> Steve:
>
> You have to know this is disappointing news as we have been told for many
> months that it would open in the Fall. I'm sure the testing is very
> important and doing it right is more important than meeting an arbitrary
> deadline. Keep on truckin, post us when you can.
Everyone in this group needs to realize that the time to fully test and
make the almost certain corrections, improvements, etc. to such items as
sensor hardware, communications, and system control software is a very slow
and deliberate process for any fully automated system such as the ULTra
system being tested at Heathrow. Those of us who have been involved in this
process understand the scope and nature of the problems that can be
encountered and must be corrected before any automated system can be placed
in public service. There are almost certain to be problems to be solved
between limited but usually impressive demonstrations on a small test
guideway loop and a fully qualified system for public use. That is
precisely the reason that our company has consistently said that we can not
commit to fielding a fully automated version of our own systems in less than
48-months. It is tough enough to just solve all of the hardware and
software problems to field a manually-controlled, coupled train version of
our systems.
Kirston Henderson
MegaRail®
If there are problems, I doubt if Steve is in a position to be able to tell us what they are, so that we can plan to avoid them. Heathrow's PR people are obviously clearing all press releases.Maybe later on?....
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Read the material ( 1 and 3 yrs old) and see no reference to Setty in them> Am I missing something?
The price for Virginia system seems low, should be about 50M per mile more. Any data on what the overrun was, eventually?
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This is news to me, Mike. I thought he was just some kind of a grumpy recluse, who doesn't travel.
I wonder if will tell us about the last time he actually used his favoured method of travel?
|
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If this form translates at all (a .pdf is also attached), here's a table of costs for light rail systems that we've collected over the summer. The basic per mile average cost is $140 million for at-grade technology, or about five times the current vendor consensus of $23-30M/mile for single-track, unidirectional elevated PRT. Certainly, elevated LRT costs would be astronomical as the City of Honolulu is finding now.
These figures do not take into account the potential of private investment in PRT (e.g. stations funded by hotels, big box retailers, apartment/condo complexes) or private vehicles -- all financing strategies that lessen the infrastructure costs normally be borne solely by taxation. If anyone would care to add to this, we'd welcome the numbers and would post them on our website. I'm especially interested in the new system in Phoenix, and would also love to add a column on the public subsidies that LRT requires.
US$ Millions |
Miles |
$M/Mile |
|
MUNI (SF) Third Street Extension |
1,297.95 |
1.7 |
$763.5 |
Sound Transit (Seattle) Central Link projects |
4,384.58 |
17.0 |
$257.9 |
Portland-Milwaukie LRT (Oregon) |
1,471.76 |
7.3 |
$201.6 |
Hudson-Bergen MOS-2 (New Jersey) |
1,215.40 |
6.1 |
$199.2 |
North Shore LRT Connector (Pittsburgh) |
235.70 |
1.2 |
$196.4 |
Metro Gold Line Eastside Extension (Los Angeles) |
898.81 |
5.9 |
$152.3 |
North Corridor LRT (Houston) |
677.00 |
5.3 |
$128.2 |
Southeast Corridor LRT (Houston) |
680.60 |
6.2 |
$109.8 |
Central Corridor LRT (St. Paul/Minneapolis) |
914.89 |
9.7 |
$94.3 |
Gold Line (Denver) |
859.51 |
10.8 |
$79.6 |
Central Phoenix/East Valley Light Rail |
1,412.12 |
19.6 |
$72.0 |
Northeast Corridor Light Rail Project (Charlotte) |
748.96 |
10.7 |
$70.0 |
South Corridor I-205/Portland Mall LRT (Oregon) |
575.70 |
8.3 |
$69.4 |
Northwest/Southeast LRT MOS (Dallas) |
1,406.22 |
21.0 |
$67.0 |
South Corridor Phase 2 (Sacramento) |
270.00 |
4.3 |
$62.8 |
West Corridor LRT (Denver) |
709.83 |
12.1 |
$58.7 |
Mid-Jordan LRT (Salt Lake City) |
535.37 |
10.6 |
$50.5 |
Southeast Corridor LRT (Denver) |
879.27 |
19.1 |
$46.0 |
East Corridor (Denver) |
788.69 |
22.7 |
$34.7 |
Norfolk LRT (Virginia) |
232.10 |
7.4 |
$31.4 |
|
|
|
|
CenterLine (Orange County, CA ~2005) |
1,167.00 |
9.3 |
$125.5 |
Honolulu, HI Elevated LRT |
5,300.00 |
20.0 |
$265.0 |
Average Cost/Mile |
$142.5 |
||
Avg Cost less Honolulu, OC |
