shop at the wharf but tourists do during tourist season.  The re-route was simply mind numbingly moronic.  Whoever thought that one up should be sent to moron prison.  It is unbelievable that they would build two tracks too close together for the cars to pass each other on that short section of track.  Crazy does not start to explain that one.  They certainly did not ask an engineer.  If anyone knows the person who authorized that modification to the guideway I would be curious to know what went wrong in the room that that was decided.  They certainly did not ask me I would have given them that one for free.  duh! 

The monorail seemed to work fine and I did not see one fire or panicking passenger on my ride.  ;-)  The science fiction museum was REALLY cool.  The rock and roll museum eh. Those museums are at the base of the needle and the monorail starts there. 

Jerry Roane

On Mon, Jun 16, 2008 at 5:41 AM, Luca Guala <gu...@systematica.net> wrote:

2) a near-fatal fire in a car of the Seattle monorail......       Your technology is no better than what existed in 1962?

I wonder if anyone is aware of the details of the Seattle monorail accident. It is worth reading , as a case study. What happened caused only minor casualties. The reason for the accident was a mix of human error and outright planning stupidity. It this accident had happened to any other "ordinary" vehicle in the same circumstances, it would have had much worse consequences. The Seattle monorail was an extremely safe system, made unsafe by an alteration to the line. The criticism came from the fact that the passengers had to wait for a cherry picker before being evacuated and many panicked because there was a small fire caused by the seizure of a brake. The fire did not spread and was anything bur near fatal. Nobody got burnt nor suffered seriously from inhaling the smoke. Instead of rebuilding the line as it was before the stupid alteration, the monorail was blamed and was shut down. Regards Luca

 

[Kirston Henderson]

on 6/16/08 5:41 AM, Luca Guala at gu...@systematica.net wrote:

> I wonder if anyone is aware of the details of the Seattle monorail accident.
> It is worth reading , as a case study. What happened caused only minor
> casualties. The reason for the accident was a mix of human error and
> outright planning stupidity. It this accident had happened to any other
> "ordinary" vehicle in the same circumstances, it would have had much worse
> consequences. The Seattle monorail was an extremely safe system, made unsafe
> by an alteration to the line. The criticism came from the fact that the
> passengers had to wait for a cherry picker before being evacuated and many
> panicked because there was a small fire caused by the seizure of a brake.
> The fire did not spread and was anything bur near fatal. Nobody got burnt
> nor suffered seriously from inhaling the smoke.

I doubt that the people on board that day would agree. They clearly had
a close call with regard to danger of smoke inhalation. I am attaching a
copy of a news photo showing passenger laying on the floor in the open
doorway attempting to escape the smoke. There is one woman holding onto the
door jamb with one hand while she has most of her body and a small child in
the other arm holding it out away from the dense smoke. Except to the
availability and rapid response of the Seattle Fire Department, the
situation could have rapidly become far worse.

Kirston Henderson
MegaRail®

[Luca Guala]

Jerry,

THAT modification which you mention, i.e. bringing the rails too close to allow passage of two cars, was done to allow rising a new large building which, incidentally, also blocked the view around the corner so that the driver of one monorail car had to rely only on a green light to know that the passage was free. I learnt that in English this is called “an accident waiting to happen” and there it was. Two monorail cars got badly stuck one against the other but incredibly, they did not derail. A train or LRT would have derailed. A derailment on an elevated track is not nice.

So the reason for that stupid modification was, as is often the case, money.

Cheers

Luca

 

 

 

Da: transport-...@googlegroups.com [mailto:transport-...@googlegroups.com] Per conto di Jerry Roane
Inviato: lunedì 16 giugno 2008 19.28
A: transport-...@googlegroups.com
Oggetto: [t-i] Re: R: [t-i] Re: Additional Dualmode Requirements

[Luca Guala]

Kirston
We seem to agree on everything: I wrote nobody got burnt or suffered
seriously from inhaling smoke. As far as I know there were no casualties nor
serious harm. You do not seem to imply the contrary. You add that this was
mainly thanks to the quick response of the fire brigade. Clearly the people
on board would have much liked to have an escape walkway but after the
accident the vehicle was recovered and repaired proof that the situation did
not really get much worse. When a bus burns, it usually ends at the
scrapyard once it's cooled down enough to touch it.
Cheers
Luca

-----Messaggio originale-----
Da: transport-...@googlegroups.com
[mailto:transport-...@googlegroups.com] Per conto di Kirston
Henderson
Inviato: lunedì 16 giugno 2008 20.53

A: transport-...@googlegroups.com
Oggetto: [t-i] Re: R: [t-i] Re: Additional Dualmode Requirements

on 6/16/08 5:41 AM, Luca Guala at gu...@systematica.net wrote:

[robbert@2getthere.eu [2getthere]]

I was told by a bus operating company official that the have about 20
spontanious fires a year on their busses (on a fleet of 3400 vehicles;
approximately 0,6%).

