What are your craziest transportation ideas and dreams?
6mon 4d ago by fedia.io/u/atro_city in publictransport@slrpnk.net
Feasible or not, what has kept you up or had you go chew somebody's ear off?
Independent bike transit away from cars and connecting everywhere. There should not be stops or intersections anywhere. A simple culvert works as an under/over pass. There are several in my area that are just very large corrugated drainage pipes. Without the need to support cars, this stuff is cheap to build by comparison.
The Netherlands has that... mostly. It's glorious. But I agree, having that worldwide would be amazing!
I have a few, but a world-wide, interconnected high-speed rail is probably my wettest dream. Imagine taking the a highspeed rail from Paris to Beijing across Europe then the Trans-Asian Railway. Or deciding to travel from Alaska all the way to Patagonia by train. How about a trip from Oslo to Cape Town? We have the technology to make that reality.
My wildest dream though would be having some kind of solution for connecting remote areas. Imagine living in a cabin in the woods and wanting to get to town. Right now, the most likely answer would be "I need a car", but imagine we invented something else? What would that be? A public hydrogen powered drone network for last-k transport maybe? Gondola lifts? Bike paths and on demand rail to every house? A slingshot system with a glider? I dunno, just anything but a car.
Always airbone airships with small electric quad copters that pick up and drop passengers.
Instead of a car, you get an enclosed quad with a electric engine and pedals. It's equipped with a warning system for you to get out of the way of larger/faster vehicles approaching.
Dutch style bike infrastructure in the US.
So this is not my idea. Its been around for awhile. Its actually kind of two but they could be combined. One is to have a one way bike expressway where going out of the city starts high up in the city and its end destination is at ground level and the reverse for going into the city. Every so often there are egress/entrance points with stairs. The idea is that you are riding very slightly downhill. A similar thing is covered bikeways that are one way and completely covered tunnels that have negative pressure so the wind is always at your back. That could have interchanges to switch direction. Also the concept could be combined so your ride into the city is covered, downhill, and with the wind at your back. I can say this. Where I was at biking into the city seemed to be overall slightly downhill and in the morning the wind seemed to mostly be at my back and in the afternoon coming back it was reverse (slightly uphill and wind in face) combine that in the summer with the mornings being cooler and oh man biking in was way easier. I used to bike in and then bring my bike on the train for the way back (which by the way was awesome.)
I wouldn't chew someone's ear off or anything, but I have thought about wormhole portals and trains. Teleporting trains. And you can see through the portals too.
Edit: I realized this is the public transport community, but you said feasible or not and I chose not.
Interesting. I would've picked personal wormholes, but picked wormholes for trains. Why trains?
Seriously though, I was thinking of this as more of a fictional thing (I didn't check what community I was in lol) and personal wormholes would be too convenient for sci-fi, in my opinion. Wormhole trains are like the sweet spot of coolness and convenience, and they look cool in my imagination.
Sidenote: I once had a dream (as in sleeping) where I was on a haunted space bus. Like, a bus that floated through space and even toured around planets.
I can't remember the name of it but there is a book with that exact thing in it.
As eventual God Emperor of New Jersey I've given it much thought. It involves light rails, trams (mind the tram car please) and lots of jitneys!
as prospective Supreme Leader of New York who has family in PA, I support your local trains so my express trains can have less people from New Jersey on them
(I was born in NJ this is a joke pls don't kill me)
Anything that keeps drivers away the better. Specially PA drivers!
agreed 😬
I know it's just a fantasy but having a semi frequent tram on 1 or 2 major routes in the area.
A Vancouver like skytrain - but down every major street, with stops every half mile (my city is laid out on mile grids). These go not downtown, but to the middle of every township (Townships in the US are squares 6 miles on a side) - these trains are really going township to township, but you are mostly expected to ride to the center of your township). From there you can get express trains to every suburb around, and those continue on through the city. All of this frequent so once you arrive it is only a few minutes until the train arrives, and fully automated
there was this idea for a swiss wide hyperloop like metro: https://swissmetro-ng.org/en/
and more recent one a similar system just for cargo: https://www.cst.ch/en/
Both have enormous potential but ofc also enormous costs. More realistically I would be really happy if we would have a European wide high speed railway. Similar like the Shinkansen, connecting all major cities.
I'm still very doubtful of a hyperloop. But a Europe-wide highspeed railway network? For sure! We need that.
Why do they have a IBAN just hanging out on the bottom. To send them random amounts of money?
Lots of chair lifts in hilly areas. I have ideas to make them bike/handicap accessible.
Ropeways with gondola cars are probably a good fit for this
Indeed I love the classic chairlift and my area had very nice weather so I would want quite a few, but some gondola type cars for wheelchairs and bad weather would be ideal too.
I like bike lifts too but since it’s primarily for pedestrians the bikes are an accessibility feature. My idea is to have hooks where the bike can be clipped in and once the seat raises hang underneath. For the wheelchairs there would be a little platform to drive onto and the lift would stop entirely (based on sensor) until the stall door closed.