$137.3 |
||
Light rail (LRT) projects identified in the U.S. DOT/Federal Transit Administration "Annual Report on |
|||
Funding Recommendations" for Fiscal Year 2010, sorted in declining order of cost per mile |
|||
Orange County and Honolulu estimates per PRT Strategies research |
|||
Source: T. A. Rubin, 07.09.09 |
==========================
Roy Reynolds
Managing Director
PRT Strategies
Office: 714.531.7076
Skype: rallenr
|
From: transport-...@googlegroups.com [mailto:transport-...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Jack Slade
Roy
Was TriTrack price averaged into the $23-30 million per mile for single track? According to the TxDot funded study by the Texas Transportation Institute our guideway is quoted at $1 million per mile even though I told Jim Longbottom it was $170,000 per mile for our guideway in the interview. In that study they published the price per mile on page 33 (TTI:0-5827 kept in the UT Austin library) of systems A through N the mean (average) is $9.5407 million per mile. Where are the $23-30 million per mile numbers published? Perhaps that needs to be revised. If the world thinks guideway is too expensive they may reject the idea off hand if their impression is off by a factor of 155.
I like your list of the competing (not really competitive) fixed guideway systems. I did hear the term "fixed guideway" used several times in my last TxDot meeting. That is a huge forward step in that world.
Kirston Henderson
MegaRail®
The CEETI report is available on-line at:
http://faculty.washington.edu/jbs/itrans/big/CEETIreport.pdf
- Jerry Schneider -
Innovative Transportation Technologies
http://faculty.washington.edu/jbs/itrans
The $23-30M/mile numbers are anecdotal -- that is, they're in a range per the conversations I've had with ULTra, Vectus, SkyWeb and others. Would I bid a system on them? Of course not, they're obviously too imprecise (as are the LRT numbers, and for that matter, anything I've ever seen for BRT). Put another way, it's the best information anyone has right now as far as what's been divulged.
The issue in these comparisons comes to the old problem of comparing apples to oranges. PRT and LRT are very different technologies, and the big problem in using these financial comparisons is really the imprecision of potential vehicle quantities in use, their carrying capacity (relative to PPHPD analysis) and their costs. Still, one must deal with the entrenched nature of LRT (and HRT) in the "transportation establishment", these numbers are all we have right now. Fwiw, I've placed our table on our links page.
Roy
From:
transport-...@googlegroups.com
[mailto:transport-...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Kirston
Henderson
Sent: Friday, September 04, 2009 10:35 PM
To: transport-...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [t-i] Re: Michael Setty, inventor of the "gadgetbahn"
smear, doesn't like name calling! :-)
on 9/4/09 11:50 PM, Jerry Roane at jerry...@gmail.com wrote:
No virus found in this incoming message.
Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
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> The $23-30M/mile numbers are anecdotal -- that is, they're in a range per
> the conversations I've had with ULTra, Vectus, SkyWeb and others. Would I
> bid a system on them? Of course not, they're obviously too imprecise (as
> are the LRT numbers, and for that matter, anything I've ever seen for BRT).
> Put another way, it's the best information anyone has right now as far as
> what's been divulged.
Perhaps, I can shed a little more light on the system cost subject in
terms of cost information that has been disclosed. Although the information
described below is for our larger MegaRail systems, it is not more than
about 10% higher than for installed system numbers for our smaller
MicroRail system.
The downloadable pdf file at the following url has total installed
system costs to the customer:
http://www.megarail.com/pdf/current/I-70MTNCRB-3H.pdf
Page 31B provides total estimated installed system costs per lane-mile
and these numbers are based upon what we believe to be realistic,
upper-limit cost and are based upon firm bids from our major industry team
members. By the way, these costs are for a 125-mph MegaRail® system
installed along I-70 through the Colorado Rockies.
The downloadable pdf file at:
http://www.megarail.com/pdf/current/RTC-CRB6f.pdf
shows total installed system costs for a MegaRail® commuter rail system in
the Dallas/Fort Worth area. See page 21.