A fire on a vehicle appears to be a scenario to be taken into account
for any system (no matter how well you do your engineering).

Robbert

Luca Guala schreef:

[Jack Slade]

I can't agree with this statement.

 

First of all, a lot of bus fires do start with the park/emergency brake system, a lot of them caused by the driver leaving it "on" as he travels. I don't remember much improvement in the last 50 years, except for maybe a little red warning light on the dashboard. Safe system: the bus would NOT be able to move until the brake is released. This engineering improvement would make fires from this source absolutely impossible.

 

Second reason:  You are comparing a large bus,  (with ICE, fuel, made of materials with no thought of making it all fireproof) with PRT vehicles that have no engine, no fuel, no brakes.  That's right, I said "no brakes". The braking is done by the guideway, which has the propulsion system built into it. The vehicle components are all contained in the base of the vehicle, a separate compartment, which can certainly be flooded by an automated extinguisher, which would also re-program the destination to "next station", as well as activating some other alarms at that station, and central control.

It may be " absolutely impossible"  to totally prevent a fire, but it is possible to contain it, and get the people out in 20 seconds, not minuites.

 

Jack Slade

"rob...@2getthere.eu [2getthere]" <rob...@2getthere.eu> wrote:

[Jerry Roane]

Luca

You have the lingo down.  It is an accident waiting to happen and in legal terms it is called criminal negligence.  This makes the creators of things that wait to happen financially liable for the stupid "money savings".  The hope of these punitive legal settlements is to make it seem more expensive to make these moronic decisions than it is just to move the stupid wall over a scant few inches.  There was no good reason for putting the tracks too close together.  The monorail was built for a fair a long time ago.  Back when they had sense.  As for saving money when they went to buy parts for these monorail cars they dorked around for months and finally the city stepped in and said just get them fixed on an even faster schedule.  If you want to spend money just speed up the restoration of an icon and see how expensive that must have been.  They did not save any money in the long run and they could have hurt those people. 

We are trained as kids here to drop and crawl in case of a fire so the passengers were doing the right thing to stay low under the smoke.  They were doing what they were supposed to do but again the moron in charge putting the tracks too close together I guess skated free.  I did not hear of any jail time for that genius move. 

On more constructive note.  I had an excellent meeting with the new head of CAMPO this afternoon.  He is new on the job and the meeting filled in the information that he was not able to get from my web site.  I also have feedback as to where to beef up my web site.  There is a volunteer who is working on a wiki for TriTrack and we can use the information gap today to do a better job on the wiki.  CAMPO directs where federal funds get spent at TxDot and they are charged with planning the area mobility.  I pitty the new guy becaue he is stepping into the biggest mess you ever saw.  The toll road feasco is fresh on everybody's mind and the planning for roads in Austin is crazy and totally non-functional as evidenced by our traffic snarl rating of cities our size.  I was able to even throw in a few pointers on how to fix the highway system in the short term.  I will let you know if any hardware results from CAMPO the minute it happens.  I did mention PRT in the Ed Anderson version and the MicroRail and the BladeRunner.  I think that helped my pitch to bring up the others trying similar but slightly different approaches.  I always try to include the other systems in my presentations and this time it seemed to help our credibility with CAMPO. 

CAMPO does have written direction with this new director and its goals are dead center with the goals of our advanced transportation ideas.  They are directed to consider air pollution as a major goal.  That was great to see.

Jerry Roane

On Mon, Jun 16, 2008 at 1:55 PM, Luca Guala <gu...@systematica.net> wrote:

Jerry,

THAT modification which you mention, i.e. bringing the rails too close to allow passage of two cars, was done to allow rising a new large building which, incidentally, also blocked the view around the corner so that the driver of one monorail car had to rely only on a green light to know that the passage was free. I learnt that in English this is called "an accident waiting to happen" and there it was. Two monorail cars got badly stuck one against the other but incredibly, they did not derail. A train or LRT would have derailed. A derailment on an elevated track is not nice.

So the reason for that stupid modification was, as is often the case, money.

