Links and Tidbits – October 24, 2014
Links and Tidbits – October 24, 2014
Links and tidbits is our semi-regular roundup of interesting fodder about transportation from the last few weeks or so. If you have links to contribute, put them in the comments, or email us.
» Transit buses in North America are built to last about 17 years and after that they hit the scrapper. Check out this photo from the Amix Group of our old buses:
Did you ever wonder where the old @TransLink buses went? One of my favourite salvage photos. pic.twitter.com/s34TzNS3Zx
— Amix Group (@AmixGroupPhotos) September 17, 2014
» BREAKING NEWS – TransLink is unveiling a tiny bus program! “Where will these buses go at night? How will we keep them safe?”
» Transit Police’s surveillance footage of a thief losing his pants after breaking into a SkyTrain station has made it onto CBC’s This Hour Has 22 Minutes (starts at approximately 17:40).
» What are you doing on Halloween night? Why not get together with other ghosts and goblins and ride the Canada Line?! The Vancouver Public Space Network is organizing the ninth instalment of their Halloween SkyTrain Party.
» This video will warm your heart as dozens of train riders came together to help a man that was trapped between the platform and train.
» Can’t miss this bus stop! This “obvious bus stop” in Baltimore, designed by an art collective Mmmm, is a typography sculpture that spells out the word ‘bus.’
» Instagram recently introduced Hyperlapse – an app that allows users to create their own time lapse videos right from their phone. Check out these Hyperlapse videos on Miss 604 of SkyTrain, SeaBus, and much more!
» The economic benefits of being linked to rapid transit means developers are stepping up to pay for stations, reports Business in Vancouver.
» The Globe and Mail’s Ian Bailey tweets, “Montreal’s #STM lays down law on fiddling with #Metro doors.”
» Illustrated Vancouver and TransLinked’s Jason Vanderhill has a new book. Titled, Vancouver Confidential, this book is a fresh look at the rare urban culture of a port city in the mid-twentieth century.
» Who can resist a discussion of how to improve online trip planning? Transport for London’s Digital Blog has had some interesting posts lately about how they’re upgrading their online trip planner. Things like crowdsourcing points of interest (identifying POIs must be a major task in a megacity) and planning appropriate transit journeys to large sporting venues with multiple access points.
» We love some cool SkyTrain photos! Check these out from Céline Ramoni on Flickr.
» What were you doing in eighth grade? Ivan Specht is designing subway maps for cities that don’t have subways!
» This will surely brighten up your Monday morning commute. A dance partay onboard this train in Perth, Western Australia.
» The Associated Press takes a look back at how Japan’s bullet train has revolutionized rail travel in the world as it turns 50 years old.
» Honolulu is building the United States’ first “wide-scale” driverless transit system! It is scheduled to be in operation in 2017 and will operate for 20 hours a day. (Thanks Sheba and Stefan)
» Check it out – London Underground’s new planned subway trains designed by PriestmanGoode! They will replace trains on the Piccadilly, Central, Bakerloo, and Waterloo & City lines.
Author: Allen Tung
Honolulu’s system will NOT be the first driverless transit system in the States. There are 2 “SkyTrain”-type systems, using the same technology Vancouver’s Expo and Millennium Lines:
The Detroit People Mover uses driverless UTDC Mark I cars in a one-way loop around Downtown Detroit, and has been operational (though sadly underutilized) since 1987:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit_People_Mover
And New York’s AirTrain JFK’s Mark II cars have been carrying airport travellers 24 hours a day since 2003:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirTrain_JFK
@Stefan: Hmm, you’re absolutely correct! The article calls the Honolulu rapid transit line “America’s first fully driverless transit system.” I’m interested in knowing what their rationale is behind that. Could it be they don’t consider the Detroit People Mover and New York’s AirTrain JFK as a ‘system’ since it serves a small locale? The Detroit People Maker only serves the downtown Detroit area and the AirTrain serves almost exclusively the airport.
Hey, Allen:
It looks like a bit of linguistic creativity on the part of the writers… :)
The article body says that it will be “first fully automated wide-scale urban transit system,” which the headline writer reduced to the “First Fully Driverless Transit System.”
One could argue that the Detroit and JFK systems are not “wide-scale.”
But come to think of it, isn’t it kind of cool that the first city in the US to have a driverless rapid transit system was actually Detroit, of all places!?
@Stefan: Indeed! I guess it is a lot more impressive sounding calling it the ‘first’ (wide-scale) than the ‘third’ automated system in the United States. ;) Very cool, that the once automobile manufacturing capital was the first to build automated rapid transit.