Kirston Henderson
MegaRail®
Jerry, one correction on your math: 5280 ft divided by 137 ft spacing comes out to 38 cars.....
Estimates I have provided follows your basic rules....the actual cost to create the system and install it, not what price I would sell it for. The reasonong for this is that I think it is better to enter an agreement to build, maintain, and operate the system for a specified period.
I can see no other way to ensure proper maintanance and operation. It is not the same situation as if qualified maintenance people were alteady employed by the Cites, and improper O & M may eventually cause a disaster that will have the City looking around for somebody to blame.
That would be you, or me, and I think you know what their maintanance records are like....wait till it breaks. and then ignore it.
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Estimates I have provided follows your basic rules....the actual cost to create the system and install it, not what price I would sell it for. The reasonong for this is that I think it is better to enter an agreement to build, maintain, and operate the system for a specified period.
I can see no other way to ensure proper maintanance and operation. It is not the same situation as if qualified maintenance people were alteady employed by the Cites, and improper O & M may eventually cause a disaster that will have the City looking around for somebody to blame.
That would be you, or me, and I think you know what their maintanance records are like....wait till it breaks. and then ignore it.
That's good, Kirston. If you are not the owner, I would add one more precaution....no override button that would permit the control room to ignore the computer.
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In my response below, I neglected to mention the elephant in the room as I suspect most in this group understand it's there -- but I'll bring it up anyway. Right-of-Way is the major challenge to any at-grade LRT alignment. We're in the densest part of Orange County, and any endeavor here involving, e.g., freeway widening has the enormity and risks of the Normandy landing. An LRT alignment had been marketed by the transit agency just a few years ago, but went down hard when it was learned it would take out a few hundred homes and businesses.
Aside from the political risk and nasty press, in general terms, the sheer expense of RoW acquisition (particularly where government land isn't involved) undermines most LRT opportunities. As LA Metro has learned, where streets are shared, accidents and deaths result -- the successful Long Beach <> Los Angeles Blue Line has been involved in 90+ fatalities since 1990. PRT can make a much easier argument for RoW, especially where it can share it on existing arterials, river and flood channels as we have here and alongside existing rail alignments (why not?).
Roy
latimes.com/business/la-fi-cover6-2009sep06,0,6494829.story
TECHNOLOGY
A peek into the future
Wireless electricity, touchable holograms, grown-up slot cars, elevators to space and more: Who knows whether they'll pan out, but they're in the works.
By David Colker
September 6, 2009
Of
all the predictions made during the future-happy 1950s -- when it was declared
we'd soon have flying cars, robot butlers, rocket-delivered mail and food made
from wood pulp -- there was one forward-looking statement that was completely validated.
It was delivered by Criswell, a self-described soothsayer and TV personality,
who said, "We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and
I are going to spend the rest of our lives."
Otherwise, predicting the future, certainly in the realm of technology, is a
risky endeavor.
Still, billions of dollars are spent every year in trying to do just that:
predict which products will spark new businesses or even whole new industries.
Here's a look at proposed technological wonders that are under development in
the fields of energy, transportation, television and medicine. Some are far
enough along to be aimed at the near term, others are more in the pipe-dream
category, but all are serious enough to be funded by corporate, government or academic
dollars.
Keep in mind, however, that the most important new technologies for the coming
decades might not even have been thought of yet. After all, 1950s futurists
didn't foresee the biggest game changer of our era -- the Internet. It's where
so many of us are spending much of our lives.
Energy
* Smart meters: Global warming and volatile energy prices have spurred
development of digital meters that provide real-time reports of energy usage.
They're already in use in some parts of the country.
This year, Southern California Edison Co. will begin installing 5.3 million of
them for all its residential and small-business customers. The cost: $1.63
billion, to be offset by a 1.5% rate increase until implementation is complete
in 2012.
Once they're in place, consumers will be able to monitor their electricity use
via the Internet.
Next up: remote-controlled thermostats and appliances. That can happen as soon
as manufacturers agree to a single standard for the control chips, according to
Paul Moreno of Pacific Gas & Electric Co., which is installing 9.8 million
smart meters in Northern California.