Cheers

Luca

 

 

 

Da: transport-...@googlegroups.com [mailto:transport-...@googlegroups.com] Per conto di Jerry Roane
Inviato: lunedì 16 giugno 2008 19.28

A: transport-...@googlegroups.com
Oggetto: [t-i] Re: R: [t-i] Re: Additional Dualmode Requirements

 

Luca

money.  The only noticeable flaw I saw was the windshield sections on the corners had been fabricated with some waves in them but other than that they looked good.  The person driving the car was just a regular worker looking person.  I asked lots of questions and tried to snag a monorail trinket or two.  This monorail goes right down the middle of a busy downtown street at second story window level of some major department stores and I did not hear one complaint from the locals about visual intrusion.  The locals don't ride it because they don't live at the space needle and shop at the wharf but tourists do during tourist season.  The re-route was simply mind numbingly moronic.  Whoever thought that one up should be sent to moron prison.  It is unbelievable that they would build two tracks too close together for the cars to pass each other on that short section of track.  Crazy does not start to explain that one.  They certainly did not ask an engineer.  If anyone knows the person who authorized that modification to the guideway I would be curious to know what went wrong in the room that that was decided.  They certainly did not ask me I would have given them that one for free.  duh! 

[Edward Sax]

On the issue of brake related fires on track or guideway systems,  have hotbox detection systems not been around for a while?      In addition to IR thermometry located at critical points along the line to check wheels and drive trains,  why couldn't a combination of today's IR imaging and smoke detection technology protect the cabin interior as well,  automatically bringing cab to nearest station for passenger transfer and equipment check?

[Eric Baumgartner]

 

Elk Grove California hybrid buses caught fire. 

This story is taken from Sacbee / Opinion.

---

Editorial: Elk Grove transit works, even if buses don't

-
Published 12:00 am PDT Saturday, May 24, 2008

More than three years ago, the city of Elk Grove introduced with much fanfare one of the nation's first fleets of hybrid gasoline-electric buses.

The city sidelined all 21 of its hybrid buses last fall. Elk Grove officials say the decision was made after four of them actually caught fire and another 25 to 30 other "thermal incidents" were reported.

With the clarity of hindsight, it's easy to conclude that the city's decision to buy an untested new technology was a mistake. But does that mean that the city also made a mistake when it broke away from Regional Transit and started its own transit service? The clarity of hindsight makes this an easy call as well. The answer is an emphatic "no."

No matter how you measure it, Elk Grove's transit service, known locally as e-tran, has been a success.

Bus ridership has soared from 565,000 in 2005, the year e-tran began service in Elk Grove, to more than 1 million riders in 2007 – nearly double the number of riders in just three years.

When RT provided exclusive bus service in Elk Grove, 25 percent of residents lived within a half mile of a bus stop, the distance transit officials say people are willing to walk to take a bus. Today, 90 percent of Elk Grove residents live within a half mile of a bus stop.

E-tran's fleet of commuter buses whisks Elk Grove residents not just to their jobs in downtown Sacramento but to job centers in Rancho Cordova as well.

The transit success in Elk Grove is not Elk Grove's success alone. Regional Transit has been an active and necessary partner. E-tran buses use RT's bus stops and fueling stations, and both transit operators honor the other's transfers.

The benefits of e-tran go beyond Elk Grove as well. It has been a boon for the entire region. More bus riders in Elk Grove means fewer cars on freeways we all use and less pollution in the air we all breathe.

Untested hybrid gasoline-electric buses failed Elk Grove but, clearly, e-tran has not.

---

Go to: Sacbee / Back to story

This article is protected by copyright and should not be printed or distributed for anything except personal use.
The Sacramento Bee, 2100 Q St., P.O. Box 15779, Sacramento, CA 95852
Phone: (916) 321-1000

Copyright © The Sacramento Bee

 

Eric Baumgartner
eri...@shaw.ca

 

Eric Baumgartner
eri...@shaw.ca

[Kirston Henderson]

on 6/16/08 8:32 PM, Jerry Roane at jerry...@gmail.com wrote:

We are trained as kids here to drop and crawl in case of a fire so the passengers were doing the right thing to stay low under the smoke.  They were doing what they were supposed to do but again the moron in charge putting the tracks too close together I guess skated free.  I did not hear of any jail time for that genius move.  

   Is my memory playing tricks on me, or was that Seattle monorail fire the result of a collision with another train?  I seem to remember that it was caused by some sort of electrical fire on one of the cars.  It seems to me that the collision was entirely another event that did not result in a fire.

Kirston Henderson
MegaRail®

[Jack Slade]

I don't keep up to date on train systems, but I remember one incident here 30 years ago where a hotbox went undetected, brobably because the "detector" was asleep. The resulting crash caused the evacuation of 250,000 people from Mississauga, next door to Toronto, because some of the cars contained chlorine. Others carried propane.

 

It is not difficult to reroute a vehicle safely when the temperature reaches 100 degrees lower than the ignition temperature of the components on board. Why should I wait till I smell smoke in the cabin?