In my area everything is on a very steep incline and there is a big park area with a swimming hole at the top of the hill that is only accessible by an unpleasant bus ride (lots of twisting roads) with very limited hours. It would add so much flair to the town if you could ride up in a chair lift and take in the breathtaking views! I would definitely ride it just for fun regularly.
I'd like to be able to broadcast/listen to what my fellow passengers are listening to in their Bluetooth headphones.
It's Porn
The punchline is always porn Petah.
Sailboat. But I also want to become liveaboard someday.
Honestly extending Dortmunds H-Bahn to the city center. It is completly stupid as there is already an extensive light rail system, which covers every logical approach so well, the H-Bahn is a complete gadget bahn and most stupidly I have never even been to Dortmund. But I like small automated metros and suspended railways are really really cool too. So any system which combines both is just awesome to me.
I only know the very similar version at the airport Düsseldorf and it is honestly not very good.
If you want to see a well working hanging rail system, visit the Schwebebahn in Wuppertal. That one has also proven its use as a real urban transit system for more than a hundred years.
[off topic?]
The Guns Above by Robyn Bennis.
Airships in the Napoleonic Era. The only 'fantasy' element in the book is that they have unlimited access to helium.
https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-guns-above-robyn-bennis/90734a18a40dfd82?ean=9780765388773&next=t
wat?
First, it was clearly labeled 'off topic'
I figured that anyone interested in odd transportation ideas would get a kick out of the idea of an airship built in the 1800's.
The author does a great job of describing the wicker works and silks.
I'm sorry if you found this confusing.
But airships were built in the 1800s, and the 1900s, and even the 1700s
They were used 1785 to cross the English channel.
Did you look at the book?
It describes an entire air armada, not just a one off craft.
If you want to know more, the author has a website.
Hydrogen powered trains, with stations that generate the hydrogen to power them.
Trebuchet to work.
Public transport by trebuchet?
Quicker and safer than car travel.
Arguably more fun too!
My focus is sort of on the other side of all these public transit options - the autoroads changing with disuse, falling into disrepair, perhaps some becoming seasonal. I like thinking about the types of vehicles we might see once nature lowers the the speed limits and people don't have to rely on cars because there are better alternatives like trains and ropeways.
Fewer ferries, more catapults.
Making fantasy transport networks is one of my favorite hobbies 🙂
I usually try to keep it "realistic", meaning doable with current technology and budgets, taking maximum advantage of existing infrastructure without complete rebuilds.
Enjoy! https://metrodreamin.com/user/pccscaED3pabJXFUZVdyh3tx8Gy2
Make buses a tag on tag off system so that transit agencies have the data about where people are coming from and going, so they can have realistic data to build routes
I believe the Netherlands and London have that. Tap in, tap out. Probably more cities have that. Definitely one of the things more cities should have!
They do, but so does Seattle.
i live in nyc
i would like some more subways that go sideways pls we already have a lot of north south ones
(i still support the Q extension though)
I always thought a train car or bus that just turned into an orgy sounded really hot. Like a really long ride and two people hit it off and start fucking in front of everyone and then the floodgates burst and everyone just starts going for it? That might be my craziest transportation dream. Its definitely kept me up.
I'm thinking of a cannon like at the circus. Tickets are 1 million dollars and after they hand over the money the cannon gets fired point blank at a brick wall. They can pay double for a wall of spikes.
A series of platforms that can raise on demand. Couple hugs poles around town in clusters of destinations and the tiles would rotate or swap positions to where you are somehow.
A smaller number of much bigger poles with not necessarily bigger platforms that crosses bigger distances at once. Cross country trips would involve several exchanges of platforms, not unlike connecting flights or trains, but it would have a better fuel system.
Maybe a whole third or fourth tier of them for local, regional, interstate, and long distance. I used the word platforms, but given the speed the bigger ones would move at it would probably be more like one of those observation tower-like rides at a theme park. Sometimes you'd stay on the same one as it got picked up by a different tower, sometimes you'd switch.
Not feasible, but a fun idea.
I understand going up, where would the platforms go to? Just up?
In my head the platforms all reach platforms from another tower, enabling passing from one to the other.
Sorry, but I'm having trouble visualising this in my head. When and how do these platforms go horizontally?
They rotate around these poles. So it's not exactly horizontal, more like an exaggerated version of going to a theme park and getting on, for example, the swing ride. You usually aren't in the same place when you get back down on the ground as you were when it started moving. But I'm imagining other swing rides being close enough to also connect to that point tangentially, and you're using the fact that by daisy-chaining the rides on different poles allows you to reach different places.
The version in my head has way bigger radii, obviously, but that's the gist.
I get it now thanks. That's definitely novel to me. It could make for a fun method of transportation at a theme park!
I thought so.
You'd need a lot more of them than there are airports, and I have no ideas to make it doable or sustainable.