* Wireless electricity: Electricity that travels through the air to power
lights, computers and other devices sounds like one of those 1950s-style
fantasies. But WiTricity Corp., a company spun off from research at MIT, says
it's time to cut the cord. Wireless electricity products using its technology
will be available by 2011.
Funded by $5 million from Stata Venture Partners and Argonaut Private Equity,
the company has developed a system based on a technology already used in
transformers (such as the block-shaped thing on your cellphone charger).
In transformers, power jumps across a tiny gap between two coils. The
scientists increased that distance between coils to as much as 7 feet by having
them both resonate at the same frequency.
The energy that travels between them is in the form of a magnetic resonance
that's harmless to living beings, WiTricity Chief Executive Eric Giler said.
"To the magnetic field," Giler said, "you look like air."
One of the main obstacles will be skepticism about safety. When a post about
WiTricity appeared on the latimes.com technology blog, a reader who wears a
pacemaker said she'd never get close to one, and a man writing from Japan
wondered whether the system might "nuke someone by mistake."
Transportation
* Ground: Cars are getting smarter. We drivers remain, well, about as smart as
we ever were.
Researchers are pushing to provide drivers with better, faster information to
avoid crashes and speed traffic flow.
One major effort is dubbed IntelliDrive. Funded by the federal government and
major automobile manufacturers, and overseen by the U.S. Department of
Transportation, the program will begin tests of a traffic warning system in San
Francisco next month.
Participating drivers will receive signals on their cellphones alerting them to
bottlenecks approximately 60 seconds ahead. The phone will say, "Slow
traffic ahead" through its speaker phone or headset, and a message will
appear on its screen.
"We call it situational awareness," said Jim Misener, executive
director of California Partners for Advanced Transit and Highways. "It's
not for braking hard but for warning you in advance."
The operators of the program will use traffic information from several existing
sources, including Caltrans, and crunch it to provide the real-time warnings.
Only cellphones using Windows-based operating systems will be able to download
the software to take part in the test -- which leaves out iPhones and
BlackBerrys, among others.
A video showing how it works is at www.intellidriveusa.org/library/videos.php.
The ultimate goal is a dashboard warning system, fed by sensors in cars and
along highways, to alert drivers of potential hazards all around them,
including blind spots.
Far more radical programs take at least some control of cars away from drivers.
The proposed RUF system based in Denmark is called a dual-mode program because
a vehicle incorporating its design can be driven like a regular car or joined
to a mass transit system reminiscent of kids' slot-car toys.
In that system, elevated monorail-style tracks would be built alongside major
freeways, but instead of carrying trains, they'd ferry cars. Motorists would
drive onto the tracks that fit into slots cut into the bottoms of their cars.
That's when the automated system takes over, whisking the vehicles in single
file as if they were on a fast-moving conveyor belt.
The RUF system's name comes from a Danish expression denoting fast movement.
But in an investment brochure aimed at English speakers, inventor Palle Jensen
said it could also stand for Rapid Urban Flexible.
No matter what the name, RUF would be a difficult sell to a city government. A
study on building the system infrastructure in Los Angeles estimated the cost
would be $10 billion. The proposed system can be viewed at www.ruf.dk.
* Commercial aviation: NASA allocated $12.4 million in research grants last
year to Boeing Co., Lockheed Martin Corp., Northrop Grumman Corp. and others to
develop so-called N+3 concepts -- proposed aircraft designs for three generations,
aeronautically speaking, in the future. That would put them into operation in
the 2030-35 period.
Instead of focusing on building bigger, faster commercial jets, most of these
efforts are aimed at designing aircraft that will be quieter, less polluting
and more fuel efficient.
One NASA-funded project, which is experimenting with natural gas as fuel, is
designing an aircraft that will fly at speeds approximately 10% slower than
current norms.
Other projects are looking at biofuels. Earlier this year, Continental Airlines
Inc. powered a test flight in part with a blend of fuel derived from algae and
the jatropha weed.
* Space elevator: What if you could get to the final frontier by simply
pressing an "Up" button?
It's in the gee-whiz category of future tech, but two university research
groups have done work that could lead to elevators stretching from Earth to the
edge of space.
At the University of Cambridge, scientists are developing carbon-based fibers
far stronger than anything on the market. A practical use would be for
lightweight bulletproof vests.
But some dreamers say it's so strong, it could be used to make the ultimate
elevator.