 

Jack Slade

Edward Sax <es...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

[Kirston Henderson]

on 6/16/08 2:28 PM, Luca Guala at gu...@systematica.net wrote:

> Kirston
> We seem to agree on everything: I wrote nobody got burnt or suffered
> seriously from inhaling smoke. As far as I know there were no casualties nor
> serious harm. You do not seem to imply the contrary. You add that this was
> mainly thanks to the quick response of the fire brigade. Clearly the people
> on board would have much liked to have an escape walkway but after the
> accident the vehicle was recovered and repaired proof that the situation did
> not really get much worse.

It was not long after that that both the Seattle and Las Vegas fire
departments placed hard requirements the future monorails have escape
walkways. The Las Vegas system was nearing completion and they were forced
to essentially retrofit walkways to the monorails beams.

I have receive a lot of flack from various members of this discussion
group in recent days because of MegaRail'® provision of escape walkway in
the center of our guideways. I believe that is important at this point to
say that these same walkways also serve as work platforms for workers during
final assembly of the system in the air and provide an important barrier to
prevent objects, including chunks of ice, from becoming deadly missiles to
people below for high-speed versions. By the way, in our case the cost of
these walkways is less than 1/2% of the installed cost of the guideway. I
consider that to be a very small price for the increased safety.

I have seen some recent chat about PRT vehicles on fire being directed
to the nearest station. That doesn't work well for high-speed cross-country
versions where stations may be ten to 15 miles apart. Furthermore, all of
vehicles will be equipped with passenger operated emergency stop buttons to
call for on-line stops when essential.

Kirston Henderson
MegaRail®

[Michael Weidler]

Care to bet that they were TOLD to get on the floor to avoid the smoke? In case you didn't know, smoke rises.

--- On Mon, 6/16/08, Kirston Henderson <kirston....@megarail.com> wrote:

[Michael Weidler]

Ummm... how does a bus have a "spontaneous fire"? What exactly caused these fires? --- On Mon, 6/16/08, rob...@2getthere.eu [2getthere] <rob...@2getthere.eu> wrote:

From: rob...@2getthere.eu [2getthere] <rob...@2getthere.eu> Subject: [t-i] Re: R: [t-i] Re: R: [t-i] Re: Additional Dualmode Requirements To: transport-...@googlegroups.com

[Gérard Massip]

http://groups.google.com/group/transport-innovators/browse_thread/thread/8c1994fd39ffbb7a/87d5748e10027aad?hl=fr&q=Additional+Dualmode+Requirements&lnk=ol&

 

Jerry,

Après bien d'autres, j'ai identifié quelques Doit
exigences d'un système dualmode soit pas inclus dans la liste ou CEETI
votre liste. Ils sont comme suit:

1. Facile et rapide d'évacuation d'urgence à partir de n'importe quel véhicule en panne ou de brûlure
sans aide extérieure pour tous les passagers d'une passerelle de sécurité d'urgence
et, finalement, à la terre.

2. Efficace à 100% des véhicules d'urgence de direction, même dans le cas de la perte de
compléter l'énergie électrique.

3. Tolérance de pannes et d'auto-guérison des systèmes de contrôle qui permettent de tout manquement
à détecter et à surmonter au point que le véhicule peut atteindre une voie d'évitement
où il peut sortir de la principale guidage. Ces défaillances doivent être signalés à
centres de contrôle central, où des mesures appropriées peuvent être prises par l'homme
moniteurs.

4. Dispositions pour empêcher tout véhicule d'être soufflé par le vent de la
de guidage ou de déraillement.

5. Capacité de tous les véhicules à fonctionner en sens inverse lorsque cela est nécessaire pour effacer
guidage en cas de défaillance catastrophique d'un véhicule ou d'un
de la section de guidage.

6. De guidage de la vie, au moins, 100 ans, sans nécessité d'entretien
il faudrait le chemin de guidage à être arrêté pendant plus de quelques heures.
Cela comprend qu'il n'y ait pas besoin de peinture ou des reapairs de
aucune sorte. Porter des objets devrait être sur le véhicule plutôt que le guidage.

7. Essentiellement, un fonctionnement silencieux à des personnes sur le terrain.

8. Résistance à la rupture de guidage ou de quoi que ce soit lors de l'effondrement
autres que les plus graves tremblements de terre.

9. Fonctionnement normal, en vertu de tout autre que les conditions météorologiques les plus sévères
ouragans.

10. Souhaitable que les générateurs de puissance de veille d'urgence être fournies pour permettre
véhicules pour être déplacé à des stations à, au moins, une vitesse réduite et à un
temps, si nécessaire,

11. Piles de guidage de contrôles et de la communication et de la communication
dans les véhicules afin de permettre les communications d'urgence en tout temps entre
passagers dans les véhicules et le centre du centre de contrôle personnel.

Kirston Henderson
MegaRail ®

[Gérard Massip]

Sorry again, it was for help me to clear my gmail box by keeping only the first message + a translation to help me