Meanwhile, a group at York University in Toronto says a better way to go is an
inflatable tower, 9 miles high, made of already available materials filled with
helium and other gases. The York team built a 2,000:1 scale model in a
stairwell.
So why an elevator?
Because launching a vehicle from terra firma, as we now do it, is tremendously
expensive and requires massive amounts of energy. An elevator would eliminate
that step by delivering humans and materials to the edge of space, where the
pull of gravity is far weaker. Waiting spaceships could then take over for the
second leg of the journey.
Let's just hope the arrival and departure announcement system at this transport
station in the sky would be better than at most bus stations. A years-long
flight to Neptune would be no fun if you meant to instead take the red-eye to
Mars.
Television
* 3-D TV: Plenty of experiments have been staged in presenting television
programming in 3-D, but they've been novelties.
Manufacturers hope that high-definition imagery and electronic shutter glasses
will make 3-D palatable enough to make it a regular part of viewing. Indeed, in
Britain, the satellite-delivered Sky TV service said it would launch an all-3-D
channel next year.
But is the average person ready to don dorky glasses to watch TV (without them,
the 3-D picture is just a blur)? Especially when said glasses, even if digital,
can bring on feelings akin to seasickness?
That's what happened when Panasonic Corp. showed off its new 3-D system at the
Consumer Electronics Show this year. Hopefully the nausea problem will be
solved before the product makes it into homes.
* Laser plasma: Using a powerful, pulsed laser, Burton Inc. in Japan has made a
projector that produces 3-D images that hang in the air. So far, it can show
only points of light that can be combined to spell out letters or make a
geometric pattern, and glasses are needed to view them.
But Burton Chief Executive Hidei Kimura said the company hopes to soon
demonstrate "real 3-D images inside of the closed space covered by [a]
glass dome."
* Touchable holograms: This is real "Star Trek" territory.
At the Siggraph trade show in New Orleans in August, a University of Tokyo
research group demonstrated holographic images that could be touched. Sort of.
The images were made, as with all holograms, of light. But as you reached in to
touch them, an electronic tracking system (adapted from a Wii game controller)
and ultrasound generator worked together to provide a tactile sensation where
the object appeared.
A demonstration is at www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-P1zZAcPuw.
One of the most clever demonstrations involved holograms of raindrops that
participants could feel dropping on their hands.
It has been often noted that the porn industry drives a lot of the innovation
in high-tech entertainment. No more need be said about what one day it could do
with this.
Medicine
* Robot instruments: At the University of Nebraska, doctors Dmitry Oleynikov
and Shane Farritor developed a set of surgery instruments so small, they can be
inserted into the body and then remote-controlled from outside.
Oleynikov is used to the comparisons to the sci-fi movie "Fantastic
Voyage," in which a team of doctors gets miniaturized to go inside a
patient.
"Except with us," Oleynikov said, "the surgeon does not get
shrunk."
One use, he said, would be to send an instrument through a patient's mouth and
down the esophagus to make a small hole in the stomach. From there it could
remove the gallbladder or appendix. Light could be provided by a second
mini-robot.
The idea is to make surgery far less invasive.
The researchers have raised $1 million so far. They're looking to raise about
$10 million more to fund greater miniaturization and refinements to get the
instruments ready for human trials.
* Nanosurgery: If this works, it could revolutionize the practice of medicine.
The idea is to be able to practice surgery so precisely that a cell or even
molecule could be repaired or manipulated.
It's not a new idea. In 1959, Nobel-winning physicist Richard Feynman suggested
that tools be used to make smaller tools, and then those tools used to make yet
smaller tools and so forth.
Eventually, tools would be created so small, they could target individual
diseased cells while leaving healthy cells alone.
Dreamers of the future have imagined that this could lead to triumphing over a
foe as horrific as cancer.
And that would be a whole lot better than any flying car.
david....@latimes.com
Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times
----- Original Message -----From: Roy Reynolds
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where can the grassroot exhibition be seen and visited?
Kind regards
Jan G Lindhe
>----Ursprungligt meddelande----
>Från: p...@ruf.dk
>Datum: 2009-09-08 10:36
>Till: <transport-...@googlegroups.com>
>Ärende: [t-i] Re: LA Times Predicts the Future (including RUF)